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'The Network is the computer'- Sun Microsystems Inc.

The undisputable truth of this computer age.. Huh.! as if I realized it today!..no..that was almost a decade ago, when I had my first encounter with networking during my school days. 'LAN' was the word, which proudly took its prominence in the vocabulary of our daily talk then. We jumped with enthusiasm similar to that of a small child who gets a new toy to play with and completely unaware of the complexities inside it.

It was not long, before we learned skills to extract whatever little fun we could out of it. But to the dismay our fun was restricted, both out of our fear of the teachers and ignorance about this new technology at our disposal - sending messages across network to different machines and accessing our C++ program files from the server using our logins was all that we did and remained content with. Obviously Internet, Email, Multiplayer network games and Instant Messaging were some of the words we never heard at that time.

Two years down the line LAN became an indispensable part of computing during IITK. A year later Internet came as a mercenary in our lives making us invincible in our wars against those undoable projects and assignments of the courses. Emails took the place of hand written letters and Instant messengers substituted for phone calls. Multiplayer network games like AOE and Counter-Strike became best time-killers. And now almost a decade later internet has almost occupied our time schedule becoming more than a way of living our lives.

And with free internet access at the work place and an equally good access( and yes its free during night hours) at home now, its hard to now even look back at the pre-internet era of my life.

Net is often argued as the inalienable symbol of freedom in all senses, a freedom which however bills us not on our money but our time. Though we do realize how dependent and addicted it has made us on itself, still its something we can not forgo. So much so that its 600 hrs in the morning and I guess its time to get rid of this addiction now.

EXIT.