08 Mar 2009 |
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Enslaved By Technology By Reuben Abati THERE is an emergent generation of Nigerians that is enslaved by technology. It is an interesting form of colonialism in which the colonized willingly submits himself or herself to the imperialist. I see the evidence daily each time I open my e-mail box or go to the internet. It is called the new media, this superior reign of all forms of electronic gadgets which has redefined the way we live and our notions of freedom, rights and citizenship. I had once tried to reflect on the subject in two previous pieces, one in which I wondered about how we ever managed to live without the GSM cell phone, which now dominates our lives, and two, another piece in which I protested about the totalitarian nature of the cell phone, and how it could be such a menacing tool of social terror. But in those two pieces, I probably underestimated the extent of the new media and its uses and abuses. Up till about ten years ago, the new media was a relatively new thing in Nigeria, but today it is the vogue. Nigerians love toys and novelties and it is amazing to see how readily they have embraced the resources of the electronic age, despite the challenges of underdevelopment that they deal with daily. Go around Nigeria, nearly everyone who can push a button has a cell phone. And virtually every young person, if I may so state, has access to the internet, and its various resources: search engines, discussion groups, relationship sites and so on. That this is so in a country with epileptic power supply is paradoxical. I believe that the attraction lies in the convenience and other advantages such as political participation, interactivity and technological citizenship. With new media, spatial and time boundaries have suddenly shrunk. With a cell phone in your hands, anyone can reach you at any time. Your phone rings non-stop the whole day, sometimes the calls are from strangers who tell you that they got your number from the friend of a friend. And if you do not pick up the phone, they send you a text telling you who they are and why you must send them a text or return their call. Some persons even go about with what is called Blackberry, which allows them to browse the internet on the go and send electronic mails from their cell phones. Even persons who do not have Blackberry can access the internet and send mails from their cell phones. In this age of convergence, it is also possible to receive phone calls on your car's dashboard while driving, or through the computer. A typically modernist person possesses in addition to this, i-pod, palm tops and all kinds of gadgets that enable him or her to intrude into other people's lives at the speed of light. Speed, that is one advantage of the new technology and it is one reason why it is such a huge colonizing tool of the age. The other reason is the elimination of the fact of isolation in people's lives. The internet is particularly notorious in this regard. Through chatrooms, blogosphere, discussion forums, yahoo messenger and the likes, persons enter into virtual relationships. They make friends with persons they may never see, and share an intimacy that negates the frustrations in their lives. Many of the internet sites also allow the grace of anonymity, with people living out their fantasies and saying things that they will not normally say under their real names. This is not a Nigerian thing, the world wide web is a global property just as new technology is an aspect of the cultures of democracy and globalisation, and the information revolution. But like all things, Nigerians are abusing the new technology. I am not talking about the more familiar cases of Nigerians hijacking people's e-mails, or using the internet to commit crime, (we are quickly apppropriating these as means of national re-branding), rather I am more concerned about the character of the Nigerian user of the new media, the psychological crisis that I see, the evidence of damaged, troubled lives, of frustrations hidden under the cloak of activism, of inner spiritual crises passed off as objectivity, and the addiction with the internet as if it were a kind of hard drug, and the increasing population of internet upstarts in a classless digitalised sphere. There is a new disease in town, and it is located in how increasingly Nigerians abuse new media. Drug abuse is a bad thing for society. It requires therapy, rehabilitation, and possibly enlightenment. You must be familiar with the cases of persons who make phone calls while driving, and text message addicts who won't allow other persons to rest; I am concerned about such addicts. Each day I open my e-mail box, I am inundated with at least over 300 messages from all kinds of unsolicited sources. I am required by persons that I do not know, and sites that I have not subscribed to, to read all kinds of comments from all kinds of people on just about any subject under the sun, written from every part of the globe. It is not surprising to see why the internet is hailed for promoting the freddom of information, it accommodates everything including stupid speech. There are no standards, so any idiot can post his frustrations online and inflict it on others across the world. I try to pay attention to the names or the pseudonyms used by the contributors, and noting the prolific output of some of these characters, I wonder whether they have any serious job at all. Many of them are in virtually