-Karan Hiral Mehta
Only yesterday I saw something that frustrated me to the core. I was walking down a lane late at night when I saw a man lying in the middle of the road. He was injured and bleeding a lot. I ran towards him and looked around for help to find a man standing a little away taking a video of the man lying on the road. I asked him to help me. He looked at me surprised and told me that he is not interested to help as he didn’t want to get involved. All the same he stood there taking video as I tried carrying the injured man on my shoulders. Somehow I managed to get the injured man to the main road and then found help and we took him to the hospital. Ever since then, I have been thinking of what technology has done to man.
The modern era is but run by one thing-technology. Whatsapp, facebook, twitter etc have become a daily necessity. They are slowly becoming just as important for survival as food, clothes and shelter. I read a troll somewhere that just imagine a day when twitter and facebook stops and people come out in the sun all confused of where they are. Come to think of it, that would be funny and maybe it is possible that a day might come when a few of us may not know the warmth of the day or the chill of the nights as we may be locked up in the house 24X7X365.
I am not saying that technology is a curse. It is a boon rather. We are what we are today because of our advancement in science and technology. Science and technology has always been, is and always will be a major determinant in changing our lives. It is only because of social media that we are able to connect to the whole world while we sit on the comfortable couch of our warm home. If it was not for the internet, knowledge about thousands of unrelated things would not have been so easy to access. Technology also plays an important role in all fields of human development including medicine. It is only because of our advancements in technology that man has been able to walk on another planet. One can fill volumes talking about how technology is a boon to mankind and how it has helped man reach such great heights of success.
But all the same, it is the same technology that has made man a loner even when he is in the midst of a crowd. I recently found myself in an awkward situation where I was talking to a friend of mine and he was so engrossed in his mobile that he didn’t even hear a word I said. I got irritated. Later I realized that I too do the same thing a often lot. I believe that everyone would have come across such an experience. Nowadays it’s a common experience where a group of friends would be sitting and having tea but everyone would be engrossed in their phone and not a single conversation would start. I am so glad that as a child I was more accustomed to outdoor games to the contrary practice of children nowadays who are always into gaming rather than outdoor sports. Children nowadays are more accustomed to computer games than outdoor games. They lock themselves up in their home and play games in computer while the sun shines. I am not saying that computer games are bad. I myself find them a whole lot of fun. But there is a time and place for everything.
I have always believed that you get to know a person better when you converse with them in person rather than by texts or calls. I actually think that social media can actually turn a person anti-social. I always find it more fun to play in the sun and sweat than to sit home gaming. I always enjoy dancing in the rain more than standing in the balcony watching it. I would any day prefer exploring nature more fun than seeing wallpapers of them on the net.
Nowadays people express their feelings as statuses rather than expressing it directly to the concerned person. Many of us do not know how to behave in a society as we never have taken interest in being an active part of one. A few of us can chat for hours on text but cannot even mumble a word in public. Doesn’t that make us an introvert?
Not only has man become lazy, he has also become less social. I wouldn’t say that technology is bad, because it would be wrong to say so. I would just say that we should not be its slaves. It should be us that controls technology and not technology that controls us.
And so I would say that it is up to us to decide of what we make of technology. It is us that decide whether it is a string that connects or a barrier that divides.