Lessons from the Lake: My Involuntary Off-Grid Adventures

The three small cabins on Goose Pond, where my wife’s family has spent the summer for over 50 years, is always a welcome respite from my “civilized life” in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. Located in Northern Maine, accessible only by a small boat, the camp has a few propane-powered amenities, but we had had no electricity and were beyond our cellular carrier’s coverage area until a couple of years ago.

Far from an inconvenience, the camp’s lower-tech lifestyle creates more space in our lives for often neglected essential activities, such as books, boats, gracious conversations, dips in the pond, and random naps. At the same time, being off the internet for long stretches of time revealed several unsettling insights about how dependent on technology I’ve become.

One incident, which occurred only a few years ago, even got me to thinking about how many parts of our society and the economy that it’s built on might be equally vulnerable to an over-dependence on potentially fragile technologies.

Dearth of Data

It started when my trusty 2003 Honda Element began acting up during the 524-mile drive from West Windsor, N.J. to East Holden, Maine. Its automatic transmission began shifting erratically early in the trip, but it didn’t worsen, so we decided to cautiously push onward and try to find a mechanic when we got to camp.

After we unpacked, I was pleased to find that my smartphone actually had a signal. However, shortly after I began my search, it became apparent that, while my carrier had a roaming agreement with the local carrier to provide voice, text, and data, the data limits were so severe that I quickly burned through my allocated megabytes and lost any access to the internet.

Undaunted, I boated back across the lake, threaded my way up the deeply rutted logging road that leads to the highway, and took the 10-mile drive to Bangor in search of either an internet connection or an old-fashioned phone book.

After discovering that the local Dunkin Donuts had terrible Wi-Fi, I found a solid connection at a nearby Tim Horton’s that, incidentally, turned out to serve much better coffee than its tech-challenged neighbor. With the smartphone temporarily back in action, I quickly located a mechanic who had both a Honda certification and a set of glowing customer reviews, and set up an appointment to drop off the Element the next day.

Bumping back down the access road towards the dock, I briefly thought I’d gotten off easy. However, I soon discovered that being a temporary internet have-not would impact me in several other unpleasant ways.

Digital Woes Continue

The next morning, as I prepared to take the Element to the repair shop, I realized that I had no idea of how to get there and the navigation app on my phone could not help me without a connection to Google Maps. Sheepishly, I called the shop for directions and fished out a musty paper map that had not seen the light of day in several years.

After a few navigational misadventures, I dropped off the truck and rode back to the dock with one of my in-laws. Later that day, I got a text from my daughter at college who needed help with a few details concerning her enrollment for the fall semester. Since that would require internet access, I couldn’t do anything until the morning, when I’d be in town to get my truck.

Due to complications, it took two trips between the lake and Tim Horton’s before I finally got our daughter’s issues untangled. So by the time I got back to the lake the second time, it was pitch dark and I had to thread the boat across a mile and a half of rocky waters using only my tiny headlamp—and a keen sense of smell.

Being digitally disabled caused several other inconveniences during the week. They included being unable to use my phone to navigate or avoid the traffic jams on our drive home until we picked up internet service again just outside of Boston.

Nothing I experienced was life- or career-threatening, but it made me keenly aware of how dependent I’ve become on anytime/anywhere Internet access for so many trivial and critical aspects of my life. Even losing connectivity for a few days had been a painful experience and I shuddered to consider what life would be like if an actual calamity took me offline for much longer.

Future Cyber Considerations

On the long drive home, I began to think about how much of our nation’s economy and basic infrastructure relies on the internet and other fragile digital resources. Since hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires are inevitable, and cyber-sabotage has become the point of the spear for many aggressor nations, we need to start asking uncomfortable questions such as:

• Can we afford to produce consumer and industrial products that so many of us rely on, which become shiny bricks as soon as their connectivity or GPS signal is lost?
• Is there a way to push enough intelligence to the edge of a transportation or logistics network that it can run in a gracefully degraded mode if a natural disaster, or some more sinister event, takes out its communications?
• We are already developing guidelines, standards, and design practices to “harden” some types of networked products against cyberattacks, but do they include guidance on retaining as much functionality as possible when they go off-network?
• Since redundancy is key to resiliency, isn't it time to start reconsidering FCC protection of the "backbone companies"? Since many of these Tier 1 carriers that provide connectivity to local and regional internet providers enjoy near-monopolies in many parts of the country, the regions they serve are especially vulnerable to natural or human-created catastrophes. Should we fix this by subjecting backbone carriers to the same regulations as utilities, or finding ways to ensure more competition?

I’m sure you’ve got even more interesting questions than I do. Please share them with your fellow readers in the comments section, or send them to me at: lgoldberg(at)green-electronics(dot).com