Technology: Master or Slave?

“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”
– Stewart Brand

Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computers and Pixar Animation started the company at the age of 20 from his parents’ garage. He said at an oration at Stanford University in June 2005. “Woz and I worked hard and in ten years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. When I was 17, I read a quote:

“If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”

It made an impression on me, and since then for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself,

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Your time is limited; so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”.

Time is limited and technology is advancing at a fast pace. Can we slow down the advance of technology? Can the technology roll back? Are we using the technology to the best even if it is at our fingertips? Are we paralyzed or crippled by the traditional thinking? Are we afraid of using the hi-tech gadgets? Are we receptive to the new ideas? Are we progressive or regressive?

Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. If you can amend the technology, you are the master. If you can’t, you are the slave!

Technological advances unimaginable only a few years ago are now a reality for those on the front lines. Bill Gates has rightly said, “We are changing the world with technology. The greatest danger in modern technology isn’t that machines will begin to think like people, but that people will begin to think like machines”.

As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of “do it yourself”. Whenever our children are on the video games, they carry on winning but when we, the surgeons, are at computers, the screen says, “Game over or Time over” Why? Are we ready to learn from our children? Are we afraid to explore? Are we suffering from excusitis?

The greatest fire in the world would have started with a single spark somewhere. We should start today and become “enabler” rather than tech-disabled. We believe, “What I hear, I forget; what I see, I remember; what I do, I understand.” We should come out of the orbit of fear and start fingering today… We can always leap forward.

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