Technology...everything it's cracked up to be?

I realized yesterday that technology runs our lives. We would be in a state of emergency, if the things we take for granted daily, were to stop running. For those of you who have seen "Live Free or Die Hard", you got a pretty good look at what could happen, should someone tap into the big "computer".

Yesterday, while I was online, I got kicked off. Didn't think too much about it until I realized that my cell phone didn't have any reception. Then, tried calling Mark on the landline, and we had no long distance either. Hours pass, and then my brother calls from work, saying that their interent and long distance were down also. They couldn't take people's credit cards or checks, because they couldn't get through to the company/bank. He was also told by a customer, that ATM's were down. No 1-800 numbers were working or anything, so I couldn't contact my local bank to find out if this was true or not. Sure enough, my mom called her bank, and they told her that they weren't allowing anyone to withdraw more than $100 (inside the bank) because their system was down too. Apparently, some guy knocked down a computer line in Fort Irwin by mistake, and it created all this mess.

This only happened for a few hours in my town. Could you imagine if it was done to knock out the country's computer system? We would be in a quick state of chaos. And understandably too. We rely far too much on technology. Just not having reception on my cell phone was driving me insane. I had no way to reach Mark, because even though the landline was working for local calls, Mark works 45 minutes away and couldn't be reached via cell or long distance. It sucked. I believe there were a lot of angry customers yesterday as well...they couldn't use their credit cards, checks or pull money out of the bank. They were virtually stuck! What would happen if banks started freezing accounts because something went wrong. It would be 9/11 all over again, but much more dramatic.

It's a scary thought!