Mark Andrews: Amid a global 'outage', should we reconsider our relationship with the internet?

Outage. That's a word you never heard a few years ago. Or 'digital pandemic' as it was described in one of the more sensationalist headlines.

As I listened to the radio on my drive into work, I was bracing myself for the end of civilisation. The broadcasters put on their best serious voice to tell us that a 'Cobra meeting' had been called. Had all the warnings about the Millennium Bug finally come true?