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It’s a calm Saturday morning and I am walking along a Kampala road. I think I should send an email or two besides it’s been a busy week and didn’t have so much time to drop line to my friends. Click Internet Cafe is most within my reach compared to the several internet cafes within the city centre. Besides, it’s got the best rates for internet surfing in town. I get into Click and get credit worth three thousand Uganda Shillings an equivalent of US$1.60.This amount is enough to keep me online for three hours.
I do the needful during the three solid hours and feel tired. I notice everyone’s been quiet and been paying unconditional attention to their desktops just like I’ve been for the last three hours I’ve been in the café. It hits me that this has been the nature in any environment that’s got the internet, not only in the cafés but offices, school computer labs, control/server rooms; name it that accommodates desktops connected to the World Wide Web.
The internet is depriving its users from the original socializing aspect that has always been part of human nature. People get into the internet and become so engrossed that surrounding human beings are of less priority. Exchange of addresses/names of card holders is hardly heard of and yet this would be a potential arena for meeting people and developing certain ideas, perhaps ideas with origins from the internet itself. One gets out of the computer café with a cloud-like mind of several aspects from the net. An email from a friend, research downloads as well as several correspondences to make, generally create a cyber-like controlled mind.
We are out for lunch at the cafeteria and everybody seems to be hurrying with lunch, a situation comparable to a rat chase. 'Remember we have to be at work by 1400hrs, Caesar’, is what Tom (not real name), whose on my immediate right tells me. He adds, ‘I have to check whether I have got an email, check the Premier league update, latest movie releases, the list goes on and on. What Tom tells me is no different from the others’ opinion of hurriedly having lunch. They, too, have all sorts of online activities to do.
It’s 1700hrs and the typical working day is over. From my office at the 5th floor, I decide to take a lift and bump into a good number workmates from my department. The moods in the lift are rather sombre and except for a few comments about who found what online or who has a document to follow-up ‘because of the email from Mr. X’. And that’s it- a typical working day.
No chance, for J to share her domestic problem with K, no chance for M to help his son at home with school homework given that he can continue transacting business online at home. It is not uncommon for several Dot Com companies keep bragging about the Internet being the future or rather ‘The Internet is the Future’, ‘The Future is on the Internet’. What about Generation X? There is no doubt about the cyber-hive that is slowly but surely taking over humanity’s social-life. What will happen when the future is on the internet indeed? We‘ve got to find a solution, what about having a policy of setting up recreation centres within the internet café vicinities? Like any other recreation ground, people would have the opportunity of mixing and interacting after a session of being engrossed in the cyber-hive!
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Writer Profile
caesar
Hailing from the Pearl of Africa, Caesar has been involved with issues pertinent to youth and general community since high school when he was Director of International relations of the Interact Club, a section for young people in Rotary International, an organization that's involved with community welfare, charity and specifically deals with ideologies that are under the theme:
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Comments
You should have gone to a journalism School!!! Trevor Kaita | Jul 7th, 2004
A great Master piece judging on creativity and construction of sentences .However in the developing countries acess to the internet is still very low largely in urban centers, towns and cities where the minority live. The biggest percetage of pple in poor countries live in Rural areas like for Uganda 85%. Most of these people dont even knw hw a computer looks like!! Dont u think u have over exaggerated yr facts Bro!! why not put in place community internet facilities in vilages to close the information gap between the urban based people and the rural dwellers? Information is power!!!!
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