Techno world-A tale of intoxication to slavery

“Necessity is the mother of invention”- this adage hold true for the remarkable advent of humanity from a nomadic tribe to the most advanced species on earth. With rapid strides in the technological field in the past few decades, mankind has seen tectonic shifts in the way things have changed around. There are an abundance of technologies today and the list of new frontiers being breached is ever growing. In the initial stages, machines were created to ease man’s burden or in many cases to completely take over the task from human clutches. The argument put forth was that it was essential to move from complication to simplicity and soon enough, technology brought fortunes and started globalisation where the whole world started virtually shrinking.

The discovery of electricity totally galvanised the technological era. The industrial revolution happened and later a slew of new technologies like televisions, computers, internet, embedded devices, mobiles, social media to name a few came into being. In a way, one technology became a precursor to another and now the whole world is wrapped around technological might. Massive technological advancements are taking place with the illusion that things are becoming smaller, smarter, simpler and better! Man used the powers of technology as a great tool for his own progress with him being the master and technologies being the slaves that were created to fulfil his wishes or to fill in his shoes to make tasks simpler. In the midst of this arrangement, man allowed technology to take control over him too and the tables are surely turning, as a majority of humanity is getting used to technological slavery!

It is said that common sense is not so common in today’s world. With the over reliance on technologies, we have put brakes on our own common sense with little thinking to do as the devices are doing most of our work. As a simple example, in olden days, people had no Global Positioning Systems(GPS), yet they could find out ways and routes to their destinations. Cut to the present scenario and most people would struggle to go anywhere without Google Maps. We are not allowing our instinct and common sense to develop as much as they should, as we have swanky devices and gadgets which process our inputs and get instant results.

A major factor for the slave mentality to set in is that a majority do not have any knowledge of how a technology actually works. As long as they are getting what they want from the technology, they never bother to get inside the working of it. As a result, we have very few creators or innovators while a majority are just over dependent consumers without any technical know- how. To compound the problems, there are way too many choices now, where the end user with little technical acumen is spoilt for choice which has over complicated the whole process.

Though technology made the world smaller and people are well connected now, statistics show that the quality of relationships has not improved and on the contrary it is deteriorating. Being hooked to so many technologies, people neglect the powers of communication and building relationships. They are not spending quality time with family and friends due to which the only strong relationship in sight is the one with the technology unfortunately! Over use or improper use of certain technologies has been proved to be hazardous to health, yet the deep rooted slavish mentality has forced us to ignore these warnings.

How addicted people are to technologies can be easily gauged by a simple experiment of taking away all their technological machines and gadgets away from them for some time. Studies have revealed that a majority felt a sense of deep loss with a feeling of incompleteness and inadequacy shrouding them. So much of power surrendered to a non living thing! An overbearing attachment is one of the by products of this addiction and there are many cases of depression too resulting due to technological over kill. With the masses over dependent on technologies for most of their daily chores too, sloth has set in due to which health concerns are rising by the day. To address these issues, people invest in more technologies becoming more prone to technological slavery.

A few days ago, WhatsApp’s breakdown for 30-40 minutes created a storm worldwide with news channels going berserk over the news as though it was some national calamity. This was simply an incomprehensible thing and even today I am at a loss to figure out how several minutes outage can be such big breaking news! Even today we have crores of people who are bereft of the basic necessities of life and most services simply don’t reach them. Have you ever seen that news telecast simultaneously on all channels? What does that show? How much precedence has WhatsApp taken in our lives? Perhaps it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to forecast a world war if the service had not resumed for a day!

As new inventions and advancements are taking place frequently, there is no clear demarcation of how much is too much. Companies forcibly create a market for something new taking advantage of the gullibility of people. With more technologies, more consumption too follows which results in more demand creating space for more technologies. This is an intelligent cyclic process going on from a few years that has taken full advantage of us becoming slaves to products. It is also common place these days to view usage of technology for setting a style statement. There were reports from China where a few sold kidneys to buy the iPhone 6! Whether there is a real necessity of a device is nobody’s concern. As long as they are following the trend, they feel safe for not standing apart from the herd. We have fallen prey to the companies’ mind games and today a person is often judged by not what he has inside, but by his gadgets, gizmos and other technological properties. To adhere to this notion and to create a favourable impression in the eyes of others, many have given up themselves totally to this slave mentality.

