For nearly as long as I have been in business, about 30 years, the daily battle cry has been on how to protect and ensure that one’s business would not stop if some terrible physical disaster or computer problem occurred. Even in these heightened times of Swine Flu and natural disasters, I have forged new alliances with providers of backup services in every conceivable area, and feel quite accomplished and expert, until a few weeks back.

While out sailing I had noticed a change in what is known to the highly nearsighted crowd as “increased floaters” while heading in. That was followed by an area of vision loss and later in the dark an interesting and somewhat terrifying show of lightning as I walked. An immediate visit to my Optometrist and an equally fast visit to an eye surgeon swiftly led me to have retinal detachment surgery to reconnect my overly ambitious retina that decided to take a walk of its own. So as not to miss the point or sound too dramatic, I should be fine going forward so let’s keep the story on the right track.

Expecting a 3 hour surgery to just fix me and send me back out, I was then told some interesting facts or pointers as my surgeon might call them. NO READING, NO COMPUTER, NO ACTIVITY. Other than that enjoy the recovery period and catch up on the rest you always wanted. Sounded ok until I got home and after realizing what had just happened turned on my Blackberry and tried to read the first of a hundred emails. Nope. Not allowed, but could I just squint with my other eye. Nope. Could not focus. Wait hours and try again. Nope. Pain in both eyes now. Crawl to computer when my wife was not looking. Look at keys to log in. Nope, can’t see. Get close in with good eye. Nope, barely able to focus. Fall asleep and hope the dream will end and try again tomorrow. Nope. Wait, one day without Blackberry? No computer? The more I tried to function the more I began to realize that I had formed a connection to the world through my fingers, text and viewing. I did not know how, nor want to talk to anyone. In fact I could hardly build my thoughts without a visual cue, or a list of points.

The realization after the 3 days was that we had transformed our ability to talk to people and express emotion from speaking and hearing to text and visual. Our verbal listening skills and capability had been diminished to such a high degree that I actually felt that I had lost everything, yet had only lost partial sight. My attempt to get around it by downloading audio books and using my Amazon kindle text to voice function made things worse. I realized I never listen to anything or read a book without keeping notes and drawing pictures. I had become a pure visual robot that looked, typed, or drew and wrote everything that I consumed. Was this just me or has our entire society been shifted this way?

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Learn about what you can do to quickly and effectively recover your business' systems in the event of a disruption.

For most small and mid-sized businesses, computing systems and electronic information are necessary to conduct business on a daily basis. You shouldn't have to think about disasters causing you to lose valuable resources and data, but the reality is that the risk of unforeseen circumstances and disruptions to IT systems is always present. If your IT systems go down, it's not only inconvenient, it could cost your business a substantial amount of money. A study by Forrester Research estimated that the average cost of downtime for an e-commerce site is $8,000 per hour.

It is natural to depend on your information systems to be functioning reliably and effectively at all times. Whether your business needs to process certain orders by Christmas Day, or report financial data to the government to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, time is of the essence.

Recommendations
Here are some steps to take to help your business recover effectively in the case of a disruption to your business' information systems.

• Create disaster recovery and business continuity plans: It is important to have disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place now, so that you have a systematic way of dealing with problems in the future. Consider creating written documents with specific instructions that you and your employees can easily access.

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The first successful cast iron plow invented in the United States in 1797 was rejected by New Jersey farmers under the theory that cast iron poisoned the land and stimulated growth of weeds.

In Germany, it was “proven” by experts that if trains went at the frightful speed of 15 miles per hour, blood would spurt from the travelers’ noses, and that the passengers would suffocate going through tunnels.

Commodore Vanderbilt dismissed Westinghouse and his new air brakes for trains with the remark that he had no time to waste on fools.

Those who loaned Robert Fulton money for his steamboat project stipulated that their names be withheld for fear of ridicule were it known that they supported anything so “foolhardy.”

In 1881, when the New York YWCA announced typing lessons for women, vigorous protests were made on the grounds that the female constitution would break down under the strain.

Men insisted that iron ships would not float, that they would damage more easily than wooden ships when grounding, that it would be difficult to preserve the iron bottoms from rust, and that iron would deflect the compass.

Joshua Coppersmith was arrested in Boston for trying to sell stock in the telephone. “All well-informed
 people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over a wire.”

The editor of the Springfield Republican refused an invitation to ride in an early automobile, claiming it was incompatible with the dignity of his position.

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