Is the dot and @ icon on your pc fading ?

When the world of cyberspace and emailing hit Sri Lanka, having your own unique email id was considered somewhat important in the workplace. I remember having one common email id and everyone’s mail arriving in the mailbox that was sorted out for reply. In one of my workplaces, (despite the fact that I was replying on behalf of many others to cover up for their language deficiency or sometimes laziness) I didn’t have my own unique email id. The day I was given an email id with my name followed by the symbol @ something followed by dot com made me feel a little important. As I recall those simple things that gave me a boost it makes me wonder how I ended up having a gamut of web related applications to deal with. I was receiving my own mail now and was able to respond from my unique id. Not stopping at that I also registered in hotmail, yahoo and finally gmail. My work involved a lot of writing and on a personal front, I also had to stay in touch with my cousins, relatives, friends who had crossed the shores of Sri Lanka. I now had to check several accounts but to me that didn’t matter, I guess a part of me was taken up with the world of electronic communication. I was enjoying this, there was no need to wait for the postman, nor have to deal with nail biting moments when the Sri Lanka Postal Service decides to wind up working and call it a day of ‘rights defending’ I was taken up with replies received from distant lands claimed to be a couple of hours behind or ahead us. No more 7-10 day replies, This was live and happening and came within a couple of minutes, hours not exceeding a day. Then came, the trend of chatting, I tried that as well but soon realized that was a huge disturbing element to my concentration in producing quality work. Chatting was not for me although was nice just once in a while with doors opened to make friends, exchanging views and ideas. I find it amazing in different times how technology can create a silent tsunami with your life. While once upon a time hotmail and yahoo was in, it is now facebook, myspace, zorpia, linkedin and many many more that are in the limelight. There’s B2B trade portals that are really a thing with the commercial business’s while the scribes are after google earth and other news sites accessible to everybody. There’s no need to walk into a library and browse encyclopedias for information, A simple key word, hit enter on Wikipedia can provide you the information in seconds while Wapaedia can replace the service on your WAP enabled phone. When the skype craze hit the workdesks, everybody went berserk at the thought of being able to talk to their friends and family across the globe with merely a headphone and neat piece of software installed in a pc. Yes, I signed with skype as well, but not really have had the time to actually use it much. You Tube brings out the movie making skills in you while flickr is generous in letting you maintain a digital photo store house in cyberspace. Who can forget blogging when millions simply maintain their journals online with random thoughts and photos are accessible to anyone. A simple dot before the com surely revolutionized the trends in communicating and gave birth to ‘infotainment’ the new cliché to creep into corporate jargon. I write with ease knowing I can look upto askoxford.com for help in any definition or reaching out to Wikipedia for extra information and multi tasking between responding mails that arrive now and then in my mail box while John Lennon and Paul Mc Cartney is sending energetic music waves of “Here comes the sun” to my ears. I am looking forward to more changes in communicating, I’ll probably get that one into my clutter as well. Just now, I received an electronic invitation to open up a web album in picaso, I already have flickr, Do I need more clutter ? I guess I will receive several hundreds like these as and when more developments take place, until them I’ll stop by wishing more power to