Loss of Innocense to Information

The information age as they say is an age where information pertaining to anything could be at your disposal within a fraction of seconds.I can assume the aforementioned phrase to be true considering the giant leap we made from the homosapiens stage.Just look around you and you find yourself bounded by an infinite array of information almost everywhere your life clock takes you.I strongly believe it is because of our innate ability to learn from our mistakes that we have been able to overcome all the major technological/economic obstacles which had stagnated growth element in the last ten centuries.Though teachers take the liberty to sometimes compare the human mind to a computer but the fact behind that could be simply illustrated by the fact that the human mind unlike a computer does not have a central area where information is processed and stored as in a CPU(Central Processing Unit) but rather the brain on a more cellular level is comprised of almost 100 billion neurons each of which is responsible for generating thoughts which in turn are connected to an infinite chain of thoughts hence unlike a computer the human mind learns from the mistakes it makes everyday and trains itself to perform better to reduce the error ratio the next time.To make this discussion more meaningful,let me no digress from the topic which examines a huge paradigm shift in the human behavior 2 decades back to human behavior in this current century.

When I talk about human behavior I immediately issue a disclaimer that I am no certified psychologist(I'd be damned if Sigmund Freud hears that:)) who can preach theoretically trusted values on human behavior and establish a correlation between them and morality as Plato specifies in his epic work The Republic'-"All Men are corruptible."Whatever I talk about are pure by products of my observations in my not so important life comprised of 28 years.I would specify examples and demonstrate how Information age has wiped us out of our innocence-something we did have two decades back or even earlier.The accounts I mention are not fictitious but authentic but the conclusions they draw cannot not be generally applied to all macro economic scenarios in this world.

To start with two decades back to me happened in a very normal way.I'd go to school,learn new things,play and come back.The solitary intention of going to school was to have fun,rejoice,play around and come back.Studies of course were an inevitable part of our lives and parents and teachers left no leaves unturned to make us aware of the importance of education in our lives. One big disadvantage of living in an underdeveloped economy was you were devoid of choosing any career you wanted unlike the west where in you can step into a small time business at the onset of your young age and can make it big in the subsequent years as governmental policies encourage and promote business.This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons why today we have such big business conglomerates like IBM,Ford,Microsoft,Google, etc.

Western democracy was clever enough to understand the principle of capitalism earlier than any other denizens of this free earth.The way trade and commerce was executed by the East India Corporation all across the globe is a classic example of the aggressive modus operandi adopted and advocated by our western counterparts and which in the long run made us haplessly resort to becoming victims of Capitalism sooner or later.Quite an intellectual phrase I would now say but perhaps our parents were genetically engineered by the socio economic changes subliming around them to groom us in a way that we are educated enough to understand the profound significance of getting a job in the new era.We were never at free will to see things the way we wanted but rather relinquish to an existing educational demon which would eat you up and convert you to yet another rat in this race for gaining micro monopolistic power without realizing the capitalistic burden you would have to shoulder throughout your finite lifetime.I think the discussion would again become irrelevant if we start discussing the ills of capitalism and my invaluable observations would go unnoticed which would make the dish of interest distasteful so I'd rather speak about my observations.

What could make a standard three child happy?This is a question which has answers in different dimensions of space and time.At my age I would say I and my friends back in school in standard eighth would be the happiest kids on the block if we were able to buy ice creams in different varieties viz orange,lemon,milk and many a more.We would be mad with happiness if mom and dad would take us out to an amusement park.We would be happy if mom and dad would buy us comic books.We would be happy if mom and dad would take us out to a hill station where we can spend our summer vacations in some hill station far from the hustle bustle of the city.We would be happy if mom and dad would celebrate our birthday and call lots of people for the celebrations-happiness emanating from the simple economic fact that the celebrations would give way to lots of presents that we can enjoy subsequently.

As I grew up and became a teenager my tastes too changed a bit and I became more interested in sports and different educational activities like debates,extempores etc.The singular aim was to grab attention from everyone,get noticed.I do understand every human being in his lifetime yearns for fifteen minutes of fame and I was no different.Another different thing was to die about reading adventure,action,science fiction and mystery oriented books namely the Hardy Boys,Nancy Drew,Doctor Who,Indiana Jones etc.This was an age where you could not bear the atrocities of being confined to the boundaries of the house.I was like a free spirit who wanted to venture out to all the alchemy elements of the universe .These were ages when conflicts started happening with people with whom I grew up as ideologies were single handedly governed by the hunger for power and fame.I can say the only difference between our teenage and our adult age is that the money factor which is quite vibrant in adulthood is missing in teenage.Another physiological change that happens in our demeanor is the birth of attraction towards opposite gender-all of a sudden we start doing irrational things with the motive of creating an impression on the member of the opposite sex.Going by this protocol I too was vulnerable enough to fall prey to charms of the opposite sex.I started hanging out with guys who had girl friends,I would be curious enough to gather and assimilate as much information as possible about the process of procreation.Remember those days when watching an adult film with friends would give immense pleasure.Remember trying to attract attention from a wannabe princess charming by doing all kinds of obnoxious things.Still remember the first proposal I made to a girl which was immediately turned down.Still remember those x-mas days when I used to hang out with my best friends in a church to light candles and pray for a successful future though eying girls was also a second motive in going to the church-forgive me if I sound logical enough to be called blasphemous .These were days when even the most simplest of the simple events would render bliss.

