Devil's Advocate

The Internet recently celebrated its 40th birthday. From being a niche research baby of the American Department of Defense and all those men who roamed about in a lab in white coats, the Internet has come a long way where the Google homepage has become a shrine, a page which is visited by the masses religiously. If Internet was a religion, Google would be its god, undoubtedly. I, for one, cannot imagine my life without a net connection (a high speed one for that matter). But a 40 year old spider's cobweb also brings with itself a whole lot of nostalgia. Some sweet memories of using the Internet in the cyber cafes still linger in my otherwise volatile memory.

Like millions of other kids, I too grew up in the post liberalization era. Cable TV was (and still is) a staple diet. Everything American was cool!!! And with all those movies playing out on Star Movies, the one's which showed that two computers could connect and communicate were watched with gaping sighs. And then it happened. Internet was ushered in my city in late 1998 in the form of those (in)famous cyber cafes which, time and again have been blamed for corrupting the minds of the impressionable youth (as if we ourselves don't want to get corrupted!!!). 

But back then, the Internet was the cool thing. It was obscenely expensive. Surfing rates were as high as 100 bucks/hour. Surfing speeds, if one was lucky enough, during peak hours would peak out at 10 odd kbps!!! Some speed there compared to todays easily accessible 1 Mbps networks. And since we'd have limited financial resources at our disposal, it usually required 4 people to pool in money to enjoy an hour's worth of drive on the information highway!!! 

But the major credit of attracting men towards the Internet was Pamela Anderson!!! Being the sex starved nation that we are, people would flock to the cafes to get a good look at her incredible anatomy. So you see, the Indian government should confer upon her some award for hooking an entire nation to a phenomenon. If Internet had a brand ambassador, Miss Anderson would be it. And its not as if this is true only for India. No sir. Its true for most of the world. The Internet's traffic, 80% of the precious bandwidth is still hogged by adult content (now don't expect me to put a link for that!!!). Also all those unknown hackers who have wrecked havoc should thank Miss Anderson as they would embed their malicious codes in her photographs and some unsuspecting lecherous prick would download it, just to find that their system is fucked!!! 

Only later did we realize that apart from all this, we could actually use the Internet for some good use. Like ripping off material from the net to make reports. MBAs would be doomed had there been no net. My acknowledgements read till date- I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude towards Larry Page and Sergei Bin without whom this report wouldn't have materialized. 

Here's for Pamela Anderson..... the Internet owes you much.   

PS: I hope I satisfied some souls there!!!