Technology Slave

It makes me uncomfortable when I think about the future, future of my species, future of my children ! and I am not worried about the aliens from the future or the terminators, I am worried about the future that we are creating now. Right now we depend on technology pioneered by great visionaries decades ago, take an example in computers, all of them run on Von Neumann architecture conceptualized in 1944-45. If we ask ourselves what are we doing now, is there any breakthrough which we could be proud of in the computer industry ? Yes, chips are getting smarter, hardware is getting cheaper and efficient but the basic principle is the same - Moores law. No new architecture has been proposed of even though of. Companies are rolling out new software which is more buggy and error prone, and the worst part is; it keeps on getting worst year by year. Its like an endless race of designing the worst software.

By the time you catch up with a new technology it would have been already scrapped. I was happy in 2000 when people used to say world has become a global village, information was available on the finger tips. It was a whole new era of global awareness. It all was developing so rapidly, now definition of information has changed. information is all you can convey in 140 letters. Is that all we are about - 'Twitter' ! Life is caught up between the limits of 140 letters. Friends are now just Facebook status updates. How many chat discussion end with a good bye statement ? we just get bored and stop responding till either of us logs out of the chat.

I am scared, I am really scared about the future. Commercialization has eaten up all the research dollars, everyone want to land up with Google or Microsoft. Harvard, Berkley have become machines to produce slaves for these companies. I do not go to a big school nor do I do any ground breaking research, I am a common man who is scared about the uncertain future. Maybe, I am just scared that one day technology will outgrow me.

Its easier said than done, we are so caught up in our daily activities that we are neglecting our future. Instant gratification is all we need, we do not want to wait for the new technology to be tested, we just want to lay our hands on them. I am one of them, unfortunately all I can do is think. But at-least I am happy I started thinking.