Rebooting the internet - what flavors do computers come in?

[Lyzzy]

Hi everyone
If any of my ShadowGurps-players happens to read this, please stop reading now or you'll hate yourself later. I mean it.


Anyway, here's the deal:
A near-future-pre-cyberpunk-campaign I'm running is about to soon include a series of events that most likely will destroy the internet as we know it!!!
-It will happen by a virus the players will set free that ressembles life as we know on earth and have tried to create in the digital sphere for about 50 years without much sucess. A lot of wild chaos devouring the well ordered (hah!) structures programmers build all these years, going from parasitic to symbiotic as the analysis of these entities will give raise to new technologies. When it's over, just like in Shadowrun, there will be a matrix instead of an internet, with a lot more of touchy-feely stuff instead of cold merciless code - so you can sorta model software, instead of constructing it. And software is somehow flexible or living. Oh and you can experience it without having to understand anything about computers. Now here's the rub: What ideas and motives can I harvest from that situation? Of course there will be some people mentioning the bazaar and the cathedral or evolution VS design, a lot of frontier spirit and some crazy folk that preach the singularity be nigh. I think there's more though, especially in terms of chaos but I don't have any good books or movies to leech that from. So, does anyone here do?
Good books about the early days of computing in German or English would be great, some Apocalypse-Material dealing with the shutdown of any modern appliances with some sort of access to the net, etc, etc.
Or do you have your own ideas how this situation might play out? It's no problem if your ideas are highly technical (they don't have to be) or even obscure. Everything's appretiated, I really want to blow the players mind.