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The Modern man’s E-ddiction “DAMN!”
I push myself away from my desk and take a few uneasy steps around my house.
I look at my mother cooking up a delicious lunch. I continue to move around. I see a skimpily clad girl telling me on TV that I could have her if I used the deodorant she was selling. But I continue to walk around wearing a frown. One hundred agonizing seconds have passed.
I pull the chair and swerve towards my desk; stare at the keyboard, hit the “W” key thrice, then a full stop followed by “Google.com”.
Enter.
“Server not found. Please try again."
“SCREW MY LIFE!” I curse and leave with a fist mark on the table.
Another young adult has fallen prey to this epidemic called the internet.
I have been reading a lot, obviously on the net, that man has a few basic needs that need to be satisfied, else he would be deemed unfit to lead a productive life. This primeval list of basic needs started with food, clothing and shelter. But with evolution, the curtain between wants and needs has started thinning and the number of these needs have evolved to such an extent that even a roll of toilet paper wouldn’t be enough to fit them all in.
The poor “food, clothes and shelter” have got lost in that crowded family of “basic” human needs.
Though every list is subjective, I can bet that over a billion people including me would begin our list of needs with that magical word – “Internet.”.
Yes. It is oxygen to us. And without it we are soulless wanderers in the endless space.
“A pitiable situation…” Is the reaction of my forty five year old mother to my declaration. She, obviously unfazed by the E-aura fails to fathom the bridge that lies between our life and the internet.
But step into the shoes of anybody bitten by this internet bug, the pitiable situation is rearticulated as “An understandable situation.”
“So what is in this bite that excites everyone?” asks my mother in a vexed tone. I show her my favorite roll of toilet paper again and tell her it’s not enough to fit in all the advantages of this phenomenon. She continues to challenge me. Like a good human being, I begin with the basics.
“Firstly, it’s a knowledge bank with no horizon. Information about literally anything is available. Talk about communication now. Thanks to Email and chat – One click and your message is sent. Even if the recipient is on the other side of the world, he’s just seconds away. A webcam lets you see and talk to a person sitting millions of miles away as though he’s sitting right in front of you and through that 19 inch monitor, you see the entire world. You can literally rotate the globe with the help of Google Earth. So whoever wrote “Around the world in 80 days”, please go tell him you don’t need 80 days to go around the world now. 80 seconds is more than enough.” I state in one breath laced with pride, obviously pleased with my smart conclusion.
“So the world is under your finger tips?” she asks, straight faced. I grin and nod. She’s buying my bug.
“So this means your world begins and ends only on a finger tip. Pitiable situation.” She says, with disdain.
Back to square one.
I sit down to introspect for some time. Is our world so petty that it resides on just one small fingertip? – A question that not many internet enthusiasts might like to answer. I had to answer that question but nothing strikes me. Worse, I was deprived of a Google search for that answer thanks to my internet shutdown.
For the first time, I felt handicapped, dependent and yes – addicted. And the withdrawal symptoms were showing. Though it had been just minutes, it was showing its colors.
A wise man has said – “A lot of anything good is bad.” And this holds good for the internet too. Yes, it has made our life comfortable but so comfortable that without it, life becomes synonymous to uncomfortable. You begin to think what your grandparents did to “kill time” without the internet. They had no Farmville to plough virtual land and nor did they ever answer multiple questions to find out their “lover of the day.”
Despite this, today they are content with their life because it has been so simple. The sole reason why many grey haired people don’t easily digest the internet as a tool of life is because they have this premonition that it would trigger the breakdown of the element of simplicity which has been driving their life till now. And rightly so, the internet, however user friendly it is supposed to be, has brought about tides of complexities in our lives which have certainly not been that friendly. Where there is communication, there also exists the ingredient of miscommunication and the internet is only the fuel to this fire.
The internet might have an endless list of pros but the biggest drawback one can think of is that because of it, the human touch in our lives has started diminishing. Even if one has hundreds of friends on Facebook or Orkut, one still yearns for that one or two ‘real’ friends on whose shoulders one can cry on; Handwritten letters seem have gone away with the dinosaurs but the feeling of receiving one still has its own charm that no Email or E-card can generate; No chatbox can replicate the emotion one goes through when someone holds your hand and talks to you. All this proves that we are after all made of flesh and not binary digits. These physical bonds that we desire do not exist in the virtual world. That's the reality.
The see-saw of pros and cons of the internet in our life will continue to teeter back and forth but it’s up to us to decide where we want to draw the line. The internet has surely made this world a smaller place but along with that we fail to realize that our vision of life has started receding too. We need to remind ourselves that it was man who made the internet and we should let it stay that way rather than allowing the internet to make the man. It’s time we logged out of this addiction. Reality is calling.
I sway back and forth on my chair with a look of content. I close my eyes and take a vow that I would not let the internet control my life anymore. The smell of the delicious food lingers around, tickling my taste buds as I eagerly wait for lunch to be served. I feel a sense of solace knowing the fact that I’ve now become a part of my home’s atmosphere.
I move around aimlessly for some time but eventually end up on my computer chair. This time with not much hope, I play with the keyboard. I press enter.
Lo and behold! My eyes beam, my frown disappears and my lips flip inversely, breaking into a smile as my Firefox status bar fills up with one stroke of green, bringing back the lost greenery in my life.
My mother calls me for lunch. With both my hands on the keyboard and eyes fixed on the screen, I shout out my favorite line – “One minute ma… Wait!”
My mother and my taste buds can wait. Old habits die hard, don’t they?
- Rahul Mansur
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Originally Posted by gaggan4392 
