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Feature Articles (English)
Male Female and E-mail
-Vinaya Kasajoo
Since the emergence of human beings the Earth is
dominated by male and female. Although they had great differences
and there was continuous conflict between them, they lived together
and produced living beings just like themselves, either male or
female. Now, after more than ten thousands years long communication
between them, they have given birth to E-mail.
Male and female may either love or hate each other
but both male and female love E-mail, their brain child. That is
why all male and female, living under cyberspace turn his or her
computer every morning and evening to play with E-mail. His/her
happiness knows no bound when he/she discovers E-mail in the liquid
crystal display (LCD) screen or monitor, most of which are colourful.
It seems that the days of Gutenberg-male and Gutenberg-female
are counted. They did enough to dominate and shape our civilisation.
Now the dream of a paper-less office has become reality since 1980s,
when the electronic-male and electronic-female began to exchange
mail electronically, using computer - popularly known as E-mail.
The birth of E-mail became possible only when computer
married with a hardware dame, well known as Modem. Poor computer
cannot talk on telephone unless Madame Modem modulates and demodulates
his message. She converts analogue (telephone) signals to digital
(computer) and vice versa. She handles the data for the computer
quite efficiently.
Modems come in different shapes and sizes, and
they have different working speeds. Some Modems like to live inside
the computers and be a part of the Central Processing Units (CPU)
sharing the same source of power. Though they cannot be seen from
outside their activities are visible in the screen. External Modems
are also quite handy. They prefer to meet their fiances at Serial
Port , rather than Sea Port, and pay their bill to the Electricity
Authority themselves.
While at work, Modems like to indicate that they
are busy by beeping and hissing, since they work at a tremendous
speed - from 2400 to 28800 bits per seconds (BPS) . No warm bodied
madam can work in such a tremendous speed. Thanks to the Madam Modem
and her lovely Email the globe has turned into a small village.
(Published in The Kathmandu Post/ Sunday Post, Nov.30, 1997.)
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