Preamble
Technlogy is something which appears to be with us to stay and there hardly passes a day where some new invention is not heralded or trumpted in the media. But the revolution is certainly the more pronounced in two areas, mobile phones and the internet, together with the seamless interaction between the two.
The 21st century has seen an incredible advance in mobile phone technology. Chief amongst these has been the development of the iPhone, which is parctically a personal computer at your fingertips. The sheer scale of applications avaialble on this product is almost never ending and the ability to access broadband at fast speeds makes it a force to be reckoned with.
Personal computers are also becoming smaller and smaller with the result being that these can be constantly a companion wherever the owner or user goes. So you can take your laptop with you on a visit to another country and remain constantly connected to the internet thus becoming a sort of ‘mini slave’ to technology in the process.
Internet is now freely available almost everywhere in developed countries from wi fi hotspots in city centres to all sorts of high end connections everywhere. Your car can come installed with the latest and most advanced GPS systems and you can stay on the internet even while driving although it is not always advisable to stay ferreting around with a screen while in motion. But the technology is there and it is getting perfected all the time resulting in an explosion of opportunities which are hugely difficult to resist.
Are we getting cut off from the real world?
With all the time we spend on the internet, be it on a computer, a mobile phone or the latest state of the art iPAD, it is a fact that everyone is slowly getting disconnected from real life issues. Slowly but surely, communication is more often than not through some sort of machine and the level of personal contact is obviously deteriorating at a fast pace. Face to face contact is becoming less by the hour with top management and other decision makers preferring to fire off emails if they want to send a message to their staff. But even in normal domestic conditions, some families end up communicating only through their computers or their mobile phones and the level of interaction constantly gets less and less.
Naturally there are benefits to such an approach but being a traditionalist, I do believe that nothing beats face to face chat as here the true emotions of the person can be gauged. Technlogy should only be there to achieve goals better and faster and should definitely not replace the normal humane touch but sadly, the situation is likely to get much worse before it gets better.
A complicated technological future?
As devices become simpler, there does not seem to be a threat that the future will become too complicated. Actually, man is becoming rather alzier than he used to be with all that’s available on the market today. Cars can practically end up self driven whilst all other home gadgets normally work on their own with minimal user intervention. The joy of certain home hobbies has long gone now with all sorts of contraptions reducing life to a mere succession of remote control buttons. Is that a desirable future?
Do computers and technological innovations really change lives?
This is an arguable statement as one has to say that the situation does remain very much the same on a basic level. Man still needs to eat, sleep and get about his daily needs although technology obviously makes these easier to achieve. Still some facets of life, especially in the workplace have gone forever, a typical example is the secretray which is really no longer necessary in this day and age when you can organize your diary so easily with some sort of application or another.
Nothwitstanding all this, one has to accept that technology and innovations of some sort are here to stay. The trick is to combine traditional life methods with the technology available to you but not let it take over your life completely. One should moderate time on the internet and not end up playing games for hours on end with the resultant neglect of domestic or other duties. Man should not reduce himself to be a slave to technology but should harness the same technology to suit his own needs.
There is a jungle of technological innovations out there but its always your choice at the end of the day how much you want that to affect you. A judicious re-appraisal of life within the context of 21st century innovation is ripe for the picking.
