Only an emotional response

Please feel free to give this blip a skip. I was compelled and so I wrote.

A friend of mine recently forwarded me a link about a new technological innovation, a portable multi-tasking device that takes the idea of these advanced mobile phones to a whole, almost unimaginable level. At the moment it is only an "ugly" prototype, which involves a few sensors on the fingertips and a small projector (and processor, etc) hanging from the neck.

When four fingers, two from each hand are joined to form a rectangle, it takes a photo - as simple as that. Later, one can sort out the photos and tweak them much as one works on Microsoft Surface. It is "intuitive" as was reiterated in the presentation. Further, if you want to see the time, just draw a circle on your wrist and voila! You can also make it project a keypad on your palm to make calls, to type, to basically to everything the most advanced mobile phone and a computer can do together. Then this device takes photos of and is able to recognize objects, giving you instant reviews and ratings on every supermarket product, every book, every meal at every restaurant, every movie you go to watch, in fact everything in every place you visit. From your flight tickets it will tell you the flight status. Point it to a car, you'll have its name, make, age and so on. Whatever you want to know, just point towards something and it'll have you make a well informed choice. What is totally incredulous is that when you meet a new person, words associated with that person begin to get projected upon the person?s body.

So, it makes all kinds of information easily available. Within a split second. The prototype has been developed by an Indian student called a "genius" at MIT.

Even at this day, despite being a slave to technology, and earning a living from it, I believe that there is often a bit too much dependence on it. Information, for which generations before us had to struggle is available to us at the push of a button. Everything we want is instant, and we are spoilt for it. The fact that life is a journey an though a journey?s end inspires the means, it is the means, that make this life worthwhile. And in our age, this is the very fact we often forget. We have more 'things' than we need, but do they bring us happiness or merely an illusion of it?

Sometime back, I was in Calcutta attending a book launch when I met an American who was one of the architects who developed GW BASIC (ring any bells?). He was retired when I met him and had given up his former life to come to Calcutta and live in the middle of the slums, amid great poverty so that he could help the poor. I suppose it was his salvation, and something he so believed in doing. He was living his words. One thing he told me was that "'things' always get between people." And I do believe he was right.

Man survived before mobile phones, they were happy too, but it's almost hard to imagine that there was a time not too far in the past that the mobile phone was something of a fantasy. Which is precisely what makes me wonder, that a device like this (whose name escapes me now), priced at a meagre $350 when in production is quite likely to become ubiquitous. Sadly, such readily answered questions do kill our spontaneity, our instincts, our intuitiveness. It gives us the illusion that life?s about the 'Whats' rather than the 'Hows.'

Technology like this will undoubtedly give a false sense of security, a complacency and, as life has a way of mocking us, of testing our instincts, of making us encounter situations where our little convictions and beliefs are completely trampled over, will make us far more vulnerable than strong. As humans, very rarely have we shown an ability to use power with discretion. And as is increasingly happening now, we are likely to become stronger conformists than we already are. I do believe that if conforming wasn?t such a big need for us, the world would be a better, a more interesting place. But again, that is a different debate. True empowerment comes from within and technology like this is not likely to bring that. All, I fear it will do is take away all those little things that make us unique; all the things that bring us great joy and great sorrow, and an array of complex emotions in ways only we understand?

The idea of beauty does not have a structured definition, it is not a conditioned, thought out response. True beauty is what reaches deep within us without our knowing. It appeals to the 'wise' as it does to the 'foolish', it is a language we all innately understand, a song our hearts instantly recognize. It is a mystery, an idea, and for some, a hope (not a word I use too much). And, it?s that little gap of uncertainty, of melancholy, of our incompleteness and often helplessness from which art, and indeed beauty are born. It is not always about filling the gaps; sometimes it is best to leave them as they are, for it is music that rises from their depths.

A part of me fears that technology if used injudiciously can not only kill the origins of art, it can turn us into mere zombies.