13 long years

Its been 13 years since I joined MIT. I had sent an email to my college group. Just putting it here.
-------------------
Hi All,
Was cleaning my mail box and came across this email sent an year ago. One more year passed.. 4th October 2008...

13 long years ... rather, short ones. Time flies quite fast.
Past 9 years have been quite a radical change in the field of communication.

I still remember, the internet and the email was still in the nascent stage when we had left MIT. It wasn't a part of our lives like it has been today.
Then once the internet boom started , yahoo chat became an integral part of our lives. The Bakvas Mandalis which we had in our hostels had only been converted into virtual rooms in yahoo chat.
When I had just landed in Bangalore, for my first job, and we had to travel a little less than a kilometer to reach a phone booth to call up parents and friends. Email became popular and so were the "egroups". Many email groups came into existance and suddenly every one had information of every other friend directly in their inboxes.
A little later, mobile phones came in handy. Though one would pay through your nose for the calls including incoming calls, but still they were handy. The initial lines in a telephonic conversations changed from " How are you ? " to " Where are you ?". The standard meeting point of "Food World on MG Road" was changed to " Will call you once I reach close to MG Road". That was technology. SMS's were FREE those days. But sadly they werent used as they are today. And the reason behind these Telecom Companies to give away FREE SMS was only because there was no platform then to bill the Text messages:)

Friends started to move to US, either for Onsite posting or for Higher studies. Calls coming on to your mobile phones from the US became a common feature. But not the other way round. Calls to US were still costly for an Indian earning in Rupees. Folks in the US soon learnt the art of talking to each other on Voice Mails and soon became a part of lives. We got used to the machines and found them more reliable to convey messages. Emails had replaced the snail mails.
By this time, everyone only logged on to one's yahoo chat in the invisible mode. It had begun to create more of irritation then help to be seen online.
The mobile phone competition grew day by day and the phone call rates came down day by day. Communication became very easy mobile phones became a integral part of one's life. Every one, friend and family were just a button away. It was a funny feeling to see someone on the middle of the road talking to himself.

The next big thing was orkut. Suddenly everyone seemed to have found their long lost friends. Everyone got an update of the others through the scrap books, either on your own or on someone else's. Gtalk was more popular.

Skype and VOIP calls were more common and cheaper than regular calls. Roaming calls in India became more affordable. Telemarketing calls increased with the day and do not calls list are floating.

Today we have new gadgets being added every day.
Apple Iphone has been quite in the news.Cell phones with Dual SIMs are the in things today.

Communication has become faster , more reliable and lastly much much cheaper. But sadly while accomplishing this huge task of communication, we have forgotten to communicate.

Gtalk also has an invisible mode now .

Regards
Prasad