Let’s skip back into the far past where Windows 95 rests. Back in the day, our low-definition box-like monitors flickered asking us: ‘Where do you want to go today?’

Little did we know, as we explored the land of chips and bytes, that life thereafter would be only about questions. From MSN Messenger statuses to Twitter, it has been a long journey of endlessly telling strangers what you are thinking, doing, eating and god forbid; wearing. Sometimes, it is tiring to register your state of life but let that not wear you down, because now they want to know, ‘Where are you right now?’ It is not a dictator’s plan (hopefully), but the newest child on the social networking block, Foursquare, wants to know where you are and then collects your digital footprint there for others. It started as an application made for New Yorkers not just to find their friends but also to be able to play a game doing it because Foursquare gets you badges for every time you ‘check-in’ to a place. Enough badges can even make you the ‘mayor’ of the place. It doesn’t end at the mayorship however; this service (available as an application through your Smartphone) is laying the bricks for a new bridge between the online world and the newly-classified offline world (previously referred to as the real world).

I am dying to see a day when, as I arrive at a restaurant, and through Foursquare, the waiter will know I have arrived and the food will reach my table as I sip on my kiwi daiquiri because I have already tweeted the chef the menu of choice. Whether Twitter-happy Bollywood bigwigs and politicos will take to Foursquare rapidly is debatable; in much the same way that it is debatable whether a Foursquare-inspired mob of stalkers will be chasing us (not technically possible as Foursquare’s privacy rules allow one to be picky about their friends). As of now, Foursquare is maintaining the status of an ego-feeder among the techno-savvy. BlackBerry-crazy 27 year-old, Sohini Sengupta, doesn’t sign into Foursquare to find out where her friends are at, “It’s really about me, I like to tell everyone how happening I am so I always check-in to all the cool places I go to.”

It takes us around the city, and serves the purpose of keeping us active in competitive game-making. As we begin to find the tangible increasingly frightening, applications like Foursquare is making sure that there is the virtual realm to guide us through the real world.

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