In the morning, when the moon is at its rest, you will find me at the time I love the best, writing and penning my thoughts.
It has become a routine for me to wake up every Friday morning around 4am to pen my weekly article.
Things change so fast that what I initially thought of writing over a Monday breakfast had already become “stale news” and probably uninteresting to read by the weekend.
With social media, news spread like wildfire and many of us keep receiving repeated news and pictures until there is an overload of information on our palm-sized smartphone. Incredible.
When Alvin Tofler wrote “Future Shock” in 1970, he mentioned that the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
He also wrote that knowledge is the most democratic source of power in that you’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
This great growling engine of change called technology – it is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.
The unbelievable pace at which smartphone companies introduce their range of gadgets does remind us that becoming obsolescence is indeed a scary thought.
There was a time we would just be happy to hold a Motorola “flip-phone” and felt good to be connected but Huawei gives connection a new definition with its latest model, the Y6 Prime.
Among other things, the Huawei Y6 Prime (2019) “on the rear packs a 13-megapixel camera with an f/1.8 aperture. The rear camera setup has autofocus and it sports an 8-megapixel camera on the front for selfies.” Wow!
I remember feeling so elated sending my first monochrome picture via a mobile phone which would have looked so antiquated by today’s high-definition standards – “the future has arrived, so I thought.”
The Nokias and Motorolas had since faded into oblivion and it is no longer unfashionable to be seen with a China-made handphone. It’s the in-thing.
While our technological powers increase, the side effects and potential hazards also escalate with them.
Face-to-face interaction seemed to diminish as people stayed glued to their smartphones and relationships appear at risk with a noticeable reduction in “communication” with the people near us while we can connect with those far away, at an instant. How ironic can that be!
One of the probable definitions of sanity in our modern world may be the ability to tell real from unreal.
With so much fake news circulating on social media these days, it requires extremely good and sharp judgement to separate the truths from the lies – the real from the unreal.
I have my fair share of “sharing” fake news too, without even realising they were fake until being alerted by well-meaning friends.
I believe many of us have similar experiences in this era of “touch and go” – we don’t even have a chance to be prompted and reminded, “Do you wish to proceed?”
It doesn’t help if one has extra sensitive fingers which can react faster than the brain.
Fortunately most messages can now be deleted even after sending.
For the more embarrassing ones, one can only pray that they have not been read, especially in group chats.
A double “blue tick” can only mean that the embarrassment has become real for the unintended recipient and sender.
In short, we may soon need a new definition for embarrassment as it may no longer be, if done once too often.
However careful we can be and while we can use all the quantitative data we can get, we may still have to distrust it and use our own intelligence and judgment in the final analysis.
The number of people and amount being regularly scammed is a stark reminder that technology is indeed a double-edged sword.
We can cut and also get cut.
While it has become an integral part of our lives by providing conveniences in transactions and interactions, it can also cause great misery and inconveniences when scammers and hackers join in the fray.
We are literally swimming with sharks in this vast ocean of “science and technology” where artificial intelligence can possibly get the better of real intelligence, or the lack of it.
It may sound confusing but it’s undeniable that technology feeds on itself and it is technology which makes more technology possible.
A friend used to joke about the paradox of learning, “the more we learn, the more we know. The more we know, the more we forget. The more we forget, the less we know. So, why learn?”
Yet another wise soul remarked, “the person who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow will probably become uneducated the day after tomorrow.”
If we care to recall how doctors during our primary school days studied and handled malnutrition among patients who ate what’s left while the current batch is focusing on obesity and advising patients to eat what’s right.
That, in a nutshell is how fast the world changes around us.
We need to embrace change in the right spirit before we are overwhelmed by change.
It is the only thing constant.
The future shock is already here in our presence.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the New Sarawak Tribune.
