A Wired Depression

I've already been without cable for over 6 years, and just recently cut my cell phone options to their bare minimum to save more money. I could probably get rid of everything besides the net. That's the only thing I don't see myself having to cut out to save some bucks.

Ask me after I lose my job.

During the Depression guys with previously stable jobs were giving themselves serious self-inflicted wounds so they'd have extended stays at the hospital with a bed, shelter, and three meals a day if they survived. If we're talking Depression depression then we'd be seeing a far tougher scenario then any of us can personally envision for our future.

This is a great and intersting point. Would we see Federal intervention into IT and Communications the way they did with manufacturing, power, water etc during the New Deal? Would there be an ISP TVA for example, providing cheap broadband for poor and rural regions. What would a New Deal style economic overhaul look like in a wired world as well?

The generations that lived during the Great Depression were argueably better equipped to deal with some of the problems considering we were a far more labor intensive, manufacturing, agri economy then. A lot of people knew a trade, knew how to work with their hands, could plant crops, lay brick, etc.

A lot of that work today has been passed on to immigrants or shipped overseas.

Rid of? No.

Scale back? Absolutely. I'm spending upwards of $150 a month on digital cable/internet, and I may well be cutting into that this winter.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/...ion/index.html

Take a look at this analysis. It covers the original mistakes of the 1930's and how we are avoiding those and making new mistakes instead.

I think we become increasingly disconnected. If the Great Depression was marked by a rise in nomadic lifestyle in a hunt for work, then people will stay at home surfing Monster and CareerBuilder all day.

People may cut their cable (since most TV is available on services like Hulu and through BitTorrent) and certainly their home phones (if they haven't already) but the Internet and cell phones have simply become too integral to day-to-day living. And in trying to land new work, removing those tools could do more harm to one's financial circumstances than good.

Some people are already cutting cable TV and using their internet to download their shows.

I also see more people working from Panera, don't know if that means they're also getting rid of their internet, although I've thought about it ...

We've curtailed our going out at my house. A bottle of wine and TV have replaced a Friday night out with friends for dinner. We're pretty good financially but we're still feeling the pinch.

I won't even start on cable..ugh. The rate hikes keep coming and I'm thinking we should cut back a bit.

I don't think this "depression" should it get to that point, will be that similar to the 1930s. The economy is too different. I also don't think it will necessarily be a Steinbeck GRapes Of Wrath type of stiuation.

Instead of people eating their shoes, we will be eating Dinty Moore imported from Mexico, now with 30% more cardboard!

I do know that if a depression hits, I'm learning how to shoot a gun.

I was raised on a farm, know a trade and my family still has land they use for farming. I do know I'm out of the city if it did get really bad.

I do have this feeling that we are far more disconnected, especially in the urban and suburban areas, these days than we were during the Great Depression and that loss of personal relationships with your neighbors, that sense of community, scares me sometimes when I think what could happen if something like that ever did happen again.

You don't need the internet and all the other services that keep everyone connected in order to survive if the economy really tanks and the jobless rate skyrockets (survive being the important word). But it will be much more difficult to get a new job without these services. And if you have no job and the credit market dries up, how do you pay to stay connected so you can get a job so you can pay to stay connected?

Also, if our digital social networks become unaffordable to some, it will be interesting to see if people have robust enough analog social networks (walk down the street to talk to your friend instead of chatting on CHUD) or if people will just become hermits.

How do you put people to work (which is one of the questions The New Deal tried to answer) in a wired world and in an economy, that frankly, is radically differnt from that of the early to mid 20th century. Do we, as a people, have the tools to do the massive public works projects?

I don't think we do.

If current conventional wisdom holds up, we might see another ice age due to climate change. In that case, we'd all have to move to Mexico for jobs and land. I wonder what all the anti-immigration mouthbreathers would say to that. Oh, the irony!

I don't want to panic anybody, but the water situation is what scares me more than anything.

In terms of a wired Depression, I think that internet connections will help people help each other. In the 1930s, people were very cognizant of what was going on and eager to help.

My friend's dad told me about how his stepmom would make sandwiches every day for the hobos who would come by their house.

So, maybe the social networking might help with getting people food and shelter.

Yeah, fuck fossil fuels. Most of the planet will be fighting over drinking water in the next great depression. Which reminds me, unlike the last one, which only really affected the USA, this depression should it hit would be global.

The last one was globe also, Europe had it worse if anything and it started there first by five to ten years before it hit the US. Why do you think Hitler came to power? Do you thing that the Germans were just bored. So one day they just said hay let put a fruit cake in charge, and start a world war.

