One of the removed chapters from Flight of the Scions was a memory from Ruben's father of watching his wife going through telepathic withdrawal after they were forced to leave the Isle of Vo. It was a rough scene, mainly because Tagon was struggling to contain his emotions but also because it established the idea that having an always-on connection to a massive collective for thirty years and then suddenly having it disconnected can be devastating.
In the end, it didn't advance the story that much and the book was already too long.
There were quite a few influences for this concept: watching my children not having access to a computer, or the time in 2008 when I was forced out of my apartment without a working laptop for three months, or even the trips up to the family cabin before we got broadband. There is a certain sensation, an empty feeling, that herald learning something new or having new adventures, but it was also terrifying.
It also was influenced by my father's early resistance to Intellisense in Visual Studio. He used to rant about how it was causing people to forget how to code, where to find things, or how to remember even simple API. That lead into my efforts to memorize code, to prove I was as good as he hoped.
Decades later, he wasn't capable of coding without auto-completion, but I saw no reason to point it out. We went different paths and I'm not going to mock someone who found a tool that works for them. We can't remember everything, we can't keep a hundred thousand line program in our head. And we shouldn't.
But, if you coded with auto-complete (or keyboard shortcuts) and then couldn't use them? That hurts.