This Is Not News

I’ve been shopping for a new computer for a while, so I’ve been reading a lot of tech sites. Even still, it took a while for information about Thailand to penetrate my consciousness. The country is experiencing an extremely significant amount of flooding, which has shut down many of its factories. The humanitarian disaster is bad enough, but there’s a significant technological ripple effect. Many of the world’s computer hard drive manufacturers have factories in Thailand, and those factories are out of commission right now. I’ve already seen the price of hard drives for PCs go up in the last few weeks, and supplies have not yet run out. This doesn’t just affect home computers – it affects all the companies that depend on storing large amounts of data. With so many companies relying on the cloud, this story is not likely to be over any time soon. It’s another reminder that our technological world still depends on the stability of the natural world, and nature doesn’t always cooperate with our plans.