Are we living a private life anymore?

Sandown Way, Newbury      Jan 16, 2010       9:36 PM          Saturday


Strange feelings flared up across my mind the moment i wrote "Sandown Way" on this post. Yes, this is probably the last time i'll be posting from this house, which has been my abode from the past 1.5 years. A number of different guys came and went,  some stayed here for a few days, some for a while, and some for ever, in my heart. And how lucky i've been to have those friends in my life !


I am moving to another house near town center with couple of my best mates here. Both are extremely chatty, cool and funny. Perfect companions for me. And so you can see, i am equally delighted. 


As I move ahead of these mixed feelings, my mind still has been muddled up with something else. I read an old article somewhere today which speaks about the changes, or shall i say revolutions, that these social networking websites have brought up in our lives. I said "revolutions" on purpose. We probably might be a little behind the western countries in terms of the impact of these, but we certainly are getting the real heat. 


There were times when we used to publicize our limited moments of life. Once upon a time, we only used to share special things, and that too with special people. Once upon a time, our lives were private by default, which have eventually crawled to Public over the past few years now, thanks to more than 1000% growth of Twitter and 350+ million subscribers for Facebook. That's the combined population of United States of America and United Kingdom by the way!!! Orkut is not far behind either. 


Strangely enough, flowing along the course of this modern trend, we find it hard now to filtrate what NOT to publish. We get confused over the idea of not sharing everything with everyone. Because nothing is personal anymore ! People propose over web these days, they give birth, they die, drink, smoke, love, sing, dance, i mean what is personal then??? It's becoming more and more ' cool ' to live a public life. And boy, don't you believe me? There was a news of a guy posting a video of his wife giving birth to his child. A guy updating his relationship status during his marriage ceremony. At the Altar !!! Many more...





Now, we tweet it for the hundreds of followers, half of whom we haven't even met or known; we broadcast renowned "status update" to apprise people of every single action from last night dreams early next morning to late night party gossips... We all do it.. I do it as well ! I don't know the reason why the others do it; i do it because at times i just don't find anything better ! I am sure others must have got some better rationale than this. I guess anyways it's not everybody's cup of tea, so guys like me shall actually bank on orthodox methods of social interaction such as e-mails, personal chats and once in a while putting up a blog post for the sake of keeping ourselves in sync with this public world :)


With Google swallowing over the internet world in its own belly, you just can't expect the situation to be any better, if not worse. Almost every software professional in the world, if not all, use one or the other Google services today. And Google is smart. They have integrated everything together, and that too very nicely. So, you login to different services using the same credentials, say e-mail address and that's it pretty much. Now, come third party applications developers which make use of this fact and exploit it to the best possible way. You go to any social networking website today, and you very well know how easy is to import your Gmail and other contacts straightaway. No wonder girls have to forge their pictures to avert unknown friend requests, or other crap billions profile visits, or hacks...With even more powerful search engines coming into every corner of all the websites, i wonder how difficult would it be for someone to live a private life in this big public internet world in the near future? 


So, you just can't ignore anyone now a days, can you? The idea of your own small private world looks like a distant dream now. But yes, you do have a choice. Do not join the internet. Or join hands with everyone. Join this vast web of unknown people with a public hug...Guys and Gals, good or bad, I reckon we have almost officially entered into an era of Public visibility !


Ta
Gaurav Gupta