Outage Report

Since this blog began, we’ve had three Internet outages: September 17, 2011, January 7, 2012 and February 1, 2013. In the first instance, a power cord had gone bad. In the others the fault lay in AT&Ts failure to transmit a DSL signal. Now that the web is back, I am pleased to be able to report that those letters stand for Digital Subscriber Line. In each of the first two cases we were down for a day, in the last case for most of three days. These outages teach a lesson: we have become so highly dependent on the web’s communications facilities that its outage produces at least the strong temptation to talk about an “existential crisis.” Then, of course, one laughs. Nothing like humor to remind one of one’s own humanity.