Are we becoming too dependant on technology?¶

Have you ever thought what would happen if all technology was suddenly just dead? Basically, all that needs to happen is for the Internet to just go offline completely.

I am pretty sure most people that are able to read this online depends on technology for almost everything: communications, shopping, finances, work, and even entertainment. We consume so much online and with the exception of perhaps some of the poorer countries, most of the western world will probably be in a state of disaster should teh Internet as a whole go down for more than a couple of hours.

Hopefully this will not happen and even in a worse case scenario, I'm sure that there is enough redundancy in the system to prevent a complete and global offline situation. Regional outages for various reasons will occur - wars, natural disasters and even human error may cause parts of the world to go dark from time to time. But a global outage, I hope, is not possible.

But this did get me thinking in terms of how prepared I am personally for even a limited regional outage. If the region I live in went dark for a couple of weeks, what will I do? This thought made me realize that I am probably too dependant on technology. So here are some things I have started to do just for in case I need to spend a couple of days or even weeks offline:

• I bought a portable AM/FM radio, with a rechargeable battery. And I started to listen to radio more often as a result.
• Most of my books are now either on Kindle or PDF, but I started investing in some actual physical books again. However, I found that I got so used consuming content via video (Youtube, Netflix etc.) that I am finding in harder to concentrate on reading for more than a couple of minutes, except if it's a technical article I am working through. So spending more time reading, even if it's digital content, is something I want to start concentrating more again.
• Have cash available. I can't really remember when last I needed cash, but the reality is that with a regional technology outage, trade will have to be done old school with cold hard cash. So, I do have a small amount of cash available now that covers basic groceries and travel expenses four a couple of weeks.
• Keep hard copies of very important information.

Hopefully a prolonged Internet outage will not happen on a global scale, but I do think we all have to be prepared for at least a regional outage lasting a couple of weeks.

Tags¶

personal