Interesting times

We live in interesting times…..

I have a lot of talented friends writing really insightful blogs using a variety of narrative devices. Know a 8 year old who writes the most amazing stuff in his blog….cracks me up everytime I go through it.

All of us are on the social networking sites, posting a lot of stuff, shouting loudly about a lot of things, signing up for causes we dont even know about. Exploring and putting up a lot of personal stuff because the option is there. Compulsively exploring as many of the nifty commands as possible.

I still keep reminding myself that am part of a generation that started learning to use computers. Not the pioneers or the engineers etc who started in the 70s or the 80s. Nor the generation which came next where playing with a computer or a mobile phone was the equivalent of me playing with a squeaky toy. But full blown usage at home when i was around 15. Learning the tedious MS DOS commands and marveling at people who could pull up the same stuff you did in 7 lesser characters. Was lucky that I had a computer at home, wasn’t really a common thing back then.

From there to full blown Graphic users interfaces in the mid 90s to the then wondrous Windows 95 (no had never even seen a MAC until then). Then to post graduation where we got to work in a “computer lab”. Where a bunch of 110 people fought for 15 computers. Bizarre I know. Many of the people with me hadn’t worked on a computer before then and had to go through an introduction course.

Then onto work where again luckily I worked in a place where everyone had a desktop, this wasn’t really common practice 8 years back. In my internship a year before that I saw the bizarre dance of having to type out an email and give it to a receptionist who had access to the prized password and she would send it out. We of course received print outs of the emails we received.

And so on and on and on….until now where I stare into the screen of my laptop almost 14 hours a day. Just makes me wonder whether I am part of the (un) lucky generation that grew up with the gradual increase in the usage of this machine.

I am one of the billions of normal people who use the computer as part of a routine, nothing in terms of cutting edge usage or anything of that sort. In my younger days I would know enough to keep it running, or start it up if something went wrong. But these days if something goes wrong with this machine, then apart from doing what every self respecting sys admin would do, i.e restart it, cant do much more.

And how does this tie in with my opening sentence?

Well was just wondering that where would this go on until.

So now we use the net to publish our thoughts and like I said there are a lot of talented people I know who are doing this beautifully. For the real savvy ones amongst us, to work within a boundary in their social networking sites or blogs etc is second nature. Like I said earlier it just leaves me bewildered. One of the fall outs is that potential employees, girl friends, boy friends, business associates, random people have unfettered access to murky pasts. Think this is already part of a wider debate or will be soon.

All the above has been explore by much smarter people and there are lot of literature available on the same.

The more interesting part is this…..where would this all end up with as far as the next generation is concerned? I think it could have potentially hilarious fall outs.

“DAD you did what during the summer of ’04. And you are telling me not to do this? Where is the justice? What am doing is not even 6.8% as potentially lethal. I have gone thro all the images, all 4539 blurred ones. What do you mean, that was a different time?”

“What the hell have you been writing about me since I was a child, and those images? And how come you never took my permission to put my images?”

“You know am never going to go thro all that you have been writing to me over the last 20 years…video blogging would have been so much easier!!!!”

“What bands have you been writing about anyways? And why are you forcing me to read about them? Give it up the Beatles are like so 100 years back.”

I never wanted to know what my dad did in his college years or what my mom and dad did on vacation! Perhaps thats a personal choice and avenues for learning about the same was offered by the parents and it was your choice to take it or run. But what if it was all around? In a hyper networked world where all and sundry details of what happened 40 years back was there at the click of a button. Oh i know about the checks and blocking and all that stuff, but what if it was just a dunderhead like me doing the rudimentary things and not knowing or not caring enought to put more checks?


And so on…..contemplating how this generations blundering about on the net will be looked at by the next one to come. People in our personal realm of contact.

Should be interesting.