gajabhuja funda

intresting read

This is an article by Author Sujatha in Indian Express.Definitely worth a read !

The net and I- Sujatha

The Internet is described as an ‘accidental superhighway’. It started as an American Defense Department project as an academic exercise to protect sensitive data from the Russians during the Cold War. Look what it has eventually turned out to be? Every day I get junk mail promising minimum six inches of penile enlargement!

The internet is a perfect example of chaos theory in action. Patterned disorder, a shape underlying apparent randomness. Three major innovations have contributed to this orderly disorder. Increased bandwidth, the world wide web (sometimes called world wide wait) and hypertext mark up languages.

Today it is possible to search the web and get useless information from across the globe transcending language, culture, geography and centuries in five seconds.

Like many others, I had my first acquaintance with the net through email. Friends started contacting me in bizarre abbreviations like asap, btw, tcalss (I never got to unravel this) Then came mail from strangers inviting me to join various fraternities and kinky societies. Then came the Viagra sellers and finally hate mail.

I quickly changed my mail ID and password and I am lying low and open my mail with a very nervous finger with a prayer Lord give me this day my daily anti-virus.

The net is a great source of information, a veritable boon to writers like me. But there is a catch. When writing Maniratnam’s movie Uyire (Dil Se in Hindi) the director wanted to know the expansion of RDX. I sent a query in Yahoo! and got the first ten of about 10000 entries. I got the answer yes. Research Department Explosive. But I also got to know how to prepare RDX at home. The website talked about gelatinous sticks, nitric acid, glass stirrers and thermometers (‘It may explode keep off’). And to top it all, a question. Do you want to order some? Click here and give your credit card number. I quickly switched off and waited for the RAW men to get me. You get the point? The internet is like the river Ganges, beautiful marigold flowers float along with dead bodies.

Soon, I learned how to use it effectively using combinatorial search except occasional lapses like once when I wanted to know about the little bird ‘tit’. I was flooded with photographs of mammaries. The little bird tucked perilously in between them. Try it!

Here are my tips.

Abandon the search precisely after two hyperlinks. If you are not careful you will start with Ramanuja and end up in the rain forests of Amazon.

Consider the net as a huge resource. A virtual worldwide library. To make effective use, you should know the shelves and the cataloguing methods.

Avoid blogs, they are endless ego trips. Be very choosy in adding to your favourites list. It becomes too big.

McLuhan said, “Each new technology obsoletes an earlier technology and brings back a much earlier technology.” The internet has obsoleted letter writing, but with so much of bandwidth available and computing power, it is bringing back our ancient matrimonial practices like, the prospectives, meeting and talking to each other virtually and perhaps even marrying in cyberspace.

Nuptials are a little difficult.

K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 4:17 PM