Ring, Ring Ring, in Japan Novelists find a new medium, now publishing novels on the cell phone, and reading novels on the cell phone.
Most of cell phone novels have skimpy language and are simple and with modest themes like love and friendships, but they have turned into real books and are read electronically. One book “Love Sky” has sold over 1.3 million copies (wsj, of 9/26/2007). Mobile novel writers like getting feedback from readers. The closer interaction between writer and reader lead to writers even changing their stories to suit the readers. Young people use their cell phones, in addition to making calls for surfing the Internet and listening to music. The computer replaces with a cell phone for many other uses, including serving as a camera as well.
These days’ kids are growing up with electronic devices and cannot be without them. When they grow up to be 30-something they will lose the values that we brought forward from our parents and grandparents. Impersonality has set in to the extent that one young man is pretending to have a telephone conversation with his girlfriend but is actually surfacing the web. Another young man is so absorbed in his TV, telephone and laptop computer that he is oblivious to the cries of his infant child. Gadget owners alienate themselves from other things around them. Parents accompany children to their school ball games, but instead of watching their own children at the game are absorbed in their Blackberry. A few children I know literally hide the parents blackberries to get their attention.
I remember the old UNICEF days when the telephone and telex was our only means of communication in addition to meetings and talking by the water cooler. Within a few years of the electronic age taking hold, staff would send e-mails to the other in the next room rather than talking to them. When people behave in this electronic way day in and day out, it adopts as a new culture, a new way of life. However, we do not have to sink into these ways. People can learn to use technology for efficiency but learn to keep their human values at the same time. People must learn to be technologically human.
It will be more puzzling when computers of the future turn out to be artificial human beings. It has begun to happen already. Try getting a person on the phone when you call your insurance company. Already, some remote computer understands enough casual English to fill up your prescription or order.
Lives have changed to the extent that we are now a mobile community. You are reachable wherever you are, sometimes, even in the discomfort zone of a bathroom. There are pros and cons to all of this.
If not to electronic technology, we would not see the incidents that happen in Myanmar and Sudan. In Zimbabwe, an anonymous blog has allowed people to publish things that would incur the death penalty. Anonymity on the Internet also allows people to send hate mail and allows sex offenders to chat with children. Electronics is a Mecca for terrorists to organize and spread their message of hate and destruction. This is no criticism of the electronic age; it is just than humankind has a new set of problems to deal with. Before the discovery of any mode of transport, a thief could only run, but these days he can take off in a car. That does not mean cars are bad for society other than the CO2 that they emit into the atmosphere. Therefore, pollution is the bad byproduct of automobile industry in as much as airplanes and ships also pollute the atmosphere. So now, humans have to deal with the pollution from all forms of transportation, including the pollutions from factories, but they only keeping pointing fingers at the automobile industry. In the same way, even if it means less freedom, governments with the help of engineers and scientists will eventually devise ways of making the use of electronics safe for public use.
The web has captured us. Our solitudes transact through paper-thin fibers, codes, motherboards and we consider ourselves contact points in those technologies even without fatherboards. Electronic options have lead to contractions in private lives, a sort of seclusion as terminals, computers and cell phones entered the living rooms. It's even worse when some people have TV's in their bed rooms.The danger is that we may move into such a unitary life that they would lose touch of what human life was like before and future generations may have no inkling that humans had a life other than electronics. On the other hand, past generations can say how human it was for them to meet at the water well and chat and pipe borne water destroyed that form of socializing. As one famous Sri Lankan writer, Tarzie Vittachi (was also Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF, 1980-1988) had this famous slogan in his UN career: ”everything is about something else.” Now what remains is for the reader to use his or her imagination; I think the imaginary opportunities are limitless. Imagination is not bad, is good, is necessary. What is discovered today is first imagined.
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