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The joy of being on holiday is the ability to ‘book-end’ your life and, of course, to reflect.

We allow ourselves to relax and take a break from the relentless pressure that we subject ourselves to in the ‘modern world’. All too soon, though, it is back to the daily routine; something our ancestors would have experienced when they went back to work at the factories which, after the industrial revolution, had utterly changed many town and cities.

Early industrialisation based on the techniques which are usually referred to as ‘scientific management’ have evolved into the modern systems that have come to almost literally, dominate our every waking moment thorough the ability to exchange information and communicate with one another via mobile telephones, computers and tablets.

Increasingly it seems we cannot escape these systems though, as we are all aware, there is the off button! Equally, though, if we lose the ability to access the internet or our mobile network to make calls we feel isolated and the sense of being cut off.

Whether in business or simply to keep connected with friends, being connected is essential. But for most of us ‘the network’ is something of a mystery.

However, the ‘system’ we unconsciously rely on is based on vast amounts of data and increasingly complex algorithms.

The consequence is that these systems are showing the strain of being so overloaded as to be prone to the breakdowns that have been experienced by the likes of Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Even more recently the American Stock Exchange in New York – the Nasdaq – was crippled by a three-hour network shutdown caused by what was referred to as a “communication failure” resulting in a third fewer shares being traded that day (an estimated loss trillions of dollars though many would argue that it is all somewhat notional).