When you use WhatsApp today, think about all the work that goes into making it. That's understandable, but it's a shame too, because we're taking for granted a modern miracle of engineering. We take it for granted that our digital systems are there when we need them. We grumble and reroute, just as many people rerouted today, heading to iMessage, Signal or another WhatsApp alternative. When the trains are cancelled, we aren’t shocked.
The gigantic size of services like WhatsApp means that one outage matters to so many more people than a lane closure on the M25.īut, as we saw today, there's also a difference in expectations. Of course, there are differences, most obviously in scale. Yes, one is physical, and the other is digital – but they're not so different as you think. As any commuter will tell you, they go down far more often than Reddit or Netflix. Yet despite that, services like WhatsApp run smoothly almost without exception.Ĭompare other networks, like road or rail. If you can't, I'll tell you: it's incredibly hard. Imagine how hard it is keeping a system that's used by more than a quarter of the world's population, available at the touch of a button. Technology correspondent a service like WhatsApp goes down, everyone is shocked.
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