Sir Elton John has seen the internet, and he wants to turn it off. "I do think it would be an incredible experiment," he says, "to shut down the internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced in that span." While this statement demonstrates an admirable grasp of the way the whole thing works, it is just possible that Sir Elton has not considered all the implications of his daring five-year plan. Doesn't he realise what would happen?

Millions of people who have become addicted to "poking" each other on Facebook would be forced to travel long distances in order to poke friends and relatives with actual sticks, leading to increased carbon emissions, misunderstandings and eye injuries.

Without the internet, people would no longer be able to download their favourite tunes on to their MP3 devices. In order to fill the gap, our high streets would inevitably become littered with unsightly "shops" selling compact discs at inflated prices, killing off the music industry as we know it.

Sir Elton speaks derisively of people who "sit at home and make their own records", but he overlooks the internet's importance as a vast slush pile for the Earth's surplus of not-very-good creative output. What would happen to all this music and prose if the internet did not exist to contain it? Some of it might accidentally be published.

Without access to Wikipedia, thousands of schoolchildren may never learn how Joseph Stalin overcame his political enemies to found Motown Records.

Those too young to remember life before email often don't realise how many greeting cards a person used to have to send or receive every year. This evil industry is now, thankfully, on its knees, but we cannot afford to be complacent.

It would be scientifically impossible to go back to the old forms of written communication; we might be able to turn off the internet, but we cannot simply reopen all the post offices, because people are now busy drinking lattes in them. You may have kept your old fax machine, but where will you get fax paper? They don't make it any more. No one even knows how.

It's not just people who use the internet, Sir Elton. Without it, millions of drinks machines will no longer be able to inform the central depot that they are getting low on Diet Sprite. People will have to have regular Sprite instead, or even V8. It doesn't bear thinking about.