I work in technology and along with my writing it provides me with a very good living but every so often something happens that makes me realize, firstly how horribly dependent we are on the stuff and secondly how its failure can pitch us into chaos, literally at the click of a mouse. I refer of course to the RBS debacle that I was unfortunately caught up in, along with millions of others last week.

It was quite a surreal experience to say the least, which began with a call from my wife to...