Internet Outlook with Richard Wiggins

East Lansing, Michigan
What Is Your Internet Half-Life?

By Richard Wiggins

ave you ever had the lights go out at a crucial moment? It happened to me last Sunday at 2:00 am. Monday morning I was due to fly out for a business meeting in Boston, and I was polishing off my Powerpoint presentation. The lights flickered and the hum of the PC went to 0 dB. Sigh. But wait! The power came back on, and after a quick reboot, I saw my cable modem was able to move data again, and I went back to screen captures and cutting and pasting.

Ahh, but it was not to last. The power went out again, and this time, it was not to return for 28 hours. Some 300,000 other households in Michigan faced the same situation. The only way I was going to recapture my work before my flight would be to haul the PC to a place that still had power. I gave up on that idea, and resolved to rebuild my Powerpoint presentation on my laptop during the trip.

Electricity is a utility that most of us take for granted, and most of us are ill-prepared for the consequences of its loss. My Powerpoint presentation wasn’t my only handicap – my clothes for the trip were in the dryer; my garage door would require the removal of a brace to open manually; the furnace wasn’t going to heat the house all night; the food in the fridge was not likely to survive unspoiled.

The question arises: for you, or for your company or other organization, is the Internet now a similarly vital utility? How much do you depend on the Internet for the basic information gathering and exchanging that’s part of your everyday life? Can you live without it if it goes away?