Years ago, people talked about a computer addiction. Today, it is a necessity. Bills are received electronically and paid electronically. Snail mail is out. In fact, if I get a piece of paper, I either scan it or take a photo of it because all of my files are now electronic. I no longer keep paper. Several years ago, I took all of my paper files, nine storage bins full of them, scanned them, shredded them, and carefully organized all those filings so my entire life is now digitalized. I have not one but two cloud storage systems to ensure that I never lose anything.
Addiction? Necessity!
Today, Friday, July 8, 2022, I wake up to discover my Internet is down; Rogers cable is offline. I sit at my computer desk, looking at the flashing red light on my router signifying no signal. Now what do I do? Suddenly, the world has shrunk to the confines of my apartment. No email. No news feed. No social media. I also discover my phone is showing just about no bars. Has this outage also affected my phone carrier, limiting whatever cellphone tower services my area? I can’t dial out. I’m doomed! Well, at least cut off. Like Tom Hanks, I’m cast away. All that’s left is to explore my island.
I sip a coffee and stare out the window. I sit at my computer desk and look at files representing writings I’ve started but not yet finished. I wander around, tiding up here and there. I get out an old toothbrush and clean some of the grout in the bathroom. I vacuum. I refill my coffee and stare out the window again. I wonder what everybody else in the world is doing.
Throughout the day, I have meals, snacks, more coffee breaks, and naps. Mixed up in all this, I peck away at some writings, including this article. Later in the afternoon, I discover the news feed in my phone will work but is terribly, terribly slow. Click on a link and come back in a minute or two to see it open. At least I have something. It’s painful but it’s something. It’s here that I find out about the extent of the Rogers outage, and it’s big, like really big, like 25% of the Internet service for Canada. Never mind me being offline, this has had an impact on all sorts of businesses including debit cards, Interac, and anything working over the Net. I have to chuckle about this. I worked in I.T. for over thirty years, the last twenty-three as the manager of the computer department for a small company of sixty employees. I’ve seen all sorts of crazy sh*t. Install an update, crash the system, and knock everybody in the company offline. I liked how my phone would light up like a Christmas tree with irate employees, or how I would hear the pounding of feet as people ran down the hall to my office, demanding to know what’s going on. But I only screwed things up for a small company. Rogers has screwed things up for the entire country of Canada! I’d like to be a fly on the wall to see this tap dance! Ha, ha!
Over the years, I’ve known people who’ve gone off the grid. A woman and her husband dropped their Facebook account. Several years later, I heard through the grapevine they were doing great and did not regret getting out of it. Can we live without it? However, here I must make the distinction between the computer and the Internet, a necessity, and social media which is a time suck. Getting into arguments about politics with total strangers. God, don’t we love our drama?
I’m now writing this the following day. I went to bed without the Internet. In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom and noticed my router showing a green light. Rogers had solved whatever problem brought them down. As I sit here with a cup of coffee, all is back to normal. I’m plugged back in and once again, part of the global community. I’m alive!
Rogers is one of the largest if not the largest cable service provider in Canada. What happened? We may never know. I've been with them for the past ten years and have always found their service to be reliable. Do I classify this as nobody's perfect? In scanning the headlines, I see this has had a significant impact on the country. We are reliant on technology. We can't live without it, and we don't want to. Oh, well. I'll chalk this up as just another blip in life. At least, I got some of my bathroom grout cleaned up.
2022-07-09
Posts
Hugh, you and I are both old enough to remember the days before the internet, even before personal computers became generally available...we got along just fine, we were happy, healthy and not afraid of someone maybe gonna offend us or be offended...we all had thicker skins back then. We celebrated winners and entrepreneurs, instead of hating them, there were no participation medals and sometimes you didn't make the team...but there was no shame in that. I swear that the world has been made a much colder and less friendly, less tolerant place since the advent of social media. People seem to have forgotten how to communicate with each other and are now allowing themselves to be manipulated by the tech and media corporations as well as the political class.
ReplyDeleteThe internet is a great tool and a source of entertainment...but it is also an intrusive and dangerous tool in the hands of totalitarian government and over dependence on this technology leaves us vulnerable
I agree with anonymous. I have music and Netflix programs downloaded on my phone, so I could listen to music atleast. I realized that foolishly I don’t even have a clock radio. Atleast I could listen to the news or music on that. In the evening I pulled out a book, an actual book made out of paper..(!) Haahaa - they do still exist. I was on the second page when notifications and headlines started to pop up on my phone. ‘Could it be?’ I thought, ‘is it fixed?’ I looked at my phone scrolling down. The first was a CBC headline about the Rogers internet outage and the second was a notification from Rogers that monthly bill had arrived. Typical.
ReplyDelete