The sad thing about this whole thing, is the people most responsible for all this will not get blamed, just like the last time. Also the poor are being blame, and as a result they will never be aloud to buy or own real estate any more. What even more sad is that the middle class is officially dead.

Some times I start to thing this whole thing was done on purpose. It the only thing that really make since.

It's already been stated, but yeah, people will wake up from their slumber and realize that they can watch almost everything that they DVR anyway online, either on the network's websites, or at a second party site like Hulu. I think that Netflix will actually flourish.

It will more than likely be a huge hit for companies like DIRECT TV and DISH though, because Verizon, Cox, AT&T are already in the internet business anyway--though they'll still be losing a huge chunk of accounts.

But you know, just as in other economic crunches, the luxuries will be the first to go. Beauty salons, car dealerships, theaters, restaurants, etc., will probably be hit pretty hard. Especially for families, as people just can't afford to drop $150-$200 to take their family of four out to dinner and a movie anymore.

I read recently that stores like Sears and KMart recently posted losses down 65% from last year, and are on the verge of bankruptcy. They're banking on the upcoming holiday season to save them.

Well, my family is cutting back their DirecTV to the basic package as of next month, which means no more HBO, but I really couldn't care less about it since all the shows that I watch are readily available via BitTorrent. I'm sure the studios are going to be real happy when more people start bootlegging their shit because of the economy. Eating at home is another thing I've noticed more people are doing to save money.

I think, if anything, people will turn to the internet more then ever as a time waster/tool for finding a job. Yes, that means you can expect a greater amount of people posting more than 10 times a day because their out of the job and have nothing better to do, so you better get used to it, Chris.

But everything else outside of the internet is going to suffer pretty hard.

It's a two thousand year elaborate plot, spearheaded by the Rockefellers and the fourth dimensional reptile aliens (who are somehow responsible for the Bush dynasty) currently living under the earth (who can latch onto human beings via the shakra) that have orchestrated every great ideological movement as a way to keep people occupied until the technology exists (on Earth) for them to RFID an entirely docile and dependent on government society.

Be here all week, folks.

You'll see lots of people dropping their cable, that's for sure. That shit is preposterously overpriced as it is. I don't even get CNN or MSNBC on my basic tier anymore and I'll be goddamned if I'm going to pay more for news channels I don't even trust. The DTV changeover greatly increases the number of potential channels freely available in any given market - and the economy would seem to make that an increasingly attractive option.

As for internet, look for wi-fi co-ops to form, where one person has an internet connection that they charge other people in their building or immediately next door a reasonable fee to use. Easy enough with any decent router software such as Tomato or DD-WRT.

Good, read this then: http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111719

As the threat of depression looms, a lot of negative information is online and processed in advance of actual events and their effects. Will this undermine the psychology of our society?
I've been thinking of the movie Firefox lately, which was probably my initial impression of the Soviet society, and how feasible it seems for our country to become similar. Sobering. I'm glad its just a movie...

Incase you guys missed out on the news. Comcast is no longer offering unlimited internet downloads. It's 250 gigs a month and then they charge you for each gig there after... Also they're doing away with newsgroups as of Oct 25th.

So.. factor that into your hulu planning.

That's not a problem for hulu and youtube, it's a bigger deal for bit torrent downloads. Although I think most shows are now around 300 megs.

Comcast sucks anyways, they can't compete in places with alternate providers.

It's news like this that makes me happy I have FIOS instead of Comcast. I'm sure a lot of people with the ability to switch will simply do that.

I don't know. I pay about $230 a month for cable and internet. I'm sure I could save money if I did some readjusting but having multiple providers seems like a lot of effort that I'm not willing to spend right now.

Will this make us the new best generation?

Holy fucking crap.

Ugh, Comcast is the fucking devil.

Definitely the devil. But the internet is, well, the internet. We need it desperately, one of those items like oil that we'll buy no matter how expensive it gets. Oh sure, municipal services may be out, water won't be hot and the trash isn't getting picked up all too often, but there's the internet to give us some semblance of human connection and, especially in internet journalists' cases, give them a bit of income which I'm sure they appreciate. The internet abides, even if all we do is post stupid ass, guess that was funnier in my head responses (see mine above, as well as Scott's rebuttal to it).

Holy Shit! Jesus, Snaieke, what kind of service plan do you have? What do they do for that...move Univision's Sabado Gigante studio into your family room?

Well, there are already reports of tent cities in Fresno and Reno: people forced out of their homes and having no where to go and no job. We could see mass migrations out of California to surrounding states (the homeless in Reno went there hoping to get casino jobs only to find the casinos are laying off too.)

