Google, Wikipedia and Facebook

If there are three sites which are perhaps as crucial to my existence as a grad student as air, water and food they would be Google, Wikipedia and Facebook.

Therefore, today was an unusual Islamic fast for me. Without any water or food.

Wikipedia has been blocked by Wikipedia Foundation in order to protest SOPA. And as it claims, if SOPA passes through and wiki goes down, it might have hard consequences for me.

Facebook stands blocked due to Institute's own helplessness against the tide of rising number of users. Apparently Facebook used to consume a lot of bandwidth. And since it was definitely not being used up for any academically productive purposes, the institute in all its fine wisdom decided to block it so as to free up the clogged network. This is its own version of HOV lanes concept or peak time user charges for congested areas.

In fact the revered DoSA (acronym for Dean of Student Affairs, which always reminds me of a ubiquitous south Indian gourmet delicacy) expressed his helplessness in having had to take such an extreme step. And he gave the congested highway analogy so that the perspicacious, knowledgeable and enlightened Times of India will not have to tax its already overburdened and about to collapse neural networks.

Facebook has been beyond bounds for me for last one week. Seems like an eternity. I have been fasting like a Jain Monk....surviving only on water and air for last one week. I missed a couple of birthdays and other gossip. I also have pictures collecting up on my digicam ready to be dumped into Facebook's cloud (or wherever it bothers to store them up). It was during one such attempt to google a method to access Facebook safely (without letting my password to be hacked by a random site) that I saw a news item and was startled by it.

The all high and mighty, respected and glorious, Government of India has been contemplating action against Google (as well as Facebook) for having some objectionable content on its various sites. Now, I am totally opting out of the debate whether the said content is objectionable or not. That would make up for another interesting post later on. But one prospect mortifies me.

I have somehow survived a day without water and food... Wikipedia and Facebook actually. What if Google is shut down in India? What will I do? What will happen to my masters project? How long will I survive...an hour or more? What after that?

I think I will be forced to breathe knowledge and information from the stuffy, smelly, dusty, dingy, cluttered carrels in the Library. If the noisy repair and construction work is not going on...I will also have to explore other sources of artificial supply like the British Council Library.

But what about my mails...my B-School SOPs and other submissions....all the documents stored up on Google Documents? How would I use all those sites where I use my google ID as the primary username? And given the pace at which Indian judiciary walks on judgements, if government passes any ordinance against google, it will be decades before SC will annul that order.

So here I am frantically searching and storing up links that I would need before Google dies out.

I remember few years ago an Indian environmentalist group used to run ads, which had a middle aged male preparing for the coming environmental apocalypse by storing up candles, having his boat ready and other things. I think if I keep getting news like this I may get that paranoid.

Just kidding...