Our grandfather once told me a story reminiscing his young days, when he shifted from his village to a grand city he saw the way of life was much different.
He told me about a day when he saw a group huddled together around a box, upon coming close he heard a voice coming out of the box; he was scared and took a few steps back, he could not understand what was happening. That box was a radio and that was the first time he had seen one. He bought one for himself a few years later. Nowadays, that radio is available on every cell phone you buy.
Technology is ever-changing and ever-developing; what you think is flashy and cutting edge will become an outdated technology in a few years. As said by Heraclitus, ‘change is the only constant in life’ and that rings true with technology too.
Thomas Friedman has a famous book on the evolution of the internet and its uses named ‘The world is flat’ where he depicts how the internet changed the world and benefitted millions.
Companies in Bangalore could make the operations cost of companies based in the USA much cheaper and faster. He writes that the internet globalized the world much more than governments did.
Nowadays, a person can find a psychiatrist online at livehealthonline.com, fashion advice from Fashism.com, career suggestions from Top Assignment Experts, get to design his/her home from floorplanner.com, and a student from Turkey can find an assignment from academicians based in the UK at this Paper Writing Service. Hell, you can even find people to write your CVs at Paperdoers. That makes you understand why Thomas Friedman named his book as ‘the world is flat’.
We as a generation have grown up witnessing multiple developments in technology; we did not know once that we could use a cell phone to click pictures, listen to music, create images, and watch movies. We once thought that it is used only for making a call and sending messages, we had no idea it would develop so much over the years.
There is a TV series named ‘black mirror’ where each episode has a story based on a make-believe technological advancement, you get the feeling that those would not be make-believe one day and we do not know what we might witness in the coming decades.
MIT released a study naming 10 breakthrough technological advancements in 2018, where one of them is 3D metal printing which will allow manufacturers to just provide the design to create the parts in their warehouse if there is a shortage. That is, frankly, unheard of and incredibly helpful to manufacturers and companies.
There are breakthrough advancements each year in every field of science; there are promises of nanotechnology that would be able to cure a body of cancer cells, change genetic traits at DNA level, and advance AI technology for help in major sectors.
I remember a topic ‘how technology is impacting our lives’, which we were asked to write about in my English classes in school and it was a fairly common topic; I was given the same topic when I took part in a debate.
When I was graduating, we were given the same topic for group discussion; each time there were different ideas put forward, and each time the students talked about how it has developed so much and affect our day-to-day activities. One theme is common among all those essays and discussions, what we are marveling at right now would be a given for the next generation; that is a scary thought and makes me feel what my grandfather must feel looking at his old radio.