Weird Wired World....

Being in a top notch institute has it’s perks.. Sprawling campus, state-of-the-art infrastructure, great batchmates and so on.. But, the one thing that keeps most students hooked most of the time is a 4 letter word- ‘2mbps’.. That’s the speed of the internet lease line.. Most of the time, all of us are online.. Most of the studies, as well as most of the fun, takes place on the net..

The entire campus is on a 100mbps LAN.. All PCs, in hostels, in classrooms, in faculty rooms, in offices..are on the LAN.... Thus, effectively, one can access any PC from anywhere on campus.. Humongous amounts of data is transferred on the internal messenger (called ip messenger) daily.. Doc files, pdfs, software setups, songs, movies.. You name it.. It’s on the lines.. The wired world helps us play some ingenious pranks too.. When a Prof. declines to share his presentations with us, IT comes to the rescue.. All you have to do is share the CD drive of the classroom PC on the LAN, then copy all the presentations to your hostel PC as the prof. teaches in class.. So you get all the stuff that was taught in class, without even attending it.. This is what I call ‘virtual education’.....

Text and note books are on their way to obsolescence.. Most of us tend to download pdf versions of textbooks from the net, rather than buying a hardcopy.. Others don’t bother to read books at all.. Just the MS Power Point slides used by profs. in class are enough.. And what if you have a nagging doubt while studying??.... Well .. All you have to do is ‘multicast’ ur doubt on the ip messenger .. And voila.. In a few seconds, you hav answers from all those who know..

It is very difficult to find an activity we perform without the help of the net.. Wanna know bus routes of Mumbai?? Wanna know which movie is playing in which multiplex?? Wanna read newspapers or magazines?? Wanna book a railway or air ticket?? Wanna listen to the latest hit movie songs?? Or wanna set an alarm so that u get up early in the morning?? There is only one place to go.. near ur PC..

All important info. is sent through mails.. And it is not unusual for someone to write 15-20 mails a day..

IT has it’s effect on work as much as it has on fun.. During my 2 months of summer internship, I have hardly ever carried anything to office.. Whatever I did in office, I uploaded it on my Yahoo briefcase at the end of the day.. And I could continue the work from my room later.. But IT is taking it’s toll.. It has almost killed the reading habits.. By conservative estimates, I spend 80% of my time in front of the comp, whenever I am in my room..

Now for weirdest part.. Me and Nikhil live in adjacent rooms, and have a connecting door in between (which is perpetually open).. So in effect, we live in joint rooms.. So what does he do when he wants to give an important message to me late in the night, when i am already asleep?? Write it on a piece of paper and leave it on my desk?.. No way.. He’ll mail it to me.. As he knows that mail is the first thing I'll check as soon as I wake up......

"IT support is like a soft bed.. easy to get into.. but very difficult to get out of.."