Snow and technology doesn’t mix?
13th February 2009
There does not seem to be anything that has not been affected by the adverse weather conditions over the past few weeks. Whether it be the travel network, education system or technology infrastructure….pardon? Technology can be affected by a bit of snow? Okay, it may be more than a bit but surely in the 21st Century there are contingencies in place to enable everything to continue to run smoothly…….
Many travel websites reported an exceptional increase, in some cases by 800%, in visitors trying to find out whether their journey was really worthwhile. That meant that some, such as the Transport for London (TfL), websites crashed making it impossible for travellers to make an informed decision on whether to try to get to work.
As everything starts to return to normal, although you may disagree if you live in the north east or parts of Scotland, I have realised how much I take for granted during the non-snowy weather. Not wanting to generalise, but many people appear to take it for granted too.
However, surely in the 21st Century, when technologies and their infrastructure are paving the way to how we work, live, socialise etc, we should be able to expect certain things. Smart working is becoming one of the new buzz words, but if a heavy fall of snow can cut off communications for some of the largest companies how can anyone else have the confidence to choose to work from home if they can’t get to the end of their road? Many appeared to take their chances, ignoring severe weather warnings, to take to the roads to get to work and drop their children off at school/childcare maybe showing that the technology is not available to them, or they cannot use it in certain connectivity conditions.
My point? There has been so much progression in technology infrastructure, software, connectivity speeds, the list is endless - therefore, how did some snow cause such havoc to how people went about their working day (regardless of the transport network disruption)? Answers on a postcard!
