Since yesterday, I can surf the web and manage my sites as usual without getting disconnections and half loaded web pages.

But the question still remains the same, why everything is so fragile at this time of so called hi-tech era?

I talked to a very knowledgeable person from Renesys.com about the problems and he helped me to understand why while Iran is not enlisted as disconnected due cables problem, we still have such problems, and it seemed it is a matter of routing schemes through countries, and the fact we use a Turkish network (only, possibly) to connect to the outside world.

Lot’s of technical talk, so don’t bother, unless you are a network engineer

Paymaan.

Last week, 2 data cable out of 3 which connect Middle East from Egypt to central Asia like India, were simply damaged by possibly ship anchors at somewhere near Alexandria port in Egypt. Almost all of internet connection of this part of world has been blacked out since then, and companies have told it will take a few days (to a couple of weeks) to repair the problems.

Even worse than that, yesterday another cable around Dubai, UAE, was cut off to worsen the problem even further. I have had even huge problems with updating this blog, almost 100% of data is being lost, and all data is being rerouted through Japan to US, possibly on very slow and bad networks.

You see, in digital age we are related on 2 inch cables placed at sea bed, and if a shark tries to brush his teeth with them, half of the world will lose billions of dollars of funds.

So let me be scared that much, we are walking almost on hair-thin ropes, and be prepared, we may lose everything so easily we may not gonna believe ever!

Paymaan.

P.S. I am still having problems sending this post, this is third time I am trying, so the problem is real!

100 years ago, people would store their images and documents on paper. Either normal paper or photo papers. I still have photos my father has taken back about 50 years ago, and they are all remained intact. AS long as they are not under direct sunlight, humidity or something similar, or if they burn.

For DVD, almost all of those problems, also heat, shock, and like that. DVD are much sensitive than paper, and a little may make lots of data unrecoverable.

Worse than DVD, are hard disks. They might look a little more secure, but those are even more sensitive, and problems include mechanical failures, and Magnetic interferences.

Personally, I am always scared of losing my data, family images, documents and a lot more of electronic design and software work. That’s awful. I have lost data before, and every year, my data has grown 10s of times from the year before, and now I have started to feel very insecure.

Now imagine some military shows it has some kind of EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) ordnance. If people, those like me specially, feel their data is unsafe, what will they do? Better to ask myself first, what will I do if I am scared of losing data due an EMP attack around me?

Maybe I make copies and put them around the world? Then what? is that enough? I say no. The cost can be too much and useless, because you don’t know where in the world there will be safe place.

Another method will be to put your data in some secure environment meters under the ground, but it will possibly make no difference, how many people can dig a 100 meter or even more bunker? I cannot for sure.

Then what if I store some of my data, at least the most important ones on paper? sya printing images and documents and designs and sources on paper, just like they did for hundreds and thousands of years since this last decade?!

Although it takes a lot of space, but it is not that costly, it is viable, and will not be easily lost, as digital data does.

Then imagine part of people think like me, and imagine they are really scared of losing their data, what will happen to the world? people may rush to buy paper, lots of it, huge amounts. What will happen to the world?

I say it might lead to a chaos, to a crisis. Just like what is happening to the oil. Price of the oil is raised from about USD 14 a barrel a few years ago to more than a hundred USD, and it is awful.

Just a simple thought.

Paymaan.