It truly is an amazing world we live in. Just 10 years ago, Information Technology was more of a crutch of support, a specific tool that we used in our everyday lives.

But now, just a decade later, IT and all the peripherals that come with it have become the backbone we rely on.

This is not just in business, but also in the personal lives of each and every one of us. People immediately think of IT as meaning databases and the Internet, but it goes far beyond.

In the past year or so, we have seen outages of Internet service, which basically changed life as we now know it.

The purpose of this editorial is not to go in causes and the time taken to fix outages, although Melita do deserve a mention for offering compensation to customers who were left without connectivity for about six hours.

The real purpose of this leader is to remind people of the way things used to work before IT took over our lives and to show people how quickly we have forgotten.

One can simply take the newsroom of this office, which was not connected to the web for some hours yesterday.

It takes real effort to do things by hand, even simply digging up the fax number so as to at least receive information through that medium (which strictly speaking is also an IT peripheral).

It takes real effort to do things by hand, even simply digging up the fax number so as to at least receive information through that medium (which strictly speaking is also an IT peripheral).

Checking simple facts is so easy on the Internet, but it becomes a lot harder when one has to phone a local council, be passed onto someone else who then tells you they have to ask yet another person just to get an answer to a simple question.

Yes, we forget very quickly. On the same note, does anyone remember a life without mobile phones? Was it better or was it worse? Is it an advantage or a disadvantage to be plugged in?

Practically everyone reading this will know what one is getting at when a person feels sheer shock horror at having left his or her mobile phone at home.

Nine times out of ten, they turn back and pick it up - and we mention again, not only because of work.

Children have mobiles, as do grand parents. We truly have become the generation of IT. But what if we blackout completely? Do we, and more pertinently, do the university student generation have the necessary life skills to compete in a world where not everything is available at the touch of a button? The answer would probably be a resounding no.

How many people would even think of keeping a hard copy of the telephone directory at home?

How many students can face going through a textbook to find an answer to a question rather than using Google or Wiki?

Science is progress and progress is wonderful. But what if so-called ‘progress’ leads to our downfall?

What if our so-called progress turns us into a bunch of sedentary people who do nothing more than sit at a computer desk, both at work and during our free time?

Some might argue that we have already got to that point and that we are now at the point of no return.

They might be right. One also wonders how many people had Facebook withdrawal symptoms on Tuesday.

The truth is that humanity needs to strike a balance; we cannot live in a world where we rely on one tool to keep us going.

Times may have changed a lot from hunting and gathering, but an old adage` holds true: Don’t put all your eggs into one basket.

We need to remember how to do things manually for a start. We saw all to well in the rebuilding of South East Asia after the tsunamis how difficult it can be to remember or learn skills that only a few decades ago were commonplace.

Yes. Technology is a wonderful thing - when it works. It would be a brave person indeed to try and live without it for a week .