It was the first of October. Thirteen well-to-do professionals who were filing out after a yoga session in the early hours of the morning signed out for the day. The first one to hurry out quickly opened the register, zeroed in on the page marked September and put his initials in a jiffy on the column with the 31st date and zoomed out. The others followed suit unthinkingly. Even as they scooted out, they did not forget to check out their smartphones to update themselves, lest something had happened to the world while they were twisting and turning in the past hour.
The incident was both amusing and frightening to say the least. It can certainly be written off as a mindless activity triggered by sheer habit. Yet seeing the baker’s dozen doing the same thing underscores a latent issue that is dogging the contemporary populace.
It is really hard to see people sans their cell phones these days, the ruling mantra being, smarter the better. The instrument seems to be capable of doing everything in its power to keep us distracted, self-absorbed and even selfish, at times. People are always speaking into it, taking pictures, texting, paying or playing all the time. Messages, pictures, videos which are meant to be tools of effective communication assume different dimensions, when they do multiple rounds in the name of being shared. Truth of the matter is seldom verified or considered before it is spewed around carelessly. No one seems to find it strange for it has been accepted as an unwritten norm of present-day life.
The harsh truth is that people have generally stopped exercising their grey cells. They prefer following the trend without even bothering to see what is in it for them. People seem to have lost the distinction between the real and the virtual. The selfie-obsessed youth have embraced narcissism like never before. The media has forgotten the definition of newsworthy. The working class prefer to charge their phones as a priority as against a decent meal. These are but stray instances that highlight the power of smartphones to bamboozle people into doing unrealistic things. Then there are the unscrupulous nosey parkers and peeping Toms who make lives miserable for others. The misuse and the abuse of the gadget by anti-social elements and terrorists have attained horrifying heights.
We are living in a wonderful phase of time when it is possible to do most things we wish to without working on the technical know-how or having a special talent for handling the gadget. We can now freely interact with anyone we choose to, document events, record evidence, learn, educate, transact, entertain and enjoy the latest facility at a reasonable cost. Yet most of us do not seem to be tapping the net potential of the instrument for helping or upgrading ourselves.
The smartphone is the smartest thing that has ever happened to mankind. What is more, now we can actually see the face of the person we are talking to if we have accessed the app. Loving hearts of all age groups could not have asked for a better boon. Science has made the most fantastic notions of human imagination possible. It has shrunk the world truly in terms of time and space.
Now our country is all set to dapple with electronic transactions. Nothing could be safer or better, if used judiciously. On the contrary, if we are going to be led by the nose, worse debacles will follow. We could end up paying the wrong party if we key in even one digit wrongly. We could land ourselves in a mess if we forget to store our passwords and PINs in our memory banks. Online gambling, betting and chit fund facilities can go out of hand beyond repair. These are but a few obvious setbacks.
Human intelligence is getting increasingly polarised in these terrible times. On the one hand, we have extremely intelligent minds working wonders, and on the other, the rest of us seem to be rather content using what has been unleashed upon us. There will really be no problem having the cake and eating it too as long as we do not indulge in this exercise mindlessly. The urgent need of the hour is the ability to reckon and reason individually and independently. It is only then we can consider ourselves to be on the path of progress.
prathi2000@rediffmail.com
