Published in 1997 - or thereabouts
Manoj Naik, research student at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, is hunched over his terminal at Gateway Sleepy on the Internet. Cyberspace is the part of the world he knows best and today he is giving me a ride across this wondrous frontier.
I am especially curious because Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) has just announced that anybody who has a personal computer, modem, and a telephone can register himself and hook onto the Internet. But what do you do once you get there, and what is the big hurry anyway?
Naik clicks open the windows in his computer and lets me peer at the fascinating parallel world inside. Colored bands float across the screen and he keys in appropriate instructions. "Internet is a virtually inexhaustive source of information" he tells me. "Here you can find something about almost anything on earth."
But that must make Internet a vast jumble of information. How then do you locate whatever you are looking for? " Very few people are ever sure of the locations. So we have Web Browsers - friendly software like Netscape and Mosaic - which are directories to the Internet" explains Naik. "They are navigational charts which take you wherever you want to go."
Right now we are trying to locate information on Dire Straits, the rock band. The mouse in Naik's hand is a magic wand as it traipses across the screen to reveal layers of information. Our catchword is Dire Straits and soon enough a picture of the familiar steel guitar begins to form on the screen.
Even with the high technology it has not been particularly easy. The Indian Internet link functions on a very narrow bandwidth, which limits the amount of information, it can carry. The way I figure it, it is rather like transporting petroleum in tubes instead of pipelines. Information filters through painfully slowly, taking minutes rather than seconds. Pictures come on even more leisurely than the text and Mark Knopfler's guitar forms in little dabs on the screen.
Pretty soon however we have hiccups with the telephone line. Despite its technological pretensions Internet is a no go if old-fashioned telephone lines do not work. Our connections are finally 'alive' after consuming quite a bit of our patience. Naik still does not trust his luck entirely and repeatedly opens the magic window on the screens to confirm that the telephone connections have not been delinked.
When we are finally ready to read, the information available is a fan's dream. Critical articles, interviews, discography, biographical details; news of forthcoming plans, etc, are all there and what is more this information is constantly updated. On Internet nothing is ever behind the times.
All the information is not merely a blink on the screen. Unlike big screen movies these can be preserved forever and for no cost; finally books for free! And what is more even picture can be stored.
So far the information we have been looking for has spiraled one way towards us." The beauty of the Internet line in the enter -activity," says Naik, " If you are looking for a conversation there are a host of discussion groups that you can latch on to and discuss anything under the sun."
This is where the worries come in. Internet is likely to provide access to loads of information, which is likely to be not only useless but also tasteless. A lot of folks are likely to spend most of their time downloading cyber-porn or cyber-babble.
Freedom, however used, is a very serious issue on Internet and computer aficionados who have developed the network without any active assistance from Governments are extremely touchy when anything regulatory infringes upon their domain. B.N. Jain, Professor at the Computer Science Department, IIT, say Internet will always stay ahead of Governments. “To describe cyberspace as uncontrolled or chaotic is to miss the point entirely, " he points out " It is far more fruitful to describe it as distributed control. We are now moving beyond the stage where nodal agencies had enormous clout. The goods are distributed far more equitably in cyberspace. Let's see what we can make out of it".
Some uses, of course, suggest themselves automatically. Entertainment is likely to be redefined and the commercial prospects enjoined by the unprecedented information dissemination are immense. People sitting at home will now have fiber-optic nerves doing everything for them. They need never go out. I could have written this article sitting are home, talking to my sources on the computer and then just unloaded the file in my office computer. Would I be tempted to do just that in the very near future?
Jain is not too sure. "Technology does not necessarily diminish human contact. Internet will make work more efficient but you would still need to meet people. I would not have granted this interview without seeing you. You may make a million faceless friends on the computer but you will still want to hold someone's hands."
Manoj Naik, research student at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, is hunched over his terminal at Gateway Sleepy on the Internet. Cyberspace is the part of the world he knows best and today he is giving me a ride across this wondrous frontier.
I am especially curious because Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) has just announced that anybody who has a personal computer, modem, and a telephone can register himself and hook onto the Internet. But what do you do once you get there, and what is the big hurry anyway?
Naik clicks open the windows in his computer and lets me peer at the fascinating parallel world inside. Colored bands float across the screen and he keys in appropriate instructions. "Internet is a virtually inexhaustive source of information" he tells me. "Here you can find something about almost anything on earth."
But that must make Internet a vast jumble of information. How then do you locate whatever you are looking for? " Very few people are ever sure of the locations. So we have Web Browsers - friendly software like Netscape and Mosaic - which are directories to the Internet" explains Naik. "They are navigational charts which take you wherever you want to go."
Right now we are trying to locate information on Dire Straits, the rock band. The mouse in Naik's hand is a magic wand as it traipses across the screen to reveal layers of information. Our catchword is Dire Straits and soon enough a picture of the familiar steel guitar begins to form on the screen.
Even with the high technology it has not been particularly easy. The Indian Internet link functions on a very narrow bandwidth, which limits the amount of information, it can carry. The way I figure it, it is rather like transporting petroleum in tubes instead of pipelines. Information filters through painfully slowly, taking minutes rather than seconds. Pictures come on even more leisurely than the text and Mark Knopfler's guitar forms in little dabs on the screen.
Pretty soon however we have hiccups with the telephone line. Despite its technological pretensions Internet is a no go if old-fashioned telephone lines do not work. Our connections are finally 'alive' after consuming quite a bit of our patience. Naik still does not trust his luck entirely and repeatedly opens the magic window on the screens to confirm that the telephone connections have not been delinked.
When we are finally ready to read, the information available is a fan's dream. Critical articles, interviews, discography, biographical details; news of forthcoming plans, etc, are all there and what is more this information is constantly updated. On Internet nothing is ever behind the times.
All the information is not merely a blink on the screen. Unlike big screen movies these can be preserved forever and for no cost; finally books for free! And what is more even picture can be stored.
So far the information we have been looking for has spiraled one way towards us." The beauty of the Internet line in the enter -activity," says Naik, " If you are looking for a conversation there are a host of discussion groups that you can latch on to and discuss anything under the sun."
This is where the worries come in. Internet is likely to provide access to loads of information, which is likely to be not only useless but also tasteless. A lot of folks are likely to spend most of their time downloading cyber-porn or cyber-babble.
Freedom, however used, is a very serious issue on Internet and computer aficionados who have developed the network without any active assistance from Governments are extremely touchy when anything regulatory infringes upon their domain. B.N. Jain, Professor at the Computer Science Department, IIT, say Internet will always stay ahead of Governments. “To describe cyberspace as uncontrolled or chaotic is to miss the point entirely, " he points out " It is far more fruitful to describe it as distributed control. We are now moving beyond the stage where nodal agencies had enormous clout. The goods are distributed far more equitably in cyberspace. Let's see what we can make out of it".
Some uses, of course, suggest themselves automatically. Entertainment is likely to be redefined and the commercial prospects enjoined by the unprecedented information dissemination are immense. People sitting at home will now have fiber-optic nerves doing everything for them. They need never go out. I could have written this article sitting are home, talking to my sources on the computer and then just unloaded the file in my office computer. Would I be tempted to do just that in the very near future?
Jain is not too sure. "Technology does not necessarily diminish human contact. Internet will make work more efficient but you would still need to meet people. I would not have granted this interview without seeing you. You may make a million faceless friends on the computer but you will still want to hold someone's hands."
No comments:
Post a Comment