With an outage of one of the two main Australian telephone/Internet companies a number of services were not available. There were emergency calls for ambulances for many, hospital numbers, EFTPOS machines but one of the more unusual was from a radio caller, their internet connected automatic cat feeder wouldn’t work so pussy-cat wasn’t happy and decided their owner needed to wake up and feed them.

Resorting to manually feeding your cat is easy but it does make you wonder how much technology has taken over our lives and this didn’t even involve AI. There are people who could be endangered if they cannot access medical services including ambulances from their phones and many would just be inconvenienced if they have to shut their businesses for the day since few people pay with cash now.

Maybe it’s time to switch off our technologies for a while, go out into the garden and smell the roses and water the garden manually if you have a Wi-Fi activated automated watering system. It will be better for our stress levels and probably our sanity.

Dennis Fitzgerald,
Melbourne, Australia