-Bumblebee
A challenge for all to make the cyberspace habitable for ALL.
P.S. Technology, in this context, can be used interchangeably with terms like the internet, worldwide web and all other applications that come with it.
There was a time when many believed that technology was evil. However, just as every form of civilisation, they realised it couldn’t be stopped. Now, it’s not surprising to still find some people craving for the old world and citing how it was much better back then. The craving is not a surprise, as it can be ruled as an emotional attachment. The real surprise is that the idea of making the world a better place is now a quagmire of warped realities. To say it expressly, technology has been ingrained into every aspect of our society and our everyday life. For many who were born in this age, it is hard to imagine a world before the advent of the internet and smartphones.
Technology, like every other tool, could be wielded in the right or wrong direction, depending on the mode it’s used for, and to what purpose. In addition, it is not just a tool, it is more than just a tool; it’s now man’s best friend or worst enemy.
It all started good, and it hasn’t stopped being good, except that it susceptible to abuse. Look around you, there’s hardly anything that doesn’t have the touch of tech — from easier transportation to communication to easy trading, to medical research, to advertising, the list is endless. You can’t take away the fact that technology has increased accuracy and precision in our day-to-day lives. Bringing it to recent reality, the advent of Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of our world and its overbearing dependence on technology. The work-life paradigm shift is now based on working remotely. This has even shown that work can be done from home, questioning the relevance of offices, not forgetting the effect it has had on telecommunication and cable entertainment space, with these perfectly substituting for the need for social interaction, despite the lockdown measure. No one other than a 2-year-old needs convincing on the good of technology today. The advantages are widespread and across board, creating new jobs that were not in existence before. Look at the role technology plays in the vaccination against the COVID-19 virus, or should we go back to the 1913 and see if technology has done more harm than good? Maybe we were better prepared or inoculated in that period?
What do I need technology for? It has made the kids these days lazy; they no longer try to think for themselves, since every piece of information is at their fingertips. Now, almost everyone is getting fat from lack of physical or mental work because computer can do all the work for you. Gone are the days when men were agile and strong, we are now characterised with a world of fake glamour, yet you wonder why ADD is on the rise faster than 4G LTE. Perhaps technology is just a superman with a gift and a curse. From misinformation to misdemeanour, time has deteriorated, leaving simplicity with additional complexity and innovation with bits of negativity. This is more than just saying it is down to the user; it is also up to the maker. I remember going to the library and staying up for hours scouring through different books on various topics; now kids just wake up to opinions on tabloids and can’t even go on a long read without surfing the social media, taking comments from total strangers. What good can come from a tool that creates false impressions and fake glamour? It could even be the reason for the rise in different medical conditions like sclerosis to bad posture (from additive and long usage) to eye defects (from long exposure to blue light emitted from screen further resulting in insomnia in many) to mental depravity. Alternatively, you think the idea of the ground-breaking innovation in the treatment of previously life-threatening disease is enough to trump the evil it brought in the first place. It is clear that technology is bringing more problems than it can solve. It gives too much bad than it can handle. Even patent rights can’t make it good. Even though it makes lives more convenient, as highlighted, it can be negative. It isn’t negativity alone that sums it up as bad. It’s because it spirals into other forms of negativity that are are then covered with fancy words like paparazzi or influencing, or technical terms like phishing, etc.
It all gets ugly when the bad guys come to the fore. Many a time, technology has deployed over time by individuals, countries, and corporations in a fancy but disastrous way. The use has gone from 4-squared mire to a full scale dirt pit, from the prospect of cyber insecurity, to dark web and different vulnerability in so-called enhanced devices. Just like cutting keys, corporation and national database are being broken into by smart users or geeks with little consolidation in many quarters to arrest the crime. Technology itself has given rise to the selling of privacy and authorisation, not that this is a bad deal, but it is mostly done without the party of interest formal approval. Malware, spyware are everywhere and even firewalls are through the roof.
Unequivocally, we can agree that there’s something wrong with the system we utilise. We need to start policing our usage with preventive and corrective actions like eye-filter application for avid night users of different devices from health reasons to security consciousness across various platforms. Utilising applications that arrest addictiveness and prolonged usage of techy devices, policing our point of view to a macroscopic level vis-à-vis other insights. Actions like this will, in fact, reboot the chaotic scene that surrounds us.
