LONDON -- Have you ever stopped to wonder what life would be like without Wikipedia, without Candy Crush, without Facebook?
The folks at Founders Forum collaborated with the World Wide Web Foundation, YouTube, Freud Communications, King Digital Entertainment and Stephen Fry to produce a spoof vision of what the world might be look like without the Internet. The video features cameos from Internet giants, entrepreneurs and businesspeople who have made names for themselves online.
The action kicks off with Arianna Huffington doling out newspapers by hand, just like the old times.
Stephen Fry's rumbling voiceover narration imagines a different type of employment for Skype founder Niklas Zennström, as a code-breaker for the Enigma machine. "It seems that they've been sending messages through emoticons," says a straight-faced Zennström, before grabbing a print-out sheet of smiley faces.
Candy Crush cofounder Riccardo Zacconi gets an entertaining part as the owner of a sweets shop, gleefully hammering away at some goodies in front of two bemused customers.
And wearing an old-fashioned press hat, Mike Bloomberg puts down a copy of The Bloomberg Times before picking up the phone. "Bloomberg here," he says. "Get me research. I need someone to go to the library and look up the population of Peru. On the double."
Perhaps our favourite cameo, though, is Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales as -- you guessed it -- a librarian.
"Don't talk to me about authors," he says, casually editing a mistake in a book. "Everyone should try and improve the library. In fact, the next time you see a mistake... I'd like you to fix it yourself."
Solid work, Internet.