I mean I get the wire running and the modem and routers and stuff, but how would anyone know the ‘internet’ was ever there…or if the entire world collapsed and the internet was restarted, would it be a new instance or will it become reconnected to the original instance?
In: 0
“The Internet” isn’t a single instance or a single machine, or a single _anything_. Various parts of it — including vital ones — go down on occasion and come back up. You _can’t_ “restart” the entire internet. It’s decentralised and that’s kind of the whole point.
Now, if the entire world collapsed to the degree that network and telecommunication ceased to operate, you’d have _much_ more immediate problems. We’re talking about civilisation itself collapsing, in which case what we have evidence of is up for debate. And we’re not just talking about the internet at this point.
I think your question is “if society collapsed but eventually reformed, could future archaeologists find proof of the internet”.
Certainly, all the data would be lost, but there’d be evidence of some global communication network. Subsea cables might become buried in the seabed and stay preserved for a long time, perhaps the remains of some computers/technology would stay somewhat preserved in the right conditions (e.g. buried in caves).
Satellites as well. Low satellites like StarLink will quickly slow down and plummet to the earth from atmospheric drag. Some of the higher satellites, however, could stay in orbit for millennia if not essentially indefinitely. They’ll wander from their orbits due to random forces like solar radiation and gravitational perbutations, but many could stay in space for a truly long time.
Again, these findings wouldn’t necessarily prove the exact nature of the internet or how it works, let alone what sort of thing was on it, but they should prove that our society *could* have had such a network.
Even if the internet itself disappeared… there’s a million books and magazines and diaries explaining in detail what the internet is and how it works. Future archaeologists would figure it out fairly easily.
Latest Answers