Is Technology making us its slave ?

People depend on technology and technological inventions for their day-to-day works, and major works as well. Our lives have been enhanced in diverse set of ways due to technical advancements. Some even argue that 'Modern-day peoples have become mere slaves of technology'. In my opinion, this statement is only partially true.

 

Modern day technologies include video conferencing software like Skype, Viber etc. Many young peoples of Nepal have gone abroad for their further studies, and job opportunities. Henceforth they talk to their relatives back in Nepal through those video conferencing software. Communication technology have made it possible to communicate easily with a person who is thousands of miles away.

Moreover, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and so on have become appendage in our lives to interact with all the peoples out there. Instant chat, uploading photo, like, comment, share, and many such facilities are very handy. Apart from, general interaction between friends, Facebook and Twitter also aided in social revolutions in different contexts, and different countries. In our country, many governmental decisions, after being criticized widely in social networks, were taken down. And YouTube contains millions of videos including teaching materials and other general videos.

Among all the technologies, communication technology is growing very fast. Different models of modern cellphones have ruled the market. Most of the peoples either go for ios or Android phones, developed by Apple, and Google respectively. We can free our mind as different storage mechanisms can store Terabytes of information for us. And we can retrieve that information whenever we need that.

Why Nepal is lacking behind in comparison with other countries? Its simple. Nepal is not giving enough attention on developing technologies, and using technologies to enhance efficiency of peoples, society and government. Hydropower is a great possibility in our country. There exists a high source of water from which thousands of megawatts of electricity can be produced.

However, technology merely does the job of implementing our original ideas. For example, Facebook, and Twitter only communicates the writings, and thoughts which we create or think in our mind. They does not create ideas and views themselves. Let's take an example of very good looking and fuel efficient car. That car is first designed efficiently by a veteran designer using his original ideas. S/he may use some drawing software to design that car, but at first, s/he must create it in paper originally. 

In addition to it, a good program or software is first thought by a creative programmer. Then only s/he can write source codes using some software development framework, like .NET, Java etc. Therefore it would be a wrong conclusion to say that technology deteriorates the ability of humans to think for ourselves.

In account of all these examples, it is convenient to express that technology has enhanced our lives in multiple aspects. Having said that, it is also noteworthy that technology itself cannot produce best results without human support. In fact, technology fosters with better human thinking and innovations.

(Published in The Himalayan Times On 6 November 2014)