mark zuckerberg is my god, facebook is my religion!

The signpost read Mountain View, California. Nestled in the breezy environment of the Charleston Park, the five hundred thousand square feet compound was the Promised Land for any software techie. To the dim-witted postman, it was 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway. To the rest of the world, it was Googleplex. With all esteem and veneration, the Googleplex! Or the worldwide headquarters of the Google Corporation! And ruling it was technology czar Larry Page.

Tonight, he was a proud man. His Google Earth research team had improvised the existing software such that users could now view the planet as it had been 24 hours before…A MERE 24 HOURS PREVIOUSLY. A perfectionist by birth, Larry was determined to ensure that this application turned out flawless. He typed his first query “Vatican City” and two seconds later, he could hear the bells outside St.Peter’s Square clanging twelve. Great! His second request took him to the Ashes at the Lord’s. Fantastic!

To triple-ensure the infallibility of the software, he keyed in his last and final query “Maryland Sports Centre” and two seconds later, the image beamed on Larry’ desk. Larry’ brows furrowed. His smile creased. He zoomed into the image and the frustration persisted. He had expected to see youngsters cycling; playing baseball, working out and so on but what stared at him was empty courts, rusty sports equipment and a few solitary trees. This set Larry thinking. Was it a technical glitch? Possible. Or did it convey something more serious? Are playgrounds becoming more and more desolate by the day? Are kids no longer playing?

Brussels, New Delhi, Jakarta…the playfields in these cities wore the same deserted look. It confirmed Larry’s hunch that this situation went beyond a common software glitch. Children were indeed keeping off parks and race tracks. The software proved it beyond any doubt. But why?

Could it be studies? Feasible…but 24*7 marathon studying would drive the most sincere and fanatical of students crazy! Parental coercion? One kid, yes, ten, possible, hundreds, might be…but thousands across the world? Preposterous!

Or was it simply that youngsters no longer cared for the dust, sweat and blood of the play areas? Has the progress and advancement of the modern era come to mean an age of lethargy, inactivity and indoor imprisonment? Have adventure, exploration, sports and games taken a backseat? Three Olympics down the line, will we ever have another Michael Phelps, another Nadal or Usain Bolt? Will we, ladies and gentlemen?

Orkut, Connect, Myspace, Friendfinder, this is how the world communicates today. With the world going digital, our lives have increasingly become computer-centred. Computers at home, computers at office, computers at school, life seems to have been redefined to running from one silicon box to another. The joys of love, the bloom of sunflowers, the frustrations of road-side traffic, are our kids missing them all? With the coming of the Internet, our games are hosted on online servers; our conversations communicated over Skype, our sleepovers on Yahoo chatrooms…all from the comfort of our bed. Ought we ignore the loving care and affection of our family and seek instead the pokes and testimonials of strangers? Must our gaiety be dictated by number of notifications we receive? Should our popularity be determined by the number of profile visits we have had? Have we started leading two lives…a physical one on Earth and a more fascinating demanding one online? Are we slowly sinking into this virtual quagmire which we have created? Are we?

No, no and no! Ladies and Gentlemen, the woeful stinking stories that we’ve heard till now is a classic example of the human mind’s ability to make a mountain out of a molehill. Stay off the net, lose out on its countless advantages, let’s go back to living in caves and living off trees…surely, the words of a dogmatic individual, bigoted, parochial and obstinate. Furthermore, it represents our inability to utilize the benefits offered by science and technology and our nagging predilection to blame everything around us for our failures.

Freidrich Schiller once opined “Time flies on restless pinions - constant never”. How very true! Amidst our fast-paced lives, rushing from one place to another, meeting one deadline after another, we rarely find the time to socialize or spend time with one’s family. The fact that we live in nuclear families scattered across the world does little to help us. Enter social networking! Emails, instant messaging, tweets, connect with the world anywhere anytime. All this and more, just with an email! And the icing on the cake…it can be done alongside homework, assignments, and school projects. Calculus and Classmates can be real compatible!

Cocktail parties, Saturday night sleepovers, beach holidays, Pottermania fan clubs…how many friendships can these forge? Ten, fifty, hundred? Log on to facebook, update your profile, reach out to people, you’ll be astounded by the number of people you meet. Shared passions, mutual friends, common interests…social networking exposes you to the lifestyles and cultures of hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. Cousins at Harvard, dads at Dubai, friends from New Zealand…social networking brings them all straight to your home, to your desk, to you simplifying the distance, strengthening your relations. Just as if we are with them, breathing the air, walking the road, living their lives…

Half our evenings and most of our nights are spent Orkutting and Facebooking. This virtual presence can serve as more than a mere distraction for students. With teachers joining sites such as Facebook, schooling can take to an all-new level. Educators can merge academics with technology and make education all the more worthwhile. Teachers can be more attentive to every student’s needs, attend to their queries faster, and the teacher-student barrier can be overcome. The Oracle ThinkQuest Initiative is an example of how social networking, contrary to popular opinion, can actually aid and enforce education.

“Gossip-machine! Rumor funnel! Needless distraction”…

Ladies and Gentlemen, these are some fancy titles social networking has earned for itself. True, social networking does offer a platform to discuss glitz, glamour and girls. However, that’s not all that there is! Online websites, if properly used, can make people aware, educate them, empower them. Green drives, global issues, health advisories, consumer rights…social networking has carried such thoughtful messages too. Twitter, for example, has changed the destiny of a nation. Not India, not China, not America, but a remote republic in Eastern Europe. Moldova. A nation where governmental autocracy combined with police atrocities threatened to bury the seed of democracy forever. It would have succeeded but for Twitter. Twitter organized the revolutionaries; it lent a voice to them, spread their tale far and wide, and brought international attention to the debacle in Moldova. Thus, a mere website turned out to be the unifying force behind millions exposing barbarism and bringing in democracy. Does social networking still deserve the cheap tags we have coined for it?

What would you do if you wanted to reach out to hundreds of millions of people across the world overnight? Despatch postcards? Make phone calls? Front page advertisements on the Strait Times? Or simply go online? Knowledge is power. Information is the true liberator. In this information-hungry world, social networking sites remain a source of extensive information. From the NBA to the Indian Premier League, everyone remains convinced of the reach of social networking. Barack Obama’s election campaign, NUS’s undergraduate admissions, PETA’s animal welfare plans, social networking is the solution! Employers searching for prospective employees, girls looking for guys, imagine all this and more minus social networking…Impossible!

Opportunities don’t just walk one’s way. They are created. Social networking offers its users a platform to exhibit their talents. Facebook and Friendster combined have discovered more poets in this world than all English lecturers put together. In online portals, the stage is set, the mikes switched on, the audience ready…all that is required is you. Show this world what you can do and you’ll be stunned by the heights it can take you!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we live in an age where it isn’t just what we know that matters. As a matter of fact, who we know, who knows us are frankly more important. And social networking sites do exactly that! They create a new world around you. A world of countless opportunities, a world of infinite friends, a world of limitless knowledge, and a world beyond cultural and national divides! Let not the fears of couch potato-ism deny social networking its true worth! Let us welcome the opportunities of the 21st century with a broader mind!

Mark Zuckerberg is our God, and Facebook indeed our religion!