With a couple of flickers of the bed lamp, followed by piercing screeches from dying carbon monoxide alarms, the world went dark.</p><p>There&rsquo;d been no real storm. At most, a gentle shower.</p><p>Earlier in the evening, on the way to a party, we&rsquo;d passed a congregation of emergency vehicles where a driver had left the boulevard and struck an electric light post.</p><p>The wreckage of the car and fallen pole were just then being cleared.</p><p>But that had been hours before, and six or seven blocks away. It hardly seemed to account for a power outage along our street.</p><p>The racket from the alarms had greatly unnerved our several resident creatures. For our part, though, after locating a flashlight and surveying for possible fire or other peril, we went back to bed and slept until, a short while later, the lights came on again.</p><p>As crises go, it didn&rsquo;t amount to much. We&rsquo;ve had power failures before &mdash; one of them that lasted nine days in the bitterest spell of our first winter in the house. But we were reminded afresh of the fragility of the systems upon which we&rsquo;re obliged to depend.</p><p>For an annoying spell some weeks ago, when picking up the telephone to make a call, there&rsquo;d be no dial tone. Or in the middle of a conversation, there&rsquo;d be a series of clicks, a squeal, and the line would go dead.</p><p>It&rsquo;s digital service, offered by our cable provider. Most likely, they said, the problem was with the modem &mdash; whatever a modem is. After visits by two technicians the gadget was replaced. Now, at least, the interruptions are less frequent.</p><p>Just after that the fax and copier in my home office went south.</p><p>I got a new one, a fine machine. Unfortunately, the instructions that came with it were sketchy, at least half written in Spanish.</p><p>In order for me to install and operate it at all, it had to be made compatible with my computer. A CD was provided for that purpose. Regrettably, something had gone wrong with the disk drive of my computer, so professional help was required to get both machines up and running.</p><p>Meantime, my wife&rsquo;s computer had died entirely. It spent a week in the shop.</p><p>We woke the day of a recent cold snap to find that, while the thermostat was set at 70, the downstairs temperature was 63. No heat issued from the registers.</p><p>That was on a Friday. The forecast for the next morning was in the 40s. It turned out the nearest replacement for the defective furnace part could be gotten here by Monday.</p><p>By then, or Tuesday at the latest, I&rsquo;d have back my faithful dog-hauling machine, the 15-year old Ford Explorer that went dead on the driveway and had to be hauled off to a friend&rsquo;s repair shop.</p><p>Have I made clear my sense that life has gotten complicated?</p><p>I&rsquo;m remembering now a simpler time when I owned no car, had no telephone, no computer or printer &mdash; no electronic machine of any kind, not even an alarm clock.</p><p>My total armament was an iron stove, an ax and hand saw for cutting wood, a $35 manual typewriter and, out on my country lane, a mailbox for communicating with the world.</p><p>That&rsquo;s not to say I was happier then. But I did sleep better.