Is life all about 'convergence'?

So we're up at the cafeteria having some really insipid food. Insipid because that's how all cafeteria food is ordained to be at any company in this the garden city. It could be called 'Rasganga' (river of juice literally speaking, or river of flavours for a slightly evolved interpretation), Grandmother's Recipes (they were obviously moth-eaten and full of bacteria, since they ended up giving my colleague food poisoning) or whatever, the fact is it 'sucks'!!! Big time!

But this is not about the food being served at cafeterias that feed the obscenely paid IT professionals in this garden city landscape. Maybe that's the reason for high attrition and low employee engagement. When the high point of one's working day is lunch or tea or a 'coffee break' and if the hapless, harrowed, highly-paid IT nerd living from one EMI to another is faced with the prospect of a 'tadka dal' where he can't smell the tadka, then I guess, it's the end of civilisation as we know it.

So coming back to the lunch. 3 women (including yours truly) and one man sitting in an uninteresting cafeteria, eating insipid, uninteresting lunch. The man is an IT geek turned management geek - meaning from coding he's decided he'll try and strategise for other geeks on what to code - while the 3 women are into data analysis, corporate communications and business development. Anyway, the conversation revolves around 'convergence'. And I'm scared.

It seems, that nothing is sacred, sacrosanct or private anymore. Don't ask me how, don't ask me what, all I know is Google probably knows more about the moles on my back, to the underwear I wear, to the number of times I shat, to the food I eat, to my dreams, to the last penny in my non-existing savings account, to the number of times I masturbate or not as the case may be, to every existing detail of a date I've had and more. It would basically know more about me, than me. It's scary, and it's causing me sleepless nights. It's worse than the fictional bestsellers about how the KGB or the CIA and Pentagon knew exactly everything about anyone. It's horrid.

And what's worse is that we seem to be wanting it, willing it that way. Our phones are no longer phones. They're music systems. Our music systems are no longer called that. They're called ipods or iphones through which you can also make calls. Ha! Or send an email. Or locate a house in a neighbourhood through some GPRS fancy system thanks to Google Earth or whatever technology crap that everyone is spouting. I mean why is a phone a PDA? a music system? diary? a phone book?a recorder? a camera? a map? a guide / instructor all converging into one complicated morass of impersonal, nasal, 'You have reached the voice mail of 92110094982100. It is away at the moment, but you can leave a message after this loud beep that is actually designed to blow your mind, but in the interest of the highly confidential message of it's bank account number VRF%#D4Ever000 , kindly record after this tone' robotic , computer thinggamajigs? I don't understand it. I don't want to understand it. I am scared.
In this impassioned but lonely world, where we're all trying, so desperately to create bonds, to connect, to feel as if we belong, we're managing to successfully accomplish the exact opposite aren't we?

I shamelessly admit to belong to ye olde school. It's with very great difficulty I decided to have a cell phone just about 3 years ago. I can manage to operate my ubiquitous Word and Excel and my desktop without much ado. I do like technology to an extent and the convenience of tele checking or blocking my airplane seats many days before I even board the flight is something out of MI 25. Yes, of course there are advantages and conveniences and pros and cons. But look at the way the world is going. Look at what all those geeks are doing to our world in the name of progress, evolution, mankind! Shudder shudder! Damned the pros and cons, the world is a morass of spaced out aliens. We don't need to look to Mars for alien life. It's right here.

I want my world to be simple, uncomplicated, and connected. Yes, not in the 128 kbps (or is it mbps) way, but connected. I want to feel someone's handshake when I say hello and not an icon with a :) saying 'Hi!' in a chat box. I don't really want to do everything including ordering my refrigerator to order food or control my room temperature before I come in, all in the name of convenience. I mean, hell, what's all this for?

I've never understood the need to be so 'wired' anyways. When they show the CXO types or the black suit executives in ads, or movies or television serials, why do they show them busy all the time? Why is everyone hell bent on telling anyone who is willing to listen or believe that it is important not to waste a minute, sorry nano second of your time in seeing the clouds out of your airplane window? Will the world really stop if we stand to stop and stare? And then in the name of simplifying matters, things are so complicated, that if you need to basically lodge a complaint about your credit card, it would take you well nigh 10 minutes to get through those nasal, robotic, pre-recorded 'Hiii! Welcome to Citibank' messages, click through some four numbers, remember some PIN, QPIN, IPIN, GodknowswhatPIN, and then wait inexplicably for an interminable amount of time, to hear 'sorry that was an invalid code' and go nuts by that time, what's the point? Why are we doing this to ourselves? If we're trying to simplify things and give ourselves time, harping all the time that there is no time, what are we supposed to be doing with all the free time? And where is this free time anyway? We're too busy deciphering the unlock key on our latest gizmo which is this iphone, no phone, sorry music system, oh forget it.

Anyway, the point is I hate it. I can't understand this need. I'm not sure where we're all headed. besides the grave of course. But while I ponder about this rapidly changing world, I'll take a break and converge at the blog for more blog bytes.

While you go figure too.