This is a story about a pursuit. A pursuit of finding out why people could not be in touch with each other! Once upon a time there was a group of friends who played and ran around together and then one fine day they had to separate. They were going to live in different cities. With the enthusiasm and innocence of childhood all over them, they exchanged postal addresses and decided to stay in touch. One fine day, one of them jumped up and down with excitement. In his hand was an Inland Letter on which he would write a letter to his friend. There is now an exchange of posts between friends for some time.
But soon the postal exchange reduces. There is so much to write daily in those notebooks that will go under the scanning eyes of the teacher who will then spit out red marks all over the notebook. There does not seem to be much time it seems to go out and buy an Inland letter, write a letter down, go all the way to the post-office and then post it. With time, the postal exchange dies down. The friends never hear from each other and the world teaches them not to wonder why they haven’t heard from each other.
In another sequence, the government takes up a wonderful initiative. The telephones get cheaper. Buying a telephone has become affordable and gradually evolved into a necessity. Two friends now just need a couple of seconds during which they have to punch in some numbers and voila - they can now talk to each other! Oh, but how expensive is this way of communicating? So taxing on the pockets! No, let us speak with some time gap. With time, this “time gap” grows to being nearly “forever”. Another separation, another reason!
The world is changing and witnessing a revolution. A wonderful thing called the Internet is emerging. It first hits the business centers and then slowly reaches the homes. Soon, there are generous people who are providing E-mail services for free. Wow! The end of reasons is near and people can finally stay in touch or can they? The e-mail is free but the Internet is not. So, no wow! Soon, the semiconductor industry evolves to strikingly reduce the cost of the computer, the modem and the mobile phone. Both government and private ISPs (Internet Service Providers) slash down Internet charges making it affordable even to the lower middle class. What reason can there be now for people to not stay in touch with each other?
Each one has an email address, but wait, do we not have to type the whole address down in the “To” section and then the subject line and then type the email and then send it? Oh, who has time? Then comes another invention – the messengers, the MSN Messenger and the Yahoo Messenger and many others. All one has to do is click on the name and just type a message, only the message. No need to type the address and no need to type the subject. But oh, the IDs they are so complex. I don’t have time to figure out whose ID is whose! But you can type the names in the Address Book so that you don’t have to remember whose ID is whose! No, who has time and patience for all that?
And one fine day, the solution to this laziness is invented. Social networking sites! Orkut, Facebox and many others! But how do they work? Simple, there is a list, the name of the person and his photo appear in the list and all one has to do is click and leave a message for the other. In the meantime, one can speak across the globe for free. Audio and Video chatting and conferencing have become free and so has the little additional hardware needed to use them become cheap.
But still people are not in touch! A curious character spends hours pondering over this in the corner of his house. He is troubled by this question. He stands up as he has found his answer. But the discovery does not excite him and make him run around shouting “Eureka!” Contrary to this, it makes him lower his shoulders, hang his face down, sigh and say in a low voice, “There is no will left to communicate!”