A DIGITAL MIGRATION

I still remember when I first encountered the Internet, via a dial-up router that took twenty minutes to start up and connect. This was a world before Google and Facebook, when search engines didn’t exist and the only social media were chat rooms and something called Orkut that made me feel as exposed and vulnerable as walking alone into unknown territory. There were no mobile phones, smart or otherwise and no laptops. Everything was on a lumpy desktop computer, which most of us shared between our families and friends. Our time online had to be negotiated and monitored due to the high expense of landline phone connections and the need to keep the shared telephone free and available.

As exciting as it seemed then, it never occurred to me to want more. I think we were all more easily satisfied then.

Over time, I discovered the use of the Internet for research on my college assignments and learned how to navigate the early search engines with carefully constructed search phrases. I don’t think I thought they could be any better. They were already so much faster than scouring through a huge library of books through reference catalogues. And I was proud of my developing search skills.

Then Google and Facebook came. By then I was working in an advertising agency. We worked on desktop computers in offices and had clunky mobile phones we used sparingly, more like security blankets than communication devices. The Internet lived at the office since none of us could afford the required speed for those data connections. Some of us even went in to work on weekends to check our Facebook pages and some of us felt it was a good enough motivation for any extra work we were assigned. I remember my friends complaining about their restricted access and feeling happy that an advertising agency couldn’t restrict the Internet if they wanted us to learn more about consumer behaviour. 

I don’t remember wanting to bring the Internet home. It was a relief to be back in my room at the end of the day, with the office emails far away. I had a TV and so many books I could escape into. I even had a quirk that made me take long detours to avoid crossing my office building on holidays and weekends that I wasn’t working. I didn’t need any reminders of what might be awaiting me on a manic Monday morning.

The free weekends were lazy late mornings that stretched into drowsy afternoons and evenings. We got excited about seemingly scarce things like picnics, concerts and matches, building up the anticipation of meeting friends who were visiting from other cities and going out with the family once a week. We used to get bored, a feeling that seems to have become extinct. 

The smartphone and laptop arrived in India as a corporate tool, a perk I was given with a promotion and one I was not too happy about. A Blackberry had only one advantage over a regular phone and that was access to office emails. I knew this wasn’t so I could leave the office early and still respond to emails. The Blackberry was to ensure that my work followed me wherever I went. Now there would be no excuse and no escape. I learned I had to put it away in a drawer if I wanted to sleep uninterrupted through the night. 

The quick multiplication of social media added the elements of entertainment and socialising to the digital world. Newer smartphones developed with so many user-friendly apps. Then e-commerce arrived and we tentatively dipped our toes in, as we worried about all the ways it might let us down or drown. I was a reluctant early adopter – not jumping in because I was wary for myself but coaxing myself forward for the sake of my profession. Once the early hurdles were cleared, the convenience of the digital world was addictive. I enthusiastically took to net banking when it saved me from bureaucratic processes and timelines. 

We still had a distinction we drew between offline and online. Though almost everything offline had a corresponding digital avatar, we still clung to what we called the ‘real’ world.

The Covid pandemic has pushed us into a mass digital migration much as wars and famine in the past have led to migrations to other geographies. Only this time the new world we find ourselves in is already familiar to us. We have had to disregard the barriers of privacy, data security and trust now that physical safety is at so much risk offline. Virtual interactions are safer so we cling to technology, even if some of us still feel uncomfortable with it. 

Most of our focus has been on working from home with a laptop with a web camera or even just a tablet or smartphone. We worry that work has moved firmly into the home space but we don’t realise that the truth is that we have moved more completely into the digital world. 

Almost anything we do now is through the Internet. News, entertainment, shopping, payments, financial transactions, interacting with friends, networking, family events on Zoom, teaching, learning, exercising, even our quintessentially Indian time pass.  

Our lives are now more digital than physical and as this second wave rises up, they will only become more so. 

Whenever this pandemic ends, what will be left of our ties to the offline world? Will we visit it, taking digital vacations to return nostalgically to an obsolete world we once knew and loved? Or will we be so firmly entrenched in the digital space that we won’t want to switch off or even know how to?

THE PANDEMIC PARADOX

This post comes exactly two years after I published my last one. It seems we have swung from one extreme to another in this time.

Our world is becoming smaller and flatter as the virus threat, its impact on our lives and work, the response and the tools we use to adapt to it are similar across countries. The gap between countries, rich and poor, is shrinking, as are our options in dealing with the pandemic. 

Where once we clamoured for our freedom from authority, now we look to the same authority figures to protect us by locking it down. 

Our homes have become our hubs and we are deeply entrenched in technology. Work and life have merged in confusing and confounding ways. We are now dependent on our smart phones for most of our basic requirements. 

The pandemic has forced a re-evaluation of our priorities and given us a chance to identify and edit out the unnecessary. It feels like we can make our lives simpler and cosier if we choose. Not just on social media, but in the reality behind the camera. 