So converging back to the topic when I compare an individual,mind you that I am referring to a kid or a teenager in todays generation as an individual as they seem to possess and exhibit individualistic characteristics which defines them seperate from the crowd,with me I find an abysmally huge difference in perceptions.Todays' kids are dependent entirely on the electronic media for their growth.When I talk about electronic media I bifurcate electronic media into two broad categories-The Television and the Internet.Considering the Internet penetration in our country I think it would be best to talk about Television first.Television became popular in our country with the roll out of mythical serials like 'Ramayana' and 'Mahabharata' which paved the way for serials like 'Tamas' and 'Buniyaad' to take the the next step in alluring people towards television.Little did people know the devastating implications Television would have had on our current generation.I remember meeting a Young kid in Bombays' Leelavati hospital who had a syndrome which could be best described as an urge to be always in the vicinity of a television and with that condition not getting satisfied things canperhaps go really worse.Todays kids start learning about the world by watching MTV Roadies,their convictions,beliefs right from the beginning get formulated as a direct result of watching Indo-American Channels like MTV,Channel [V].Now there is an interesting term I have coined for kids in todays' generation-I call them people with Identity chaos as hey want to convert to anything and everything that is western but can't of course change their genetic identity as that of an Indian and the resultant would be an individual who is in complete chaos over his identity.Kids today are completely glued to their television sets and seem to have lost all interest when it comes to outdoor activities.I have been different places in India all across my educational and professional career and have observed the kids enamoured with the idea of staying physically fit as a result of which obesity and different ailments are at an all time high in kids.Putting light on a recent report published by Indian Medical Association for the first time in India children namely girls are getting pubert at ages as young as ten years.The physiological cycle has reduced.We may develop an interconnection and say thanks to MTV but scientifically nothing is proven yet.Still we cannot ignore the catastrophical effects of Television.

Now talking about internet I'd like to say that this category of media has been exploited completely by our teen generation and the reason owes its' existence to none other than billionaires like Hugh Huffner.Like Playboy lot of pornographic websites have been hugely successful in making it big on the desktop of the Indian teenager.Call it extreme testosterone urge or an environment of isolation between boys and girls that pornographic websites have been able to tap way too successfully.Now internet supposed to be the information bridge between demographies invariably as diverse as ever is going the dark side of evolution and as a result the definition of internet for a teenager is a medium to access sexually explicit materials.Now Larry Page and Sergei Brin had little idea how destructive orkut could prove to be for the younger generation.I can understand the whole equation of the social networking idea but is it just limited to social networking or does it have a negative side too.Google of course does not vouch for the fact that it can't be put to bad use and any rational thinker would never accuse Google of any foul play as before designing a gun ,corporations never discuss morality over capitalism.

I recall an incident I witnessed in Nagpur last year in the summers when I saw that a group of young Gujrati teenagers would swarm in to a cyber cafe I used to frequent during my stay there and once there would log on to orkut at once and start sending scraps to every single female soul in India.Some got way too lucky to get scrap replies almost immediately.So the entire definition of internet is digital bliss through things as mundane as meaningless chats or as complex as searching pornographic stuff using Page Rank.

Last but not least gadgets that come out in this age have made an everlasting impact on the young generation and people are never seen doing creative things other than playing games on a Nokia N82 or on X-Box 360.Arun Sarin the head of Vodafone was not wrong when he saw the huge telecom market India had and acquired Hutch telecom.Indeed telecom is the only market segment which has shown an outstanding growth in the last 10 years.Peple say Sam Pitroda was the man who started the telecom revolution but I'd rather say Ambanis were the people who actually accelerated the revolution by selling phones as cheap as five hundred bucks to people and thanks to them we are eternally connected forever.In a recent Gartner survey they observed Telecom companies and Service Providers make more money in the 17-30 age group segment who switch gadgets like clothes.A man without a mobile is considered a body without a soul.Teenagers with mobiles indulge in invariably all kinds of experimental stuff which sometimes prove really detrimental to their careers-refer to the DPS MMS scandal.Though time heals wounds but the tragic MMS scandal would take a lifetime out of the teenagers life to forget the event.More so as we belong to a closed and conservative society the repurcussions would keep on tormenting these teenagers in the forth coming years.

Teenagers now have become completely materialistic.They have become tangible if that is the term Adam Smith associates with something which has a value.The sweetness of life has diminished.It is all about a transaction that is to take place.The romance,love and feelings of caring and sharing have turned materialistic much to the happiness of Event Management circles like Archies and Hallmark who have made a fortune out of human emotions.So you have a card for birthday,wedding,anniversary,mothers' day,fathers' day etc etc.Now flowers no longer hold any place among couples rather SodexHo gift vouchers hold more significance as they can be used at any outlet to buy commodities.The mad rush to embrace information has made us artificially intelligent models devoid of human emotions.Every day in this information age deprives us of our so called sweet and innocuous events of our life.Instead of spending time with our loved ones we spend every non retrievable moment of our lives seeking information that can make us happy but in the process lose out on the innumerable wonderful moments we could have spent with our kith and kins.

As Michael E porter puts it in his paper 'Strategy and the Internet'-"Because the Internet tends to weaken profitability, strategy is more important. The Internet is an
enabling technology".Though this message is for corporates to follow it does point out towards the fact internet should just be an enabling technology rather than a governing technology.
Now on a conclusive note I'd say that we as humans or protagonists of Darwins' hypothesis have the power of choice and our fate would depend largely on the choice we make-so do we want to become a part of a clan of dead digital machinery or do we want to be vociferous about the fact that we are humans the only clan in the world who have evolved exponentially due to the powerful brain we possess and which also enables us to emotionally attach to each other and form a timeless bond that can never disintegrate thus making us attain Nirvana by rendering us Happiness to the highest degree.