Essays

Sitting in our drawing rooms, one can view what is happening across the world even in the farthest of the countries. Be it the Prince Williams' wedding in 2011 or ball by ball updates of cricket match happening anywhere on the globe-today one carries the world with him/her. A few years back, one needed to be glued to the TV to get the latest updates, as TV was the prime source of information. Today the entire world is at our fingertips. Web cam, 3-G internet at unbelievably high speed, video calling, photographs, videos, recordings, music, and payment of bills—everything is assimilated in a small gadget called mobile. Moreover, with telecom companies slashing their rates every other day, access to technology is no more the domain of a few elites.

Gone are the days when even a STD call to Ludhiana would cost around $50 a minute. Now video calls even to London are for free through facilities like Skype, Gmail chat and yahoo messenger on internet. Telecom companies today offer STD call rates at inexorably cheap rate of 1 p/sec. Moreover, calling only to hear voice is out of date today as video-calling facilitates face to face direct conversation with the person.

My father tells me that it took him months and months, in fact years to get a landline phone connection, that too after coaxing a pot-bellied, half-bald sarkari babu who wanted nothing less than a god-like treatment. This is hard for me to digest as today telecom companies vie to offer customers mobile connection for free.

The world today has become tightly linked. Even in the domain of education, the distinction between distance learning and studying on campus is becoming increasingly artificial. Today, large number of students are availing the facility of online exams, online libraries, e-journals and e-books. As technology gives distance learners easier access to their institutions, universities globally are helping campus-based students to study on the move. Top class accredited universities like Capella university, Walden university, Leicester university and many more, offer online degrees to students to facilitate the learning process.

Extraordinary networking advancements are creating a new information era. Today businesses run online and companies of all kinds are making use of technology to reach new markets, create unique goods, manage inventory with exacting precision, and deliver products and services much more efficiently. Today, the entire world is a market for corporates, who are keen to capitalize on the opportunities galore.

Ironically, shrinking world also refers to the deplorable state of the Mother Earth. Dm- to global warming and increasing pollution, rivers and other water bodies throughout the world are shrinking. According to researchers, three Himalayan glaciers have been shrinking over the last 40 years due to global warming and two of them, located in humid regions and on lower altitudes in central and east Nepal, may disappear in time to come. Other major bodies in the world are also fast disappearing; the Aral Sea in Central Asia, once the world's fourth-largest water body, has today shrunk by 90 percent and is reduced to sandy wasteland since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in n Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region, This shrunken sea has also ruined with it the once-robust fishing economy. These are just few of the examples that highlight the dangers of the shrinking world. Therefore, it is important to prevent pollution and degradation of our water bodies to restore the balance of ecosystem on our beautiful earth.