I mean really. I often forget about it because I like many other people out there just take it for granted and we use it everyday.
It’s really insane being able to call someone from any given location (well if you signal lol) to anywhere on this globe. You can write an e-mail and the person will read it with little no delay.
Heck, we can be living in a polar climate zone and be in tropical climate zones within a day if you have the spare money to fly.
110 years (1914) people installed the first air conditions in their homes. I don’t know how life was without but I can imagine.
We can buy food in a store and keep the food cool and frozen for however long we want in our own homes.
I think it is astounding too. On the other hand, imagine how much history will be lost if we had another Carrington Event. There are ways to preserve huge amounts digital media that would survive such a thing, but I don’t think there’s been any serious attempts to preserve important stuff that’s only on the internet.
So it does astound me, but it also worries me.
Solar flares don’t erase HDDs. EMP could ruin the control circuitry but not the HDD disk itself. If someone could rebuild the controller all the data on the disk would be recoverable. Solar flares are not like nuclear bomb EMP and most electronics would be fine in a Carrington event. The electric grid, with its long wires, would have a hell of a time.