Editorial: Need for the net is scary

Photo / Thinkstock

Like many of you, I'm old enough to remember a world not dominated by the internet - when people still sent letters instead of emails or messaging, when people used encyclopedias (or at one point CD-Roms such as Encarta) to find out about the world, when the term social media referred to journalists at the pub, and when playing computer games involved a tape deck that screeched like a fax machine when loading.

Since then, we've become so reliant on being connected online, it's become a basic necessity for many.

That may seem obscene to those struggling to pay bills, but the fact is, a good chunk of the population now needs an internet connection to carry out their jobs and earn a living, to pay bills, to watch television or listen to the radio, or even do their groceries. That's without taking into account leisure activities like Facebook, watching movies or TV shows or playing online games.

So you really notice it when your online connection is cut.

This happened for many at the weekend when customers of Spark, New Zealand's largest internet service provider, were hit by outages.

Not only were users unable to get online on computers and tablets, but mobile internet was affected too.

I was able to get a couple of hours' work done at home in between outages, but others weren't so lucky.

For most, it didn't matter why it happened - whether it was vulnerable modems or a few people unknowingly downloading malware causing a data traffic issue that ballooned into a problem, affecting the whole network.

What we want to know is that it won't happen again.

When you consider our reliance on the internet, compared with say 20 years ago, it's almost scary.