Description
There is no doubt that the proliferation of technology has dramatically changed our world, with countless positive
impacts. It's almost unreal to see toddlers playing with iPhones and people in their 80s using WhatsApp and Facetime
to communicate with their families around the world. However, a side effect of the increasing availability of
technology has been a corresponding increase in the strain it's put on humans. In today's developed and developing
world, the majority of people have become busier than ever before, constantly engaged in reading, viewing, creating
and engaging with content.
Booking travel, conducting banking transactions, or buying things has never been easier—something which has
spurred significant economic growth. However, technological improvement has also disrupted traditional business
models, and many longstanding businesses have gone bankrupt as a result. This has birthed an interesting dichotomy,
where even as millions of new jobs are created people are losing their existing jobs at a faster rate than ever before.
The net effect of this is that everybody is now "on the run". There is a constant rush to remain on top of technology
and be current, for fear of becoming extinct. This has caused significant changes in many aspects of life, including
family dynamics, human-pet relationships, and our attitude towards the environment.
This has raised a few important questions: Has our increasing access to information actually made us smarter? Has
the propagation of mass communication tools actually improved our ability to communicate? Have inventions designed
to make our lives easier truly improved our quality of life?
For amidst all this change, many things have remained constant—nature's cycles, human physiology, the number of
hours available in a day. In the face of such contrast, the time has come to break through the noise, reduce the stress
caused by our constantly changing lifestyle, and bring some sanity back to our lives.
This book is an attempt to capture my own ponderings on the vast innovations in science and technology over the last
few decades, and the impact they've had on human life. I think it's time for everyone to take a break and contemplate
our ultra-modern times. Human life is too rich of an experience to be wasted in being a slave to technology, merely
a tiny node amidst the vast universe of the Internet.