Of course, nobody admits that they broke the internet. Not the caretaker, who basically doesn’t know how this Interdings works, so he doesn’t know how he could have switched it off either. Not the electrician, who first drills in the basement on Friday afternoon and then calls it a day when a neighbor asks him that his television has just failed. Drilled into a line? He? Absolutely no way!
And it can’t be because of the cable service provider either: He also acts up innocently when another neighbor reports that the Internet connection is obviously cut as well. A glitch? Really now? Well, let’s see – see you tomorrow evening. Before that, nothing works anyway due to a lack of skilled workers. And if things haven’t fixed themselves by then, it’s the weekend for now. There’s nothing you can do about it.
It’s just a small cut in a Munich basement, not such a serious hack as recently on a Frankfurt construction site, where an excavator operator severed a five-meter-deep buried Telekom cable and thus paralyzed operations at the distant Frankfurt Airport, after all, Germany busiest airport. But for the humanity living above the Munich basement, it is a big turning point: a free weekend, free from television and the Internet. You are almost cut off from the outside world. phew! What now?
If the conventional TV isn’t on, you can switch to Netflix and watch a series there… Oh no, you can’t; you need a working internet for that. Listen to music via Spotify? Forget it! Checking the weather for a trip? Only through the window! Order from the delivery service, online banking, home office, google something? Everything is not possible. In addition, there is the frightening realization that even a WLAN, i.e. a wireless network, is connected to a cable somewhere. So share the hotspot on your smartphone and let all devices run on cellular? Gobbles up the booked data volume in a very short time. Better save for emergencies.
A moment of reflection before panic breaks out: In the pre-digital era, one could also keep busy. So then: books for the head cinema are on the living room shelves, next to them the record player is waiting to be played, and this time no algorithm interferes with the music offer. You can even do Schafkopf without an app if you sit down at a table. It’s amazing what’s possible without the internet. But it’s also a relief when it’s repaired.