There’s something about working for a company (as pretty much everyone does these days) that is extremely reliant on the internet, and then having your servers crash, and that crash lasting for nearly six days, that gets you thinking.

We’re back up and running our bread-and-butter twice-daily newsletters as usual, almost as if nothing happened, but I’m sure there’s more to come from internal discussions on what happened — how what happened will impact our small business, and what we will do to improve our capabilities for the future.

As you know well, the meat processing business doesn’t work unless the lines are running at a sufficient pace and volume. The information business, likewise, doesn’t work when the flow of information is cut off.

In either, technology proves to be our best friend and worst enemy. That automated system in a processing plant is reducing labor needs and costs, but it can be too complex for a quick fix. Artificial Intelligence can whip up a news story in no time, but getting it out there first mean’s nothing if it’s riddled with factual errors.

Disruptions teach lessons. They allow reflection on what went wrong and what can be done better the next time. They help in the creation of contingency plans. And, in the post-pandemic era, we seem to be living in a constant Plan B. The time always comes when we must find alternative ways to get the product out.

With our server meltdown, as the discomfort grew with each day, it dawned on me not only how reliant we are on technology but also how helpless we can feel without it — and how comfortably numb it can make us. We may even forget about other tools at our disposal, that while passe are still effective.

Oh, a phone call? Wait, what’s that?

We people can’t forget how to be people, to use our critical-thinking brains and the dexterous hands that built these machines. We can’t let the comfort and distance that technology affords us to lull us into isolation. When the machines break down, guess who has to fix them?

Be it the meat processing business or the meat processing information business, we must thank the brilliant people who rally in an emergency, troubleshoot the problem and get us back up and running.

Well, that sucked

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