Our existing information technology infrastructure is surprisingly robust, at least for now. But what's left if something really big happens?
The editor of the Gawker media sci-fi blog io9, Annalee Newitz , is working on a book about how humans will regroup after the apocalypse. That such a book could be considered non-fiction is a remarkable commentary on the world we live in, with gold at a record high, the U.S. government on the verge of default, supplies of cheap oil running out and the environment crashing down on the heads of more humans than anyone ever imagined could simultaneously inhabit spaceship earth.
It's tempting to believe that we live in a special time -- this is the root of all apocalyptic thinking -- but it's hard to compare even today's menaces to the rise of the Third Reich, the fall of the Roman Empire or the Black Death . At least not yet.
But supposing something were to happen, as it does every day in parts of war-torn sub-Saharan Africa -- some cascade of environmental and political disasters leading to armed conflict or resource starvation. What happens when all those data centers, housing all that knowledge we digitized without a second thought, go dark?
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