A political analyst with a penchant for communication, Gamal Nkrumah finds in Mohamed El-Sayed the perfect way into the weird and wonderful world of Internet chat "There was speech in their dumbness," -- Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale. Living in the electronic age is especially precarious for a middle-aged man with a passion for communication. Who, for the last two decades, at least, has been embroiled in the business of disseminating ideas as well as information -- and, let it be admitted, a little old-fashioned gossip added in for good measure. For a seasoned international affairs journalist, indeed, the onus can only have been on communication. Yet it wouldn't be entirely groundless to accuse that selfsame journalist of computer illiteracy. And determined to bridge the generation gap, it wasn't without trepidation that he embraced instant messaging -- in affirmation of the Chinese saying, "the palest ink is better than the most retentive memory." With messaging, he discovered, not only do you get to jot down your thoughts; you can engage in strangely intimate exchanges with your nearest and dearest, too. Unlike the relatively straightforward language sounds of speech, however, messaging turned out to rest on a bewildering motley of visual and written as well as sound symbols -- conveying emotions, facts and commands. Initially formidable -- it was hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel -- the task of mastering these was facilitated by one of the aforementioned journalist's junior colleagues, a young man as expeditious and IT-oriented as they come; not so much a computer whizz-kid, as the journalist in question had mistakenly thought, watching him work, as a typical contemporary of his age. The seasoned journalist had mistakenly assumed that his junior colleague was a computer genius. He'd never have had the gumption to do what the youthful brain-box had done. Be that as it may, he had no qualms about being guided by a junior. Indeed, teacher and student discovered that they shared a puckish sense of fun that came to life online. But, the elderly disciple soon realised that the puerile computer nerd merely possessed the elemental and most basic skills for any contemporary youngster. The older journalist's mistake with the computer whizz-kid had been to attribute to his younger colleague an intelligence that had never really existed. The entire exercise proved to be a healthy albeit humbling experience for the more aged student. Nor did the junior in question always think the world of his newfound pupil; and his reprimands could be -- well, downright insolent. He even used hacking tools to control the older journalist's computer, by way of punishment. This was not altogether unexpected, for instant messaging is largely about the older -- not to say the old -- imitating the skill and the lingo of a young generation. A turning of the chronological tables, in other words -- one that led, in this particular case, to a gradual, if profound transformation in the lives of the people concerned. The political analyst addicted to the morning BBC broadcast, for example, now finds himself torn between the radio and a PC window, irrevocably. And one conclusion to be drawn is that the medium breaks down inter-generational barriers, not to mention the frontiers separating nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, political and religious affiliations. Ideas are forever debated -- a constant flow of information. And what is remarkable is that, unlike international affairs journalism, this content has more of an entertainment and emotive than an intellectual value. It also breaks down language barriers: one communicates in English, Arabic (often transliterated into Latin letters and numerals approximating either the English pronunciation or the look of the Arabic letters required -- the word for "want", for example, starting with the letter 'ain and often transliterated simply as 'ayiz, is more likely than not to appear as 3ayiz ; the same goes for the haa -- 7, the tah -- 6, and the hamza -- either 1 or 2) or any ad-hoc mixture of the two. The transfer may as yet be imperfect. Still, instant messaging brings people from all walks of life together, online. The young sometimes prefer the succinct force of the Arabic, though with certain elderly journalists, not to put too fine a point on it -- such journalists' Arabic will only ever be so-so -- English is not only easier but more beneficial: their English improves your own; and learning, alas, becomes a two-way process. Thus transliterated, Arabic will serve a broader purpose, too. For one accountant recruited by an Egyptian-American company to work in Kabul for three months with no more than two weeks' vacation as of November 2004, Mohamed Lutfi, the job would have been out of the question if not for a reliable and affordable means of daily communication. But in buying his family a computer and teaching them how to use it, to this end, Lutfi transformed their lives. The chance to see a live image of him via a webcam overjoyed his wife and brothers, and was nothing short of miraculous to his illiterate parents. The webcam also enabled Lutfi to keep up with the trials and tribulations of his eight-month-old baby. Messaging has broad-ranging consequences -- it links images and alphabets to sound and meaning. One sprightly woman in her 50s, initially out of concern, became an avid reader of her daughter's poet boyfriend's messages, remaining a chat-friend of his long after he broke up with that daughter. Forget snail mail: even e-mail pales in comparison to instant messaging. E-mail "pen-friends" find renewed energy in their exchanges years after they meet online, and places like California feel impossibly close. People venture into the most private and otherwise taboo realms as they enjoy this exquisite balance of closeness and distance. Then again, it is possible to "run into" undesirable acquaintances online, too. There are of course ways of blocking out certain of your so- called contacts, but that is a lesson a seasoned journalist has yet to learn from his young colleague. For now, he will just chat with an old friend.
