ISN’T the internet wonderful?

We have access to literally any piece of information at the push of a button, we can video chat to someone on the other side of the world at a moment’s notice and our mums can send us as many pictures of next door’s new shed as their hearts desire.

What was once solely the realm of Captain Kirk and co is now reality.

But with this comes a fairly large problem – when everything is connected what happens when the system stops working?

For example, if a reporter on a topquality regional newspaper was to come into work at 7am raring to get started on the day’s work only to find the internet wasn’t working they’d be left twiddling their thumbs until it was fixed.

While, having being born in the mid 80s and grown up through the 90s, I can faintly remember a world without the internet, it’s now become so prevalent that the idea of not being online 100 per cent of the time seems oddly troubling.

It really is a case of wonderful when it works, but a real pain when it doesn’t.

A few nights ago while at home watching Netflix I noticed a little red light on my internet router had come on and, having no idea what it meant, decided to reset the connection just to be safe.

Of course the episode of Orange is the New Black I was watching immediately stopped as – you guessed it – Netflix needs you to be connected to the internet to work.

While in this case simply turning it back on again remedied the problem you can’t help but wonder what happens if something went catastrophically wrong.

How would hospitals effectively monitor how many patients were in their beds? How will air traffic controllers keep track of planes in the skies? How would police be able to quickly spread information about missing people?

Yes, all this worked fine before the internet was so prevalent, but at this point we’ve become so reliant on it something going wrong could have catastrophic repercussions.

I’m not saying someone standing on the wrong wire somewhere will create a Terminator-esque post apocalyptic society – although I might start stocking up on canned food just in case.

But maybe it’s worth reflecting on just how important the internet's become in our lives.