Is computer technology our slave or master?

Nowadays we have the Internet, knowledge for whatever its worth has by and large been digitalized and millions if not billions of people are hooked onto the “Net” on a daily basis!

We have become a people very much dependent on information technology for our almost everything.

Indeed, someone had said that the “Internet” has become the world’s largest library and very soon, the largest shopping centre too.

Imagine, you sit at home, lock onto a computer and you can search or buy almost anything under the sun with just a click of a mouse, which was not possible at all less than thirty years ago.

Even the old-timers are doing what most people say, just yahoo or goggle it but you could be surprised by what you’ll find.

The data-base is incredible! Ever wonder how they are able to put up so much stuff in there?

You can’t help but think that when something can be used so effortlessly, surely great effort must have gone into its making. It’s incredible but true, man’s genius knows no bounds!

The power of technology is sweeping the globe and like time and the river it waits for no man.

Either you tame it and make it your slave or it traps and enslaves you. I think the power that’s been unleashed by computer technology has gone beyond even its creators’ wildest dreams.

Questions that come to mind are: Can we live without computers? Are we enslaved by this technology or not? Can business move, can the world tick without it?

Someone once said, “Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand and it stabs you in the back with the other.”

Karl Marx had this observation and said, “The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”

Indeed, now we have machines to work for us literally at the push of a button.

It’s no wonder our working week is shrinking and very soon it might be down to a 4-day working week instead of 5! But is that good for us or not?

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom”, so said the famed social scientist Issac Asimov in 1998. And I think he isn’t wrong at all.

Indeed as Albert Einstein had put it, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

If it keeps up, man could be endangering the very Earth he calls home.

You know one guy puts it this way, “The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”

And if we are not careful that day may come sooner than we think. How pathetic!

I will close with this thought.

Buckminister Fuller, the founder of the Geodesic Doom, an architect by profession and a renowned 21st century thinker had posed this challenge some years back which I think is still relevant today.

The question he had asked is this: “Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth and if so, how?”

Is computer technology our slave or our master? Will it kill us or can it save us from impending disaster? Think on it.

While doing that let’s listen to Slim Whitman sing “North Wind” (live concert) a rare oldie (not often heard) of the sixties brought to us courtesy of “mgbay”. TQ.