April 24, 2010

Twitter : New Age Communication medium or Merely a Luxury

Often my weekend time pass also include reading celebrity tweets. Today was a similar day too. After logging, I read tweets to feed my gossip hunger. After that I noticed how one celebrity just mentioned that her phone battery is low. Her Battery status was instantly known by all her followers, including me. Call it Power of technology, Public’s obsession with celebs or whatever. But technology has made it possible & feasible to interact & reach the stars. Indian Metro’s middle class is getting more obsessed to celebrity culture. Technology has removed all 4 dimensions from communication. 3 locations dimension & forth time dimension has been totally eliminated. People in Delhi, Dubai, London, and Germany all are as close as person next to me (i.e. just a click away) so space dimension are obsolete. There is no time frame also, it is all in real time (Instantly). As far as I want, I can know easily about star (as much as celebs/others are willing to share).


All this pushed me into a sort of Moral dilemma. I might be getting closer to those geographically away. But I don’t know where most of my school friends are. Why technology is not allowing me to interact with them. I can’t communicate to my childhood school friends because they are not on twitter, they don’t have internet in first place.

I will love the luxury of knowing whereabouts of SRKs. But first I need necessity of communicating with family & not-so-rich friends through economical & feasible technology. Necessity should always be affordable & available to all. Luxury might be expensive. Which is not the case here. I can’t see a point in knowing about SRK when I had not talked to my sister for 5 days.

This brings me to most important question. Is It Twitter’s fault? Definitely not. It is my decision & my fault (if it is at all). Best possible way will be when I can enjoy both with equal ease. When can we see Pro-poor technology for communication? Is internet sole way for better communication? Can we not make something which is for masses? Something which is not only affordable, easily available but also required minimum skills to operate. Internet might be ‘taken for granted’ thing for few metro based peoples, but it is still a rarity at least in India. Forget about internet, more than 1 billion people in world don’t have access to electricity even today. Most of them are in Africa & south Asia obviously. More than One third of India’s population live below poverty line. They are many decades away from internet. We need something which has more reach than web based communication. Telecommunication is field, in which technology has raised the people’s living standard more than any other technology in last two decades. Indian lower middle class is slowly getting access to mobile phones, thanks to competition open market & tight regulation in the sector. I really wish it keep up the pace & let more be benefitted from it & not only the selected few economically strong. Communication is very important tool for empowerment of people. Government can’t construct roads connecting every village in next 10 years; it is financially & logistically very big. But Communication can be improved much easily & faster.

Long live SRKs. Long live twitte. Long Live India. Long live poors. Long live peace.

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