At this moment, I am sitting in the dark (during the middle of the day, mind, it’s that grey and dark here in London today) cold, with the power off. Not for the first time in the past few months I find myself without electricity, without warning (and not by choice), in my building. There’s some irony in that I was watching the trailer for No Impact Man just minutes before it spontaneously shut off.

I was able to get back online again fairly quickly after rustling up a mobile broadband dongle and my laptop. But there is a danger in the era of always-on computing or assuming that essential infrastructure will be there when you need it. I’m lucky to live in a highly developed country with a relatively stable electricity grid. But I’ve also worked at a university that fell prey to frequent power failures, a happenstance of location and an ageing building. At my first workplace I remember a full day without power where we embraced the dull cast of the generator’s emergency lighting glow and took to shelving to fill in the day. Basic connectivity is an issue I’m increasingly aware of when I travel and plan for work in all kinds of different places. We anticipate having to work around technical difficulties in developing nations, but we are less prepared for it when it happens in our home environment. When we design services and software, do we make plans for what might happen if suddenly you couldn’t connect to it anymore? Even if just for an hour? Or a week? What impact being thrown off the grid would have for being able to communicate?

Food for thought while I sit in the dark, waiting for my laptop battery to run out.