The weird thing is I don't see any of this in my daily life; San Francisco has had a banner year in terms of tourism so far. The Europeans have been buying our crap all summer...even now there are a lot of tourists running around. But go out to Tracy or Stockton and I'm sure there are wolves in the streets...

I have every channel available, including premium channels and add on's and I got 2 HDDVR Boxes with the best internet tier package they had available. My price is locked in unless I modify it. A friend of mine is paying about $30 less then me and he doesn't have half the stuff I have.

I've lived a short while after 9/11 with no tv and no internet and much like the jews with the holocaust I say never again!

Dammit, we've got both up here!

Great, Mad Max with Montanans instead of Aussies and redneck BCers and Albertans defending the border ...
What about mesh? Could be a big boost to the efforts to get that going.

Well, I'd argue that the modern global economy is more interdependent since there are more nations trading. But I'd agree our depression had repercussions globally.

And there Germans had economic problems all of their own design before the rise of Hitler.

LOL
If McCain wins this thing, I'm going to seriously miss you Snaieke seeing as I plan to move to New Zealand and start herding sheep.

(Then, in ten years I can come back and run for public office as a Republican!)

Hmmm, No. It could make us a new Lost Generation. Actually I don't know what the term was for the intellectuals of the 30s and 40s. Other than commies quite frankly.

hahahahahaha, you think we're intellectuals.

Why can't we be the Algonquin Round Table? I call dibs on being David Ogden Stewart!

A couple of other points: What would be the civil unrest factor and the impact on American society? If mass defections from consumer tech services did occur would America's tech infrastructure erode and could it eventually collapse? How does the Federal Governments response to a new "Great Depression" work in a wired world?

If we had to play the guessing game of what the feds do in the face of Great depression style situation. You could guess that some kind of CCC/WPA system place would be put into improve the infrastructure. There's that idea.

Frankly, it may not be a depression what could end up is a Japan-style malaise that has been going on for 15 years or some shit like that.

Funny just how 10 years ago there was a global economic crisis aka "The Asian Contagion". It pretty much decimated Russia at the time.

You guys seem to be looking at this purely from a connected net/cable perspective - aren't there vast swathes of people who couldn't afford these things in your country in the first place? Even when the economy was going well in your country?

What about them?

I mean Jesus, you guys are casually talking about tent cities side by side with discussing having to download some of your shows on the net because you can't afford HBO.

Are you guys really that bloody pampered and spoiled that the first thing you can think of is not being eble to flick on The Wire?

Sure, a lot of you guys aren;t going to be going door to door begging or eating your shoes - but come on, theres a massive massive underclass in your country that was getting bitten hard and regularely before this crisis by those above them, what the hell happens to those people now?

Why do I seem to be more worried about a massive demographic of broken desperate people and you guys seem to be considering halving your cable packages?

I personally didn;t see Devs starting of this thread as "In a wired society, how would a Depression effect the wired aspects of it?", I read it as "We live in a wired, non agri-industrial society now, so what would a Depression look like in that context?"

...I would think - still pretty bloody miserable and depressing.

Obviously Devin wasn't talking about the underclass. And to be honest, you see more people with DirecTV in the ghetto than in suburbia. Maybe that will change now.

But at the same time, the people on the bottom have the less to lose from a material standpoint. They aren't worried about losing their internet, because they don't have it. They, effectively, aren't a part of the wired age.

Were you? I dunno, I didn't take your initial post to mean this would be a discussion about the effects a Wired Age depression on the lower class, because they were pretty much left out of the whole Wired Revolution in the first place, so to speak.

No, really - what?!?!?!

What age are they a part of then? The stone age? Bronze? Pre-Industrial? Help me out here.

So because the poorest have "the least to lose from a material standpoint" they're gonna come out of this the best huh?

Sorry, I hope Im just misreading you there but you seem to have beyond no idea what you're on about.

I didn't mean they were going to come out the best, I just meant they are more worried about how they are going to pay for food then losing something as material as the internet, because very few of them actually had it in the first place. And if you don't think the American inner city has been left behind in more ways then one, take a nice walk down a street in Philadelphia and ask a kid if he's ever used a computer that's been made after 1999 outside of, possibly, his school.

A lot of these people are stuck in the era before the internet controlled everything. It's one of the reasons they have trouble getting basic secretarial positions, because they require additional training in the use of a computer. While they might live in a "Wired Age," and I know this sounds wrong I just don't know how to put it, their not really apart of it.