Technology has penetrated into every facet of modern day life. People are more plugged in than ever. They carry their tablets, their laptops and their smart phones around. As soon as they get home, they plug in again, either on a computer, or on a smart television.

Every day, we see how connectivity and information technology continues to mould and shape our lives. Gone are the days of phone calls to landlines, people just pick up their phones and call people. If they cannot get through, they simply send an email or get in touch through a social media network.

But sometimes, the internet goes down – whether through a fault from the service provider’s end, or a software glitch at the service user’s end or through much greater issues, such as when ships accidentally sever an undersea cable. This happened a few years back and much of the Indian sub continent was in a digital blackout. Needless to say, chaos ensued.

It truly makes you wonder. When we experience an IT or connectivity blackout, everything goes dead, and the younger generation – most of whom do not know what it even means to not have a mobile phone, are absolutely shellshocked. They just cannot function.

The vast majority of businesses now have an online presence and a substantial amount of them also operate solely through the internet, so when the system comes crashing down, they simply cannot function. While the wonders of technology are there for us all to behold, the stark reality of it all is that if we suddenly go offline, then the world would come to a standstill, both in terms of communication and in terms of business activity. We all saw what happened when the financial crisis hit the world, and the sobering thought of what would happen if a digital crisis unfolded is enough to make you shudder.

No one could trade, transactions cannot be made and there would be a complete information blackout. Pardon the pun, but we would go back to the dark ages, and what is worse is that we would not even know where to begin dealing with it.

We need to find a balance. While the paperless trail is the way forward, individual countries, and indeed the world, needs to have a backup system whereby things can still function without internet connectivity. As the old saying goes, putting all one’s eggs in one basket is never a good idea. The world needs a failsafe. Without it, we could be sealing our own fate.