I've been thinking

A friend has been posting updates about her trip to some place beautiful on a social networking site... seems an amazing place from comments like its snowing, beautiful color of the clouds... a mountain goat... it was all soo nice and I wished that I was there too. The only disturbing thing was the fact that all these details were shared before the trip was over. Yeah technology... you can tell the whole world about something the moment you want. You can tell that you saw a rainbow, and that you smell rain in the air and that you are upset over Rakhi Sawant having to handle a baby!!!

Twitter, facebook, orkut are they fulfilling our need to connect? Is there any void in our lives, a life devoid of real caring friends that we fill by having online "fans" ? Do we need to tell people about how great or how hopeless we feel .... that we exist? We have to "tweet" about every thing that we are doing, believing that people do care, and strangely they do. They care because its a game of give and take... you have to be interested in knowing whether a person 700 miles away slept after a nightmare or not, so that he can ask you what you cooked for breakfast. All the time, people closer home might be buried deep down in depression and loneliness.

Sometimes I wonder, have we become dependent on technology? I need to check my emails first thing in the morning and last thing in the night. I feel restless if I cannot access my gmail account or office mailbox, as if the whole world is waiting for me to take a decision on ending the nuclear war. I have to check my orkut account, although I know that there wont be any new scrap. I just have to do it to know if some friend of friend of friend has posted some good picture or news. I need to check facebook, although I hate the UI, just to know about friends. My parents get tensed if I donot pick up their call or my phone is not reachable. Its hard for them to believe that nobody is after my multi billion dollar company. My friends and I cannot coordinate to meet if there is no cellphone, even if its a pre-decided spot at a precise time. Yes I believe technology has become an indispensable part of our daily lives.

Are we trying to escape from reality in all those chat rooms or online games or watching the most eligible bachelor, Rahul Mahajan pick his bride? As a popular ad says "Real life is boring", so we replace it with drama, even if the drama is someone else's spiced up life.

Undoubtedly, technology has advantages... well that was the reason someone invented internet or TV or mobile phones!!! I can talk to people close to me any time of the day, even if we are miles apart. I have met some friends I lost touch with through social networking sites. You get to meet people from different parts of the world, talk to them, understand their culture and differences, without ever meeting them.. thanks to the internet. People have used the network to spread awareness about some cause and motivate people. There is no denying the fact that you can reach much more people, much more faster and much more easily, if you know which links to click.

However, like all other things, there has to be a limit. You have to decide what is information and what is spam. How much is too much. Whether you are living in a real world or fiction. Noone else can make the decision for you. The point where line is drawn might be different, but the fact that there has to be a line is still valid.