system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If I was downloading something on my cell phone in the middle of a field somewhere and a bolt of lightning shoots down a couple hundred yards away. Would the lightning bolt disrupt the information stream?

Obviously avoiding the possibility of any harm coming to me from the lightning or reaching me in any way. Would the lightning inhibit the data stream for a second or two?
gpt
Probably for less than a second (assuming the nearby lightning bolt didn't fry your phone or the cell tower or whatever). The radio protocols between the phone and the cell tower are designed to be able to recover from brief interference like that, and the internet protocols between your phone's web browser and the remote web site are designed to recover from the occasional lost packet and silently retransmit it.

But the RF noise from the lightning bolt would disrupt the transmission briefly, yes. If you were on a voice call you might hear a brief dropout or garble, since voice usually trades off occasional errors for lower latency.