Trapped in the Net

There was a time, I guess during Engineering college days- that seeking information on anything was a job. This was the time when notes from the senior batch, projects from their batch had so much value that they could even earn decent money.

But information more valuable usually came in from the non academic front. The super spies were not the ones to infiltrate into enemy territory and steal documents, it was the Bond’s who could walk up to a girl to get an intro and at times even walk back with complete data profiles like phone number, her likes and dislikes and most critical one: do you stand a chance?

Second to this was background information. Where has this good for nothing Prof come from? How the hell did this guy ever work in the industry? This girl claims she was a college queen… did this bimbo even been there? The sources were scarce, which made speculations too easy. There were no means of a double check.

There was a recent discussion I had with two different people, both using movies as an example to gauge how much dependence on technology can endanger human race. My father saw a movie named “The Net” and was amazed that a smart hacker could destroy the existence of a person virtually by erasing all records in Government and Social registries. Another friend of mine was sharing the possibility of why nuclear weapons were still being feared when a situation as in “Die Hard 4” could hold the world at ransom based on the fact that some people hold all the keys.

As we all are getting wired to the Net and information of ours is no longer a part of a government file stacked under a million others, the access has become easy. Best part is you don’t need to be a wiz to get information any more. Thanks to social networks, cross linkages to websites and search engines which can search meta tags and content, nothing is impossible.

I guess this all has changed with Internet searches becoming an integral part of our lives. The level of information available on the net soon started making internet searches more popular than skimming the index, glossary and appendix sections in a book. Though books will always be referred for the fact that we always seem to have more faith in what’s on paper.

But the degree of personal information that became available on the net is simply amazing. I would say till somewhere close to 2004-05, social media was still finding its feet in the water. But for people who adapted to this new revolution initially, used it as if it was a reflection of their own self in the virtual world. It was not until some misuse of the information started that privacy settings came into existence.

Even then, we today have amazing level of information at our fingertips. I remember till two years ago, while going for a meeting, we always made a point to as a few contacts about the person we were out to meet. Recently, prior to going for a meeting, I just hit a search for the person and his organization. I had information about his previous 3 employers, the time he spent there, college, schooling all in hand before I even saw his face. What it gave me was a hundred things to talk about on topics I knew the person had a background in and presenting me in a way that made an easy connect with his background.

I thereby want to just sum it up saying that ‘I don’t know’ is a lame excuse. Information today is as plenty as fish in the ocean- all you need to know is the right place and the right way to trap it in the net.