posted on Oct, 28 2012 @ 01:43 PM
I think loam is actually trying to point out how many "vital" services are now bound over network connections. Online banking, online bill pay,
direct deposit, stock brokerage, medical records, earthquake monitors, and most POS terminals, just to name a few, are all processed via secure server
connections. To lose that connection is to deny access to those services.
Perhaps you need gas, and use your card at the pump, a sure convenience, but you are told by the clerk that the connection is down. No gas for your
automobile. Cash only, the clerk says, so you go to an ATM, but lo and behold, it is non-functional as well. You go to the bank, to withdraw cash in
person, and they tell you their computers are also down, no internet connection. So how do you get cash? Wait till they fix it? You need gas
now.
My point is that we have slowly relinquished most transactions concerning money to the internet, thinking the internet can never fail. True, it
won't, as long as there is an electrical grid in place to power the computers that serve such information, but the bottleneck of information WAITING
to be processed (packet loss), will strangle it's effectiveness.
Small outages will decrease the overall function of the interwebs, but to me, that's enough of a situation to create a "tipping point" to chaos.
To me, we are on a very thin line. Our dependence upon the internet, versus our ability to live without it.