During this shared Global challenge that is the COVID-19 pandemic and now – much more than ever before – the internet is our critical information lifeline and tether to the world. How well is the internet coping with such a sudden and massive hyper-inflation of demand?
The internet of popular imagination is an omnipresent amorphous abstraction of instantaneously-accessible information, communication and connectivity. These abstract information spaces and distributed social places are built upon upon a backbone of infrastructure and organisational complexity that, much like the very many critical social services that everyday life depends upon, is almost entirely invisible when everything is working properly.
What are the consequences (and costs) of such a sudden acceleration of infrastructure upgrades and of an associated proliferation of network, security and organisational complexity? The logical, technical and organisational abstractions, costs and benefits of virtualisation may have been absolutely exploding already but watch closely in 2020 as it all goes positively supernova.
Context: Why the coronavirus lockdown is making the internet stronger than ever
