Computer Mania

Literally going crazy spending too much time on the computer. I had left the computer for good about a year back and now I'm addicted to it again.

It's really a sad way to spend your day, sitting and staring at a screen. Your world confined to just 15 inches of an LCD screen.

In my hostel too I see people doing the same thing... throwing away their life for a dumb machine. Trying to get better download speeds for some stupid movie they're leaching off some FTP server. Why do these guys whore their machines for such dumbass leaches anyways? Or else if they've got a new comp they're trying to install Linux... for god knows what reason. They're never gonna boot into it, the next time they run out of space for movies, songs or cool videos that partition will be the first on to go.

I think computers will eventually end up doing more harm to our society than good. In IITs it's already begun I think. Chatting with the guy next to your room on a messenger instead of simply going up to him and saying a Hi! Simpy discussig stuff on the newsgroups, belting out theories and arguments by the dozen, and not even turning up when General Body Meeting are called to discuss issues. Why? Cuz that would mean leaving your precious computer and the movie or your CS game for a couple of hours and going out of the room.

And computer games, they're the most fucking addictive thing I've ever seen. AOE, CS, Warcraft, Civilization, Quake... folks spend the whole night fragging each other in virtual maps or building empires. What they dont realize is it's their life, this precious student life that they're wasting.

There's a flipside to this though. Getting addicted to a particular activity related to computers can introduce you to a whole new community. For example, gamers have their own community. By playing these multiplayer games on the LAN you become "pally" with a whole new set of people. But I guess that's the problem. After some time you end up having a social circle which consists mostly of those people. Cuz most of the time you're stuck to your comp screen and cut off from your room mate or the rest of your wing.

And then there's this bunch of downloaders. Who will go to any limits to download the latest "cool stuff" off the net or any FTP server on the LAN. And I guess they're online 24/7 on iitk.sharing.vidoes or iitk.sharing.music or whatever.

It's really sad to see people buy comps so that they can "learn" - and all they learn is how to install Windows for the n-th time. How to download and install stuff and how to use their comps as home theaters.

I guess I'm really not practising what I'm preaching right now. These days I'm really stuck on to blogging. It's fucking addictive. But I have yet to see a downside of this addiction. I blog for only about 30 mins a day, but I spend hours reading others' blogs. But I guess that's not much to do with computers as it's got to do with reading. And I guess reading is a good habit to cultivate - atleast that's what my mother told me :-)

Later.