We are using video calling apps to create intimacy in those relationships where we have physical distance and are perhaps testing the endurance of those where we don’t. 

Cabin fever has set in and we are yearning for a return to ‘normal’. But, what is this imaginary destination that we all seem to want? Normal is something no one has experienced truly. It is a fleeting childhood from idyllic memory, a momentary dream or an impossible ambition. We’ll know it when we get there, we think, but will we be able to hold on to it even if we do? 

Life has always been and will continue to be a constant flux, where we seek to find our balance on the shifting surface. 

Context matters and how we understand and react to it determines the consequence. Judgements, however, can only be made with hindsight. So we may be able to judge the generations who came before us but we cannot judge ourselves. Later generations may decide if we did the right or wrong things in coping with the Covid pandemic. It is impossible for us to know, even as we struggle to find the right answers and actions in our small, everyday decisions. 

Our discomfort with this uncertainty has increased our political polarisation to the point that our affiliation determines what we think we know about the virus, how we react to the pandemic and even which, if any, vaccines we will put our trust in. 

Some of our biggest differences, of income class and gender, are widening the gaps we tried so hard to fill. Women are the majority of job losers as employers rush to cut costs and they are the ones most quickly absorbed in the quicksand of home and family responsibilities. 

It is the more protected and privileged of us who are paranoid about the virus. We insist on face-masks, hand sanitisers, temperature checks and social distancing. Perhaps, we feel we have more to lose from Covid and yet, we are the most likely survivors, given our financial safety nets and medical access. 

The economically disadvantaged need to get back to work. They will wear face-masks if we tell them to but they will never feel our desperation over the risks. The risks they have been facing all along were never any less dangerous. They are as likely to suffer the same mortality and economic stress from the treatable tuberculosis or even a more common infection. Dying from hunger versus dying from the virus is not much of a choice. 

We would like the economy to open up so we can enjoy the lifestyle luxuries we have had to put on hold. We would like the vaccines to be fool proof so we can rid ourselves of the constant worry. We would like the virus to disappear so we can be free from the constraints we are living with. 

The uncertainty remains. We do not yet have a starring role in the big picture of what is to come, but we can play our small bit parts and hope for the best, as have the generations before us in good times and bad.

PERFECTION AND POLARISATION

In Greek and Indian mythology, the Gods are not perfect. They suffer from hubris and bend the rules they expect others to follow. Today’s leaders are similar and they enjoy fanatic support even when caught in their lies. Denial is a great weapon to perfect polarization, to cast the villain as a victim and propagate conspiracies that are easier to believe than facing up to our own culpability.

We find ourselves in a polarized world, where there is a need to choose sides and then stick to them blindly. There must be total faith and support, no questioning one’s idols. Whether it is Narendra Modi or Donald Trump, one must either believe in the myth of their perfection or be aligned totally against it.

We can believe Michael Jackson is either a great artist or a pedophile, Julian Assange is either a sexual predator or an icon for press freedom, after all a person cannot possibly be both! We need to love or hate with absolute fervour, avoiding the ambiguity of sometimes liking and other times disliking the same person. It makes life difficult to think it through each time so it’s easier to just align once and never cross the imaginary line to the other side.

It’s better to shout our beliefs than to listen and have a fair conversation. Admitting to mistakes is a weakness we can’t afford just as we cannot give any due credit to the opposition. Without dialogue, we can believe in our imaginary perfection and not truly know how much of it is true. We can fall for the propaganda and PR with a disregard for facts, develop a lack of compassion for anyone else and lose all sense of direction and proportion.

What we’re losing most in this forced polarization is an essential ingredient to human progress: accountability. There is no provision to fairly evaluate, recognize and correct mistakes. Pretending they’re not there, covering them up or recasting them as “the right thing to do” leads to loss of learning opportunities. Progress is not possible without these precious lessons.

Human beings are fallible. None of us know everything about everything: as right as we may be about some things, we are bound to be wrong about others. Yet, the myth of perfection prevails. We like to idolize people and put them up on pedestals, where the slightest fault could lead to a perilous fall.

We do this to ourselves and our loved ones too. Every time there is a doubt, we seek to hide rather than question, confront and learn. The myth of perfection is a heavy burden to carry, more so when we believe we are already there. The illusion takes more work to maintain than if we were to let it go and admit to our vulnerability and weakness.

It is not our fallibility that holds us back but our inability to admit to mistakes, never seeking to correct them. We may find our idols to be less worthy than we thought but in recognizing this, we may push them to be better. We may find our opponents to be more worthy than we thought and we can seek a meeting point for the sake of human progress. We can find true acceptance in admitting to our failings and seeking support to overcome them, and offering support to others instead of condemning them.

We are in this together, we are more alike than we think and we can do better if we choose to live in reality rather than an imagined perfection.

