h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I live in the North Central region of the U.S.. My area did NOT have a blackout. However, for my work I use the web site for the city I live in, in particular to look up records of permits for repairs and improvements by address. This portion of the city's data is on a server/computer in Canada (apparently under contract). I had wondered where in Canada, but when the data was inaccessible or an extended time during the blackout period, I concluded that server must be in eastern Canada. It was a minor inconvenience in my ability to complete my work-related tasks, but it shows how connected we really are.

Huge chunks of the Internet disappeared because a lot of top-level routers disappeared. My ISP has several redundant links, but all of these links passed through places that were slow to get their power back.

In contrast, my ISP suddenly became extremely reliable (got connected immediately, close to the maximum dial-up speed, and no dropped connections). It's as if the blackout gave the ISP a good kick in the pants and straightened it out, because it was pretty unreliable before and it's been performing like a champ lately.

And the volume of spam went way down during the blackout. 'It's an ill wind...' and all that.

There were surprising gaps in site links all over the palce during the blackout. It was intriging finding out just where some servers are located and where some others are not. Made some tasks at work here in the UK actually difficult. Part of being a small cog in a big multinational machine I suppose.