How long could you survive without your mobile phone? Not just for idle scrolling to fill a boring commute, but for the life you carry precariously around on it without even thinking. For managing your bank account, navigating an unfamiliar neighbourhood, connecting to the outside world; for a torch in the dark, for checking in with friends, and potentially also in the worst-case scenario for frantically trading information about the safest place to run.
If the old rule of thumb is that any society is only four missed meals from anarchy, then what would be the equivalent in hours of telecommunications blackout caused by a cyber-attack on mobile networks, a sudden catastrophic power outage, or even – given Taiwan is the world’s leading supplier of the tiny computer chips on which your smartphone possibly relies – a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? How thin, exactly, is the veneer of a civilised life?
