Thanks to the ‘information highway’ the world has never been so small; its widely diverse people, irrespective of culture, language and creed, so close together — so close it seems that they can, and increasingly do, reach out and hold hands as anyone using a social networking site can confirm.

Breaking through bureaucratic boundaries and political defences, the global population is, at long last, learning to use its voice, interacting with ‘friends’ from all levels of society to discuss the good, the bad and the mundane modalities of their lives and countries, some of them overcoming previously insurmountable language barriers by clicking on an automatic translation tool to make personal communication a mind-boggling reality.

In this way, for example, an Italian speaking mountain dweller is able to ask a contact in Pakistan if televised reports of militancy are accurate and if so, how this affects life for people at large and, in turn, the online Pakistani can ask questions about the Italian debt crisis, the participants each learning something about actual realities as against reported ones.

Direct exchanges and the ‘posting’ of music, photographs and interesting snippets enables ‘onliners’ to directly promote their respective countries on the kind of global scale that national and regional tourism departments can only dream of, as just a single such post can be passed on to eventually do the rounds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people. On the other hand, derogatory or inflammatory information can also spread just as fast, which is why an increasing number of ‘control’ bodies are speaking out against what is, in all actuality, freedom of information and of global interaction at grass-roots level.

It is true to say that social networking sites did play a role in launching the recent wave of revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa: It is also true to say that they played both negative and positive roles in the wave of unprecedented but not, according to some levels of society, completely unexpected riots in Britain where sites including Facebook and Twitter were used by perpetrators to guide their cronies from incident to incident and likewise by peace mongers struggling to stem the rot, clean up the mess and aid the afflicted.

Attempting to balance the good and bad sides of social networking sites is an absolute minefield of sexual perverts versus innocent friendships, malicious mischief versus outright honesty, misinformation versus accurate information, online addiction versus socially acceptable healthy options and so on, with each and every option also being available on the relatively more innocuously perceived mobile phone networks without which an incredible number of people feel totally and utterly isolated…as do dedicated onliners if they lose their internet connection for any length of time.

These worrying aspects aside though, the information highway has raised the consciousness of its ‘travellers’ to an astronomical height, whether they happen to be highly educated or not, and has, above all, brought an awareness that it is governments and other powers that be, which have created, and continuously fight to maintain, the dangerously divisive and violently combative world of today as, to put it bluntly, political and social unrest mean profit for one entity or another.

In this age of dawning awareness, the ‘underdogs’ are fast realising that they do have a bark, not a very loud one when measured on an individual basis, but one which is steadily rising in volume when collectively employed and this awakening voice is, on the whole, calling for peace on earth and goodwill to all of the men, women and children who inhabit it.

The ‘real’ people of this ‘global village’, this is somewhere in the region of 99.99 per cent of human beings alive today, basically want to be left alone to live whichever kind of peaceful existence personal preference indicates. They do not want shootings in the street, they do not want to resort to rioting and destruction, they do not, above all, want to see their future disappear in the oily smoke of governmental etc., promulgated greed and nor are they desirous of an environmental holocaust the like of which is looming ever closer on the horizon.

It is, quite possibly, this train of thought, a daily ingredient of social network debates and posts, that has raised the hackles of ‘controllers’ who, it increasingly appears, are, if pushed a little bit harder, fully prepared to clamp down and switch the people off. If this does happen — it has happened on a short term basis in a number of countries, including here in Pakistan, already — on an extended or permanent basis then the people, holding hands as the vast majority of ‘connected’ ones now are, are not going to take the depravation lying down. The information highway has brought the global population together, as friends not strangers or enemies and their hands are increasingly firmly clasped.