It so happened a few years ago that whenever I visited a new place that had some beautiful locales, I would instantly take out my digital camera and start clicking pictures for a majority of the time that I would be there. While returning from the places, if I would just think about them, seldom did I remember the geography, the little nuances, and the details of the whole scenery. I would stress myself out trying to bring back the picture on to my memory, but to no avail. That’s when I realised that I was spending so much of time looking through the tiny lens of the camera that I hardly enabled the most advanced lens, the human eye to get a complete glimpse of the scene so that it could paste the whole detail as vividly as possible to my memory! This is just one example of how advanced technologies have started shrouding the potential of god given abilities and faculties of a human being. There is no need to highlight about the loss of basic mathematical acumen too as we now have our phones to do even simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In the era of landlines, I have seen people who remembered at least a hundred phone numbers. Today, it is a great thing if you remember your own phone number! Advances are happening in the areas like artificial intelligence and god only knows how future generations take up to it and whether that would lead to a loss of human intelligence as machines do even the thinking for us. So what would be left for man to do then?

Though there was a dearth of ingenious technologies in the distant past, many things seemed quite simpler then than in the present. The advent of emails, social media, smart phones and instant messaging has created an illusion of simplifying things. On the outset, it is the reality too. But look deeper and many have realised that it is just virtual connectedness which has created a heady labyrinthine complicated mess. It is like a fake roof; one firm hit on it and the whole house crumbles! There is also this gnawing feeling of having less time on our hands as we spend most of our waking hours with our technological non living friends. Accustomed to living like slaves, we decide once in a while to take complete charge of our lives by giving gadgets a back seat, but our technological craze is so firmly entrenched that it seldom happens leaving us blaming lack of time for the things we really need to do!

With people lost in the wonders of this materialistic, technological world, they often fail to appreciate the goodness, the simplicity and the beauty around them. Rather than enjoying the simple pleasures of life, we are letting us get dragged on to a point of no return. We are losing track of our greatest gift- each moment! Technological interference raises its head into all aspects of our very being. We are losing our identities and our uniqueness hankering to follow the crowd. We desire to project something that we are not through our technological possessions, thus getting more stuck in the whirlpool. A sense of faking pervades most of our activities and technology has become an overpowering tool to achieve that.

Technology is never a stagnant river and it keeps flowing perennially. With each step that it climbs up, it has become a fad to keep updating with each change even if it is not needed for an individual and does not serve any purpose too. With this, man is losing hold of the distinction between wants and needs thus mindlessly getting sucked more into the depths of slavery without his notice. On the one hand, we have a few geeks and freaks who are inventing some amazing technologies and products and on the other hand we have a massive population that is only accustomed to using them. It is this overwhelming majority of people who are losing their mental and cognitive abilities, intuitive potential, memory, analytical powers and most often common sense too. The future looks extremely promising in terms of technology, but in the same breath very scary too if we consider the 98% who would have lost most of their mental and physical abilities.  Look at the picture above and just think for a moment about how much of the 6 attributes mentioned there you have lost or feel got reduced in the past few years.

Technologies developed rapidly to empower us and they have placed us on high pedestals that our ancestors could never even dream of. It has opened the doors of unprecedented advancement. But somewhere, man surrendered his own prowess and will to technology! Like many other things, technology too is a double edged sword whose real utility lies in the way it is used. The fire can give one warmth and food, while on the other hand it can burn hands too if played around with. Similarly with technology; unless clear lines are drawn on the path chosen, it is a cul-de-sac, not too different from playing with fire. Have we become slaves of technology? It is a resounding yes, though some might not admit it. We have become slaves, we are becoming slaves and we will continue in the same direction. Is redemption possible? It looks bleak, as technology is like an intoxicating drug. Once tasted, it quite a monumental task to get back to a safe state. But the more quickly we come to terms with the reality, the better for us, as it is never too late to return to the right path. Remember, slavery is never a good option, more so with a slave that we ourselves created! Our gadgets have become our bosses now and we have been thoroughly chained so tightly that we feel incapable to do anything without them. 

So many nations around the world fought for their independence from colonial powers, yet after a few decades we find that the whole humanity has become dependent on technology for the most mundane tasks too thus losing independence of mankind’s most potent faculty, THE MIND. Techno world combined with the human mind can give you the most dynamic power. Just a techno world sans the latter would most certainly lead to a precarious (disastrous?) state. How can we ensure that technology can empower us, not over power us?  The key to surviving this techno boom and retaining our master keys lies in striking a balance. But is that as easy as it sounds in the era we live in?