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![TMCNet: e-Life Phenomenon Hits Country [opinion]](http://images.tmcnet.com/siteart/invisible.gif)
e-Life Phenomenon Hits Country [opinion]
Harare, Feb 08, 2010 (The Herald/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
The information revolution has seen people becoming connected in ways that were unimaginable even half a century ago.
The world is now in a very real sense a global village, but a village with a library containing millions of books, a village with notice boards outside every house, a village served by thousands of newspapers, a village with thousands of cinemas, a village with a postal system guaranteeing instant delivery of mail, and a village with a music store selling every recording ever made.
The technology that makes all this possible is simpler than most people realise. Basically we are all now wired together with thousands of servers at the nodes, both big and little, routing traffic and requests.
At home we need modest technology that can receive and display the data we seek, and which we can use to make our requests and send our own contributions to this "global brain".
The days when this had to be a phone and a computer equipped with a modem have already passed, although that hardware pair is still the most common and the cheapest way of accessing the "Net".
Phones are already merging with computers and individuals have a wide choice of hardware and how they will connect.
In one sense, the technology is not all that important. Phones and computers that are not connected and which run no software or the wrong software are useless. What is important is this total network of connections, the ease which almost anyone can put information on that network, and the even greater ease that people can access all the information.
Zimbabwe is no exception and e-life has become the way of life, not only in the office but even in the home, or at least in the Internet cafe.
Talk of e-commerce, e-health, e-learning, online video chat and all those fantastic changes that the world has seen in the last 20 years.
As Information, Communication and Technology Minister Nelson Chamisa recently said at the just-ended African Union summit in Addis Ababa, every aspect of life is slowly but surely transforming into an e-world, both for the haves and the have-nots.
But the global village is not equal. Some people live on the wrong side of the tracks, and Zimbabweans, even in Harare, are in the e-ghetto.
There has been talk of the digital divide becoming more critical than the financial and economic divides.
And the two biggest elements of the digital divide are access to the Net and the bandwidth of those connections.
The majority of Zimbabweans do not have full access to the Net. While most Zimbabweans now can have a phone, preferably with one of the new solar chargers, thanks to the efforts of the three mobile networks, this is about the limit for those outside the urban areas.
Access to the Internet itself, at home or in the office or through an Internet cafe, is open to most in urban areas at low cost, US$1 for half an hour at many cafes. But what most of us who can be connected can actually do is limited.
Bandwidth is still a serious problem. Copper phone lines allow email and some very slow Web connections. Radio links, more expensive, are better but still far from perfect. A decent thunderstorm can limit access.
The optic cable that connects most in the First and Second Worlds simply has yet to be laid.
So streaming movies, u-Tube and the like are not common in Zimbabwe.
Even Zimbabwe's links to the outside world are narrow, and so slow. The bandwidth available for the whole country on its link to Europe and Asia might well be less than what a single small business in one of those two continents might consider adequate.
Africa as a whole is moving ahead. Huge optic cables have been laid along both Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean coasts, giving countries on the sea fairly cheap access to broadband international connections. Inland countries like Zimbabwe now need to lay the connections to these cables and then need to wire up their cities and start figuring out ways to connect the villages. But even the limited access most Zimbabweans have has changed the way we see the world.
Florence Ziumbe, a commercial lawyer who is also the chairperson for Pro-Web, said e-Life is just a jewel in her life.
"I can do my business even in America because of technological advancement, everything will be under control.
"There are no hassles, its just fantastic," she said.
Developments within the past two decades have resulted in the transformation of people's lives due to an upsurge in technology.
The mobile phone, practically unknown 10 years ago, has become an essential gadget in almost every household, urban, rural and even on the farms. Recent statistics quote the latest percentage of mobile phone users at being 34 percent of the population. They have not only become communication devices, but now have other uses in the home.
One can now open an electric gate using a handset that has infrared, upload and store presentations, connect it to security alarms, play music, take videos and access the Internet.
With just a click of a button on your computer, you can now access the world.
"You can order your car from Singapore, pay for it and get the date of delivery, while sprawled on a bed and in the comfort of your home," said Observer Mataingaidze, an Information Technology lecturer at Africa University.
He said that e-life had added a new dimension, to both business and social life.
Social interaction forums like Facebook and Twitter have become the norm with many people in Zimbabwe now using them to find new and old friends and also stay in touch with family and friends everywhere.
With technology, the universe has even become smaller, every place and person is brought nearer as connectivity is increased.
People can now watch films in the comfort of their own homes, in their cars and even on their mobile phones in this era of technological advancement. Unlike in the early 20th century where elitism was measured by the basics such as clothing and housing, nowadays it is measured by the kind and extents of technology.
Quite a number of people are spending a lot of money in buying top-of-the-range laptops, computers, iPods, and top-of-the-range cellphones with GPRS to endear themselves more with technology.
They will tell you that these electronic gadgets are increasingly making their lives easier.
Lovemore Muhamba of LM Cellphones says business is increasingly getting better as more people are now buying top-of-the-range handsets that have multi-functions for both the office and the home.
"Technology is moving very fast and a lot of people are beginning to embrace what is happening around it.
"Unlike before, where we used to get by but just buying ordinary phones, people are now very particular about what they want.
"They are now buying integrated handsets like the Nokia E71, E66, N900, N Omnia 2, HTC touch pro2 and Blackberry. Demand is even high among corporate organisations that want their executives to embrace technology.
"The scenario is the same among computer consumable companies who are inundated with calls from customers inquiring on the latest rate of computers on the market.
"We even get orders from housewives, and pensioners, mainly from the northern suburbs, to supply them with good laptops and computers," said a sales representative with a local computer company.
The emergence of the Internet proved to be a blessing to humanity as everybody seemed to be interested in the service as denoted by the establishment of many information and technology learning institutions.
A number of innovations have been scored in the ICT field with the advent of burden-lessening packages being introduced.
However, e-life brought social stratification as it came along with expenses which can only be afforded by the elite.
In an interview with the Herald Lifestyle, an official worker at a networking company, Africa Online, who declined to be named, said most of their customers come from the low-density areas despite the fact that they offer services to everybody.
"We help many people especially from low-density suburbs like Borrowdale, Glen Lorne, Chisipite and other areas because they are financially strong.
"We serve people from Budiriro, Machipisa, Epworth and other high-density areas on rare occasions," he said.
It is in the northern suburbs and other modest residential areas where you come across individuals and families who have programmed houses, in built car-phones and an assortment of electrical gadgets, reflective of the era they are in.
However e-life is a dream to people who dwell in remote areas who have the zeal of a lavish life, which they hear from their urban relatives and on radios, but have no access to.
This kind of society does not possess any knowledge about computer or smart phone operation.
Moreover, there is network deficit, let alone they are financially infertile to afford a computer.
The above predicament is a blow to Kudakwashe Samanyanga, who lives in the Zviyambe area of Hwedza.
"I long for the time when I am going to have my own monitor here, and electricity too.
"I wish to live in Harare where there are institutions where I can obtain knowledge about the email, computer, Internet and Facebook.
"I appeal to service providers to extend their territory towards this side," he said.
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