Think for a minute about what would happen if you woke up tomorrow morning and discovered your mobile phone, internet and television were not working – nothing to do with your own appliances – but because the networks and systems running these technologies were down for 24 hours. What would you do? Would your day be negatively affected in any way by this lack of digital access?

These are questions that I would often ask during my “Digital Economy” seminars

To put it mildly for most people, it would be “inconvenient”. Pragmatists may call it “frustrating”. For the technologically savvy, it could spell disaster.

Add to the above scenario the fact that auto-teller machines (ATMs) and payment systems also do not work and you almost have a pandemic. This is but a small picture of the growing level of dependence on digital technology and its impact on both the business world and the world’s citizenry. I call it the digital impact.

In this first of a series, I will be looking at the impact of the digital world on aviation.