On Facebook....

The greatest source of entertainment for most, social networking sites such as Facebook has changed the reason for people to log on to the internet these days. Porn has been the most used utility since the time of the Internet’s discovery, but leave it to social networking sites to come by and surpass the all time number one, so we know that’s a lot of people who would rather put up status messages than check out raunchy images and videos. Indian parents were jumping with joy when they heard of this statistics.

Now like most people initially I joined Hi 5 and then slowly migrated with great difficulty to Orkut, and then a friend comes and tells me to join Facebook, at this point of time there were some five different social networks and the constant debate as to which was better and which was safer, unfortunately all the sites were complicated to use and if you were concerned about safety, the best option is to not sign up. But then again we as mammals, in nature are a very curious bunch. We will go through your profile and pictures if we stumble upon it, and most of the time we stumble because we are looking around for something to stumble upon.

But now facebook has become boring, same old status messages, same old pictures, all of it, same old, same old. I need a new source of entertainment.... and oh yes... the verdict is, To be facebooking, cause it gives us slobs something to do, and in this day and age where everyone is too busy and important to keep in touch with our loved ones, a group message is just marvellous.

Bored out of My Mind....

I have nothing to write about.

I would have stopped with that sentence and received the world record for shortest most insignificant but grammatically correct blog, but then again I could not resist. “Ramble on”, says the voice inside my head. “Write some nonsense that everybody would read but nobody would want to” and it’s at this point of time that I, Santhosh Sundaram, for the first time in my life have gotten bored of my inner voice (mind you, that’s never happened before). So I decided to quit blogging and go Facebooking (is there a “ing” after that?).... Aahh Yes, Facebook.

Changing with the times....

Let’s rewind our memories as far back as possible; for you alcoholics that’s about 4 hours ago. It was a time of simplicity, before the mp3’s and LED’s, a time when Michael Jackson was normal and Bill Clinton wasn’t.

Back in the day when I was young-er, literally everything used to thrill me, I thought that a box of Lego was the most brilliant thing on the planet (have you seen what you can do with those things!!!); I honestly believed that by 2000 the next step would be here, flying cars and submersible boats (damn Discovery Channel and its promises). But little did I know that the compact disk was right around the corner, waiting to change my world in a way that I thought was not possible. Mind you, the video cassette was a great invention, if something went wrong with it you could fix it with a coin, and audio tapes had better sound clarity than most formats of music available today.

For a while though everything was getting larger, the world thought “bigger was better”. The “boom box” was a cassette player that was the size of a small car, the “laser disk” for those who remember it was larger than most man hole covers, the first floppy was a big flat something that didn't do anything. Then the compact revolution kicked in, from powder cases to cars, everything was getting smaller and more powerful. We all watched in awe when Maruti released the first A/C 800, it was truly magical. When Onida sold remote controls it was the heights of technology. When DD launched Mahabharata with its killer graphics, an epic became science fiction, and when Kapil Dev told us that Boost was the secret of our energy, we believed it.

Today, it’s all boring. We video conference, listen to music from something that would fit around our finger, access the internet wirelessly from anywhere, use Bluetooth, take pictures and videos and watch them all on our phones and iPod’s and PSP’s, and that’s just the beginning. But it’s all boring, and somehow we find ways to crib about all this stuff, “damn it, my car’s reverse assistance computer has a bad voice”, I've said this myself, the nerve! The car talks to me, it actually talks to me and tells me how to reverse and all I can do is crib about its Japanese voice and funny accent, I should be shot! (Long live the Japanese for giving us Sony).

The first time I heard about mega pixels was a few years ago, “2 mega pixel camera, what a fantastic!”, i said to myself, but today I demand a 25 mega pixel though 18 is the highest, and the funny part is it will be here in a few months (Sony again...The maniacs), the pixels are increasing like China’s population. Life is comfortable in this High Def world that we live in, we are all digitally re-mastered, we see in 1080p and hear in 5.1 surround sound, but all this in LCD and LED (old tech), then what about OLED, PLED, PHOLED and AMOLED? How much clearer can we get before we just implode? I am genuinely curious.

Somehow we’ve become so dependent on all this technology that we can’t seem to live without it. 15 years ago I remembered over 30 phone numbers, today I remember 4 and that’s including my own and I forget mine very often because I rarely call myself, “Why remember birthdays?”, I say “when my phone can do it for me, it will also remind me when the day comes” I think we deserve a belting if we need Nokia to tell us when our Mom was born.

The Verdict.... it’s a topic I cannot judge upon, If it wasn’t for Auto Spell Check, I wouldn’t be blogging in the first place, and as a big techie, I love my gadgets and am constantly on the lookout for smaller more powerful gadgets that can do everything, literally everything, in the future my phone has to call my girlfriend and wash my clothes simultaneously, otherwise it would be an absolute waste.