‘Impatience is the new life’ says a TV commercial. When you think about the life around, the phrase seems to be true. We the new generation are focused, practical, and more intelligent but we are more impatient and in tolerant. We want everything lightening fast. For us there is no tomorrow. We want everything right here right now.

To an extent, I would say it is good but we are losing the charm of enjoying life while running after everything in life. There is no time to enjoy the hard work we are putting into making our future secure and better. We look down upon people who were born few years before us as they struggle to catch up with the new world and new technologies. Our patience levels are so low that we get bored with things in days or in few hours too in some cases. We buy the latest music player or mobile phone today and get bored of it after a week. Change is the buzz word. We want everything bigger and better and we cannot wait for things to happen. We all are running after everything so much so that we do not want to stop and see if there is a better option available with a little patience and little thinking.

We do not want to wait at the traffic signals; we do not want to wait in the queues. We do not even wait for our salary (hail the credit cards, we can shop now and pay later) to buy what we want. Maps are a passé; we want GPS systems in our cars, phones, (may be in our minds too in sometime). We want everything at finger tips and at our call. We want bigger homes and better cars. We want the latest gadgets and the best holidays. This impatience has made us intolerable to a great extent. Our wants are growing at a faster pace than the availability of choices. Amidst this run for life, are we forgetting to be happy? Aren’t we becoming more frustrated with life?

We want to get happiness out of the virtual world. We have forgotten the beautiful planet we live on. We do not want to stop by and see the beauty around us, we do not look at the rainbows anymore (I wonder if the kids today even know what a rainbow is), we do not like to find faces in the clouds anymore, we have forgotten how fresh breeze feels as we work in AC offices and commute in AC transport. We meet our friends on Face book. We change our jobs like our clothes. We have stopped putting efforts to solve things or to get out of situations. Anything that stops our speed has to be chucked out of life. We have started walking in and out of marriages like we walk in and out of stores. We do not want to understand and adjust. We do not want to give second chance to anything. We have forgotten that we human beings have the privilege of expressing ourselves, being creative and enjoying life. Lot of options does not mean running after or accumulating everything available to make life better. We are trying to change our lives as we change the channels on the TV.

We are always in a hurry. I don’t know if it is good or bad to have things at your call but it sure is taking away the excitement of things we used to enjoy as kids. Life is becoming a struggle between keeping our weights down and spirits up. We talk more to people on face book than to people around us. Everything and everyone is just a click away but yet we are not content. We are not happy with anything in life. We first yearn for everything and then want to run away from it. The contentment we had as kids is missing in our fast paced, impatient lives.

Once upon a time when life was simpler we had the luxury of coming home from school and heading out to play for hours. We would wait for 6 days to watch Mickey Mouse on Sunday mornings, we used to call up our friends or meet them to talk to them. There were not social networking sites but we still bonded with friends. Once upon a time when life was good we would wait for festivals like Diwali to eat special food prepared by our moms, we used to wait for summer holidays to play out whole day. Once upon a time we actually used to live life and not exist.

Today the games we play are on computers, we can watch the programmes we want on the 50+ channels available 24×7. There is no need for us to wait for special occasions to eat special sweets or food. All that is just a phone call away. Our impatience and the need to have things when we demand has changed our lives completed and today we just exist running after everything we see. Whether we need that or not does not matter. We have everything but we are not happy with anything. Has the availability of money, technology come at a cost of our happiness? Is that the cause of our impatience?

Image Credit: Alex Grech

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It wasn’t long before we sat in front of our computers and chatted with global netizens, and wondered what a fabulous gift technology is. I still remember how thrilled I was when I got a reply for my first email. It was a different kind of experience realizing the fact that someone sitting somewhere in the world sends a letter to me in just a matter of seconds!  The little chat window which we loved most onetime, evolved through a revolutionary phase, from simple plain text chat programs to a range of voice/video enabled kinds  we now have at our disposal.

Then we saw a myriad of social networking sites which took the youth by storm..Facebook,Orkut,Beebo to name just a few. What is amazing is that these social interaction platforms have become popular without many advertisements, but through simple word- of- mouth.

The potential of these tools are tremendous – it provides enormous advertising capabilities which they are set to leverage to a large extent. We should consider the personal advertisement capabilities too when talking about such tools. Suddenly they have become a media to shout to the world what you are doing!

While we continue to interact with our fellow netizens using these latest technologies, a new breed of net dwellers is catching on like wild fire! They are the Virtual World residents. The term ‘Global Citizen’ is literally turning to reality in these Virtual Worlds.

The one caught my attention is Second Life from Linden Labs, which takes online social interaction to new dimensions. Second Life was launched in 2003 and then on its growth has been phenomenal. The underlying idea is the same – interact with people- but how they have transformed such a simple idea to a big business opportunity is something interesting to look at.

It provides a ‘Virtual World’ where we can reside, meet people, go shopping, go clubbing and so many other things you do in real life. Out of curiosity, I created an account to see what it offers, and found the design / technology similar to some of the role play/mission accomplishment games. What makes it different from these ordinary 3D games is that there is no mission-no killings and no shootings- it’s just a place to live in!

You can do as you please, of course without offending the fellow residents. To sweeten the pot, one can even generate a stable income from the Second Life with a bit of creativity and a little money.  It offers Land, which we need to buy/rent to start our business establishments and once we are familiar with the technology we can create and offer our unique services/products to people who are interested.

For example, a fashion designer can design and create clothes for the avatars (the online version of yourself), and price them. If someone is interested in your creation, they can buy it from you, just like in real world. All transactions are carried out in their internal currency, Linden $, which maintains an exchange rate with real world dollar currency. Oops! It’s not a game anymore.

Though such technologies are intended to make our lives easier and better, it remains to be seen how it affects human relationships. Second Life also has a human relationship aspect, as it allows one avatar to have a relationship with another avatar, if he/she is ‘well equipped’. Yes – you can have sex too, what is known in the virtual world as ‘Ageplay’! This is possible by buying one of those countless animations/other tools up for sale in the virtual world, making the creators of these products wealthier.

Though we like to embrace everything new and revolutionary, aren’t we missing something? Aren’t we undergoing a transformation in our social behavior?  We will be shocked to see how these latest online social trends meant for mere fun have crept into our real lives, a perfect example being the divorce case recently filed in Britain after the online avatar of wife found her husband’s avatar with another Second Life resident in a compromising position  - of course virtually.  ‘Should we really encourage such simulation worlds if we are a bit serious about them’ is one question that needs our immediate attention.

When asked one of my acquaintances, who is in his fifties, about his views on the success of face book and other social interacting sites, he reacted saying

Computers are shallow equipments destined or designed only to help humans in a mechanical way, it seldom takes you into the inner realms of human mind. However, every human being is destined to learn the truth in the hard way. And one day wisdom will dawn upon us; by that time we will discover that we have become old!

But I have to admit that I haven’t become that old yet though!’

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