every cyber forum, with such spatial mobility and contagious speed that raises questions about their motives. There are at least two Professors whose comments show up in my mail box everyday, the energy that the duo devote to ethnic mudslinging, and commentaries on silly subjects that do not shed light on anything could have been better deployed to academic research. So prolific, so energetic are they, I wonder if their employers are paying close attention to their use of time. Many employers, realising how much time their employees spend on chat rooms and discussion groups on the internet have had to restrict the use of the internet during office hours. The interactive nature of the internet makes all things possible including electronic sex. I am told that there are Nigerian sites where one can pick up a girlfriend, set up a date or arrange an affair online. A fellow once introduced his new girlfriend to me; the moment the lady turned her back, he whispered: "I got her through the internet." She soon became in subsequent conversations: "The internet babe." On the internet, anyone can say anything, every commentator is a small god, including one lady whose copy suddenly showed up in my mail box, and what was she griping about? How Nigerian men always doze off after a short round of sex! Everyday, there is so much ethnic name calling, marked by an absolute lack of civility. People call each other names, they abuse each other's parents, they malign anyone that crosses their path: they say things they can never own up to in the presence of their priest or their children, or in a court of law, idiots, blackmailers, eavesdroppers, victims of loveless relationships, psychopaths, hyperbolists, mischief-makers, upstarts... the internet allows them all. Most of the defamatory stuff that is peddled on the internet is enough to put many of their authors in jail, but people are protected by the putative nature of the legal framework on cybercrime and the practical difficulties and cost of litigation in an inter-jurisdictional context. Like many Nigerians whose e-mail address falls into wrong hands, I receive all of these mails daily in spite of myself. I have tried to block some of the addresses, to stop the uncivil terrorists from intruding into my privacy. But it never seems to work. I guess part of the freedom that some Nigerians think the internet offers them is the right to disturb other people, and to insist on doing so. Psychologists would have a lot to chew and discover were they to attempt a study and analysis of Nigerian attitudes on the internet. Ocassionally, however, I get the well-meaning invitations: someone asking me to join Face Book, or Jhoos, or a site where I can possibly track and locate long lost friends, or an alma mater chat room. While I appreciate the good intentions of the authors of such mails, I am often reluctant to accept any such invitation that could further expose me to a lorry load of chain mail or write ups by closet nymphomaniacs. The more annoying ones are those mails inviting me to buy a new version of Viagra or an energy drink or to take a trip to an exotic resort. Yahoo messenger? That's another pest. Oftentimes, the conversations never seem to end. And just as you are putting an end to one and saying your goodbyes, someone else shows up on the screen telling you he or she is just saying hello. If you take the bait, that hello could stretch into one hour of internet talk. Okay, I can hide behind a Firewall, but some guys are so tech-smart, they'd fish you out: "I can see you, are you there?" The internet may be compensating for the missing links in many people's lives, but perhaps we are all guilty as the temptation to become addicted is easy. Employers of labour in the future may have to ask such questions as: how many hours on the average do you spend on the internet per day? What is your favourite activity on the internet? Which are your favourite sites? An internet addict on the pay roll in a non-internet addicted organisation, could be a liability, an internet crook within the organisation is worse. It won't be long before medical doctors begin to use time spent on the internet for purposes of diagnosis. Technological citizenship or even of societies is about rights and obligations. Freedom exercised without responsibility is hollow. Freedom comes with a number of preconditions. We all have a responsibility to be decent, civil, and disciplined even as we enjoy the immense resources of the world wide web. The internet must not become a hard drug, nor must it end up obstructing the cultural logic of human relations. The administrators of the various sites must engage in rules-based intervention, and exercise more qualitative judgements. Allowing every subject to degenerate into tribal warfare, blackmail and name-calling defeats the purpose of enlightened discourse. Governing the cybernetic space has clear implications. The failure to do so responsibly strengthens the case for regulation in the areas of content, scope, ownership, taxation, standards and rights. In the end, we are free to make choices. When I open my mail box every morning, I go straight to the delete button and begin to delete all repetitive and meaningless stuff taking up space. I read a few. And I move on. As for yahoo messenger, I removed that long ago. There are only 24 hours in a day, and my work requires the kind of solitude that the new technology makes impossible.
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