Post by Watchman on Jan 4, 2007 13:09:11 GMT -5
"Earthquake knocks Asia back to phone age, and beyond", International Herald Tribune, December 27, 2006
"It was a tsunami for the digital age, a collapse of the virtual world that radiated through much of Asia and beyond after an undersea earthquake late Tuesday off the coast of Taiwan. People woke Wednesday to find themselves without e-mail or the Internet and, in some cases, without telephone connections, cut off from the real world around them."
"The earthquake ruptured two of the undersea cables that are part of a communications fretwork that circles the globe. Coming on the second anniversary of the Asian tsunami that took 230,000 lives, it was a reminder of the world's increasing dependence on communications technology. Financial companies and technology services suffered most directly, with banking and securities trading all but crippled. Operations from travel agencies to newspapers to schools struggled to maintain their routines.
" 'You don't realize until you miss it how much you rely heavily on technology', said Andrew Clarke, a sales trader in Hong Kong. 'Stuff you took for granted has been taken away and you realize, 'Ah, back to the old way, using mobiles'— an old way that itself is not so old."
"In this time of rapid change, it is easy to forget how quickly innovations have become necessities, from mobile phones to the Internet to e-mail to instant messaging on both the computer and telephone. 'I'm completely dependent on the Internet', said Robert Halliday, an American writer based in Bangkok. 'If the Internet goes down for half a day people can just stay in bed in terms of getting any work done'."
"It was a tsunami for the digital age, a collapse of the virtual world that radiated through much of Asia and beyond after an undersea earthquake late Tuesday off the coast of Taiwan. People woke Wednesday to find themselves without e-mail or the Internet and, in some cases, without telephone connections, cut off from the real world around them."
"The earthquake ruptured two of the undersea cables that are part of a communications fretwork that circles the globe. Coming on the second anniversary of the Asian tsunami that took 230,000 lives, it was a reminder of the world's increasing dependence on communications technology. Financial companies and technology services suffered most directly, with banking and securities trading all but crippled. Operations from travel agencies to newspapers to schools struggled to maintain their routines.
" 'You don't realize until you miss it how much you rely heavily on technology', said Andrew Clarke, a sales trader in Hong Kong. 'Stuff you took for granted has been taken away and you realize, 'Ah, back to the old way, using mobiles'— an old way that itself is not so old."
"In this time of rapid change, it is easy to forget how quickly innovations have become necessities, from mobile phones to the Internet to e-mail to instant messaging on both the computer and telephone. 'I'm completely dependent on the Internet', said Robert Halliday, an American writer based in Bangkok. 'If the Internet goes down for half a day people can just stay in bed in terms of getting any work done'."