Nicisms

I don’t. I feel connected, empowered and engaged.

A common misconception for people who don’t use the Internet as a matter of course is that it is alienating. I know people in my life who don’t use or know what Google is. These people must surely feel as if the Internet will alienate them if they make us of it “too much”.

I feel the opposite these days. After three long years of full integration with Internet and its tools as a resource and part of my life I am happy to report that I feel alive when I use “cyberspace”.

What kind of a word is that anyways? Cyberspace? Who coined that term?

This is what Wikipedia has to say:

Origins of the term

The word “cyberspace” (from cybernetics and space) was coined by science fiction novelist and seminal cyberpunk author William Gibson in his 1982 story “Burning Chrome” and popularized by his 1984 novel Neuromancer.[1] The portion of Neuromancer cited in this respect is usually the following:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding, (69).

Gibson later commented on the origin of the term in the 1996 documentary No Maps for These Territories:

All I knew about the word “cyberspace” when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.

“A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions” – that is definitely not the Internet that I make use of. I am involved in a real world that assumes the parameters of what is socially accepted as the “real world”. In fact, I find it hard to differentiate between waking up, driving to work, sitting at my desk and writing a story and waking up, switching on my Mac and writing a blog post. There is inherently no difference and thus I do not feel isolated.

Sure I do both of the above, work at a desk and blog, but the two are both a part of my real existence.

The Internet is not filled with fake relationships and sexual predators posing as young men to get in to bed with a young girl. Yes, there are those cases, but that is not what the Internet is anymore. The Internet is more, is everything and nothing to some.

As you can see, I don’t feel isolated or alienated but thrilled and revived by the Internet. Do you feel alienated?

I am really interested in what people do online. Not all the time, not everytime but specifically in the morning when you open up your browser for the first time.

I head straight for my RSS feeds on Google Reader, then hop over to Gmail then check SA Rocks and this blog and then move on to Muti, Afrigator and Amatomu. Thereafter I pretty much do whatever comes my way.

Facebook is the absolute last thing that I think to do online. Sometimes I don’t even login in to Facebook till after lunch or in the evening.

After my post on the licensing department early on Friday morning I have something to report: There is a gap in the market right there. Why is this system not being effectively improved? I am not fully aware of a system upgrade or improvement and I am sure there are many business bumps to overcome before being granted a government contract, but there is a definite need for the licensing department to go online. This sort of development would streamline the process. I understand that a large, large percentage of people in the country do not have access to internet, but why not set up the system and slowly integrate it nationwide?

If one was to create a mechanism that would allow people to visit an internet cafe and renew their license surely there exist clear benefits? Such as increasing the need for internet cafes and creating jobs for this to happen? Thus streamlining the queuing process and spreading it out. Instead of having a massive queue at four licensing departments you spread the same number of people through 20 or 30 internet cafe’s with 10 computers. The turnaround time is incredible. Instead of two people servicing the needs of 10 000 (just a random number), you would have 300 computers serving the same needs. The maths is simple.

There is already a system for paying traffic fines online, lets help move the system forward faster. I am not saying that one person, one company or one group takes on the entire nation, not at all, but what if one group started the initiative here in Jo’burg? Then over time, a few years, this system was implemented throughout the country? Surely this would improve satisfaction of clients (the citizens of South Africa) and in the process earn more money for Telkom, Eskom, governmental agents as well as entrepreneurs and small business via internet usage and customer influx?

[techtags: Telkom, Eskom, Internet, Licensing Department]

Yahoo released a list of the top 50 most influential people of the internet. Founders, Ceo’s and others stemming from companies and websites such as TechCrunch, Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, CreativeCommons, Skype, Wordpress, Amazon and Digg are present.

Check it out now.