The Internet was taken by storm this past weekend with the news that 0.08% Gmail users had opened up their inboxes to find that all their emails had apparently gone up in thin air.
My point here is not to bore you with details of how users fretted on the Gmail Help Forum, how the screw up and subsequent recovery happened, or how tech sites had a field day picking apart Google's carrion and advising users to backup their email before it was gone for good.
My point here is to highlight our over-dependence on technology nowadays. Many of us have so much "important" stuff in the cloud that we can't imagine living without it or losing any of it. We practically live on the web these days, as I once told one of my equally geeky friends.
This applies not only to the web, but also to gadgets in general. But technology can also be dangerous, as we all know. Here's a classic example where technology shows its ugly side. It talks about how a couple from Nevada, USA blindly followed their GPS device's directions into a forest and were stranded there for 3 whole days.
And our reliance on technology is only increasing with time. That makes me wonder where we are headed. In the future, are we looking at a real Rise of the Machines? I mean, I'd hate to be under the control of a mere machine (though the scenario is interesting hypothetically, if nothing else).
I'm not against technology or anything like that. Hell, if anything, I'm one of its biggest fans ever. I'm just wondering about what will happen after our dependence on machines becomes complete and absolute, because it cannot go on increasing indefinitely and must saturate sometime.
So, what are your views concerning this issue?
My point here is not to bore you with details of how users fretted on the Gmail Help Forum, how the screw up and subsequent recovery happened, or how tech sites had a field day picking apart Google's carrion and advising users to backup their email before it was gone for good.
My point here is to highlight our over-dependence on technology nowadays. Many of us have so much "important" stuff in the cloud that we can't imagine living without it or losing any of it. We practically live on the web these days, as I once told one of my equally geeky friends.
This applies not only to the web, but also to gadgets in general. But technology can also be dangerous, as we all know. Here's a classic example where technology shows its ugly side. It talks about how a couple from Nevada, USA blindly followed their GPS device's directions into a forest and were stranded there for 3 whole days.
And our reliance on technology is only increasing with time. That makes me wonder where we are headed. In the future, are we looking at a real Rise of the Machines? I mean, I'd hate to be under the control of a mere machine (though the scenario is interesting hypothetically, if nothing else).
I'm not against technology or anything like that. Hell, if anything, I'm one of its biggest fans ever. I'm just wondering about what will happen after our dependence on machines becomes complete and absolute, because it cannot go on increasing indefinitely and must saturate sometime.
So, what are your views concerning this issue?
1 comment:
My opinion about technology.... let me give you an example how dependent I am on it. My alarm is on my computer, my songs are on my computer, my e-mails are on my computer, my personal-journal is maintained on the computer, I spend time (a lot in fact) on the well known website, facebook .. and then o'course .. I maintain my to-do list there, my important appointments .... and what not.
I doubt I need to say anything else. To add, (and to show off) I'd say just today my friend needed to send a mass-mail and he had to get the e-mail addresses out of another site and manually 'copy-paste' the e-mail addresses one-by-one (note, I call that a manual task) ... what I did, made a script to do that for me.... 583 addresses in the required format in 5 min (including the time spent to make the script)
I'm HEAVILY dependent on technology and would love to see it grow (maybe even bounds). But this article has reminded me that my life would crash with the technology I depend on.
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