# Power out, but the Net still works

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2003-08-15T05:35:26Z


I'm sure everyone's already seen this, but I just woke up (6am here) to call a journalist in New York for an interview. He told me that there had been a blackout and he was walking from Manhattan to Brooklyn in flip-flops. He asked me to look on the web and tell him if there was any more news about whether it was a terrorist attack. I told him that it appears, according to CNN.com, that the affected area is wider than just New York, but that it was not a terrorist attack. We agreed to try to talk tomorrow.

I was in Tokyo in my underwear on a Vonage IP phone, reading news from the web to a journalist in New York on a cell phone. Rah rah Internet!

UPDATE: Joshua on #joiito is logged in from his office in Times Square. His building has backup power. Amazingly, the Internet seems mostly unaffected. It looks like data centers are starting to go down...

UPDATE 2: Just talked to the reporter, Jeff, who said that he had this conversation numerous times yesterday: "It wasn't a terrorist attack." "Why do you know?" "I was talking to someone in Tokyo." ;-)





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