Virtual Communication

James Khangenbam *

Virtual communication has brought us closer to our friends – school mates, college mates; post graduate friends, office colleagues, relatives, elders, guardians, junior and many more.

Our classroom is extended, we have a bigger classroom. Neither the class captain will report nor make a list of who is talking. But everyone notices any conversation in the group chat. Some may be interested in joining the chat while some may not but everyone seems to read the text messages.

I came across few of my friends who on an experimental basis did social media fasting for a month or two. I also join them and experienced the difference. When I opened my wattsapp application after about a month, I notice thousands of unread messages in several group messages.

I realized in about a month, the total number of messages, I usually would have read before fasting much be running into thousands of sentences. Equivalent to number of sentences in a novel or few magazines.

Technology is enabling faster and efficient communication. We became more communicating human than a century back. We see, read and hear so many things on a single day.

How many audio-visual stories a kid might have exposed to on a single day? Are they becoming smarter? How are they becoming smart? What is the parameter?

Of course, a cartoon story has a beginning, middle and end, a puzzle or a problem gets solve in a single story. And the kids are exposed to it enabling to acquire problem tackling skills virtually. However realistic examples super cede virtual mode of knowledge as situations differ in real life. An excessive exposure to mobile phone and Television is being prohibited by parents globally.

I was studying journalism at New Delhi, when Idea mobile network offered unlimited free text sms for the first time in India. We were fed up of typing messages on the mobile handset and the conversation was also becoming very casual.

A friend of mine started a meaningful conversation by starting vocabulary game – texting a word and the recipient has to look up a dictionary and type the meaning of the word. With meaningful conversation the frequencies of text message slowed down. Communication has the characteristic of excelling in balance mode.

Internet data is a currency now. Are you wasting the data or is the data wasting you remains a tricky question, evolution of communication is asking every individual.

A technology that fits in a palm is ever ready to serve the human. At the time of epidemic like Corono, virtual communication became the safest mode of human communication.

Communication through any medium at the time of need serves the best. What is communication and what is being social? If the two blends, it calls for a perfection.