With increasing sophistication and availablity of new technology come some unintended consequences. Sometimes we assume that technology will always work when needed and when it does not, we are at a loss having forgotten how life was before the advent of the latest version of a technology.
Two recent incidents in my life come to mind which illustrate this dilemna of the tyranny of technology and how it tends to control our lives and how we have slowly but surely handed over our brains to automation.
A few months ago my wife and I were to travel to Hyderabad to fulfill a lecture committment. We had everything organized when a freak snow storm hit our area and flooded the power generator backup. Since the roads were impassable, the replacement generator could not be brought in. And when the electric transmission lines went down -- yes in the most advanced country in the world, the lines are held up with old wooden poles - which often break and fall in a storm. Since the electric power went off in our condominium on a Wednesday and our journey was scheduled for the next day, we paid it no heed, assuming that the power breakdown could not last more than a few hours. Except of course it did. Even more importantly the power breakdown made certain that the sole elevator in our five storey condominium was no longer working. The state of the roads meant that an external elevator system could not be brought in. So there we were stuck in our flat on the fifth floor with no way of coming down with our luggage to take a taxi to the airport. ( Of course, if we had known of these possible failures, we would have packed smaller bags, organized a friend to help us bring them down and changed our flight plans). But we were sure that technology would work as it was intended to- for elevators, road cleaning and for power generation. So there we were - the airplanes were taking off in the air, taxis to the airport were able to drive to the airport but we could not come down five floors to the ground! As it happened a few friendly neighbours helped us navigate the darkened stairs and we did make our flight but for a few hours technology had dominated our lives.
And then it happened again. Our daughter decided to take a holiday from her hectic work schedule and flew off to St Maarten. Since she was on holiday, she decided to switch off her Blackberry phone, not take her Macbook but took only the latest IPad 2 with its latest fanciest gadget of Facetime. Now Facetime was a new addition on the iPad 2 which allows one to not only talk to someone far away who is connected to the internet but also to see them. We were thrilled to see her on the small screen as she described her daily adventures. Till one day last week we did not hear from her. So we called her from our iPad2 but still no reply. Her cellphone we knew was turned off and so would automatically divert us to her voicemail. We thought maybe she is out for dinner, then for supper and then perhaps at a bar and then perhaps a nightclub. Or she could be taking a midnight walk on the beach. But as evening wore on and there was still no reply on the iPad2 phone, we gradually started panicking especially when calls to her phone in the room at the hotel were also not answered. So there we were 4000 miles away unable to contact her to ensure that she was safe. Till finally in the early hours of morning, her mother who had kept an anxious vigil all night, decided to call the hotel front desk to go to her room and check that she was all right and well. Some five minutes later, the front desk clerk came down and told us that she had answered the door and was all right. Of course minutes later she called herself a little peeved that we had woken her up from her restful sleep! What had happended was really quite simple- we had assumed that technology would work as in the past. But her cellphone was turned off, the ringer in the new iPad2 was too low in volume to awaken her and the hotel phone system, it turned out was defective! We had spent a sleepless night for nothing.
The moral of all of this - don't rely too much on technology working all the time everywhere. After all before there were cellphones or phones, we would send off our children to the far ends of the earth only with a lot of advice and warnings and hope for an occasional postcard, which more often than not only asked for more money to be sent to a post office somewhere in the boondocks! Now technology had made contact so easy and we had become so reliant on its working, that any failure was a major catastrophe.
Two recent incidents in my life come to mind which illustrate this dilemna of the tyranny of technology and how it tends to control our lives and how we have slowly but surely handed over our brains to automation.
A few months ago my wife and I were to travel to Hyderabad to fulfill a lecture committment. We had everything organized when a freak snow storm hit our area and flooded the power generator backup. Since the roads were impassable, the replacement generator could not be brought in. And when the electric transmission lines went down -- yes in the most advanced country in the world, the lines are held up with old wooden poles - which often break and fall in a storm. Since the electric power went off in our condominium on a Wednesday and our journey was scheduled for the next day, we paid it no heed, assuming that the power breakdown could not last more than a few hours. Except of course it did. Even more importantly the power breakdown made certain that the sole elevator in our five storey condominium was no longer working. The state of the roads meant that an external elevator system could not be brought in. So there we were stuck in our flat on the fifth floor with no way of coming down with our luggage to take a taxi to the airport. ( Of course, if we had known of these possible failures, we would have packed smaller bags, organized a friend to help us bring them down and changed our flight plans). But we were sure that technology would work as it was intended to- for elevators, road cleaning and for power generation. So there we were - the airplanes were taking off in the air, taxis to the airport were able to drive to the airport but we could not come down five floors to the ground! As it happened a few friendly neighbours helped us navigate the darkened stairs and we did make our flight but for a few hours technology had dominated our lives.
And then it happened again. Our daughter decided to take a holiday from her hectic work schedule and flew off to St Maarten. Since she was on holiday, she decided to switch off her Blackberry phone, not take her Macbook but took only the latest IPad 2 with its latest fanciest gadget of Facetime. Now Facetime was a new addition on the iPad 2 which allows one to not only talk to someone far away who is connected to the internet but also to see them. We were thrilled to see her on the small screen as she described her daily adventures. Till one day last week we did not hear from her. So we called her from our iPad2 but still no reply. Her cellphone we knew was turned off and so would automatically divert us to her voicemail. We thought maybe she is out for dinner, then for supper and then perhaps at a bar and then perhaps a nightclub. Or she could be taking a midnight walk on the beach. But as evening wore on and there was still no reply on the iPad2 phone, we gradually started panicking especially when calls to her phone in the room at the hotel were also not answered. So there we were 4000 miles away unable to contact her to ensure that she was safe. Till finally in the early hours of morning, her mother who had kept an anxious vigil all night, decided to call the hotel front desk to go to her room and check that she was all right and well. Some five minutes later, the front desk clerk came down and told us that she had answered the door and was all right. Of course minutes later she called herself a little peeved that we had woken her up from her restful sleep! What had happended was really quite simple- we had assumed that technology would work as in the past. But her cellphone was turned off, the ringer in the new iPad2 was too low in volume to awaken her and the hotel phone system, it turned out was defective! We had spent a sleepless night for nothing.
The moral of all of this - don't rely too much on technology working all the time everywhere. After all before there were cellphones or phones, we would send off our children to the far ends of the earth only with a lot of advice and warnings and hope for an occasional postcard, which more often than not only asked for more money to be sent to a post office somewhere in the boondocks! Now technology had made contact so easy and we had become so reliant on its working, that any failure was a major catastrophe.
Ah the tyranny of technology!
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