INTERNET – TECHNOLOGY VS. FRIEND

Internet, something great, something now days taken for granted, something which urbanized or “developed” human can’t do without it provided me perplexing scene this week. My Newly established university was struggling with ICT issues at library. Because of hard work and insightful planning, ICT committee of my university was able to plan out solution for providing better WiFi and LAN facility at library. Along with planning and implementation of new ICT policies which is more faster and “secure” there was some kind of dissatisfaction among students, because new policy implemented several restriction over usage of internet (mainly by blocking social networking sites) and students as in other academic institutes showed resistance over such restrictions. Thinking on such resistances, allowed me to think in different direction than my friends who were showing resistance over new ICT policies.

During these two-three days, I was thinking about my dependency on internet (not only social networking sites). Later, I found that it’s not only about my dependency on internet; its whole world’s dependency on internet is problematic. As humans, we are now so depended on internet that networks is now are taken for granted in our daily life. Our economy, politics, religion and of course education, every sphere of life is dominated by single system called internet. Each and every aspect of urban lifestyle is getting dominated by networks which were primarily meant for communication is now becoming cause of social problems.

Now days, it is almost impossible to draw out physical map of internet (maybe that’s why they called it Cloud :)) With this thought I came across interesting argument of Danny Hillis (co-founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, Long Now Foundation, Applied Minds and Metaweb Technologies and author of  The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work) claiming that our dependency on internet needs serious investigation. Today, almost every system is depended on internet and that’s makes us more vulnerable. Variety of risks associated to information exchange are though dealt by newer and innovative systems like VPNs or secured network but it can’t assure full proof security to our information. It becomes great matter of concern when our telephone systems started using IP i.e. internet for voice data transfer, when our financial systems rely upon Internet heavily, when our communication is thought of being real time, when we can give and accept charity for good cause on internet, and the list goes on.  

Today we are left with no option to sidestep internet because we can’t imagine the cost in terms of time, place and hardship if we sideline internet from our daily life. Danny mainly argues about plan B(alternate to internet), it may be silly to think about plan B while Plan A is working i.e. when internet is working so well and it still have potential to innovate as well as expand, why plan B is needed ? Alternate to internet is needed because the more dependency on single system we’ll have the more vulnerability we are expected to face. Issues of cyber security are growing with rapid rate across the world because “everyone on internet is not good” (like our society). They have same access to system which we all have and this makes greater area of worry. If terrorists gets access of two plans and they can bring down towers of most powerful nation, imagine about threat we are exposed to where same group has ability to access whole air traffic control of the world.  

On other side, our emotional and intellectual dependency on internet is also emerging problem I can visualize. For simple things we open up Google, we are getting intellectually lazy and emotionally depended on internet. We are losing out the fun and experience of exploring things “offline”. We can argue that it saves time and energy but actually its pulling us away from very human nature of exploring things, imagine Columbus have used Google maps to discover new world, what might be its conditions ;)

I have noticed some way outs which can prove us victorious over our dependency on internet. It may not sideline the rule of networks but it’ll defiantly allow us to have real human experience.

• Write more, type less- it’ll make you more relaxed, no need to be worry about spell check
• Instead of informal emails and message try to send post cards or letters to your family friend and ask to reply back by same medium. Trust me, it feels great to receive and send informal letters from our loved ones.
• Explore by your self rather than searching it on google, use newspaper to check cinema timing.
• Try to read and collect good books rather than downloading Ebooks and dumping it on hard disk.
• Try to meet people and talk in real whenever it is possible, not on messengers, skype like things.
• Surf TV channels more than YouTube channels, view latest things on TV, nothing is ‘latest’ on YouTube.
• Share, talk, comment more with / to strangers in real life rather than on social networks. Commenting is real life needs guts and sense of humor.
• Be focused while surfing for specific things on internet, remember internet is big fair and everyone has his stall in it, you need to be very precise to what you need and from which stall you need that.
• Finally, don’t allow internet to take over life, allow your life to take over internet and show it that – “dear internet, you are just a technology not my friend”.