As Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Northeastern United States on Monday evening, I sat comfortably watching nonstop television coverage that has become the norm for U.S. television networks during big events. As the lives of families living on the East Coast were being changed possibly forever, fancy graphics displaying that the hurricane had now become a “post-tropical cyclone” were dancing across the screen. While homes and businesses were destroyed, I was viewing commercials for toothpaste and cars while doing my homework. And it felt somewhat wrong.

Our world has rapidly advanced to the point where our lives have become incredibly comfortable in ways that our ancestors and maybe even just our parents could never have imagined.

Forget the fact that in the United States we generally have a constant supply of clean water, electricity and access to food, now it is normal to have wireless Internet in most public areas, handheld devices that can do more than desktop computers I’m old enough to remember and talk to people anywhere in the world instantly. Our daily lives have moved so far beyond what “comfortable” used to be. Our comfortable is yesterday’s luxury.

Sandy is a harsh reminder that even though we may have unbelievable things available to us, sometimes we are not able to fully protect ourselves.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have put it best when he said, “Nature is an awful lot more powerful than we are.” In hours, the modern way of life we expect was shut down for much of the New York area. The horrible storm took away the lives of at least 88 people, cut power to over 8 million homes that may be without electricity for a week or more, shut down parts of the vital subway system in New York City and closed Wall Street for two days.

Cell phone service, which many people could complain about almost daily, became unreliable as around 20 to 25 percent of towers were taken out of commission by the storm. Watching YouTube on the commute to work, catching up on the morning news on an iPad or downloading new music becomes an immediate afterthought for people in the disaster zone, even if it may have been such a prominent part of life before.

Suddenly in perspective, a faulty wireless connection doesn’t seem so important anymore. As the clean up continues for weeks or months, it’s important to look at how easily the comfort and safety we take for granted every minute could be swept away by a historic act of nature. Every day, most of us are barraged by a constant stream of tweets, news reports, texts and Facebook posts about anything and everything that’s going on.

As we watch the constant news feed on our TV, computer and smartphone screens, it’s important to remember that the things we are viewing aren’t a movie, as much as the astounding pictures of the wreckage may seem to come from one.

Of course it isn’t wrong to use the powerful tools advanced technology has given to us, nor is it wrong to use it for comfort and entertainment. In a disaster like this, it’s also a great achievement that we can use cell phones to possibly reach emergency responders and that information can be spread quickly and easily through social media. These advances help inform family members, emergency officials and the press about situations in real time. Satellites allow experts to communicate with each other to prevent future disasters. Weather models are an important modern triumph of technology in that even though they are not perfect, we can decide days — or even over a week — in advance that something incredibly dangerous will occur. This, in turn, allows us to advise people to evacuate or protect themselves. If we didn’t live in a time so full of incredible works of science, the disaster could have been even more destructive.

But when something like this happens, we should remember that sometimes, there are more important things than Netflix not loading properly or that the CUMTD time estimates were incorrect. These are all good things, and of course, we should encourage innovation.

These accommodations improve our world and our quality of life, whether it be with trivial or extremely important matters, like disaster prediction and prevention. But let’s use the stories and events that have come out of Sandy as a reminder that the comfortable, technologically mind-blowing world that we are a part of is not indestructible. Let’s remember that behind all of the screens and digital graphics are real people, not just a story on CNN.

Tim is a junior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].