Tuesday 30 June 2015

2 decades that changed the technology Phases

The Mobile’s alarm clock rung. The boy wakes up and checks his phone, replies to few texts. Gets up and switches on his laptop resting right next on his side table. Read news updates, Logs in to Facebook, updates a status and leaves to freshen up. Gets ready for work. Picks up his car keys, laptop and mobile phone and reaches office. Makes a record of his arrival time through magnetic ID card and enters in the office. Switches on his laptop, says hi to colleagues on Skype and start working on his laptop. After a while, he discovers that a file he needed urgently is missing, he searches his entire data but fails to find out the file needed. He immediately makes a call to the concerned person, and instantly gets the desired file via E-mail.

Now let’s picture a similar boy having same routine 2 decades back. The typical alarm set rings, boy wakes up and advance towards the door to get the current morning’s newspaper. Stares at the peaceful new day and goes to freshen up himself, comes back, picks up his bike’s keys and leave for work. Informs about his arrival time to the office receptionist and meets all his colleagues face to face and starts working on his files present on the table. After a moment, he needed another file but is unable to find on his desk. Goes to his colleagues one by one, spends hours to search it in bookshelves, file folders and comes back to his desk disappointed and comes back empty handed.

This is how literally technology has changed our lives for real in the 20 years. Whether we talk about business and communication, food and agriculture, education, our socializing routine, our personal and professional lives have been changed drastically after the rise of technology.

Earlier, running business was hell of a job. Getting a proper area and starting up a new business needed good investment, human resources needed to perform certain business activities had to be present in your neighborhood. And due to all these limitations, opening up a new enterprise was literally a dream coming. But now technology has taken business to new dimensions. No money to get an area to set up a store? No problem at all. You can easily start it online on various social media platforms as well as you can expand it virtually. Hire resources online and get your work done in no time. Can’t go overseas? Get hired by an international firm and serve online.

Not only business but other aspects of life has been transformed. Decades back, we had limited food options and choices to eat. But now enjoy the food items from any part of the world. Genetically engineered foods such as wheat after the green revolution, tomatoes etc. are part of our daily lives now.

How about education? In old times, studying was a burden, quite a difficult task as you had to do it on your own. Arranging tutors and going to coaching classes and paying huge sums of money was a common practice. But thanks to technology for getting us all the information on just one click away. Now you can get access to all your study related topics on the internet. You can watch videos or even attend lectures online for free. Moreover, the gadgets introduced such as laptops, smartphones, E-readers have revolutionized the education sector. It has changed the way students think and pick up daily routine concepts.

Well, let’s take a look on beauty industry. Previously people entering into showbiz, crazy to become a star had to undergo certain screen tests of whether they look good on screen or not. Most of them had to leave the fashion industry due to failing the test. But now, thousands of inventions have been made to improve your facial looks as well as your body figure. Every year, millions of people get plastic surgeries to improve their looks. Growing hair is not a problem now through hair transplant techniques, Botox is there to help you fight aging and what not.

How about technology bringing change in our personal lives? Well, most of you would agree that technology has dramatically transformed our lives.  We used to socialize by personally visiting to someone’s place and had a good chit chat time face to face. But now we barely find time to see our friends and relatives. We now have a long list of social media platforms through which we connect virtually and get to know about each other’s lives through regular updates. Even If you are sitting with your favorite people around, you can’t stop checking your phone and look at it again and again for no reason. If internet disappears for some time, it comes as a great threat to our social life. If you are not found doing any activity on the internet, people will surely consider you dead.

Over the last 2 decades, technology has revolutionized our lives, making our world smaller and smaller. No doubt it has brought much ease to our lives but yet made us so much dependent on it. We would surely like to restore some of our activities from the last two decades such as playing outdoor games with the friends present in the neighborhood rather than playing virtual games on X-box and PlayStation, taking pictures occasionally had its own charm, receiving them after few days was a source of excitement. Now you can get pictures and selfies in just few seconds. Writing letters to your beloved ones added much excitement to our love life. Now, texting has replaced these all luxuries. Talk easily and have endless chats. No more anticipation of love replies anymore. Well, we cannot deny the fact that technology has served us with best of its forms but at the same time has taken away a lot of traditional practices and activities. We can justify this as the opportunity cost of having technology.

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