As many have experienced this past week, I don’t think that it would be as rosy as Mr. Alain de Botton remarks. Our world is humongously interconnected as you can see in the TED talk below (from TEDx Volcano, an impromptu event created by speakers stranded in London due to the recent contingency).

Severing links, however temporarily, is extremely painful in both personal and economic terms. You can ask the 7 million stranded passengers for their opinions if you think otherwise.  Many of them have been using social media tools to somehow cope with the situation, as Teemu Arina explains.

The past few days have looked quite a bit like a teaser of what a world without oil would be.  Hopefully it serves as a wake-up call to us all.