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I'd say the issue is not just "going back to that situation", it's the world being forcefully thrown back into that situation one random day in an instant, with maybe a couple hours advanced notice, which is the bigger issue. Also the impact on other systems such as potentially long-term significant damage to the electrical grid, it's not just losing the internet. It would have an immediate, out of the blue, devastating social/industrial/economic/civilization impact.

Most stores I shop at are unable to take money if their internet is down. And, to be a grumpy old man, it seems most of their employees lack experience in offline credit cards or cash and making change. And I have no way of getting cash with ATMs which seem to be via some sort of network. I don’t think I can even make phone calls or send sms without IP transit available to the phone companies.

> And, to be a grumpy old man, it seems most of their employees lack experience in offline credit cards or cash and making change.

Usually the point of sale system doesn't allow any offline credit.

Similarly for the making change, most point of sale systems track exact change very closely, and trying to do something outside of what eas entered into the PoS causes issues with logging/audits. (Yes, including the "I just found a $coin, can you give me different change" situations) That's before you get to the people who try to fast talk you into giving extra change.

PoS Performance is also usually horribly slow and requires manager overide for anything off the happy path.

Source for the above: worked as a cashier in the late 2010's.

this, movement of discretion from the employees talking to the customer to some central platform with the possible outcomes premapped out, seems to be a general trend for highly cost conscious large stores. so often the people at the desk say i should go online to do stuff their computers won't let them do for me.

> In the old days you would have to show up at the theater, stand in line to buy tickets (with no way to know how many had already been sold), then go into the theater and hope there were still decent seats left. It would stink to go back to that situation.

Don't most theater still work this way? The ability to buy specific seats at a theater isn't an Internet thing.

It is astounding to me that in the US the seats at the movie theater are not tied to the tickets. I learned it a few weeks ago watching that Seinfeld episode and I still can't understand why it works like this..

They are today (at least all the theaters where I live). But in the 1980s and 1990s? No.

One theater near me trialed something like that for a while, but they stopped using it very quickly. I can only assume it was confusing people and they lost sales; other than that one instance, I didn't even know this was a thing for movie theaters. They do keep track of number of seats and won't over-sell, but it's not normal to have assigned seating.

I've been to a theater with assigned seating. It was great but not sure if they kept the system after selling to a competing company.

How does assigned seating confuse people?

Someone is unaware/doesn’t care, so they sit in your seat before you get there.

You arrive and ask them to move, they apologize and say “oh but my friend is here, I see some empty seats up there you could take instead!”

So you go sit in those empty seats, hesitantly. Then someone comes in and tells you that you’re in their seat. You try to explain the situation but…

Etc etc etc.

This has happened to me multiple times on long-distance transit before (bus/train), it ends up being chaos if just a few people don’t perfectly follow the assignments.

I have been in this situation too and tried to do the ‘polite’ thing and sit somewhere else. Then of course another group comes along and I am in their spot. So now when this happens I refuse the suggestion and ask whoever is in my seat to move to their original seat. It’s the only proper solution to this problem.

Many people arrive late, while the theater is already dark. It is easier to grab an empty seat than fumble around trying to identify the right number. Some theaters used to have ushers with flashlights, but they wouldn’t want to pay them now.

Well, the solution is simply, don't be late and don't disturb all the others.

I also am quite late in many situations, but in a theather you just go, if you can manage to be seated, before it gets dark. Everything else is just rude.

Well, it's a bit rude how much of our time they waste with previews and ads. If coming on time meant just seeing the movie, I would agree with you.

For live plays, with assigned seats and no captive marketing, people do come on time generally.

Because it wasn't normal.

The time I saw it, it wasn't at the seats like the other comments are suggesting. It was at the ticket line, an old couple who didn't understand why they had to pick a seat, or what the screen in front of them represented, or something like that. I don't remember how that was resolved but they did end up getting a ticket and going in. After seeing that I'm assuming there were people who didn't bother and went somewhere else.

Do you really think that those minor inconveniences are the issue if we suddenly lose internet access around the globe?

Humans lived for thousands of years without the internet or WWW. The use of them has only been widespread for about 25 years. I assume we are smart enough to eventually figure out how to go back to how things used to be.