These are the two major trends of modern times. The technological excesses are typified particularly by the excesses in Communications and media. The other area is transportation. The decline, a colossal one, is in the inner quality of man. Let’s see how.
The ubiquitous nature of Internet is the first excess. It has carried an avalanche of information, good or bad, wanted or unwanted, in to every household, enriching and corrupting at the same time.
The TV is again a captivating medium having a stranglehold on humanity, which displays a similar capacity to right or wrong in equal measure. Yesterday was the birth day of a bollywood star, Amir Khan. He was quietly celebrating his 45th birthday at his residence. Nothing unusual? Moreover Amir is a man who shuns media, refuses to attend award ceremonies and waste his time, and does considerable social work. Enter media. The OB vans are parked outside his residence. Scores of channel personnel enter his house and telecast live the non-event for hours. An embarrassed Amir is talking to kids, cutting the cakes etc. Amir was obviously bored. So were the viewers. But who is bothered about the subject or the object? It is the medium which decides.
This is only a recent example of the excesses we are talking about. Media excesses have far outweighed political excesses which the former decry.
It is taking place every day in every sphere of activity where technology is involved, and technology is involved everywhere. In other words, every form of excess in every form of human activity is made possible by technological abundance from mass production to mass communication. In short Technology is Excess-Enabler, to the detriment of human development. This may sound quite contrary to what we believe, but it is true and would be visible only to historians of the future.
Another typical example is transportation. Choking roads, polluted air etc. The more human disaster is the tendency to be on the road most of the day, whether required or not.
Take another area for instance. The cell phones. It’s foray is unimaginable and nightmarish. The power to communicate is in everybody’s hands only to increase the babble and miscommunications as there is a corresponding decline in content. ‘Cell phone, internet and the car’, is the mantra of the day. A deadly combination called Convergence.
The decline is obvious in human values and the inner content of the human psyche. The power to concentrate, the time to contemplate and the willingness to hear other’s point of view have declined to dismally low levels. The virtues of patience, compassion for the fellow humans have become extinct. Relationships have lost their meaning in this tsunami of technology. Knowledge levels, I mean the true kind and not accumulation of facts, have gone down and understanding is dismal.
To say that everything is in the hands of the individuals, who should decide where to draw the line, is untenable in the backdrop of poverty, unemployment and illiteracy which are still plaguing humanity. Only an escapist or helpless would resort to this argument. To expect the individual, a pawn in the hands of the trends of the times, to stand up, a weak entity to have the strength to fight against such giants is expecting too much from him. Only a few strong leaders could achieve this, that too only in limited areas for shorter time.
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