The non-internet "analog option" must be preserved. I can speak from personal experience that it is becoming more difficult. Unless more people need to actually use the analog option they will be removed in the name of "efficiency" and "replacing legacy baggage".
Asking if it is possible to opt-out of the increasingly digital, interconnected, and interdependent aspects of society isn't particularly important. We need to try anyway to preserve the possibility.
Dan Geer on this topic[1]:
> The most telling fork in the road of them all is whether we
retain an ability to operate our world, or at least the parts we
would call critical, by analog means. Analog means, and only
analog means, do not share a common mode failure with the
digital world at large. But to preserve analog means requires
that they be used, not left to gather dust on some societal
shelf in the hope than when they are needed they will work.
This requires a base load, a body of use and users that keep the
analog working. [...]
> What we have here is an historic anomaly, an anomaly where the
most readily available counter to an otherwise inexorable drift
into a vortex of singleton technology risk and the preservation
of a spectrum of non-trivial civil rights is one and the same
counter: the guarantee, by force of law where necessary, that
those who choose to not participate in the digital melange can
nevertheless fully enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, that to opt out of the digital vortex does not
thereby require that they live in medieval conditions, and, by
doing so, we reap a national security benefit in the bargain as
those opting out are the base load for the analog alternative.
[...]
> And that is what I am here to tell you, that the future of
humanity and cybersecurity are conjoined, so that as we prepare
to make some decisions that are of the fork-in-the-road sort, we
need to think it through because in making decisions about
cybersecurity we are choosing amongst possible futures for
humanity. Those decisions will be expensive to later reverse in
either dollars or clock-ticks.
> The onrushing world of full personalization means the rational
decision for the individual or the small entity does not and
will not aggregate into the rational decision for society at
large. Perhaps that is the core effect from a rate of change up
with which we cannot keep. [...]
> You, we, are the masters of the universe now. What will we do
with that power, which we have but a short while more?
Asking if it is possible to opt-out of the increasingly digital, interconnected, and interdependent aspects of society isn't particularly important. We need to try anyway to preserve the possibility.
Dan Geer on this topic[1]:
> The most telling fork in the road of them all is whether we retain an ability to operate our world, or at least the parts we would call critical, by analog means. Analog means, and only analog means, do not share a common mode failure with the digital world at large. But to preserve analog means requires that they be used, not left to gather dust on some societal shelf in the hope than when they are needed they will work. This requires a base load, a body of use and users that keep the analog working. [...]
> What we have here is an historic anomaly, an anomaly where the most readily available counter to an otherwise inexorable drift into a vortex of singleton technology risk and the preservation of a spectrum of non-trivial civil rights is one and the same counter: the guarantee, by force of law where necessary, that those who choose to not participate in the digital melange can nevertheless fully enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to opt out of the digital vortex does not thereby require that they live in medieval conditions, and, by doing so, we reap a national security benefit in the bargain as those opting out are the base load for the analog alternative. [...]
> And that is what I am here to tell you, that the future of humanity and cybersecurity are conjoined, so that as we prepare to make some decisions that are of the fork-in-the-road sort, we need to think it through because in making decisions about cybersecurity we are choosing amongst possible futures for humanity. Those decisions will be expensive to later reverse in either dollars or clock-ticks.
> The onrushing world of full personalization means the rational decision for the individual or the small entity does not and will not aggregate into the rational decision for society at large. Perhaps that is the core effect from a rate of change up with which we cannot keep. [...]
> You, we, are the masters of the universe now. What will we do with that power, which we have but a short while more?
[1] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.ncc.8x18.txt
edit:
Video of Dan Geer's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbDEbfijxNY