A report today from the USA has stated that certain individuals could rid themselves of all personal physical possession save for their digital assets like Ipods, Ipads, hard drives and other such type of devices.

These storage devices obviously contain such data is iTunes, movies and pictures to name a few, basically your digital life so to speak, but could you do without them, or More’s the point just live with them alone and sell all other possessions?
Seems extreme but people really are doing this, OK there are some items that we will need in addition such as a bed, roof over our head, food, clothes, but gone are other extraneous or superfluous items such as ornaments, trinkets general clutter, I for one think this digital minimalism is a good idea and does not bog you down with other such details as buying the latest this or that even for digital items, what is the point of upgrading every time a new upgrade or model comes along? OK there are exceptions to this rule, but if it is not broken don’t fix it mentality surely with a minimalist attitude has to be good for you, especially your pocket in these difficult financial times we live in.

There is obviously one serious caveat to this, backup your data! You may have little or live out of a rucksack so to speak, but make sure you have a decent and reliable backup not just for your hard drive or disks but all other devices such as phones etc.

Seriously though how can modern society function without it’s digital counterpart? Think if you lost your phone and Internet for 24 hrs, how would that effect you? What about if you lost them for a month? I am sure this would cause at the least a major disruption in your life or worse.

How really did we get to this enlightened stage where we all rely so heavily on gadgets or technology? It appears to have crept up on us by stealth, sure PCs were about 10 years ago so was the net, but not to the level we see today, many see the advancement of technology as a good thing, and it has to be said that the Internet really has helped in so many ways we never even thought of previously, take the dissemination of knowledge its instant on demand and can be converted at the touch of a button from virtually any language to your own native tongue, this speed has helped in collaborative projects such as medicine and health care, much needed help and understanding has and is achieved.

The 24 hr digital world is constant, available and on demand to all, and to date has never failed, what would happen if the internet failed? Surely this is not possible? Or is it? Then we have the various mobile phone networks supported by satelites, again what if they were to fail?

Studies have shown that not only are there the obvious terrorist threats to various networks there may also be a threat which is out of our control, that threat is from the Sun.
It is well documented that the sun has various cycles, such as sporadic E, additional to this there are krona mass ejections, these solar winds and high energy particles are ‘dealt’ with via the poles here on earth, however as most of the infrastructure is based in stationery or geostationary orbit(s) around the earth and outside the protection of earth they are very vulnerable to such high energy events and could in theory be ‘knocked’ out or damaged, depending when and where the solar stream came from the effects could be devastating to networks here on earth.

Of course scientist do  factor into their equations such events and have rudimentary systems such as Faraday cages and other such type systems and subsystems for protection, usually there are also secondary satellites that can be brought online, so its not all doom and gloom, if anything form this blog consider your digital assets and how safely you store them against any possible data loss.