Technology a Boon or a Curse

One of my friend said that he came to United States around 18 years ago, during those days there was no "Internet". I was like "WHAT?" No Internet!!! how did you survive? He said, we not only survived but were a lot lot happy than what we are today. Here is why...


Imagine a day at work when you work from 9 AM to 5 PM and come back home with no office work to do coz you don't have a Lapop :) Internet does not exist so you don't have onsite/ offshore calls in the night and early morning.

While this model gave a lot of balance b/w work and family it had the downsides of not achieving what we can achieve today by laptops and internet. Phone bills were high, No e-mails, No photo and video sharing online and None of the business/ personal tasks (Banking, Flight reservations, News are just examples) could be carried out online.And now, we are on the next level, Laptops are giving way to Tablets and Smartphones. So you can be "Online" on the run. You can remain connected. You are technically advanced, always reachable, can share your views, photos, videos, live feeds in real time. This is indeed excellent. But lets take a step back. 

Let us imagine, just imagine...What would happen if we don't have access to laptops, internet, smartphones for 5 business days continuously. We would go to work, do the official work but wont have access to any internet application and you cannot get online for 5 days continuously. You would just work 9 AM to 5 PM and come back home. Tell your office that you cannot take onsite/ offshore calls for that week. You cannot access VPN for that week. What would happen? Answer may vary from person to person. Impact may vary from person to person. But once we try this we will for sure become restless, we actually don't know how we will react. Because all of a sudden we will have a precious commodity called "time" available in abundance and we will not have anything worthwhile "planned" to do when we get that "time" available. Makes Sense? While I am writing this, I am using blogger as a medium of communication and I know readers are going to read on their laptops and smartphones using Internet. Live collaboration across the globe, that is one example of the power of technology that we should appreciate. 

In a nutshell, technology is a boon, let us try to use it to our advantage. Let us not get addicted to it. Let us try to get away from our technical gadgets as and when possible and use them only when they add value. And just not use them every now and then coz they are just "available". Productive way to spend time on the Internet is NOT just to know which website to visit, but, it is actually to be on the other side of internet, that is, in addition to being a "USER", you should also become a good "Content Creator" and "Promoter". 
For example,

• Add value by creating videos, websites/ blogs, tutorials etc. 
• Help promote good stuff by sharing. 
• Flag inappropriate content when needed. 
• Educate people about digital literacy.