Blackberry gone down? Could be worse.....

A couple of days ago, a couple from Cambridgeshire awoke one morning to discover that they had £101 million to their names. They achieved this feat by purchasing a ticket for the lott-tree and are now discussing what shade of Ostrich-hide to go in the private jet, I assume. I bet that every single one of you reading this did exactly what I did when I heard about this: planned exactly what you'd spend the money on if you were the lucky buyers of that lott-tree ticket. I don't even know what I would do with that kind of money, it's something like £300,000 a MONTH (that's after tax) if put away properly! What do you spend £300,000 a month on? No doubt I'll figure a way eventually, but the first few months would consist of me being an idiot with the money, I suspect. What I wouldn't do, however, is announce in the Mirror that I am making 20 of my friends millionaires. The only sentence I can imagine are more regretful is Gerald Ratner's "it's all crap".

Why is this a daft thing to say? Well quite simply, if it were you that won all that dough, and you know more than 20 people, you will have nothing but arguments on your hands forever. Can you imagine what the 21st person is going to say when they find they still have to get up at 6am to pay the mortgage? Are they going to be looking forward to going round your house to see you, with your brand new gold-plated shoes (because, to hell with it, you've got £101m) and all those other new millionaires (who are apparently better friends than you) while they put away the keys to their 12 year old car? I doubt it. Then you get the "sob story" letters. Lots of them, from all over the world, all saying "dear rich person. My wife/husband/relative/friend/dog/daffodil is very ill/disabled/short/angry/wilting and I need lots of your money. kthanksbye x" I'd simply tick the anonymous box and make it clear that I am not giving any of it to anyone who asks for it. Then, I'd start the process of installing a big slide from my bedroom to the kitchen.

Now I'm not actually planning my awesome slide, mostly because I've not bought a lottery ticket in years. I can see the appeal however; for the price of half a pint, you can be in with a 1 - 83 million chance of winning lots of money. If you would like some perspective on that, the chances of being hit by an asteroid are 1 - 700,000. Anywhoo, it's the financial freedom that people are after. With that sort of money, you literally can do anything you want. Even some of the most expensive cars are within your monthly take-home pay! You can excuse pretty much anything with the answer "screw it, I'm rich". You want a nice holiday in the Caribbean, why not buy an island? You can do whatever you want, because you've got the financial freedom that millions of others work hard to try and attain. There's just one small problem with this, that has come to light only in the last three days.

The last 72 hours has seen BlackBerry's network crash across Europe and America. BlackBerry owners have had to resort to checking their emails on an actual computer rather than surreptitiously under the table, and teenagers having to actually go and see a physical person to commence saying "omg" and "rofl" to each other. Airplanes have fallen out of the sky, cars have melted into their constituent parts and the world as we know it has ground to a halt.... according to the level of furore over it. I love how massively dependant everyone is on silly little things like this, as if they are just below oxygen and Big Macs on the survival list. Thing is, as hilarious as it is to see people wander around with the look on their face of "I don't know what to do now?", I know I'd be the same if all of the internet vanished. No, really, think about it! Everything in the world is now based on the internet! I couldn't access Facebook to see pointless updates about who is doing the ironing? I can't see if I've had four or five spam emails asking me if I want to buy cheap meds from Canada? I can't waste literally days looking at comedy sites? My life would literally be over!

Unfortunately it probably will be. How many businesses rely on the internet, and I mean really rely on it? Do you think your bank could get your money to the ATM in time? Could you properly pay your gas bill? Could Sainsbury's automatically order your favourite brand of Mayonnaise when they run out? No! The internet has become one of those things that has intertwined itself into life, just like the telephone. The world literally couldn't run as we know it without it! This isn't something that keeps me awake at night, but there is one thing I am aware of: it doesn't matter how many squillions the Lott-tree give me for picking numbers at random, it will mean diddly squat if something happens to one of these things that we have unexpectedly come to totally rely on. Indeed, it's probably one of the most important things we collectively use on a daily basis.

And what do we use this great power for, currently? Funny cat pictures. 

Gotta love a world with such a funny set of priorities.

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