How much money would someone have to pay you to give up the internet for the rest of your life?

$20 million -- I would buy a place in Costa Rica and spend the rest of my life surfing.
BTW, I wrote this, but I am still not sure I do the deal.

Some downfalls:

1. My friends and relatives will have to call me on a landline
2. I will buy stationary so as to write letters to everyone like I did when i was younger.

I suppose the answer to this question becomes easier and easier, as zeroes are added. But if your answer were restricted to a "reasonable" amount, it really is an intriguing question because it requires assigning a monetary value to something intangible.

Finance and accounting folks have been able to measure the value of intangible assets over the years, i.e. patents, goodwill, etc., but these values are based on the cash flows a particular asset is expected to generate.

Looking at the problem through that lens, to someone who uses the internet to make money, the answer, in theory anyway, would be the present value of the future cash flows he or she expects to derive for the remainder of their days. That includes proceeds from the sale of the site when it is ultimately sold.

For the large majority of people who use the internet for different reasons, one would have to value their use of the internet, which most likely varies significantly from one person to another. For the mythical grandmother, who only uses the internet to check the weather, I would think the value would be relatively low. Alternatively, for the not-so-mythical porn addict, the value would be much higher, perhaps even priceless.

I'll have to come up with a whacked out formula, so that after everyone is finished calling me a lunatic, I'll win the Nobel Prize in economics. Then, of course, there's the book, then the movie....

The formula would be some function of (1) time spent on the internet, (2) where and how that time is spent (i.e reading news, blogs, or white papers, playing games, gambling, or posting moronic answers like this one on Focus.com) (3) the value derived from that activity, (4) the opportunity cost of time spent on the internet (i.e. if not for spending two hours playing Farmville on Facebook, what would you have otherwise been doing), (5) the expected increase in value, based on anticipated future use, and a few other considerations I won't disclose so that no one steals my Nobel Prize. Of course, if I have to use the internet for my research to win my Nobel Prize, my price could rise substantially.

I wonder if Al Gore considered all of this when he invented the internet?

Having said all that, the value of keeping your 16 year old daughter off of Facebook - priceless.

I'll be working on this. In the meantime, round up the Noble prize committee.