The I Word

Recently, in a newspaper, I came across a cartoon strip in which there was an exchange of views between a NextGen youth and his quite old fashioned father. The lad was observing that, in the age of iPods and iPhones, the country’s national treasures should also be renamed. For instance, he says, Indian Gate should be called iGate! To this, the father reacted violently, saying that his son had no respect or knowledge of his and his country’s history and ancestry. The lad retorted that he did know his history very well, indeed. For, he knew of a past Prime Minister who went by the name of iGandhi. The strip ended with that, but I can well imagine what the next frame would have been.

In the present day life, the word ‘I’ has become synonymous with ‘Power’. It is not any more a reference to being conceited. In the ‘I, Me, Mine’ sequence, ‘I’ is merely the ‘Intelligent’ factor. Intelligent – that’s Me and what’s Mine, including the iPod and iPhone!

When two youngsters of the opposite sex make eye contact, it is actually indulging in that good ole fashioned eye-to-eye ‘fluttering-eyelashes’ contact. For, they could actually be oceans apart, chatting on Skype or scrapping on Facebook. The buzzword here is ‘iContact’ and that’s where the connection is always happening – on Internet, with a stress on ‘I’.

For the youth of today, the word ‘static’ doesn’t exist in his vocabulary, other than in n the context of electricity. His world is one of constantly evolving nature, dynamic and improvising. His world is in his hands – in his PDA, his tablet notebook, his Blackberry, his iPhone – all of them connected to a hundred, nay, a thousand similar users through the powerful Internet. Text messaging is second nature to him.

The NextGen youth struts his ‘I’ at everything and everybody that crosses his path – both physically and virtually. His ‘Itinerary’ for the day largely comprises of how many iTunes he can download, how many messages he can send and receive and how many friends he can make over the chat lines.

To help him along in his quest for being permanently mobile (not of the phone variety, here), even the auto industry has catered to his needs. While Hyundai already has the hugely popular i10 car on the roads, in a recent development, bus maker Ashok Leyland has come up with the iBus concept with every comfort of a well-equipped work spot.

Now, with all these advancements, will our good ole planet be eventually renamed iEarth?

Nikhil Raghavan / Precious Features Syndicate