Smart watches that inform you of Facebook notifications, Smart Scales that post your weight to Twitter followers or the Smart pill apps that ping you for timely reminders, Smart glasses that let you accomplish tasks virtually, smart technologies are fast changing the landscape between social reality and mundane existence!
Google's CFO Pattrick Pichette made an insightful comment in this regard at a conference in Singapore lately. Stating that his firm was a "engineering company with all these computer scientists that see the world as a completely broken place", he reaffirms the notion of how technology is reshaping human lives in every sphere.
The thing with technology is that its laurels and accomplishments are so overpowering that imagining anything as impossible is a stub move. It is the new age problem solver of anything and everything, literally.
Browsing through the web I stumble upon so many new inventions and apps that baffle my mind about technological progress. The two startling trends common to this paradigm are thought provoking.
Firstly, for most of us being 'social' amounts to being visible on social media sites rather than than actual face to face communication. Well why shouldn't we enjoy this virtuality; afterall, "social engineering is disguised as product engineering". Secondly,this helps in understanding the flow of the current choices and preferences in the market. That's like a home run against peer pressure.
These two pointers are practically the social recipe for using technology the smart way. But there are others who worry about this technological fatigue. Well no doubt the so called smart technologies have their dark side and it is upon the user to draw the line between what is "good" and "bad" technology-use.
The opinion from Silicon Valley, the experimental lab of such revolutionary trends is clear. Technology, for them does not come with any negative adages. In fact, it provides a way to "give consumers new products that they want but to push them to behave better also... 'smart' is Silicon Valley's shorthand for transforming present day social reality".
Context is the main driving force that lets a user decide what a smart technology really is. While good technology empowers a user to ameliorate the larger standards of the world around, a bad technology often inhibits growth; rather it leaves a techno lover oscillating between moral use and natural compulsion. Now this often gets bad-mouthed as being slaves to technology. What most critics forget is that there is a CHOICE on offer, which is taken or neglected.
In a strongly worded post by Wall Street Journal, an eminent author wrote that the problem with technology comes down to issue of rooting out "imperfections of human conditions". This implies that technological innovations will remain an ongoing process as long as humans are not satisfied with their 'trial-n-error'methods. Unfortunately, it is an endless circle.
The bottomline is that yes technology has become a byword of human lifestyle. Neither can we do away with it nor without. The fetish to surround ourselves with smart technologies is almost overpowering us that the creeping tide of intellectual poverty is only apparently recognized.
We close the discussion with Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's statement in this regard. "People will spend less time trying to get technology to work...because it will just be seamless". This is the slow sartorial reality we are all heading towards. But choices we all have, we just need to 'lock, stock and barrel' it!!
We hope that the article was thought provoking. Do share with us your opinions freely.
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