Sphere of eConsciousness

I had defined a term in my post on Tuesday, August 20, 2002. The term was Sphere of Perception. I had said that it is the sphere which a person identifies and understands. It defines the region from which inputs are used by people for learning.

There is a related term, I want to talk about. eConsciousness. Offline, your entire perception is defined by your senses. Your sight, hearing, feel in addition to smell and taste. So what are your online senses? What part of the online life are you attuned to? What is your source of information from the online world? To round it off, what part of your online presence are you attuned to? What is your eConsciousness?

We shall define eConsciousness loosely as that part of the online life you are attuned to. This basically consists of two parts. The first part is the part of the online life you actually know and identify. What exists on the World Wide Web. The answer to that question is the first part of eConsciousness. The second part pertains to that part of the online life, which you truly understand. What is the part of the life online you truly know. What part are you comfortable with. What part of the online life you know makes sense to you, and is not a source of fraud waiting to happen.

Why did I get this idea? Well, it goes like this. I got this message from SmileyGram for an E-card. This was basically from a friend of mine, who apparently had given my email address. I had to go and check out what was happenning there. So I checked the URL and pointed my browser to it. It took me to a page which needed 5 names and email addresses to show me the page. And nothing was optional. Of course i filled it with ****@****.com to get to the page.

I then mailed my friend asking her not to put my email in such forms again. I have been long enough on the web to have my name in a decent number of email databases. I really dont want another one getting hold of mine. The reply was along the lines that this was a 'good site' and that it 'just' needed 5 friend's names and the card is 'worth it'. My friend is showing remarkable eConsciousness of the first kind, not much of the second variety.

This I think is the case with a majority of the users. These are the users who click on the funlove messages. These are the people that download and run cute screensavers with trojans and backdoors. These are not people who are exactly alien to the online world. In fact they know of more free email sites, more free ecards sites than the first 3 pages of google. But they dont really understand the net. If we are to make the net a more secure place, it is this set of people we have to target. It is this set that must be told that not everything on the net is what it seems. Educate them, and we just might become safe in spite of all that Microsoft has planned for us.

One day I am going to develop an eConsciousness quotient.
Should help. Dont you think. tell me if you think so, or if you dont. [of course after demungle the email id]
Hmm, the winter is coming. Things are becoming cooler, and I have started skipping the baths. :)

~!nrk