"Unseen" Problems with Technology

Inscribed by Hariharan

My Good friend Sachin Sharma mailed me links to some very interesting articles that I thought I should share on my Blog …

Importance of Boredom in life by Peter Bregman
The iPad, as it shows in the Article, is such a wonderful piece of equipment and makes life so much more entertaining and informative. But Peter also goes on to show us so wonderfully, how we sometimes get stuck in this midst of this plethora of gizmos that surround us. They (these Gizmos) make us feel like life is so wonderful and nice and create this mirage around us that we keep chasing with pleasure. In midst of these amazing gizmos we unknowingly tend to forget and ignore some finer things in life- but nonetheless important. Peter reminded us of some seemingly trivial (but important) things in life like Boredom – I quote him here

“Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that's where creativity arises. My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone. When I am lying in bed as my mind wanders before falling to sleep. These "wasted" moments, moments not filled with anything in particular, are vital. They are the moments in which we, often unconsciously, organize our minds, make sense of our lives, and connect the dots. They're the moments in which we talk to ourselves. And listen. To lose those moments, to replace them with tasks and efficiency, is a mistake. What's worse is that we don't just lose them. We actively throw them away.” ... Wow … What a revelation …. !!

Googlethink - The giant’s creepy efforts to read my mind by Nicholas Carr
Google Suggest is the new feature Google has introduced where the moment you start typing in your search Google suggests you search strings that you ‘may’ be looking for. At first it may look all helpful and interesting but as Nicholas rightly points out this whole thing also can be very nosy and interfering. This whole ‘personalization thingie’ sometimes leaves us with little room to act for ourselves. And he goes on to say that and I quote

“Software programmers are taking the displacement of personal agency to a new level. Relentlessly focused on making their programs more “user friendly,” they’re scripting the intimate processes of intellectual inquiry and even social attachment. We follow their scripts when we click on one of Google’s keyword suggestions, and we follow them when we select from a list of categories to describe ourselves and our relationships on Facebook. These choices are convenient, but they’re not our own. They’re generalizations masquerading as personalizations.” ... Ya … Again soo true …

Both these above articles show some amazing things happening in the field of information technology (viz the iPad and Google Suggest) but if you look deeper you find that its posing more problems than ever – and the problem is that you would not even see the issues if you don’t look hard – which happens so often – since on the face of it looks like an Angel but it may just be a devil in disguise.