Many of us call ourselves tech addicts because of the fact that we don’t feel like living without it. But the true story behind that is that we cannot live without it. And to illustrate that point, let me tell you something that happened to me this morning. Usually all of my mail IDs and passwords are saved in my office’s system. Today, working from my laptop, I realized that I did not remember half of my passwords and had to sit and think about it for a while before I could remember it. I realized that I had transitioned from a tech-addict to a tech-dependent.
As you read an account of what I faced today, I can assure you that 90% of the readers would have thought, ‘Why doesn’t she have a password manager on her phone so she doesn’t have to face it again?’ And this is the point I am trying to make. People of the earlier generations did not have a problem of having to remember so many passwords because they never needed them. Those were simple times. While technology was invented to make our lives easier, my question is, have they really made it easier? You have so many conditions to take care of before you set a password for basically anything and all this happens in the name of security. Another annoying thing about passwords? You cannot have the same password for all your accounts because if a hacker can get into one, he can get into everything else. While all this is being said for my safety, I wonder if this is an elaborate plan to convert us from tech addicts to tech dependents.
Technology is not perfect. Feel like having lunch outside? Let me open my phone and check. Whatever happened to trying out a new place with friends without having read ‘awesome’ reviews about the place online (the authenticity of which is debatable)? When was the last time you needed to check your phone to remember your bank account number or your internet banking details? Why do you even need to remember so many things when technology is all about making life easier? Isn’t being entirely dependent on technology actually making us lazy? Want to multiply 45X5? Hold on, let me take my calculator. Have we all become tech zombies that we don’t even want to activate our brain to do a simple math problem?
If technology is indeed trying to make our lives easier, should it force us to remember many things that we never needed to in the first place or should it actually help us be safe at the click of a button? Technology is not working towards making our lives easier; it is making our lives more vulnerable and transparent. With the advent of the internet of things, our problems will magnify. We just won’t be tech addicts anymore. We will be vulnerable and open to attack from all ends; a problem that would have never arisen if technology wasn’t here to make our lives much ‘easier.’
However, I am not one to preach. I know the positive effects that tech has had on all our lives. I know how difficult it would be to survive in this world without the help of technology. My point is that, our ancestors did not have this technology earlier and they managed fine. If technology was indeed helping us, shouldn’t it focus on that than making us tech addicts to every little thing in our life? Just something to think about.
