Let me ask you a question. What was the first thing you did today morning? Being in 2014 there is a huge chance that you would say. “I looked at my cellphone and checked notification”. Whereas before 31st July 1995 cellphones didn’t even exist, at least in India. Machines are meant to save our time, instead we spend more time on machines, over past two decades what has so changed that what was meant to make our work easier has become such an addiction, very much comparable to drugs, alcohol and things. Are you technologically handicapped? You sure are.
Reflecting on my childhood. More specifically till I was 12 that was in 2001, I didn’t know what mobile phone was. Summers were meant to be times we played outdoors mostly, be it cricket, badminton or even simple game of hide and seek. Days began in hurrying up to school, like as if it was some sort of race as to who reached first to the class. People occupying first benches were looked upon as retards by the backbenchers who used to bring ridiculous marks and even were made to sit on first bench by teachers who gave them taste of their own medicine. Fourth period at 10am gave us meaning of hunger, constantly glancing at clock to wait up for interval and then bustling up to canteen for Rs.5 pav bhaji. Evenings used to go in tutions and then that craze of street cricket. Homework, an hour of tv.
Subsequently teenage introduced me to technology. I was 15 when I got my first mobile phone. A Motorola that cost 2000 INR that time. Little did I know. I wouldn’t even carry books as much as I would carry my mobile at later years of teenage. Thereafter smartphones, tablets, laptops.
Talking of today’s kids. When they are a couple of years old parents introduce them to ipads when they must be playing with real toys and not just talking gingers and talking moms and art in the form of sketch app instead of wax crayons. Consequently digital paper takes form of notebooks and cartoons are watched on YouTube and play station takes place of hide and seek. In the name of being modern we are taking away the child of childhood and before they could become sane enough to differentiate between human effort and machine we make them slaves to the latter. Did you know that Steve Jobs, founder ofApple.inc didn’t have a single ipad in his home because he feared his kids may get addicted to it . You may say I am targeting apple but then people are hooked to all sorts of devices. I can bet you checked your Facebook or whatsapp many times since you began reading this blog article.
Kid part aside, you answer one more question. How much of your life is controlled by anything that needs electricity? Beginning with mobile phone in the morning, surprisingly many alarm clocks are thrown out because mobile phones have them too. Go to office again computer powers on and while you are busy doing “work” you check your mobile again for notifications. A tab is open in your browser for Facebook and you play candy crush often sending requests to people sitting next to you at work. Crazily enough there is an app which tells you exactly how many times you have touched your phone at the end of the day. What would you do without technology?
Psychologically speaking checking mobile, social network, email has become a reward and punishment paradigm. While avoiding these causes unnecessary anxiety, checking and not finding anything has same effect, while finding anything gives us some sort of happiness. In a recent experiment shown in the numbers game, National Geographic channel. 10 volunteers were paid not to touch their mobile phones for 2 hours and made to fill random survey in a meeting room and their mobiles were kept on a table at a distance from the table they were sitting around. And later after 30 minutes they were told that video recorder has failed and the supervisor has to step out of room to fix it. It was seen that seeing nobody watching just after 10 minutes one person broke the supposed deal and ventured to touch his mobile phone. In a span of 27 minutes 6 more followed. To make remaining 3 anxious the conductors of survey called on their mobiles. 1 person fell into the trap.
While this article may be abstruse and insufficient to make anybody understand why exactly we are slowly becoming slaves to technology. Bigger context to understanding will be monitoring your own use of technology and comparing it to eras our fathers and grandfathers lived in. The eras of hard work. The times when they had to walk miles to study, when television and for that matter telephone was a luxury, the times when a new slate meant happiness and people made genuine effort to remember our birthdays. I can write on and on, on this topic. However I do believe you have understood what message I am trying to convey.
Switch off your cellphone, ditch your tablet, shut down your laptop and take a walk to a nearby childrens park. Look at them playing, worry free. To them happiness means a smooth ride through the slide. There can be happiness without technology. Hug someone you love, give them actual flowers instead of sending stickers on viber. And if away pick up your phone and call. Trust me its way better than chatting and gives more human touch. Take a hike to waterfall, enjoy nature. Watch sunset. While you may not be able to get technology completely out of your life, at least you will know what you are missing out on when your hands are on gadgets.
Else time will come when you will become a cyborg. A mechanism that’s part human and part robot and that day will mark the end of humanity as machines will take over almost every aspect of human race. How about start by switching off your system right now?
-SAiSH
No comments:
Post a Comment