A technology-challenged technology hub

A few days ago, I had to rummage through a stack of old documents to find a phone number for a university I used to attend – consolidating talk time, direction and re-direction to a million right and wrong people and sheer inefficiency, information that could have been retrieved in the dotcom world in less than thirty seconds (or to use computer lingo @ a million bps) took about an hour.

About 40% of Indians are in the Information Technology field and India enjoys more than 60% of the market share of outsourced technical services. You don’t usually have to walk more than a few blocks to find your resident geek squad in computer-oriented cities like Bangalore and Chennai. In such a technology oriented region, it’s ironical that one does not yet find information such as phone numbers and names through the google toolbar on one’s browser. Things that are best answered by the click of a button still take postal, telephonic, personal and sometimes even telepathic communication.

Most organizations and institutions do not have a functional website, if they do, they’re not frequently updated, if they are, they don’t get adequately used, when they do, they are painstakingly slow. Having been tuned to click on Riteaid.com’s store locator to find the phone number for the nearest drugstore and search my school’s directory for a professor’s contact, the click of a mouse is usually my first source of information, as it should be; it seems ridiculous to have to make a dozen calls or drive ten blocks in search of such counsel.

It’s not without change, however. There are some areas where the advancement surprises you: train tickets are booked online in no time (tickets are still shipped to you, though), minute cell phones unfold into ass-kicking modems during transit, 24/7 technical support whips up life saving answers in seconds…

I’d still like to be able to prop myself up in front of my computer in the middle of the night because I need to find an answer to a pressing question, or simply, because I can….