Cyber Recession

Apparently putting microchips in everything and have anything and everything run on batteries or connected to the grid was a bad idea. The use of fossil fuels quadrupled due to each class of nation 'evolving' up the tier list. As the Aarde's use of technology increased exponentially, so did its requirements for power to run that technology, regardless of Cyber, 1st World, 2nd World or 3rd World--any 4th World county that still existed in this era were no different to tribals or cavemen.

Unlike the dot-com boom at the end of the 20th Century--in which the internet(software) had unlimited space to expand and exist virtually, the cyber boom or cyber revolution had a limit to which it could exist physically, resulting of an atrocious amount of e-waste once the products were expended or unwanted.

Data on the other hand, can be erased and deleted, it's hard-drive or solid-state drive easily recycled and refurbished.

As a result, 2nd & 3rd World Countries ceased to exist as they suffered from power outages, food shortages, and then the typical civil war or coup d'état.

Eventually, this lead to another Global War, but though this was often referred to by the lesser-educated as World War 3 as alluded to in popular written fiction, this was more of a Global Battle Royal between dogs to see who would win over each other's scraps of rotting meat.

Some countries died, some countries teamed up to kill other countries, some countries double-crossed each other, some countries reigned supreme above all else and some were simply self-sustainable and abstained from the Cyber Revolution--and never took part in this Global War in the Era of the Cyber Recession.

The loser in the end was still Mankind. The internet ceased to exist as a result of each nation's military shooting each other's satellites down, with many undersea cables being sabotaged or cut by all sides to impede the 1st World and Cyber World Countries.

The end result was only 1st World and Post-Cyber World Countries surviving and getting by with their own still-working national intranet systems, with 2nd World Countries on the brink of death. 3rd World Countries cannibalised and self-destructed. Aarde in the third-quarter of the 22nd Century eventually receded to a technological state equivalent to that in the fourth-quarter of the 20th Century.

Also, any pioneer communities with less than 5000 people on the Moon or the neighbouring planets starved to death due to the lack of constant trade and resupply during the Cyber Recession.