The Pakistani Spectator

If something is really killer, you are bound to see plenty of chitchat going on about it really fast, in numerous ways at numerous forums. You will find that people would be discussin it in the mailing lists, in the forums or as they were called bulletin boards, or in the blog posts or blog comments or in the social networks, or in the instant messaging, or in the podcasts.That’s this brave new world, where the world is the size of my screen now. If you watch television you really have a good understanding that the entire world fits on your screen. The word of mouth network is efficient, messages can go from friend to friend to friend in a matter of minutes. But with television it is only efficient. It’s circle is limited and its only fast.

With World Wide Web, the new media enables the travelling of information at the speed of light. The entire world still fits on your screen, but now you have more control and you can contribute more easily and freely. It’s not merely efficent, its hyper efficient. You can not only have plethora of choices available, but you can air your own opinion, and you can link to the the information you find pertinent. The reach of this new media is global and beyond and it’s not just fast; its lightning fast and more.

Especially with technologies like Twitter and Facebook and Jaiku and you can spread news around the world very quickly just on these little micro-blogging platforms. For example, nowadays everything seems to swirl around Facebook. Facebook is remarkable for sure. It’s has become a viral platform for the people. MySpace is still big, but Facebook is more dynamic and vibrant and its growng. In just two weeks of its start, it registered six million users.

The world is speeding now more than ever. Things are changing and ideas are transforming. But in this race, where we stand in Pakistan. We are quick to create accounts in such ideas after reading them on the net. Now many of us have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, MySpace, Squidoo and anywhere else on the web, but are we utilizing them for our own and for our country’s benefit?