The cycle is the same: anything new—an idea, moving picture or appliance—after a while draw arguments for and against. The latest victim is the Internet and social media tools like Facebook, Twitter or Whatsapp. I remember in the early 60s the favourite topic for essay writing for schoolchildren was “the___is a good master but a bad servant”. The blank mainly represented fire and electricity. Today’s generation could fill the blank with Internet or anything connected with it.
Facebook and Whatsapp have become the engines to forward tonnes of photos, especially as no one would want to sit and see them in albums, home videos etc. Till a few decades ago, guests would be bored with seeing photographs which they would have to watch out of compulsion probably before a hearty meal. The best reaction of seeing such family photographs was proposed by my granddaughters when they were little ones, whilst we were all watching some family function: “Mummy, we are going out to play as none of them feature us in them!” That situation is now avoided by putting them or rather bombarding the user of these sites again and again with many such family photographs and the only way is to keep deleting them.
The Internet is used by mainly to communicate not any scientific or technological idea but the gossip of the town, today’s meals and of course any small talk the users deem it necessary. Yes, it is usually the bored housewives who think they achieve something great so much so the communication may be across rooms in the same house about happenings around them!
My daughter, a gynaecologist, says everyone wants to know if she is on Facebook or Whatsapp and when she replies in the negative, they are shocked. She wonders why so much stress is laid on this though it may be a necessity abroad where the family unit hardly exists. Relationships between husband-wife, grandparents, parents and children are tenuous, social and religious functions are hardly the ground for communication, whereas in India, there is so much of social and religious amalgamation that face-to-face meetings are normal. We also boast continuous building blocks of social relations which are the foundation of a healthy family, a healthy society and of course a healthy nation!
But Indians seem to have decided to destroy the fabric of our families with too much reliance on these gizmos that are “bad masters though good servants”.
One can only recall George Orwell’s prediction of a future of four-wheelers, the overuse of which would lead us to become moving balls! Maybe like every modern appliance, the overuse of the Internet and its subsidiaries could make people mindless and speechless, only to communicate through the ever-improving gizmos which may be invented time and again—a thought that may be far-fetched possibly but something to watch out for in the not-so-far future.