When technology breaks the equilibrium of the family

Samarjit Kambam *

It is an undeniable fact that the most constant thing in the world is change. The world is changing every nano-second and there is no stopping it. Even the universe is also changing relentlessly as it has a life span even though its age is in terms of eons.

The process of evolution taking place in every living organism is also a constant change, albeit, it takes place at an excruciatingly slow pace. Ain't it hard to imagine that our ancestors were once apes?

This shows that everything be it matter, diversity, future of learning, Government and politics, society and its set-up, cultures, environment, other entities living or non-living keep on changing constantly even though we don't delve deep into it as we all are busy with our day to day lives.

Likewise, everyday situations keep on changing differing from one individual to another, one Nation or State to another, one leader to another, one corporate body to another. Change is unstoppable. Change is relentless.

Same applies to technology. The early man's transition from Stone Age to Iron Age is a reflection of technological change. The invention of the wheel has taken the definition of technology to the next level. It may be contemplated that technology changes our everyday life in ways unimaginable.

With the emergence of the necessary evil called "Artificial Intelligence" (AI), cheap labour which has been considered beneficial to economy for developing Nations will soon become a cliché. AI will be snatching away more than two thirds of the labour intensive work force and it is already impending. By the time, many manual workers will be left jobless.

For the uninitiated, AI is the result or product created out of programming language, the prodigy of machine language. And programming language is not a 'Grammarly' thing for it is all based on logic. With time, the logic gets fuzzier and fuzzier. A simple example is a washing machine. It's a fuzzy logic that the motor of a washing machine rolls, stops, gives time to soak the clothes and rolls again by reversing its direction.

Another example is an air conditioner that adjusts the temperature of air by comparing the room temperature and the target temperature value. These are the simplest examples of AI, to cite a few.

Now-a-days the programming languages have evolved to such an extent that they can be performed with more ease using human languages, hence rechristened as Coding which we hear on a daily basis.

The social media apps Facebook and WhatsApp are products of Mark Zuckerberg's "out of the box" coding concepts. So is Larry Page's Google and the three wizards who made Youtube. Nowadays, smartphones have thousands of apps for almost every application because of the advancement in coding.

As we all are aware, the sun comes up early in the morning from the east and sets in the west everyday. It's so pleasurable to feel the morning dew drops on the grasses by our bare feet and hearing the chirping of birds seems like music to our ears. Looking from a positive perspective, life is meant to be happy for we are born to be happy.

However, in the quest for survival, everyone goes on as usual with their daily chores, some mundane, some invigorating. Hardly have we ever realised that we are being drawn inside the wormhole of technology and believe me there is no escape.

And the more we depend on technology, the more our sense of happiness and purpose of life will get diminished or may even get depleted making us feel like mere machines controlled by some persons of higher echelon in AI.

In those yonder years, when we were kids, we used to play football and other kinds of outdoor games in the open fields. Real life games they were viz, kabbadi, kela ball, long jump, high jump, races, hide and seek, football, blind spot, swimming in dirty ponds etc and the gratification we derived out of playing such real life outdoor games could be considered immeasurable.

Happiness cannot be measured for there is no unit to measure happiness. But I am pretty sure that the happiness we derived by playing real life games may be far more than the Gen-Z kids with their virtual online games. With too much time consumed in their virtual world by parking their physique on a sofa or in bed, their limbs have become weaker, their capacity for imagination has reduced, some of them have become couch potatoes.

Only their thumbs and fingers have better reflexes for playing games and texting on WhatsApp. Our parents used to usher us inside our homes cursing and swearing that we were out too much in the open that we would be blackened and sun-burnt. During those times, pangs of hunger would hit us every now and then and everything we ate were yummy to our hearts' content.

In this contemporary world, the parents would pull their kids out in the open for staying too much indoors with their virtual games on their smartphones, tablets and laptops. To these kids, "hunger" is an alien term and they hardly feel the appetite of consuming any eatable like we did in our days except comfort foods such as packaged junk foods. This is harsh reality, ain't it ?

The difference in the real time world and the virtual world is quite palpable. Kids of now-a-days are so glued to their virtual world that most of them don't even realise that there is a big real world out there waiting for them to be explored, to be relished. Some parents who are not so much into technology are easily taken for a ride by their kids.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, physical classes have taken a long siesta and online classes are the trend thereby adding fuel to the inferno of technological menace. Parents would object to their children's too much consumption of time with their smartphones. The replies of the kids would be convincing but deceptive. "Don't you know I am having online class. Don't disturb me." is the most common and shrewd answer.

Due to mental gaps and wild goose chase for technological adeptness, many parents inept to cope with the rapid technological advancement are stuck at the crossroad. The present generation kids may be good at their virtual stuff but when asked to do a simple real life favour they would find themselves as if the weight of the world's on their shoulder.

They would tumble and stumble just to bring a cup of coffee or tea on your table. Kids have started lacking basic courtesy, getting grumpier, elders are taken for granted, words of wisdom from elders are noise pollution to them. To them, moral values such as basic courtesy, patience and tolerance are waning speedily.

Now, a silent war is going on. It's not a weaponised war. It is a war between the parents' race to pull out their kids from the ever advancing technology's perilous virtual world whirlpool and make them live their lives as real people in the real world versus their children's reluctance to do so.