Internet And Computing

Here’s an excerpt from an article I did for Tehelka’s special on youth and the internet, on much urging from Shivam, who put an apt title to it – The Mirror of Change – This is Who We are Becoming.

“For those completely
immersed in virtual worlds such as Second Life, the seduction of intimacy
combined with anonymity does not mean they do not share the joys and
sorrows of their real worlds. My bet is that they do. “Pet”,
a very close friend and a colleague who worked with a team of online
volunteers when the tsunami struck in December 2004, got me looking
at Second Life with new eyes. He had been feeling trapped in his body
for a long time, and when he got onto Second Life, it helped him become
more comfortable with his feelings that he was a woman trapped in a
man’s body. The beauty is that Second Life was a tool for “Pet”to figure out who she really is and how to work it out for real. Today,
she has friends not only in Second Life, but also in her physical world
with whom she can be herself. “Pet” has shared so much of
her period of transition and angst with me, that I feel I know her intimately.
Being a geek, she also helps me with my websites. I trust her as she
trusts me. I know she is very real – there is nothing ‘virtual’
about her, even though I have never met her.

While I may never
have seen or met “Pet”, there is depth in our friendship,
and solidity. I know, for some people, that is hard to accept. I’m
often asked questions like, how can you feel connected to someone you’ve
never met? How can you trust someone you’ve never seen? These
concerns are understandable given the newness of this medium and the
flow that determines these sorts of relationships. Oh there are dangers
too – the pretence borne out of anonymity, the addictions, the
spam and scams, the paedophiles, the pornography. And still, when I
meet up with blog buddies all over the world, how can I explain the
amazing level of comfort I feel!

I single out blogs
here as throwing up a whole different social system than do virtual
worlds and social networking sites. Detractors say, online you can be
whoever you want to be and nobody cares. That may be correct, yet, if
you try and fake things too hard, you most always are found out, and
can be verbally beaten. My belief is that people tend to act more like
themselves online than they like to admit. It is much more difficult
to hide away who you are when you are blogging. I’ve found myself
revealing things on my blog about myself that I would find difficult
to talk about face-to-face. Ugly things too.

And yet, I found
myself trusting myself as I began trusting people I met through this
medium. There is a fine line between the public, private and secret
self, and the boundaries blur sometimes. At others there is a conscious
effort to keep them apart. In a physical world, our lives are compartmentalized,
you have different sets of friends for different needs, and meet in
different physical spaces as a result. My blog is one space where
I connect with friends, potential clients, strangers, acquaintances,
even spammers and trolls. It is entirely up to me what I want to share
of me and when, at my blog. And, I have found, the more I share,
the more others do. It’s just an extension of basic human needs
for connection and community.”

This issue is carrying a special on youth and the internet. I see some bloggers I know like Dilip, Rashmi, Neha, Patrix and Shivam of course, who have made some neat contributions there – and as I glanced through the articles, I felt Shivam’s done a good job of getting a mix that does not perpetuate stereotypes the media usually portrays netizens to be.