Wednesday, February 25

Just in case you missed it


Just in case anyone had forgotten about, or actually slept through, the cacophony that was gfail 2009, here's a shot of what I spent my morning watching. (and in case you missed it all together- gfail refers to the 3-4 hour period when gmail, the very popular free google provided e-mail service, was down. down=broken=unavailable=end of the world)

For me the gfail was initially frustrating, then highly entertaining, and in the end actually a statement of the success of google gears. I could still work on everything I needed once I was over the initial shock. So congrats google.

But more importantly for all of us looking to seriously up our web game are the many implications of utilizing tools we understand little about. We are rapidly becoming entrenched in the world wide web, storing our lives with google, amazon, and on mysterious 'clouds.' While the potential is overwhelming- I never advocate following blindly down paths we just don't understand. Come on MSLSers- what's the first rule of the game? Understand the SYSTEM.

It seems to me we need to raise our collective intelligence about that complex system that is the web, and work harder as users of these tools to really understand the risks that go along with the many opportunities.

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