Will’s World: 4G or not 4G? A question for our connected times
© Lee Boswell Photography For a few traumatic hours on a recent Monday evening, pure unadulterated horror visited the Evans household.
Tempers were frayed, tensions ran high, longstanding Snapchat streaks were threatened, and our numerous daughters were forced into having actual conversations with each other and their parents.
Yes, our 4G service went down.
See also: Advice on managing mobile water troughs for sheep flocks
About the author
We can’t get fixed-line broadband because we live in the communications black hole that is the Welsh borders, so we have to rely on 4G for the internet, and it’s usually fairly dependable.
But not on this occasion.
By the way, were you aware that “oh my god, no one says internet”?
This is according to one of my delightful teenagers, so I’m now saying it as often as possible.
I may even resurrect the phrase “surfing the web” in the presence of their friends, just to embarrass them. Being a dad is tremendous fun.
Do I look bothered?
I wasn’t particularly bothered by the enforced shutdown. In fact, I was quite happy as it got me out of a few hours of office work that I’d had planned.
And the present Mrs Evans is an analogue girl living in a digital world at the best of times, so she probably didn’t even notice.
The only time we’ve come close to divorce is when I needed to get hold of her during a farm emergency – after 68 missed calls and me nearly having a coronary, she finally answered her phone, audibly irritated that I’d disturbed her work.
Perhaps it’s because we’re members of Generation X and so have a deeply ingrained distrust of these things.
We were brought up with the likes of The A-Team, The Goonies and The Dukes of Hazzard, where ordinary people constantly fought against the unfairness and oppression of the system, the man, the government.
We knew the machines were the natural enemies thanks to Sarah Connor defeating the Terminator, and, frankly, we should all be more worried about that now, with the rise of artificial intelligence funded by billionaire Bond-villain tech barons.
Imagine if they used some of their obscene wealth to try to reverse climate change, or even end global hunger or child poverty, instead of forcing this dystopian stuff down our throats and attempting to destroy all forms of human creativity and connection.
That’s a column for another day, though.
Losing it
We were also of the generation that would lose hours’ worth of work when computers crashed, and I well remember the absolute stress of my entire university dissertation disappearing from existence the day before it was due to be handed in.
I worked through the night to rewrite it, and to this day I still bear a grudge against Bill Gates.
I always print the likes of concert tickets and airline boarding passes. I know full well that to anyone under the age of 40 that makes me look like a character in a Dickens novel, but I don’t care.
Our recent experience only confirms I’m right to do so, and if anyone wants to get on their environmental high horse about paper use, they can be prepared for a very robust counter-argument about data centres.
It does beg the question, though, what would we do if the UK’s communications networks went down for days, or even weeks, due to a cyber attack?
How could any of us manage to run our farming businesses, given how reliant we are on our devices and the infinitely complex, just-in-time food supply chain?
And an even more pressing concern for us all: just how would the Evans girls manage to communicate with their friends?