With snow up to our knees and everything coming to a halt the 21st century’s heroic double-act comes to our rescue! The Smart Phone + Social media! Well; they should have done. Were you able to find out if your kids school was closed or not last week? Were you able to fully understand the road conditions round the corner from your house as the snow fell and blocked your drive? Did you know if it was worth digging the car out anyway? Were you kept up-to-date, hour by hour on the train, the flight or ferry you were hoping to take; on your planned Christmas get-a-way? Probably not. Why is this? Haven’t airlines, train companies, councils and more worked out that they can let loads of people know simply, quickly and currently using platforms such as Facebook, texting and Twitter? These (not now so) new forms of media can reach thousands of people in a stroke, you don’t have to have struggled in through the Arctic waste-lands to get to your desk to do it – you can do it from home, or mobile from your car if you’re stuck. 
Cosmic kept a presence today using Twitter and Facebook, and using remote technology to switch phones from offices to home lines, we weren’t in, but we were available. Why aren’t all schools and colleges on Twitter (I know some are) with a dedicated member of staff; posting Tweets or Facebook statuses about the conditions at their particular schools. Councils, the BBC and other major broadcasters could let us have more of the Hyper-local information they have via these platforms giving us just what we need in these conditions.
I believe these conditions back-up the increased use of ‘Cloud Computing’ – don’t they? Remote working, tele-conferencing, home-working. With more work-related resources sat on the internet the need to get to an office reduces, which with snow like this can only be a good idea – can’t it?