 |
|
E-lationships
All this connectivity is giving rise to a new social force that did not — rather, could not — exist earlier. Social scientists have predicted that the Web could be as, even more, powerful as the earlier developments like the printing press or the television, what with the nature of the Internet that respects no authority or control. If a mere book written by Karl Marx could send the world in a tizzy for over a century, the Internet could`85well. Coming back to India and the present, while we may have a less revolutionary situation, there is nonetheless an upheaval in social relations caused by the new technology. Both, quality and the spread of human relations, is changing. There are kinds of relationships evolving that may need new names.
The most obvious development felt by all of us is that our contacts with people we know or care for have got a new depth. From letters we have gone to instant delivery of mail, from still pictures to videos and sound, the written ‘chat’ is leading to a whole new form of expression. Simply put, people are in touch to a greater extent and more conveniently so. Some have predicted that marriages would be more stable in the wired world. While this may have more relevance in the West, information technology is definitely making things easier for couples separated by necessities of life, whether in India or anywhere else. One particular group of persons in this category are the wives of Armymen. For Kiran Khera, whose husband is posted as a UN Observer in Congo with poor access to very costly phone services, the Net has been a lifesaver. People have found old friends (and flames) they never expected to meet again. Going through one to another, whole groups of one-time friends have come together once more in virtual communities, even when separated by the high seas. Another kind of relationship benefiting is that of friends and relatives who knew each other but were physically apart. Earlier, distance over a period of time tended to remove people from each other’s hearts. Relationships that had gone cold are being rekindled again. New pictures sent can effectively convey the weight problem your uncle may be facing from the American burgers he’s been hogging. Then there is the entirely new concept of Web communities of people with like interests coming up. Earlier it was not possible for a small-town boy with a flair for cartooning to interact with others in the field. Now he can. On similar lines, there are support groups that can be a matter of life and death for people. Patients suffering from common diseases have come together to discuss issues that are beyond just medicine. Those suffering from mental trauma have found solace in support groups, which have pulled them through difficult times. What makes certain Net friendships deeper and more meaningful than the conventional ones is that there are no pretences to be kept. You take a human just for a human and not the social context he exists in. What’s more, even the good old art of letter writing has come back, albeit in a new grammarless form. While people could not get themselves to find a paper, scribble a few words, stamps and post, through e-mail, the response time has come down from a couple of minutes to a few days. (The real-life experiences of people given in the accompanying box were got within two days from countries as far apart as Australia and the US) All this flies in the face of fears that the new generation is retreating into cocoons of technology, spending hours on end on the Web. There has been an
interesting experiment on this issue in Canada. "Netville" (a
pseudonym), a housing group, was set up in suburban Toronto from a
scratch with high-speed connectivity within the community as well as to
the Web. The behaviour of the residents was studied for two years. Some
of the findings were: Wired
residents recognised 25 neighbours and talked with six, the figures for
non-wired ones were eight and three, respectively. I have read somewhere:
"Count your age by friends, not years; count your life by smiles,
not tears." Well, being online, people are not losing old friends
while they are gaining new ones all the time. The world just might be a
happier place for that. |
|||||||
|
|||||||
OUT
of sight need not necessarily mean out of mind. The Internet today has
moved beyond being a novelty or a fancy concept for the youngsters. It
is connecting real people — like grandparents or couples living away
from each other — to real people, even in an apparently less-connected
country like India.