Roundabout | Internet apocalypse and a return to the swinging 70s
Looking before and after, and dreaming of what is not with a mobile in hand sans Facebook and Instagram
Lolling about in the drawing room, my daughter and I, after dinner returned to browsing our mobile phones at leisure. I took a short break to make a cup of black coffee and had just taken a seat by my computer to type the fortnightly column, when my daughter cried out, “Someone has hacked my Facebook!” Perplexed, I asked her to check my account, and lo, to our despair found that bizarrely I had been logged out, too!
Putting our heads together, we attempted to decode the identity of our joint enemy. We also got into an argument about who the imagined culprits could be. I started calling to our friends to check whether their phones were functioning well. Bewilderingly, the answer was a resounding no.
My daughter, who is the more resourceful of the two of us, called up a police officer, who resides in our society. He assured her that this was no hacking, but an international breakdown. So, we sat back sipping the black coffee, wondering how this column would be written and sent. This, when I was planning to take an online course to hone my designing skills. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be...
Switching on, switching off
Well, the internet has been switching on and off, often at the dictate of men who matter. One may recall that a key US government websites did the disappearing act just a before Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Is the internet apocalypse close at hand? This is the question being asked all too often. TikTok, the social media platform, has predicted that all such technology, including the internet, telephone and TV and even the humble radio, may soon cease to be. And lo, some four million people have watched this in despair.
Is an internet apocalypse at hand? Will there be a complete internet outage across the globe lasting for several months? Will the operations of the internet, telephone, television, radio, and all types of navigation come to a standstill soon? These questions are being asked because a video on the social media platform Tik Tok has predicted such a scenario and more than four million people have watched it. Columbia University in the US has been researching this possibility since 2021. Closer home, the internet has been vanishing at will in Manipur, Kashmir and during the farmer’s protest.
As I sat brooding about how I would send my stories, book a cab, watch my favourite serial, send and receive WhatsApp messages late at night and listen to vintage songs of the golden era of Hindi films, I remembered a Sahir Ludhianvi song, “Yeh dunia agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai.”
An old-world charm
Anyway, I am not the kind to brood for long so it suddenly came to mind that I have done without these wires and cables before and it was quite joyous .
The end of all this technology could mean the return of the good old-world of the swinging 70s. Cabs be damned, I walked to the Government College for Women in Sector 11, with a jhola on my shoulder, from my home in Sector 19. My friend and classmate, Harry Bains, would walk from her home in Sector 17, and merrily we would march on. We did this to stay fit and avoid the rowdy boys in the buses. Reaching the college canteen, we would treat ourselves to sweetened cold milk.
Come university, it was long walks again, but with a boyfriend and a cup of 30 paise coffee from the Student’s Centre. One would go to the Tagore Theatre, and saw just two films in the year-long journalism course – Doctor Zhivago and Sholay.
At the old-world newspaper with the chief subeditor presiding over the horse-shoe desk, we would sit on both sides learning to edit copies that came from teleprinters. All the while, learning, laughing and listening to stories of legendary editors and their resolve. All the while, the rotary machines revolved and the page makeup men set molten metal blocks in trays. Everyone would come to the office and there would be no work-at-home. The internet certainly will not be the end of the game, but the beginning of a new one!
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