Technology and its ........

I wanted to write about this topic for a long time now. I have thought about it very often but somehow or the other it has not succeeded in completing the journey till here. This time though, I am very optimistic about that.

A lot has been said about the positive effects that technology has had. It’s actually hard to imagine life without technology today. And rightly so, it has made life so simple, so comfortable and so very convenient for people today. So much so that off shoots of technological advancements has become more of a necessity than a facility. I will not dwell too much into the positive aspects of technology here. There is no doubt that technology has indeed been a boon. Let me try to explore the other side of the coin.

I was travelling by train a couple of months back from Hyderabad to Mumbai. The journey takes around 16 hours and I was travelling on train for such a distance after a long time. I was looking forward to meeting new people and getting to interact with them. But my expectations turned out to be damp, not because the compartment was empty. But because of technology. 10 years ago, something like this could not have been imagined. One chap in my coupe was busy watching movies on his laptop. Another was busy talking to someone on his mobile. I really don’t know what was he doing throughout the journey. And there was another girl who had a book in her hand and a pair of earphones continuously plugged into her ears. She was continuously banging her head in the air, proving that she was actually listening to some sort of music. Few travelers have always been eternal sleepers, and their proportion has always remained the same. So considering this fact, I can only say that technology has separated people. If I had taken a similar journey 10 years back, all these people could have been seen interacting with each other as if they were long lost friends who just met by chance. But with technology improving every day, it has even increased the distance between people.

Technology has also reduced the personal touch which used to exist between people. Consider a formal communication which used to happen a couple of decades ago by the way of handwritten letters. People used to preserve these letters and read them leisurely. They used to get emotionally attached to them. It is debatable whether such emotions are good or not. But the point I am trying to make is that the personal touch is missing. Now a day when it is the case of e mails and letters through e mails, it has become instant, but with this it has also brought a whole lot of questions. Similar is the case will telephones. A couple of decades back it was hard to talk to people who are abroad and for that matter even those in different cities. Now it has become some cheap and affordable that it has no value. Cheating has become so easy, and again the personal touch is missing. Imagine what we all are missing. The anxiety with which people a generation ago used to wait for the postman to come, the host of reactions which used to come when some loved sprang as a surprise, the great deal of euphoria surrounding a family get together, are all nowhere to be seen these days. Credit cards have made purchases easier, but what has happened after that? People have started spending excessively and a part of the subprime crisis which has led to global recession is also because of this!!

Technology has no doubt given lots of benefits for us. But if we see that in the real sense, it has only given alternate solutions to needs for which solutions already existed. It has not come up with things out of the box and it has not come up with any new solutions. It has merely made existing things simpler, comfortable and convenient and nothing else. People may call me a traitor or a fanatic or I dont know what, but this is really a debatable point. As much as I acknowledge the merits of technology, I also at times start thinking too much about the other side of it which is also factually true!!