What can a digital boy like me do when the power goes out?  I tend to live in a murky world of news, information, entertainment and pragmatism.  Our lifestyles are so skewed by unnatural light that glows through the pallid troll open floor space landscapes that dominate corporate SA that when the power goes out,  we become a little weird.

Someone mentioned how well behaved motorists become when all the traffic lights turn black as a power failure descends like some esoteric dark night upon Johannesburg.  I think there’s a few reasons for this.  One is that usually everyone is shouting because someone pushed in, or tried to jump a car-queue,  because we’re all racing to make the green.   But when there is no green (or red or amber for that matter), everyone settles into a curious sense of calmness in the face of severe distress.    The power failure across much of Central/North Johannesburg on Tuesday was one of those moments when Joburgers could be seen actually smiling and waving.

We immediately realize that there’s no reason to rush because everyone is in the same boat.  We’re all equal.  Bullied by Eskom.

But there is a down side to this laissez-faire attitude that we humans display.   For instance,  when the state decides to turn off information,  will we also sit in our little dark silent information hovels and grin and bare it?

Will we also just sit on our hands and do nothing until the jam of information backs up so much behind the face of power that suddenly we break down whatever wall of silence our nasty little government builds around its nefarious activities and flood the region with serious data?  Will the failure of power by the state in the medium term be an inevitable result of this short term decision to pass a new vague law which defends “National Scoority”  from the Digital Gevaar,  the ether terrorists and the lang haarige betoges conspiring with  a deadly attitude characterised by bandoliers of real news?