Everyone can see how much the world has changed in the last 30 years with the development of technology. There are laptops, mobile phones, electronic book-reading-devices – everything you can possibly imagine. But as well as people gaining easier ways to communicate and research, what we might not realise is that there are disadvantages.

One of those disadvantages became apparent this week as a local school’s network became infected with a serious computer virus. You would be surprised at the size of the effect this had across the whole school. The type of virus meant that even the powerful antivirus software the school had installed was unable to get rid of it before it had the chance to spread to more and more of the other computers. This resulted in disconnection from the network and extensive scanning. And that resulted in not being able to use the computers for several days – no flipcharts for lessons, no working on saved documents, no online registration.

It’s shocking how much life at school now depends on computers and how things had to change to incorporate the temporary loss of technology. It isn’t only schools that depend solely on computers either; shops, companies, businesses, the majority of people in Britain all need technology to live their lives. Technology has given us so many of the things we take for granted and which are now indispensable to us.

Another 30 years from now the amount of technology in the world could have increased significantly, to the extent where children are no longer taught to write, simply type instead, and not how to do long-division, there’s calculators after all. But what if a virus was to strike then? How would a school cope with students whose only knowledge was technological?

This might seem extreme but people need to become aware of the degree of their dependency on technology. We need to remember that if we are going to depend on technology exceedingly, we have to take all necessary precautions to avoid problems; otherwise even larger issues could arise in the future.