Back when it was fashionable to be a nerd, you could always brag you were “uploading” your back-office files to the “Cloud” . . . whatever that was? As it turned out, the Cloud is a safe, inexpensive way to preserve and protect all your “data”. In those days, you could still ask dumb questions, such as “how do I know it is safe? or how do I know my privacy is protected?” Frequently, it was insinuated that I should simply shut-up as greater minds said the cloud was safe and protected! One Texas woman even suggested that I not worry “my pretty little head” about it.

During Friday’s massive IT “outage”, the world got a reminder of how truly vulnerable our society is to technology. (The irony is that the Cloud was relatively unscathed by this collapse to the technology universe – whew!)

Like pregnancy, this is not a risk we can easily “un-take” . . . so how do we limit our losses. Most nerds recommend a parallel IT system, but that is expensive; so make only part of your IT system redundant? Revisit your contingency plans at least annually. More frequent testing is also expensive . . . so is doing nothing.

Living with increasing uncertainty is increasingly difficult – with IT uncertainty, climate uncertainty, political uncertainty, social uncertainty, etc . . . Let AI handle it . . . what could go wrong?

The thoughts, opinions, and emotions above are strictly those of the writer, Jim Flinchum.