We're all connected (not)!

Some of you will know that I’m in the middle of a house move at the moment.

It’s widely believed that activity of this nature is a known stress raiser and I can certainly vouch for that but if I’m honest, because my humble abode is a new build, it has gone pretty well in general. I’ve had a good communicative rapport with the developer and to their credit, they’ve kept me up to speed with developments in a timely fashion.

However being a new build, my property is subject to problems of different type and that’s the supply of services. I have gas, electricity and water in plentiful supply; what I don’t have is a phone line and consequently no Internet. So in effect, I have a (near) fully furnished flat ready to move into but no connectivity to the outside world. The hold-up is with (surprise, surprise) BT and if I was being critical (and why shouldn’t I be) I do believe strongly that the developer should have project managed this better. Six weeks after receiving the keys – still no phone line – but that’s another story.

The point of this rant is that until now I didn’t really fully appreciate how much I depend on the Internet to exist. A situation like this really drives home the fact that connectivity (at least to me) is not a luxury item but an absolute necessity. I started to break down what I actually use the Internet for.

The first is work. Yes I can get emails on my phone but I regularly connect to my PC in the office via a VPN connection to work remotely. Then there’s all the files I keep in the Cloud and access via services like Dropbox, Google Docs and Evernote not to mention accessing our FTP server for transferring large files around during a magazine production week for example. I should also note of course online banking, downloading music, streaming films and TV, social media and Internet radio.

Some of you will be sympathising with my plight; others will be mumbling ‘that Tudor really ought to get out more’ but either way it just emphasises how much we rely on this stuff. Life used to be so much simpler!

Dave Tudor
Editor/Director