Uncertainty without a net

One of the questions that will remain unanswered after the blackout is what would have happened if, after the power grid collapsed, social media had remained active.

The question is technically absurd – there is no energy, there are no networks – but it makes sense: Locked up at home, on the subway or the train, in the office, seized by the uncertainty that nothing is working... imagine that, in these overwhelming circumstances, the torrent of social media had continued to flow, amplifying all our uncertainty that sought immediate answers to which not even today, almost a week later, do we have a complete answer: what was happening?

For a few hours—for many, too many—the entire Peninsula returned to the modulated frequency of analog information.

Surely, in time, social behavior specialists will be able to tell us with some certainty to what extent the extraordinary civic response—there are numerous examples—that the entire country offered in the dark is related to the absence of this exciting collective from the social networks to which we have adapted our brains in recent years.

We don't have the answer to whether that silence on social media was decisive. But we can always reflect on what happened to us and how each of us acted. Our own experience.

Let everyone come to their own conclusions from this bitter experience.

(Final note: Pay attention to our new premises: according to the survey published yesterday by the CIS, more people were concerned about their cell phone or internet not working than about the lack of a kitchen or hot water at home.)