You don’t typically think about the processes involved with the storage of electricity and the coils of copper turning inside the stator – or for those with an old-fashioned ICE you don’t think about the injection of petrol and a spark plug lighting up the air/fuel mixture.

I am not sure that IT has made it to this level yet. Many people are vaguely aware of some of the processes occurring with their technology.

They understand that they take a photo and it is stored somewhere or they send an e-mail and it is transmitted via some radio waves somehow.

Whilst it will be fantastic when IT involves just turning the key and we start driving, I think people pride themselves on having a little understanding of the technology in their phone or computer.

I want to further explore storage and backup.

So many people are taking photos and storing contacts on their phones just trusting that it will always be there but 37 per cent of people have no backup of their mobile phone information.

When you consider that 70 million smartphones are lost annually that adds up to a lot of very unhappy people when their phone is lost - and the corresponding data with it. 

Setting up automated processes for backup of mobile data is relatively easy and considering that 64 per cent of people would be more upset about data loss than the device itself, this is an area that I can see huge growth in.

There are many companies dedicating themselves to solving this riddle as we speak.

From a practical point of view, I recommend a complicated backup theory that I call KYT.

The Kick Yourself Theory.

Think of a point in time. Right now for instance.

If your phone was to slip from your grasp and fall in a puddle and no data was able to be recovered, how hard would you kick yourself?

If it is mildly annoying and you would be OK with buying a new phone with no data, don’t worry about backing it up.

If you would be distraught/angry/distressed/upset and more – and you would want to give yourself a firm kick up the behind – then you need to backup more often.

Most people I know are in the second category and when you consider that only 8 per cent of people back up their data daily, that sounds like a case for a lot of sore behinds.

Luckily we are in a pretty good position to address this issue.

We have good connectivity speeds with the NBN and our 4G network and there are services that exist for the sole purpose of replicating data from your phone to the Cloud.

The setup of these services is relatively simple and, generally, it is set and forget so you can be confident that your synchronisation is just happening – although I still like to test it on a regular basis.

The online storage of information is an exploding area in the world of technology.

The information above is limited to just phones but when you add servers and PCs into the mix, you start to gain an appreciation of how much data is being produced – and hopefully backed up.

By the year 2020, it is estimated that 1.7 Megabytes will be created every second for each person on the planet.

Some suspect most of this data consists of bad selfies and videos of cats playing with a ball of wool!

It is putting incredible pressure on Cloud storage providers and Internet infrastructure.

The next time you take a photo or store a contact, think about where you rate on the KYT.