What Would We Do If the Internet Crashed?

In 1982, the Internet was a safe place where everyone trusted each other. The community was so small that every email address on the web could fit into one skinny "phone book" written in big font. If you made that same book today, it would be 25 miles thick

Scientist Danny Hillis was one of the few people in that small digital community. In a recent TED Talk, Hillis says the Internet's current population exposes a new vulnerability.

"The Internet was designed with the assumption that the communications links could not be trusted, but that the people that connected computers to the Internet were smart and trustworthy," Hillis tells Mashable via email. "Those assumptions no longer apply."