Digital Dilemmas, Part 2 (How we are Affected Physically)

What can be said about the physical impact of the digital age in which we live? Its effects are so far-reaching that there are very few areas of our lives, our homes and our workplaces which are not in some way affected.

Let's start with the good stuff, and there is plenty of it depending on one's point of view.  Naturally, we can't mention everything but in broad terms, we see things like, instant communications, easy access to information, and inter-connected-ness on a scale that is unprecedented. Ease of online services such as banking, travel bookings, online shopping etc far exceeds anything we ever had in recent history.

Computers and the digital technology that powers and automates so many of the functions which we now take quite for granted; in fact virtually the entire infrastructure of our modern world, especially in western economies, is based upon recent cyber technologies.

The potential for life-changing innovations continues to emerge at a dizzying pace and is undeniable. Automated cars are already on our roads. There is currently technology in development for a car/plane as a viable mode of personal transport. This would be a computerised car cum drone. Safer, swifter and more comfortable than anything we now have to get us from A to B and all automated of course! There are many, many other positive developments due to technological breakthroughs from health and transportation to education and instant information. The list could go on and on.

The bad stuff.  Physically the lives of those who spend a lot of time on personal computers or at gaming or who work from some form of web-based technology are far more sedentary than would have ever been possible in the past. These technologies have also become part of institutional education from primary through to college and onwards giving rise to all manner of health problems and psychological issues in our up and coming generations.

While we appear to be more easily contactable more and more people are actually alone with their devices than not. Take the ever-increasing instances of when family or friends are sitting together in a restaurant, or at home, ostensibly to share a meal together and yet all the while busily tapping out messages or fiddling with something on their smartphones and quite oblivious of one another.

We may be able to easily contact one another and be wired into a whole planetary network of information and instant 'news' and yet our 'personal space' is also routinely invaded 24/7 by mobile technologies along with their electromagnetic radiations.

There are surveillance issues that are genuinely worrying despite the fact that we are told that we are 'watched' for our own good.

IDs are quickly moving towards using biodata that imprints our iris configurations and encodes our fingerprints. One by one countries are beginning to phase out passports in favour of online biodata.

Here in India, of all places, I had my iris encoded along with fingerprints in an ID process that is currently taking place all over the country. These days in India, even a Sadhu living on the street has an Aadhaar Card with all his bio-metric details encoded into it.

Getting my own card sorted was a surreal experience. There I was sitting in this dusty office, the paint was peeling off the walls, the fans were outdated and whirring loudly above our heads. There was bookwork and papers all around the walls stacked in untidy piles from door to door. The electricity went out while I was there and we had to wait until the backup generator kicked in. The fellow taking my details was making dozens of spelling mistakes and there was a constant stream of village people coming and going. It was all thoroughly incongruous and more than a little disconcerting.

What are the privacy issues at stake here? It would appear that privacy is a thing of the past and simply not possible in this new age of digitisation.

Continue Reading in: Are Smartphones Making Fools of Us All?

Digital Dilemmas Part 1

The Ways in which technology 
continues to improve communication

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Those of us who have been around for more than twenty years know very well just how pervasively modern technology, particularly that of personal computing and mobile phones, gaming and electronics in general, have changed our lives. We have seen these technologies revolutionise the way we do just about everything and all of this has come about in a comparatively short amount of time.

I well remember the days when letters to my mother in New Zealand would take around two to three weeks to arrive from India and then the turn around was often the same if not longer. It would take weeks to exchange our news and by the time the letters arrived, the news was well and truly out of date.

Probably not too much has changed with postal timings except that we hardly ever send letters these days, preferring the instant messaging or email and WhatsApp. I even remember the wind-up telephone in my grandparent's house and the 'party line' that was shared with other Motueka residents. One would pick up the mouthpiece, turn the handle a few times and hear a voice saying; 'what number please?' Although mail is still very much in use other forms of communication are quickly falling into disuse and becoming the dinosaurs of recent technology.

From shopping and banking through to how we access information, how we read, how we interact, even how we work, these changes have infiltrated every level and facet of society. There are not many areas of our lives now that are not in some way touched by the innovations of the digital age.

We older folk were well acquainted with the good old days of snail mail and landlines and my generation are by no means 'old.' We knew all about waiting in queues at the library in order to borrow a certain book. The days of newspapers and telegrams and fax machines, of trudging to the bank and standing in the line waiting for a teller to transact our business, these were all very much a part of day-to-day reality. Now, there are so many ways in which computers and mobiles have changed our lives in these past few short years that it would take up too much space to mention all of them.

Continue Reading in: Are Smartphones Making Fools of Us All?