This article was published last week or so in Livemint India: http://www.livemint.com/2008/03/20232056/IIT8217s-new-social-network.html.
It’s basically the writer’s perspective on how IITians at Bombay sit on their asses all day Net-surfing. Apparently, there’s a net access cut at specific periods, when they’re correspondingly forced to do social stuff. She writes on the positive effects of it.
My points:
- We all know the Net is an addiction. It’s like what TV was a generation ago. The logic of “Go out and get some fresh air. Go do something” applies here too. So, to talk like we’ve no idea about this, or that we’re a bunch of sodabuddi-wearing Quake-playing masturbaters is idiotic
- I would like to know precisely who the admin thinks it’s ”minding”. Because that’s what this is – a patriarchal attitude that assumes we are 18 year old breast-feeders or something. It’s one thing for them to not give us Net access for budget reasons. That’s fine. It’s also OK to block Literotica, Girls-gone-wild and so forth, I suppose. But to cut off access saying “It’ll distract you from studies” (like they did in Guwahati) or “You need to go out and hang out more or do something” is very very condescending. We’re aware of our choices. We choose to waste time or not do irresponsible. And institutes have no right to police that.
Bloody next thing you know, they’ll start saying “No short skirts and jeans on campus”, “Boys sit here girls there”, “Study hours on in the hostel” and God knows what else.
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who’s the author of this post ? My comments shall follow soon.
Me. I came across that article a few days back
if you think that is like parenting, you would be stunned to know my comany policies on the Internet. The first week of my office I went to the big boss and asked for internet connectivity. He asked me ‘what grade are you’? Then he said ‘no no, i cant give, your grade people usually misuse internet’.! 😀 I do the most internet related work in my whole department!
Our canteen stories are different, our tea/coffee stories plentiful. Bus stories are many. Bosses (old people) get everything whereas we dont. And that is in a company hailed as an ‘equal opportunity employer’.
Dude this is ground reality. We dont stand up for anything, same with the IITs. We are in India and we think things dont change. True, they dont. God knwos how we would manage Jaguar! Europeans cant tolerate our HR policies… sometimes I feel I should have been a lawyer, I’d teach them rules.
@2d,
Pal, your case the company is paying you to do stuff. So if you’re boss thinks time/money is going down the drain due to somebody surfing youtube or literotica he has to do something about it. I agree it’s silly to cut your access when you have net related work. But my point with the IITs is – they’re students there. Idiotic enough to cut net access saying it’s a distraction. But to cut it to encourage socialization and shit ?
Well I am on the fence about this. Yes, it sucks not to have the net connectivity for a certain time during the day. Most ppl are 18 or at least about to turn 18 by the time they hit IITs and so you are babysitting kids whom the Indian constitution recognizes as adults. It something like that management school sending its students “periodic report cards” home. But you have to give it to them for some reasons. Dont you think we did a little more interaction when the idiot at CC forgot to turn on the gateways to the hostel? Dont you think we had a lot more interaction with each other during our first year as opposed to the later years. I mean, we had a room full of us watching Bedazzled and what not during our first year in the TV room. I dont think anything like that ever happened in the later years, not at least during our time in Manas – we got split up in the later years. Yes we found our specific groups to hang out with etc in later years. But I tend to think while we learn so much about ourselves and the world during those 4 years, I tend to think we come out as pigs in some sense (and I dont base this purely on myself :D). May be that rule dint matter in Guwahati where we lived in the middle of no where with nothing much to do outside of campus after the 8.30 bus back. But at a place like Mumbai where you can exploits he advantages of the location – such a rule might just be a boon. Yeah it kind of restricts our freedom and add the fact that its more of baby sitting, but in some way it might help.
@Anand,
It’s the clockwork orange question – Is it better to force a person on the path of right or to let him/her choose, even if they pick what’s wrong ? I go for choice. And I think we all got our fair share of “Go out and play” from Mom’s and Dad’s growing up. No need to get the same from the Admin fucks
I think instead of laying out such stupid rules they should come up with some radical solutions like having 33% reservations for women in iit’s . I bet that would make up for any other stupid solution that they might come up with.
With due respects to all those commenting above, there is a level of thinking that has gone behind this logic for sure ….
I mean, the education we get is premium, lets face that. And we were among a selected few who were able to crack it. By employing such rules, the authorities just want to make sure that the opportunity that they provide us is not wasted. And there is nothin much to worry about, after all it isnt a complete ban in that case, I mean, students can still access the net if they want to.
What they precisely are aiming at is a healthier lifestyle. If sleeping at 4 in the morning and missing out classes on a regular basis is termed right, then so be it. However, with all the subsidised education that we were fed with (yes, and I guess an IIT spends twice the amount of what we pay every year on us) .. we ought to understand that we need to conform to certain standards.
Of course, its bullshit to parent us all the time, but there has been no mention out there that the students would then study instead of gamin all night. All that has been mentioned is that they need to take a break from their monitors, which I find is apt. We fooled around perhaps during our 4 years, and I bet if that we peek deep into ourselves (oh you morons … peek in the right sense !!!), we would know that we could have done better than what we did ….
And thanks Arun for this topic … lets hope that all those hyper enthusiastical starters … do get back to watch some meaningful ongoings here.
But dood, dont you think if we conform to certain standards then the end product(yourself) will be either a prototype or a factory product. Dont you think the creative potential of the student is dented to an extent in that case?
I am totally against the blocking of Literotica and girls gone wild. If we are adults and should not be parented and given opportunity to make our own choices, then they shouldn’t block those too. Its upto the students 😀 . I dont think that will affect the students much (all the batches before have also been exposed to it and look at how they are living now, so it shouldn’t matter).
All in all its just another brick in the Wall !!!
Some more fundaes after reading what people wrote above.
It is mostly because of the unchanging truth “Next generation always appears to be unfocussed and inefficient in everything to this generation” which leads to this irritating parenting/regulating/controlling attitude. The seniors in the IIT Alumni & campus and others intellectuals just endorse this without realizing this obvious truth. Some more Gyan flowing from seniors@iitb here.
http://www.samarthbharat.com/directoriitb.htm
So to me there is no point in this move at all. Its just an accident that one of the aged folks shouted little louder or Director must be pissed off by students or some silly random event like that and all together took shape of this decision. It is obvious that they just keep trying to regulate us and we will figure out a new way to go back to our own way of living just the way we strategize movie downloads or sleeping hours and other such stuff. These are noway related to socializing and getting to know eachother. People who come to IITs are more focussed and are clear about where they want to go in life Ok ! they atleast have a direction. So “No Point in acting like a Daddy” here.
We had LanBan or whatever they like to call in our campus too and to me all things went the same. we had same group of people who were interested in doing something passionately and they were always there. All this lanban brought them was few impassionate idiots around them to spoil their fun [:-)] Sorry to be rude.
This random event would have helped or not helped. But the Point is the system will always find a way to go back to its equilibrium. People’s socialising preferences won’t change much and they try to tweak environment always[ This is from personal experience].