Reliance on technology could be more of a threat to human race than another ice age or a nuclear war. Not so long ago only the rich had mobile phones but these days take away people’s iPhones and Blackberrys and they feel vulnerable and naked. Business grinds to a halt and peoples thumbs twitch in an involuntary reaction to the inability to send SMS texts. Suddenly blue tooth ear pieces are yanked out and people can hear, unfortunately they have lost the ability to talk face to face and make the sign of the phone with their hand and mouth I’ll give you a call later. In Israel on Wednesday 1st December Cellcom, the country’s largest cell phone provider experienced a breakdown that left 3 million without their mobile phones. The outage lasted from 10:00 to 21:23 hours local time. The company worked with Nokia engineers to fix the problem, which was described as a fault "in the core of the network."
The fault was more than just an annoyance to Cellcom’s customers with questions having been asked in the Israeli parliament and a number of lawsuits filed against the company. Not surprising when you realise that Israel has one the highest numbers of cell phone users anywhere in the world, with 1.38 phones per person.
With the obvious vulnerability of a society reliant on such a fragile infrastructure one wonders how such a society will handle a large scale outage as might be caused by the radio magnetic pulse from a massive solar event, nuclear explosion or volcanic eruption, not to mention the possibility of a large scale cyber attack.
Oh well! It is time to slip my underpants over my tights, paint my wellingtons red, turn my jacket into a cape and save the world again. Thank the Lord for Superham and his special powers to communicate over long distances without reliance on a cell phone.
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