What Do You Do When The Internet Server is Down or You Lose Your Connection to the Web?

During the nearly 20 years that I have used client-server technology to navigate the internet and/or surf the web, I've learned a few lessons that come in handy when technology fails to deliver all it promised. And it will fail. Trust me on this. Technology isn't perfect. It will fail. And sometimes it will fail when you need it most.
Whenever human beings interface with machines, things can--and will--go wrong. Human error is usually to blame. But electronic media also naturally deteriorate or become corrupted over time, and programs simply self-destruct without warning. A path that once delivered valuable information can be closed or moved or blocked. You won't know it's happened until you try it and it doesn't work.
This week a construction company accidentally cut the buried fiber optic clable that supplies Comcast users in Northen Illinois with internet, cable tv, and telephone service. For 14 hours, about half of Comcast's subscribers were in the dark; they had no tv, no telephone, and no internet. They had no way of knowing what had happened because they had no access to information. Only ten percent of those had any backup system in place: cell phone; analog tv with antenna; dial up IP with land line connection; etc.
Really smart people used the public library as their backup system: they brought their laptops to a library branch and used the library's wi-fi connection; they logged on to one of the public access desktop computers and used the library's T1 line; they used Skype or Vonage or IM via their library commection in lieu of a telephone; they simply came to a library and asked a librarian what had happened and learned the details from a friendly source.