Technology Bites!!!

A week back in the residential area where I live had a power cable fault which lasted for almost 2 days. It was at that time I thought of certain things which has led to this post. We live in an era known for its technological advancements in every field any one can even dream of. As they say every aspect has its own pros and cons, in that manner I wanted to explore the pros and cons of the current technologies which we use in our day-to-day activities in the aspects of our values, friendships, relationships, knowledge. Through this post I am not projecting myself as neither a protagonist nor an antagonist of the use of technologies in our lives but rather trying to point out the things which we are missing out/misusing by using such things.

Firstly is that of the Power/Electricity. Electricity is the main ingredient of almost all the technologies we use. Had electricity not been invented on the downside the economies of almost all the countries would suck big time. Yeah its been a boon for the economic purposes of any country, that’s on the macroeconomic perspective. In an individual perspective, it’s a bane for us. When there is power, we do not indulge ourselves in any kind of activities which nurtures relationships, friendships, knowledge. There were times in my childhood where during the regulatory power cuts, myself and my brother used to hear about the religious epics viz. Ramayana and Mahabharata from our grand parents . Those times have indeed helped us to learn more about the same and also inculcated values which has shaped our characters.

Nowadays rarely does a family comes together to get to know every member of the family in a better way and only during power cuts the same family comes together in unison to learn more about each other, nurture each others relationship, understand the other person in a better way . In this sense India is much better than any other country in the First World, at least we have the adapting capacity to power cuts and we try to know more about our family in those tough times, the first world countries which hardly have any kind of power cuts indeed suffer from the inability to adapt for power cuts and also do not have a chance to get to know their family in a deeper sense.

Secondly the Mobile Phone, what an invention it as been for the mankind. The ability to stay in contact with anyone from anywhere in the world has been made possible with this amazing device. I would say it is just another pain in the ass for us, though I am an heavy user of the same. The first negative aspect that comes to my mind regarding this device is that it causes unimaginable levels of tension for anyone through various instances viz. forgot to take the mobile phone, payment of bills, peer pressure to buy new mobile and various others.

And the code of ethics are being broken nowadays with this device with people taking photos/videos without the other person's consent, illicit videos captured through the devices floating in every mobile having a video playback feature; these things also mount up the tension levels in a person. There were no such uncalled for incidents before the device had been invented, we were leading an happy and cheerful life without it, I hope we can still lead a cheerful life without this device.

Thirdly and the most important of all The Internet, whoa!!! Am an ardent admirer of the technology that has changed the face of the lifestyle of an ordinary person. But on the downside it has made us slaves. Nowadays whenever a question is put forth, we say casually that we will look up for the topic in the Internet. Though it is comfortable it has hindered our conventional way of referring books and going to the library. I feel referring books in a library would improve our knowledgebase rather searching for a particular topic on the Net and finishing off the session with us having found out the needed answers, hardly we do some sort of extra referrals in the Internet. There it limits our knowledge base.

There were times where we used to wait for our Dad's call from a foreign country, those things have been eased out in the advent of chatting via the internet; but still the sense of belonging is lost while chatting whereas the same sense is maintained while being on call.

We can be users of the technologies which are instrumental in our growth for monetary reasons, but we should not become slaves of the same. We should use them in such a way that it does not hinder inter-personal traits and we should not be aloof from the society which indeed has a lot of lessons for us to learn from it. On the economic front with the help of such technologies we are going skywards, but on the personal/individual front we are stooping down to levels where would rather not be!!!