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Internet turns rollicking 15

The Internet is 15 years young and changing the way we find love, live, meet and talk

Log in Internet has transformed the way we communicate

Right now, someone
is pinging.
Right now, someone is
browsing porn.
Right now, someone is
being hired.
Right now, someone is
getting married based
on an Internet profile.

You walk into an e-Seva centre, produce the bill and pay the money. A businessman sits in the lobby and logs into the Internet and monitors his company's sales figures. At the Apollo Hospital in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad the emergency care unit monitors the movement of one ambulance ferrying a patient in real time. In a remote corner of Andhra Pradesh they are monitoring the movement of a cyclone on a 24-hour basis. A world away in Paris, a clothing firm is using nudity to sell clothes. And the one thing that binds all these experiences, the Internet, is now 15 years old.

It was born on August 6, 1991 when the European Laboratory for Particle Physics called CERN publicised the World Wide Web project. Married to the Internet Protocol born in a secret lab in the US, the world is no longer the same place.

So, how has the Internet changed your world? "Dramatically. It has made the world a more liveable place. The distances have shrunk. There are more jobs for more people," says Ramana Rao, a techie who did mechanical engineering and worked with an automotive firm for five years for 1/8th the salary he is getting now. And when he walks into a restaurant during lunch hour he is most likely to meet people carrying biometrically tagged ID cards. We ask another woman with her ID tagged to her denim. "The Internet has given me a job (she works in a search firm). I can talk to anyone in the world in an instant," she says.

It is not just the GenX that has seen its life transformed by this information river, even granddads are not untouched. Meet Sridhar Rao, with two daughters in the US and countless grandnephews scattered across all time zones in the world. Catch him in the evening at his residence and he is chatting, laughing and at ease with a world where the 70-something couple switch off loneliness the moment their Internet connection shows two small computers in one corner of the monitor blinking.

It is this blink that distinguishes the Internet with its use of TCP/IP protocol from other mediums.

While a phone creates a continuous connection, the Internet connection is made with small packets. The Internet is not just the email that you see and browse, but it is a technological wonder that has transformed the way we communicate.

The call centre employee who chats a British citizen through his computer booting problem uses the same info-pipeline and technology that has made the Internet what it is.

Of course, the terrorists researching liquid explosives too have used the Internet to gain the knowledge of an adept chemist. But then, what is a good thing, if there is no flip side to it.

SERISH NANISETTI

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