Cash may no longer be king, but the Optus debacle shows it is still necessary
- Written by Chris Vasantkumar, Lecturer in Anthropology, Macquarie University

A simple software upgrade went wrong. Across the country economic life ground to a halt. Groceries were abandoned at supermarket checkouts. Commerce was paralysed as the nation waited for its payment system to be brought back on line.
The Optus outage lingers fresh in our minds yet the scene described here is not Melbourne or Sydney in...