How Internet Shutdown Complicates Everyday Life of Citizens (Part 1)

It is about 10am on Thursday. Sasha is seated in her research methodology lecture room, apparently floating in the chasm between dreamland and reality, with the professor desperately trying to embed the lessons from the week’s module in the consciousness of the class seated before him. Sasha is part of a rapidly dwindling group of young people in her Country who have refused to spend the rest of her life blaming the imminent sentence to illiteracy that continues to haunt her, on society’s ills. Her poor parents have been unable to afford any form of post-secondary education for herself and her siblings; and so for the last four years, Sasha has had to live away from her family in a neighbouring city, and work every day at a pizza shop in the community to save up funds for her college tuition. The same is true about her older brother and younger sister, who also both live far away, where they can work and school without having to burden their parents with financial responsibilities. She is now a final year undergraduate student of Business Administration in a local public university, seated in what seems to be her final lecture for the week.

She is nudged back to reality by a classmate, informing her that the two-hour-long lecture had finally come to an end, but with a research paper assignment that was due by the next class. Sasha quickly notes down the details about the assignment, thanks and bids her friend goodbye, then makes for the door with her backpack firmly strapped in place. Sasha has to work half-shifts on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, so as to attend lectures during the morning and early afternoon hours at school; but has to resume work immediately afterwards. Thus, she must work all-shifts on every other day in order to accumulate sufficient weekly working hours to be able to generate tangible tuition savings each week.

She exits the school gate, and flips open her mobile phone as usual to hail a taxi via an online hailing service, since commuting by public transport has never gotten her to work on time on any of her lecture days due to multiple stops along the way; and this has generated much tensions with her boss in times past. She is immediately met with the notification “Internet Service Unavailable”; and eventually gives up after repeated attempts to connect without success. She must now make her way to the bus station and join the next bus into town, so as to get to work; although she realizes already that she would be resuming late at work today.

Sasha takes her seat on the bus and plugs in her earphones to pass time listening to her favourite radio station while the journey into town progresses. She soon hears over the radio that the government had shut down the Internet since 9am, amidst concerns of cyber espionage on the Country’s external trade and economic activities by a foreign government; and fears that this might result in further polarization of the political landscape in the build-up to the National elections that was now less than eight weeks away. She mutters to herself, “Aha!” as the finally realizes why she had been unable to connect to the Internet earlier. Yet to fathom the implications of this government action, Sasha tunes in to her favourite fashion broadcast on the metro radio for the rest of her journey to work.

She arrives at work one hour and fifteen minutes late to find her boss totally freaked out. Hundreds of customers scattered around her pizza workplace as her colleagues scampered about frenziedly trying to attend to clamouring clients that clearly seemed agitated. It looked like a fight had just happened, as the police were also on the premises trying to interrogate three men with bloodied faces and knuckles beside a police car. “What is going on today Sir?” Sasha inquired of her boss; “why is the whole place so frenzied-up and tense?” she further probed. Her boss narrates how customers had begun to throng the shop towards the peak hours of lunchtime, because they could not place pizza orders online; and since her two colleagues on duty were unable to attend to the teeming crowd effectively, tempers had risen and a fight had broken out. The police could not be reached early enough since backup communication channels were crammed, and so much damage to shop property had resulted from the fight. Her boss explains that he fears for how long this might continue; adding that he might be forced to cut down on wages, so as to increase operational costs in order to enable him hire more daily-paid staff like herself to help attend to the growing customer presence. She gloomily lowers her backpack, pulls out her work apron, and walks away as she straps it on to join her colleagues at the service counters.

Sasha gets home late that night after an unusually tiresome day at work. She always converses every night with her family over a video conference call, but that is not going to happen tonight as there is no Internet connection in the Country. The accumulation of her school research work and assignments for the week would also now be carried over, seemingly indefinitely. In addition, workdays are, henceforth, going to be more hectic because the business technology support system of her workplace was going to unavailable; for how long? No one knows. She worries about how the increasing pressure at work was going to affect her effectiveness in coping with her academic tasks and deliverables; and with an impending cut to her wages at work, the uncertainties surrounding the completion of her education and making graduation finally dawns on her. Only then does she begin to realize how the government action to shut down the Internet had begun to complicate her life and living.

Disclaimer: All imageries, names, and identities used in this story are merely for illustrative / narrative / descriptive purposes. They are not intended to bear any likeness or similarity to any individual(s) or entity(ies); whether existent or non-existent. Hence, any such perceived or deduced resemblances, likenesses, or similarities are indeed entirely co-incidental.