Accept the technological challenges & changes

Accept the technological challenges of today and changes of tomorrow. Life is all a balancing act, the struggle between now and then is just another personal choice for the modern acrobat.

CJ: Mazhar Nawaz

Thu, Sep 03, 2009 12:42:33 IST

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Technological News :

THE BIGGEST question on the planet today involves sustainable development. Is there room enough on the planet for ten billion human beings, tens of millions of other species and economic convergence between the rich and the poor?

The global economy is literally unsustainable now and cannot absorb further economic and population growth without serious risks of global destabilisation, even collapse. Even if we did nothing more than continues at current levels of production and resource use, each of these problems would prove to be devastating within decades.

So, science and technology continually dictate changes in products, processes, services and human needs, mores and even ethos.

Maqbool Ahmed Siraj, a BBC reporter says, “New technology and concepts are making sweeping changes in all spheres. Jobs being closely linked to the quicksand economy are therefore called upon to imbibe changes. Universities and educational planners have to perfunctorily bring about changes in order to remain relevant to the market. Law, social sciences and culture too align themselves to the changing needs of the society while operating on the margins. In short, it is how the human civilization marches forward and human beings live through epochs and eras. Modernity fades into past to become antiquity.”

Technological enterprises and the expanding service sector are transforming post industrial economy to one of information based production. Businesses are calling upon schools to conform to the needs of the market.

On the hand several trades have become obsolete with the introduction of new machines. New age appliances like mixers, blenders and instant mixes transformed our kitchens during the early eighties. Dhobis vanished as did their donkeys from our cities. Today court complexes seem to be the last resorts of cacophonic typists. DTP centres now combine hi-tech print shops capable of even producing canvases for giant highway billboards.

Siraj explains the phenomenon with another example. “Around a thousand hoarding painters were rendered jobless as Bangalore’s billboards came to embrace digitally printed canvases during the last five years. They look neat, brightly coloured and display perfect contours of the models.” Tailors, painters, typists and embroiders of today are threatened with livelihood issues.

Most EPABX telephone operators went out of jobs around the turn of the century when the old machines were discarded for new electronic phones. Computerisation and incorporation of information technology is resulting in consolidation of several skills into few hands. Banks need less number of hands today as ATMs are reducing the across-the-counter operations. Newsrooms no longer require proof readers as computerisation has combined the subbing and proofing operations.

Technology has its own pace. It is expensive when it is just out of the lab. Oldies scoff at it. Initially entrepreneurs and businessmen ignore it due to its cost factor. It then lures by its speed. Then it comes with the offer of replacing human hands and energy saving. Temptation is then simply difficult to resist. Inevitability knocks at the door once it is embraced by the competitor in business.

But today the challenge is not merely with livelihood. A whole host of issues stare into our eyes. There is nothing wrong with new technology. We are all in search and need of new technology. We are also in need to use the best of what's currently available.

There’s nothing new under the sun, because everything that we see as being new is just a part of ourselves, an externalisation of our desires and our drive to create them in the world that we live in.

Accept the technological challenges of today & changes of tomorrow. Life is all a balancing act, the struggle between now and then is just another personal choice for the modern acrobat. So pack up your troubles and take a step forward -The process of changes & challenges can be tough, but think about all the excitement ahead. If you are afraid for your future, you don't have a present. The future is not a gift - it is an achievement.

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