FAKING AND BREAKING NEWS

Technology is disrupting our lives at an unprecedented pace and we’re all struggling to catch up, afraid of becoming irrelevant or left behind. We’re reeling from the expose of how Facebook data played a role in manipulating the elections in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.  Yet, would any one of us seriously consider deleting our Facebook profiles? How else could we stay connected to myriad acquaintances we can’t or won’t call or meet face to face?

Social media is already integral to many of us today. We remember a time without it as one of deprivation and can’t quite imagine how we might manage without it today.


It feels comfortable to expect technology companies, government regulators and activists to sort this out for us while we wait in a sort of limbo, some of us shunning and some of us embracing social media, with most of us somewhere in the middle.

When Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, he candidly admitted that he couldn’t have imagined when he set out to create Facebook that one day he would be held accountable for possible election fraud. Just as none of us can imagine that one of our profound insights or frivolous musings, joyful sharing or pretentious posing on Facebook, Twitter or Whatsapp could be held against us in a job interview or even a legal court. Yet, this is happening and we must be aware of the danger even when we don’t quite understand it.

I’m not a fan of the gun lobby in America but they made a critical point about intent when they embraced the slogan, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” It doesn’t work so well in their context – people do kill significantly less people if they don’t have access to guns.  But this insight in the context of technology has a much greater impact – Technology doesn’t manipulate people. People manipulate people. And this is something that will hold true even if technology is removed from the equation.

Self-interest is a reality for all of us. We all sometimes have feelings and opinions we feel pressured to hide from the disapproval of the society we inhabit. Why should we expect other people to be any different? Everybody lies. The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves because we believe them.


Does election fraud and voter manipulation not happen in technologically disadvantaged countries? If anything, it happens more. The myth we believed was that it didn’t in so-called developed countries – that Americans and Europeans had evolved to a level of integrity the rest of the world must aspire to. This scandal and the role played by social media has served to unmask the subtlety and sophistication with which manipulation is engineered.  Gossip and rumour mongering have always been around, only the tools they use to spread have evolved.

In a desperate attempt for survival, traditional media is being styled as the hero in the war against fake news on social media. Yet, the fact remains that they are not above faking news either. Remember propaganda? History has shown how often and how effectively many governments used control over the news media of their times to spread misinformation and influence outcomes in their favour.


We know how strictly the government of China regulates the Internet in their territory. Do we believe they leave traditional media alone to speak the unfavourable truth? If anything, traditional media must have been easier to regulate when we saw them as trustworthy news sources. Just as social media makes it more easy to spread fake news, it also makes it much easier to spot fake news because now the seeds of doubt have been planted and we already feel wary.

Technology companies, governments and activists probably will and must hold themselves accountable for this breakdown in trust. But we as individuals must also ensure that we do not complacently put the blinders of trust back on.

CAN FACEBOOK BRING THE WORLD CLOSER?

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, I did what many others were doing – I used the Facebook application to add a filter of the French flag to my profile photograph. It helped me show my support and express what I was having difficulty expressing otherwise. My sense of shock & helplessness, my frustration against the irrationality of terrorists, who seem to do everything against religion in the name of religion. The despair of wanting to change things without any sense of what I, as an individual, may be doing to contribute to the problem or what I may yet do to end it.

Facebook was the one place I felt less alone. Countless status updates and profile pictures showed me others also struggling to articulate similar connected feelings. So I was shocked when a Facebook friend accused me via a comment on my profile picture of not having empathy with victims of terror in other places like Beirut & Kashmir. I felt so misunderstood that I have pondered this strange unintended interpretation for days. And this is my realization: the thing we can and must fight as individuals is this sense of ‘other-ness’.

It’s in the way we express and interpret things today. If someone expresses support for one person/country/religion/idea, it goes without saying that he/she must naturally be against another. But, why must there always be an ‘other’? As an Indian, why can’t I empathize with citizens of other countries? As a Hindu, why can’t I respect other religions too? As a woman, must I only envy men for being physically & culturally stronger and never empathize with any burdens they might be carrying? How is expressing empathy with one person/region/religion/ideology equal to not having any for another?

Facebook is a nice place to interact with the world from the safety of our comfort zones. We meet many ‘others’ – people who come from different places and cultures, different ideologies and points of view. Can we try, if not always to understand and appreciate the differences, to at least learn to live with them? Isn’t this what we actually do in our offline lives when we have differences with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours? What siblings or spouses or friends always agree exactly on everything without discussions and even the occasional disagreement?

While it’s nice to have an easy visual filter to show our concerns in a timely manner, maybe Facebook can’t keep up with all the horror in the world. So here’s my little action, my new Facebook profile photo:

By displaying the flags of all the countries in the world I hope I am showing that I am making my effort, as an individual, to breakdown my sense of ‘other-ness’. And if anyone can still misunderstand this, then it means that for them, I will always be the ‘other’ – the problem is now theirs to resolve, if they choose to.