Great Ife: A Time for Sober Reflection...

The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago and the second best time is now. I wish I had made this a proper release, and that I had pasted it a few days ago. However, I did not then because I did not have access to the information that I have now – but I will not pass up the opportunity to do this now.

Before I delve into the meat of this discussion, I want to make some things clear – and I will very quickly run through them.

If this spreads like I hope it does, then a lot of my readers may not know me personally – and so introductions are in order.

I am KOYE-LADELE Mogbekeloluwa, the Class Representative/Governor of the Part Five Class of Mechanical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. By the grace and calling of God, I also happen to be the General Secretary of the University Joint Christian Mission (UJCM) and subject to the spiritual authority of the Committee of Presidents – I am partly responsible for the over-ten-thousand Christian students of the University.

In a job interview after school, or on a good day, that sounds like a good thing – and trust me it is. However, at times like this, it poses a big problem – one that makes me overly careful about my response to issues – because I am no longer perceived as speaking only for myself. True, a lot of the time when I publicly speak about the dynamics of life on campus I maintain the position of the UJCM – after all I am her Secretary. However, today – I ask that the words you read be taken on their own merit – as I speak entirely for myself in this matter.

I believe in the strength of the pen, and like every true member of the ACJ* – I consider it my business to assert its power. Yet, please note that I am not entirely without bias – because just like every other human I view the world through a belief window that is tainted by my previous experiences.

Whiteberry Culture

Class this session will be very different from what it has always been.

A lot of reasons could justify this statement, such as that it is our last session and everybody wants to strive for the best possible grades or that my classmates are now more future-oriented – having just come back from IT. These reasons even have their own merit, but then – I make that statement with something else in mind.

Class this session will be very different from what it has always been, because almost everybody now has a Blackberry. Well, maybe I should make that a bit more general because of people like me who still refuse to join the bandwagon. Class this session will be very different from what it has always been, because almost everybody now has mobile Internet access.

I remember when I was in Part One. 3G was in the not-so-distant future of Nigerian telecommunications, and Symbian S60 was something only geeks talked about. Blackberries, Apples? As far as most Nigerians were concerned, they were fruits – and nothing more!

I was one of the first people to adopt Symbian S60, with my classic candy-bar styled Nokia 6600 of blessed memory. I ultimately fell in love with the phone, what with the ability to multi-task, and use a myriad of free apps such as Call Cheater and Call Manager (which enabled you to get out of conversations you did not want to have and block calls from people you would rather not talk to in the first place).  And of course, I could send and receive email!

However, back then – most of my friends used phones that were just that: phones; they could make and receive calls, send and receive texts, and very few of them could browse with the sluggish EDGE/GPRS networks.

That was then.

Now, mobile Internet access is so commonplace – it is even taken for granted.

You know, the other day – I met a guy just outside a class who needed a Word document I had on my phone. After trying without success to send the file via Bluetooth, he suggested that I forward it to his email address. Pronto, I fired up Nokia Email, attached the file and sent him the mail. In my first wonder of year 2011: he got, opened, and edited the file on his phone in under five minutes, forwarded the edited version (via email) to a friend in his room who printed the document, biked down, and delivered it in under *wait for this* fifteen minutes from when I first sent him the file!

It was surprising to see that other people were catching on to the mobile Internet ‘thingi’ too! That could not have happened back when I was in Part One. Attachments? They were ‘things’ sized 250kb that took you roughly 10 minutes to upload. Email? It was what you had to brave insults and oppressive heat in cybercafés in order to send.

There are a lot of good sides to the mobile Internet culture... Instant Messaging, the ability to recourse to Wikipedia in the heat of an argument, the ability to google that difficult topic just before you got picked out by your Professor to provide an answer to his question... Good sides abound!

Wait, did I say Instant Messaging? Now that is one of the sides to mobile Internet that ‘kinda’ make me fear for the future.

In my own estimation, conversation is one of the core things that make us human. Yet, it is becoming harder to carry on a real conversation with a young person these days. Most statements you make will be punctuated with ‘pings’ from their mobile phones. And that is if you even bother to make the statements at all – because most people cannot stand talking to someone who only manages a nod or two while furiously typing away at a phone’s keypad.

Yes, and IM has even changed the way ‘friending’, dating, courting etc is done. Lots of guys prefer to ‘talk’ to ladies over BBM/Nimbuzz/Whatsap etc rather than in person – because it feels a lot more comfortable. And ‘woe’ betide guys who do not use Blackberries – even when they use C6’s and E5’s.
Whatever happened to the larger percentage of communication, the non-verbal one?

Maybe I should not really be afraid for the future. Maybe I should join the school of thought that submits that this is all a fad – which will all pass.

Well, till that time when it passes, on my authority as Class Representative of the Part Five Class of Mechanical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University – I make the following declaration. All lecturers should henceforth note that ‘boring’ lectures will be rewarded with BBM/Nimbuzz group chats right under their noses!

Peace!