Googled forever !

It was 1995. We were passing out of our MBA class and getting a job offer was on top of everyone’s mind.The problem was how to know which company’s to approach and also how to approach them all at once.Some bright fellow came up with the idea of email. What’s that ? all of us thought :-)

Don’t be surprised. Sending messages through a computer and not through your friendly neighbourhood post office was still something very strange. I won’t say we were alien to the concept but it was just a concept that had not been tried or tested.

Emails were sent out to few prospective employers and each day we waited closely by the side of the only computer with a dial in connection which was set up in the Dean’s office.Some companies did respond back and for the first time I got convinced that folks do exist in cyber space and our ’email’  just doesn’t get lost into oblivion.

Once this miracle happened it threw a challenge as to how do you find more email addresses of more companies so they don’t get deprived of our managerial talent.So we set ourselves the task of going and meeting ‘potential’ employers and then taking their email ID’s to start the dialogue.It sounds primitive alright but trust me in those days of vsnl.net.in email was the most happening thing you could do.We did back up all electronic communication with physical ones just to be sure.You see sending out emails was more a measure of our smartness than a means of getting a response. Global managers are smart and they use email for communication, not some old fashioned post and telegraph.

Finally, I found a job but my tryst with Tech ended quite unceremoniously as the company I joined was a government organization. They had some 486 desktops which were mostly there to keep the 4th grade employees gainfully employed. Each morning or sometimes each week the plastic covers were removed as in a ritual only to be put back in place after the customary cleaning had been performed. Seeing this ceremony everyday I got curious and asked my manager who put these ‘things’ here if no one knew what to do with them.He came up with quite an interesting explanation. According to him these "things" were procured under a UNDP grant so that the idle funds could be utilized.If this was not done there was a lurking danger that the funding would get reduced by that quantum and next year we would receive the reduced amount.One day I got really catty so I unveiled the shroud on one of the Alien beings to see what was hiding inside. I realized very soon that the only trick the computer could perform was to bring up a ‘Welcome to UPEC Ltd.’  screen which zoomed in and out, gyrating while it did so. My colleagues told me that it did all this by itself !

I might be failing in memory here but it was sometime around 1998 that hot male Sabeer Bhatia sold his innovation to Microsoft. Till hotmail the only way you could communicate via email was through your organization's email or through an email provided by your Internet service provider. What was exceptional about hotmail was that it was web based and so it freed you of the clutches of the organization and ISP. By 1999 everyone who could switch on a computer had an email account. A web based email account meant an ability to communicate without the barriers of time and space.For the very first time it also gave us an option of faking/hiding our cyber identities and having multiple ones if we so desired.

The web based  cheap hotmail opened a world of opportunity for those in the export business and even I got the idea of exporting some stuff out on my own to a friend in the US. Email was not the driver but it was a motivator, an enabler. If I could communicate for free across 16000 kms there was something to be done about it, right? My luck did not support me and my fledgling ideas died their natural death but I still know of a few friends who would owe a large part of their success to hotmail if not all of it. Meanwhile, Sabeer became a millionaire leaving all of us awed, inspired even feeling cheated as to why the hell did I not get this simple idea. It's been happening ever since - first with google, then with facebook, now with Whatssapp.  

I can clearly recall that till about 2000 Internet explorer was the only popular web browser and it was almost magical to see the globe at the top right corner of your computer screen go round and round once you pressed the ‘enter’ key.Some smart cookie told me that the faster it rotates the quicker the website will load itself and I always used to get confused and ask myself - faster than what?? I knew that faster meant faster than itself but each time I thought I had figured it all out the website would load faster even if the globe was moving slow or vice versa so that my calculations would fail badly. Then one day a geek friend of mine  enlightened me that speed is not the only thing and it depends a lot on the how ‘heavy’ the content of the website you are loading is. Now what’s ‘ heavy’ about something that shows on your computer screen I wondered.And thus began my endless race to keep up with all the mysteries of the ‘ Internet’ which I still seem to be running to full strength of my intellectual stamina.

Sometime around 2000 someone gave a 100 thousand $ cheque to 2 young guys out of Stanford. No one knew at that time that how ‘search’ would get much bigger than email.Curiosity has led the way to human civilization and this was no different. An angel investor wanted to know where his bet on the Google boys would take him and suddenly the whole world wanted to know where all they can go with Google. The ability to search websites for most relevant information gave the power to .com as we knew it. Everyone had figured out by 2002 that things will never be the same again except the Google team in the silicon valley who were still trying to figure out a way to make money without being evil.

Unaware of the strife on the west coast here was me happily typing away in the box at the top end on an empty page finding out everything from flights to hotels to jobs to cures for allergies. With this new genie I became omniscient and so did everyone else across the globe.I am convinced that Google was the turning point of our relationship with the internet and what it could do for us.The websites and the information were there but without a trusting way of knowing if I am looking at the best possible  information , one piece of it was as good as the other.

My next big association with the internet happened when I was at a low point in my life and career.Things were not looking up either ways and I needed to reinvent probably re produce myself before I lost my sanity.Someone told me about blogging and wordpress. My  posts offered me a medium to express myself to the unknown, to think and write about stuff I never thought I would think or write about.I never knew I had so much to say and it was so comforting to chew on other peoples brain than my own. Initially I would post something and look at stats every day sometimes twice or thrice a day. I used to wait for comments from strangers. It was madness but it was fulfilling  until one day when I realized that my catharsis was complete and stats were just a set of numbers. They only get meaning when I attach it to them. From then on I have had a very 'real' take on what others have to say. I value that they have taken time to like or comment on my posts and I love to exchange thoughts and ideas but I never get affected by any of it.

In between the world changed many times over and we started doing almost everything on the net.So much so that we were ‘skyping’ each other from one bedroom to the other ! Finally facebook happened and friends, colleagues, acquaintances and even enemies got a new lease of life. Dead relationships got exhumed although some skeletons remained in the closet.

My status today is not the house or car or my designation. It is a line or two in the rectangular box next to my smiling  picture on the Facebook or Linked in page.That’s how the world knows me and that’s what I keep updating. My physical existence in a 6 foot frame today is perhaps much less precious or popular than my digital footprint reaching out to places and people who were otherwise completely out of bounds. To the strangers that I meet on the information super highway, I am just a thought, a wave of information or perhaps just some bytes of data. But I love to meet everyone anyway trying to figure out if there is a connection between the electromagnetic pulses in my brain to the binary existence of others in the Cyber world.

When I look back the last 20 years and ask myself if I have gained more or lost much because of my relationship with the Wifi the answer is never black and white but it's a shade of grey, like the screen of my laptop when switched off.

May be one day the back light will glow and I will get the correct answer..