Checking your inbox every three minutes, emailing a colleague sitting next to you, logging in as soon as you’re home or suffering from what looks like a GPRS-enabled phone surgically attached to your hand… if you fit into any of these categories, consider yourself an Internet addict.

“Whaaat?!” is 36-year-old Farrell Shah’s first reaction when asked whether he could live without the Net. “I spend too much time in front of the computer, I can’t even think of living without it. Life would not only be less interesting but a lot of my friends would be etched only in my memory instead of on my desktop,” says the website developer. “Of course, the upside is that I’d probably be a little more physically active.”

Think of how monthly phone bills will hop, skip and jump if communication depends on calls instead of virtual waves. And how everything will be so hard to get and do in the real world if your fingertips are denied access to the virtual world of information and services.

“It’s so convenient to pay my bills online, I haven’t stood in a queue to pay a bill ever since online banking began. I can’t imagine going back to those days when so much time and energy were wasted waiting at the end of a line,” says 25-year-old Agnishwar Banerjee.

For many, the use of the Internet is their bread, butter and jam, so a day without the Net would translate into tangible losses.

And in the age of information flow, it will hit the world where it hurts. “It’s like cutting off the information highway, because that’s what the Internet really is,” says 25-year-old Ravee Batra, a chartered accountant.

It would also be impossible to find out if Varun has scribbled on Nidhi’s wall, and the suspense can be killing for a Netizen who spends so much time bonding over the bandwidth. There are some that feel lost if they can’t go online. “The Net is a great platform for networking and, if used properly, helps maintain contacts and get in touch with old ones. Social community networks take up a lot of my time and without the Net, I would be socially-handicapped,” admits 19-year-old Chitvan Jaipuria.

No uploading and sharing of pictures, no chatting during work hours, no blogs to write, no online games to play, no videos to watch, no turning to Wikipedia for answers to all of life’s questions. No dates made online, no Orkutting or adding new applications on Facebook. No downloading of music, movies or freeware, no emails to read or write, no forwards to forward.... The horror! The horror!

“Instead of chatting, one would have to call, instead of email, there would be snail mail, and instead of porn on the Internet, we’d have to invest in CDs,” jokes Ravee. After a no-Net day, some are sure they would even start missing spam! “We kind of live on islands of technology, and asking me to get disconnected is like leaving me on an isolated island,” muses 26-year-old Maneka Kumar.

But for all those islands in the Internet stream, this special day can be a call to pause and ponder rather than log out. Let’s stay logged into the virtual world but not lose sight of the real. Let’s not choose YouTube over You.

From Sputnik to the ARPAnet: 1957-1969. Though the need for the Internet had grown through the century, the USSR’s launch of Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite in 1957, precipitated its actual development. In response to Sputnik, the US department of defence establishes the ARPAnet, the first multiple-site network. The first modem is also developed. It is believed Charley Kline sent the first transmission on ARPAnet on Oct 29, 1969. The system crashed as he reached the G in LOGIN.
Networking and connecting: 1970-1978. Once proved that computers can be networked, the quest begins to find out what can be done with the network. Meanwhile, the PC bursts on the scene, changing the computing landscape forever. In 1971, Ray Tomlinson writes SNDMSG, CPYNET, and READMAIL, early stages of what we all know as e-mail.
Internet and education: 1979-1984. Technology moves away from the government and towards the universities. In 1982, the word Internet is used for the first time and in 1984, William Gibson’s book Neuromancer introduces the term “cyberspace”.
From lab to the living room: 1985-1990. Domain Name Servers (DNS) are introduced (in 1984), then comes TCP/IP, the common language of all Internet computers. In 1988, an Internet worm is unleashed, disabling 6,000 host computers. There is concern over privacy in the digital world. New words like hacker, cracker and electronic break-in are created.
World Wide Web: 1991-1994. WWW is born. Linux OS is developed in 1991 and Netscape is born in 1994. In 1992, the first audio and video broadcasts take place over a portion of the Internet known as the MBONE.
Power play: 1995-1998. In 1995, Hong Kong shuts down Internet service providers, sparking a crisis over government intervention, and in 1998 the department of justice files a suit against Microsoft because in the eyes of the US justice department, Microsoft stood accused of capitalising on its power.
And finally, now: E-commerce, portals, virtual communities, increasing bandwidths… the Internet as we know it today.