The Last Telegram

This story gives new meaning to the term later gram. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited will send the last telegram in India next month! Believe it or not people in India still sends 5000 telegrams a day. And the government sends majority of those. This definitely raises the questions – why would they use them at all?

Well its good to have the infrastructure in hand if aliens knock down the communication satellites, I guess India is just looking out for everyone keeping the system intact. They just wana be prepared for it!  Jokes apart BSNL is paying whooping $23 million a year to keep their telegraph services running.  One thing that is interesting about that is although they call it “Telegrams”, apparently they were actually sending a lot of messages through the web. They had someone enter the details into a program. Wasn’t really a telegram at all?

With the rise of computers and technology, even the USPS has struggled enormously, so it's surprising that an old-fashioned technology like the telegraph has lasted this long. Of course India is doing the honors to say good-byes to the ancient technology in year 2013.

But if you talk about latest technologies it has done wonders but now people have been raising questions about privacy. Recently Facebook and Google privacy issue that is being called – “The Prism Scandal” has provoked a backlash.  The NSA had been accused of accessing data on people through these popular sites. The government is watching the sites where a normal person spends half of his day searching for answers or connecting with friends. People are raging, as their privacy has been invaded.

So what can be done? The only way to guard your data is to opt out of Internet life almost completely. That means No Facebook and No Google. But is anyone going to do that? There is really no alternative! These technologies has been embedded in our lives that its almost impossible to stay away from them.

People are feeling powerless among theses giants and don’t know how to guard their privacy. I came across one of the Newsweek cover from July 1970 that feels all too fitting in 2013!

Ritu Doshi