Just like the new technology in this day and age, science fictions are losing their shelf life faster. We are used to Gen-Ex fictions in our life today. The development of science and technology, and the tools available even to those in the lowest economic strata at times allow experiencing the mixed feeling between science and fiction. Imagine a rickshaw-puller, on his cell phone, is checking Delhi’s weather forecast early in the morning to plan his day! Many such tools are available to people that were unimaginable about 50 years ago. There hangs the tale of using Nature’s hidden power through mankind’s inquisitive and creative power.
At the same time, we have become impatient too. Because the technology genie has delivered hitherto unimaginable contraptions and when they fail, we hyperventilate and shoot up our adrenalin. We have got used to speed, or instantaneous service by gadgets and gizmos. A Little delay on our browsers or a busy signal on others’ cell phones makes us impatient, angry and judgmental about everything save us.
Ironically, the progress in science and technology is not matched with the progress in human emotional intelligence, which holds the key in using these new tools. The super-fast invasions of our societies by technology have taken the habits, habitats and habitants alike with lightening surprise where adjustments to the new reality have been lagging dangerously. For example, miles after miles of highways and high-speed vehicles are responsible for millions of accidents, attendant exorbitant medical expenses and fatalities. While poverty, war, disease will rule us, probably till eternity, until our Emotional Quotient and Social Responsibility Quotient evolves there is no hope in Hell.
Asteroids can destroy us at will, no matter what probability says. Ditto for tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornados or typhoons, that can destroy much of our proud creations and precious lives. Just few days of torrential rain can deluge us. We are still vulnerable to nature’s wrath as we were a century ago. Some may say we have angered the nature by abusing it till a standstill.
But there are many man-made fragilities of our existence. Start with your daily travel to work. If you live in a big city, a single accident may cause long traffic snarls, sending your daily routine into a tizzy. A single train accident in a major railway route can disrupt many lives. A 9/11 caused grounding of almost all our aerial wraths. Even breaking of a traffic light may generate jitters. The more we depend on machines, including vehicles, just like the pre-historic hunter-gatherers we are still at the mercy of Nature, some of us it call mother – not just the land, water, forests etc., but now, we are playing with many of her hidden powers. Fukushima, perhaps, has taught us a lesson.
If you were worried about cyborgs, machines or robots ruling us using artificial intelligence and the possibility of mind uploading, the good news is that the progress on that front is rather tardy.
But there is an immediate worry of more disasters due to the effect of our individual and collective Karma to be ‘fit to survive’ – for example, the emission of greenhouse gases. Diseases, epidemics, retroviruses can wipe off the entire population. We do not even have the capability to produce antibiotics to protect ourselves from millions of these organisms around us. Some of these scares come to the fore with unflinching regularity. Flu-related viruses are only the tip of the iceberg. Cloning technology and genetics can aid in creating uncontrollable species as well.
A tiny nation like Greece can cause ripple effect in global economy. Volatile stock markets may cause millions to lose all their savings, income, jobs, homes, families and lives.
Today’s civilization heavily depends on our heavenly creations called satellites. A solar flare may cause all our satellites to go crazy and our GPS and telecommunication systems which are integral parts of our lives will unpleasantly throw us back into the cave age as it happens after every natural disaster. On the other hand, while guns and bombs are still going to be used by many to dominate the world, the new game of warfare will involve attacks on these vital space assets and even America is worried about it.
We do not have any record of how people reacted when the first gunshot killed a human. With swords and arrows there was a good chance of survival in a conflict. But with the advent of guns, it is much easier to blow out a life. Weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical or nuclear — are all around us and can affect us any day. Besides, there are electronic killers, crippling vital systems like water and power supplies by remotely playing havoc with the information technology-aided systems. Remember what happened to the fuselages Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor– destroyed by remote computer viruses called StuxNet?
But perhaps the biggest fear in long time to come is the slow and gradual increase of the erosion of a value-based human society; the amount of corruption is seen around the world may also be an indicator of degradation of values. Just like our bodies have been evolving since the day of creation, one may fear that our value-system may evolve into machine like rules and rule us to say, the so called Golden Rules are useless, religious values are invalid, constitutional rules are redundant since nobody follows it anymore. Yama, Niyama and Dharma may become mere words and concepts used by pre-historic people. Words like kindness, forgiveness and compassion must be taken out of the dictionaries of the world —English, Mandarin, Hindi or Spanish. There might be a declaration of this new value system that it neither calls for ‘survival of the fittest’ any more, nor to make us all fit to survive, but to fit us only to survive without creativity and with the machines as our bedfellows because they don’t have emotions. So the human emotion will be replaced by non-emotion, human intelligence will be replaced by the robotic artificial ones and human heart will be replaced by a loveless robotic machine.
Why this poetry of pessimism? Because we have the power to act, yet we don’t. We have viveka, the power of discrimination. The discussions in our dinner parties seem to prove that we are knowledgeable and concerned people and the assertions in these hot-talks appear to be indicative of many solutions. Yet we choose to be hypocrites because these are venting of our frustrations, and are neither intellectual nor value based actions. And that’s the dark sky of hopelessness where I see all energies of optimism are sucked in. However, hope springs eternal. I know we have the choice and power to turn things around to safeguard our precious and precarious civilization.
