Digital Life
A nurse at a major hospital in Gangwon Province sought a duty doctor in a hurry at around 11 p.m., March 20, because the temperature of her 70-year-old patient had risen to 101.8 F. She called the doctor’s phone, but failed to get through. Fortunately she and her colleagues avoided a worst-case scenario by staging a massive manhunt for the doctor throughout the entire building for the next 30 minutes, in time for him to administer the correct treatment. The doctor had an SK Telecom phone, and it failed him on that day.
SK Telecom’s system failure on March 20 showed how easily our daily lives could collapse if our smartphones failed. More and more people are communicating with everyone via their phones, searching for information, sending e-mails, getting traffic data, making reservations, and even banking. The very moment these modern conveniences freeze up, people’s lives fill up with anxiety and fear in all aspects.
It is estimated that more than 5.6 million customers of the mobile carrier suffered critically from SK Telecom’s failure of just a few hours on March 20.
For example, an office worker caught a taxi in front of his office at around 6:00 p.m. on the 20th. He arrived at his destination and handed his credit card to the driver to pay the 25,000 won taxi fee, as was his habit. The driver tried to use the card but could not. The passenger did not have any cash and had to ask the driver to take him to an ATM nearby.
The office worker was already about 20 minutes late for a date with his girlfriend, and tried to contact her with his smartphone, only to hear the message that only emergency calls were available. None of his phone’s messenger apps worked either. He began to run, heading to a coffee shop where he could use the Internet. When he arrived, he logged into his messaging service over wifi and found that his girlfriend was having the same problem. They only managed to meet by 8:00 p.m., one hour after they had planned to meet.
Those who were trying to find destinations on their smartphones became blind on the street, too. A government employee got in his car to drive to a distant location on the outskirts of Seoul. He needed to arrive by 6:00 p.m. But when he turned on his smartphone navigation application as was his habit, the service was unavailable. “I took the highway to the appointment’s approximate location, but took two more hours to find the exact address, turning round and round downtown,” he said.
In another episode, a bank worker locked the door of his office in Gangnam, Seoul, at 7:00 p.m. It is bank policy to call the security company in charge of the bank before leaving, but the worker could not do so. He had to stay an extra hour, until he managed to borrow a working phone from a passer-by.
Another office worker who was going to buy a used bicycle was planning to send the money to the seller at around 8:00 p.m. He planned to use the banking application on his handset during a get-together with his coworkers. But the phone was unresponsive after 7:00 p.m. He could neither make phone calls nor send text messages to the seller to clarify the situation, much less actually pay the price of the bike. He finally got through to the seller at 11:00 p.m., only to hear that the seller had sold the bicycle to another due to the lack of any messages.
“These episodes are typical examples of modern civilization being enervated at one moment when its digital and mobile technologies fail,” said Kim Jong-seo, religious studies professor at Seoul National University, adding, “The high dependence upon technology could result in even worse situations at any time.”