Life without the internet

Have you ever you had to imagine what it was like to be deprived of the internet? Well, the netizens of the Asia-Pacific region just had to live that nightmare on Wednesday.
And we’re still experiencing it even now. Its not like someone turned off a switch and plunged this part of the region into total darkness… it’s more like rapid fading light, falling into dusk then twilight, with some light peeking out from a very weak moon in a heavily clouded sky.. perhaps.

One would have thought that the brains who designed the undersea cables linking the networld would have also designed-in or planned for earthquakes in the region. Yet, despite all that wonderful technology that our technocratic society is boasting about, we are still dependant on concept that has been around and used for communications for decades… the humble cable.

Granted the technology within and around the cable has changed dramatically since the days of Alexandra Graham Bell, and it is still the most cost-efficient way to provide mass-communications. But one still has to wonder when the next quantum leap in this area would happen. Would there ever be a technology impervious to such forces of nature?

I would love to be around when that happens. But it may be too much to ask for in my lifetime. So, for now, I live in partial information darkness, until the undersea cables which were damaged by the earthquake, can be fully restored.
At least I am thankful that I am not in a total information blackout. There are other means of communications, and the internet looks like its getting back up to speed today

~ by macrocosm on December 28, 2006.