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!
« return.