Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring The Improbable Nation - Plot & Excerpts
They sit below the ubiquitous cell-phone towers, close to the harbour or the bus station, perhaps shouldered in next to a nasi Padang restaurant. Generally, they are small shops furnished with cubicles that rise to waist height. About eighteen inches off the ground, often on an upturned crate, sit computer screens. Adolescents litter the floor behind the consoles. Girls are usually in gaggles in a cubicle, squeezing in front of the web-cam, then posting the pictures on Facebook. Boys are more often alone, doing on-screen battle with racing cars or dragons. Once or twice over the course of the year I saw people on Wikipedia, clearly doing their homework. But for most young Indonesians, the internet is pure entertainment. This is reflected in the language. To go online is main internet: to ‘play (on) the internet’. Usually, there’s a teenage boy with bad skin sitting up at a real desk playing computer games, acting as DJ for music that thuds from the wall-mounted speakers, and collecting money as people leave.
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