I was recently reading Vaclav Smil’s book How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going when I came across a passage that both made me nod my head in agreement and set me to wondering. It comes at the start of a chapter where Smil is talking about what he calls the four pillars of modern civilization, meaning that without any one of them the whole works would collapse. These four pillars are cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia (used as fertilizer for its nitrogen). Not included are any of the special materials (like silicon) or tools that have empowered what’s become known as the digital age:

First things first. We could have an accomplished and reasonably affluent civilization that provides plenty of food, material comfort, and access to education and health care, without any semiconductors, microchips, or personal computers: we had one until, respectively, the mid-1950s (first commercial applications of transistors), the early 1970s (Intel’s first microprocessors), and the early 1980s (first larger-scale ownership of PCs). And we managed, until the 1990s, to integrate economies, mobilize necessary investments, build requisite infrastructures, and connect the world by wide-body jetliners without any smartphones, social media, and puerile apps.

This is the part that had me nodding my head. And made me a little sad at the thought that I belong to what I think may be the last generation able to remember such a time. I wondered if it’s even possible to explain to a young person today that life before the Internet wasn’t a Dark Age. Given the amount of time we spend looking at screens (two days ago I had a business appointment where the person I was meeting with literally didn’t lift their eyes up from their tablet to look at me), would young people even be able to understand what life used to be like if I told them?

Then I started to wonder if Smil was right. I’d agree that his four pillars probably are more essential to life, but I was also put in mind of Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress (inspiration for the documentary Surviving Progress), which sets out the notion of a “progress trap.” The basic idea of a progress trap is that with technological advance humanity also paints itself into a comfortable corner. The development of agriculture is perhaps the best example. Once we started growing our food, leading to an increase in population, we could never go back to hunting and gathering.

So while a prosperous, advanced civilization is not only possible without all our wonderful new toys but is indeed something many of us can still remember, is it not also true that these same toys have now become essential? Could we ever go back to living without them? Would the end of the Internet mean the end of civilization as we know it? I’m inclined to think it would be. It’s an odd feeling to have lived through such a profound revolution, and realize at the same time that we can never go back to living the way we did just thirty years ago.