Nadiya Aamer 'The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built - that humanity does not understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had'. The most exciting technological thing that hit my house was the computer and then the Internet. From then onwards it was a journey of great discoveries. The knowledge that poured out of the screen was absolutely marvelling. I had the most interesting times in the cold winters of Peshawar and then Quetta, where we were posted. I spent the cold and long evenings educating myself and then my children on the Internet. The games were simpler then too. There was Hercules and Prince of Persia and of course, not to forget Tarzan. The simpler times inevitably are followed by more complex ones. The games went into boxes and the children grew up and the computer became a necessity. Projects and homework took over. The magnitude of the tasks at hand was overwhelming but the internet grew too. The MSN messenger was a place where the alert tone meant a friend was nearby. Even if you were not in the same room or city or country you could be close. That was comforting on bleak evenings. The question that I kept trying to find an answer to was this: what does the modern, contemporary mind want. What does this self really desire? The answer came soon when Face book took over the world with its appeal for this contemporary self. The need to never be alone again and for solitude to disappear with the click of a button. To post your status and then the excitement of having its acknowledgement from all. I was posting so often, it appeared a monkey had been given a typewriter On days with flu, instead of resting and having soup while reading a book, I was scanning old pictures to show how we were 20 years back. College photographs, wedding ones, the first borns and the second ones. You name it and it was all scanned. This was as exciting as it could be, or was there more. I found out, I could get my Face book alerts on my cellular phone. Joy I subscribed to it and my phones started beeping every half a minute and sometimes even more. Then came the day I read the word 'twitter'. A bird or more? I forged forth to find out more and there was a lot to find out. I was enthralled by this recognition from an entire world. Oblivious to the irritant within, I indulged to a point where I became tired of it all. I twittered all the time and the rest of the time I waited for the responses. I was as happy as a bird. The truth: I had no privacy at all and once a message came through I could not rest until I answered it. My GPRS activation was costing me a meal a day My priorities were fading and I was ill. The experiment had gone too far and it also shown its lethal side effects among which irritability and lack of sleep are top of the list. Since then, my phone crashed under the load. The software just gave in I have flinched away from twittering. I unsubscribed to getting the Face book messages on the phone (because my phone is no more) I deleted the 22 albums I had created because I read that face book has the right to use the photographs and I just opened my Gmail account after a month or so and have found 5,535 unread messages waiting with their claws. After finishing this I will settle down on reading those. The writer is a freelance columnist