Technology is great. Until it betrays you like a character from a sinister Shakespeare play.

A few days ago, walls were punched in frustration and hair was being pulled out all across the Middle East. The Internet had simply failed. Sites were either not loading at all, or else loading at the approximate speed of the dreadful dial-up era. Entire businesses were said to have stopped functioning.

I don’t know about you, but I felt as though I had been transported back into a primitive Dark Age. I opened the curtains half-expecting to see a street full of carts pulled along by donkeys.

Things are better now; for me and my ISP, at the very least. I am no longer pulling out my hair. But my fingers are still twitching from the initial shock. Any momentary lapse in my browser’s functions has me wanting to crawl under my desk, whimpering in horror at the thought that “ohnoohnoohno, it is about to start again.”

So, what happened? Apparently an underwater cable was cut somewhere in the Mediterranean, affecting a number of Arab countries, not to mention India. The initial news inspired me to picture a battle between rival armies of giant squid, with a hapless cable as innocent bystander.

Letting one’s imagination run wild is certainly one way to spend the time, particularly if one has been cut off from both Facebook and Google.

I have heard many a speech on how Internet infrastructure is The Best Infrastructure Ever. After this week’s events, I am no longer so sure.

Yet, what truly frightened me about the Great Internet Outage of 2008 was how empty and bereft my life appeared to me the minute the dreadful error messages began showing up. I felt cut off from the universe. Alone like Will Smith in “I Am Legend.” It didn’t matter that all around me were thousands of living, breathing human beings. Technology had taken me to that place where human interaction had been compressed to fit a browser screen. It lured me there, and then it abandoned me.

Looking back on it, I certainly could have spent the Outage in a better and more productive manner. Instead of banging my head on my desk, I could have taken a walk. Or a nap. I could have read a poem. Or even written one.

I could have discovered myself to be good at writing poems. I could have used the moment to launch down a path of becoming the second Shakespeare. After all, we do not know much about Shakespeare. Perhaps he became a great writer by accident: a broken-down carriage, some unexpected downtime, a sudden flash of self-discovery…

Instead, after I was done banging my head, I sat and complained to everyone I knew about what an awful time I was having. It was somewhat of a bonding ritual, even if it was a deeply unsatisfying one.

I couldn’t insert little frowning icons in conversations, and was actually forced to arrange and re-arrange my facial features. Finally, my forehead cramped up.

I then entertained myself by cleaning out my fridge, expecting it to conk out any minute now as well. Or else just conk me over the head with the freezer door.

After all, once technology starts down the path of mischief, you never know where it might all end up.

Tags: communications, disruption, humor, internet, tariq t.