TWEETING NEIGHBOURS

By S P Singh

While my wife still prefers to chirp on the phone, I have taken to tweeting. A message in broken English is no more a telegram — it is a 140 character tweet. Telegrams, cablegram and telex are limping or almost dead. Its obituary was written a decade ago.

I would be tagged technologically challenged if I did not throw jargons like spamming, phishing, and email worms in my conversation. I would be hacked from my social network if I failed to understand the nuances of Twitter and Facebook.

These are the new tools of communication that I must profess, practice and propagate or face the fate of the telegram. I have now done a year on twitter. The tweeting community is a classroom of young and old, growing at a breath taking pace with new admissions. We share on the tweet board love, hatred, ideas, beliefs and even minuscule topics as bowel movements. I am amazed at the speed and power of tweeting. You could tweet a gorilla war with menacing results and yet have no blood shed. Politicians and commissioners would endorse my views.

Internet is the mother of all inventions; it has taken the world like a storm on a computer screen.

My first acquaintance with computers was only in 1983. It looked like a programmed mini idiot box. I had never liked computers other than the fact that they were nested in air conditioned rooms; conditioned air in India was a student luxury then.

I believed engineering studies was about machines and steel structures; computer was okay for stenos and secretaries, who were lazy on type writers. Like an inflated egoistic macho man, I kept away from the feminist computers. Not any more.

Computer today is like a pace -maker that ticks my heart. I may live with a viral but not a computer virus that I can ill afford. I must confess I have been sharing a lot with my PC — my passwords, my work, my pleasures and my credit card bills. For most part of the day, my computer stays on my lap - like a genuine affair. We share tea, coffee, games, music, chats and shopping escapades. My computer faithfully reminds me of birthdays, anniversaries, funerals and pops a work plan, for all my days. I have reciprocated well to my computer’s loyal gestures. Most of my shopping bills are on upgrading my PC with softwares, discs, pen drives, CDs, DVDs, mouse, printers, key boards and an up market carrying case, to match my profile. My work-table is more expensive than my bed. I do not remember when I last bought jewels for my wife, no wonder she abhors my extra-marital computer affair.

My friends, colleague’s, kith and kin are no different. We do not party nor go barbeque camping any more. We care enough to be on the Facebook 24x7.

We do not write letters, yet we post messages on the wall. We neighbours now only Skype chat or tweet. The lesser privileged are in the internet café. The last time I said, “Hello” on my phone was a year back. That is when my PC crashed.

Today my phone was ringing again, and reluctantly I moved from my lazy chair to take the call. Guess what? It was my best friend and we hadn’t spoken for a while, life kept us busy. My friend’s PC had crashed and he wanted to know if he could borrow mine. I was in a dilemma. It was a choice between life and death. How could I share my PC? My wife felt I was being too possessive. I chose to live.

Life is on an identity crisis – quizzed between tweeting wordsmiths and modern communication tools. We are breathing through the flesh and pulse of plastic gadgets. We are now cultivating a new breed of computers, the Blackberry’s and Apple’s. Emotions now are buttons, keyed to a keyboard. The human touch is missing. We have lost our fingers to SMS, emails, tweets and Facebook clicks. We are programmed robotic couch potatoes, waiting for the ‘click of a button’ to make life happen.

Technology cannot be an excuse to fence our emotions. When did we cry, when did we laugh? Computer the Pied Piper is leading us to death. Is death a mouse click away? Are we tweeting to death?