Everybody knows what that means, right?

For a moment I marveled over such a simple but effective means of communication. Its chances of failure were slim, nothing a screwdriver or hammer couldn't fix.

If only that were the case for the other ways we now use to communicate.

Newspaper employees recently endured several long, frustrating days when our Internet connection went on the fritz.

Tech crews from inside and outside the building pounced on it. And pounced and pounced. It took four days to achieve a fix that held.

Those excruciating days showed us just how dependent we had become on the virtual world.

In the newsroom, we tried to be patient while meeting frustration at every turn. Emotions heated, simmered and threatened to boil over. I guess it helped that we all were affected and could vent to each other.

However, that didn't change the fact that we were stymied. The service would come and go, but we could connect for only a few minutes a couple of times a day.

We couldn't count on sending or receiving email. We couldn't post, tweet, blog, research or even fact-check. We couldn't consistently download wire stories or pictures.

Another longtime veteran and I were commiserating. He suggested younger staffers needed to learn the old ways of doing things. Unfortunately, that wouldn't have solved much.

Our hard-copy references - atlases, encyclopedias, etc. - are musty and outdated. New ones would have solved only one facet of the problem anyway.

The rest of the world has changed as much as we have.

There's no longer an Associated Press dish on our roof to collect wire content via satellite. Who could have anticipated space-age technology would become obsolete?

There was certainly no way to tell countless providers of ideas, tips and news releases that we weren't getting email; could they please call or stop by?

Some good will come of this. Our company is arranging for more backup - "redundancies" - in case of another catastrophe. And, yes, that's what it was.

Technological advances affect us slowly but surely over time. They're expensive novelties for the early adaptors. But then they're not novelties.

Eventually we all are sucked in, and the world changes. Think printing press, car, airplane, TV.

Don't have a smartphone or a tablet computer yet? You probably will soon. It's hard to resist the pressure to communicate and obtain information the way everybody else is.

At home my phone charger often dangles from a plug above a kitchen counter. When family and friends gathered recently, I glanced that way and saw a strange phone plugged in. A little later, there was a different phone, still not mine.

Young and not so young, we're on the smartphone bandwagon.

Several days ago my husband was thumbing through a real estate guide and noticed the square symbols with squiggly lines on each listing. He wondered what was behind those hidden pictures.

I vaguely knew there was an app for that. So I tapped a few times on my phone and soon had it downloaded. I placed the phone's camera lens over the symbol on the page. Sure enough, the phone revealed a web page with the listing for that house.

Disappointingly, it revealed the same information that was in the printed guide.

I have used the app a few more times this week, with no better results.

While it's a bit of a letdown, experience tells me even that little bit of technology is likely to get better and better. Perhaps someday I'll consider it indispensable. Maybe I'll use it as I shop, aiming it up and down each aisle.

If that's the case, I can probably count on it breaking down.

Let's hope somebody keeps the old-fashioned price tags.

Friend is editor and publisher of the Daily Mail. She may be reached at 348-5124 or nan...@dailymail.com.