Computer down! Can you survive an internet outage?
Aug 1, 2018, 5:53 AM
Facebook’s chief operating officer says that hackers are at it again, infiltrating social media.
“We want to let you know we removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated, inauthentic behavior,” Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg said in a phone call with reporters Tuesday.
Facebook is not 100 percent sure it’s Russia. But suppose it is, and suppose Russia were to go beyond this.
At our KIRO Radio building Tuesday, about the time the Facebook news broke, our entire internet went kaput. No email, no Google, no uploads, no downloads, and no dial tones!
As we all sat there wondering what to do, it occurred to me that there are fire drills, earthquake drills, active shooter drills, but no internet outage drills. We are so web-dependent that there are grown people who’ve forgotten how to write. My own producer passed me a note about an interview. I looked at it and I thought, “I’m interviewing a watermelon?”
People can’t write!
And ask yourself: Do you know anyone’s phone number? Do you have a physical map in case you have to drive somewhere you’ve never been? Do you have a written check register so you know what’s in your account?
Most important: do you have an ordinary, reliable analog broadcast radio? No, just a smartphone which is typically too dumb to pick up a live broadcast signal.
We are not anywhere near prepared.
Fortunately, there’s one thing saving us. Why would Russia yank the internet? After all, keeping it working screws us up even more!
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Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
