"Verizon reports that they had a hardware failure at their Cortland central switching site. Additionally they experienced a breakdown in their internal communications hierarchy, leading to an unfortunately long downtime."
Ironically, this e-mail was sent while many on campus did not have Internet access. I find the use of the word "unfortunately" especially interesting. Was it really so unfortunate? Although it's only the first week of classes, I'm sure that several Internet users were unable to find research or partake in online classes such as this one. For everyone else, it's more of an inconvenience. We cannot check our e-mail for the fifth time today. We expect that the Internet will always be functioning. If the page is slow to load, then we refresh it and try again.
A couple of years ago, Cortland's system went down for a day or two. I received at least two phone calls from friends concerned as to my whereabouts, or if I was purposely avoiding them. I'm the first to become frustrated when the Internet fails to load, even if the outtage is brief. The vast majority of the time, I don't really "need" to be using the Internet. Word serves most of my academic requirements just fine. But we've come to both take this technology for granted and find it essential.
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