Do you remember offhand the mobile number of your closest office colleague? Do you remember cable TV channels, when you are not watching cricket? When was the last time you woke up without the sound of the alarm? If you are like everybody else, the answers to all these seemingly innocuous questions would be a big and resounding ‘No’!

But testing your memory is not the purpose of this exercise. It hints at the web of technology to which we have attached ourselves. The day is not far when our next generation would look incompetent when making idlis, as the machine called ‘idli-maker’ would have made that aspect of cooking redundant. Sure, we enjoy a quality of life unimaginable by our forefathers. But is there something called too much technology? And machines can go wrong too.

A case in point is the January 30 Internet and telecommunications blackout in India and in West Asia. Just over five miles from Egypt’s Alexandria Beach, in the picturesque land of pharaohs and mummies, a ship had supposedly come too close to an undersea cable.

A lucky few managed with slow Internet connections, while others could just say hello to relatives in the US before their international calls were lost. The anchor of the ship is said to have cut the cable, which was transferring hundreds of gigabytes of information across different parts of the world. There are several cable systems that connect Europe, West Asia and Asia via the Suez Canal. Things virtually came to a standstill at a lot of places. This is the flip side.

Disagrees Suman Mishra, ad executive. “We are paying attention to this cable incident because of the growing linkage between the West and the East. Nobody could have predicted it. It just happened. I am sure the cable operators will fix it quickly or provide alternative channels till then. Technology cannot be foolproof!” But that is not the point I want to throw at Suman. Do we really need so much technology?

“Technology has made a lot of things possible which we would have otherwise had to do using precious and rare resources. Snags happen. The savings in terms of employing a new technology are amazing. Human error is incredibly low too,” comments economics professor Harinath Shastri of Mumbai.

The snag is just a reminder of how dependent we are on technology. People nowadays fail to remember anniversaries, birthdays and even meetings with relatives. I know of some male colleagues who keep reminders on their hand-helds to keep a tab on upcoming events. “Of course, I care about my wife. That’s why I keep a reminder for her birthday. I have put it in for one-day in advance. That gives me time to buy her a nice gift,” confesses Shashikant.

The question is this: Do we really need to send a one-line e-mail to the colleague sitting beside us? Whatever happened to good old days of just using our voice-boxes? Simple and unadulterated fun.

“We are so enamoured by Blackberries that the blueberries in the garden elude us. iPods are such a necessity that legume pods in grandma’s backyard are a piece of history. Too busy and smart to control the world around us, technology today controls us,” says stockbroker and self-confessed gizmo freak Narayana Murthy. He just bought another pair of sub-woofers last month. The new speakers are number four. Murthy’s wife Shobana, however, says he doesn’t really have a ear for music.

Things have, in fact, come to such a stage that we expect Google to find everything for us. So we have kids doing their homework by copying stuff from theInternet (which also shows how often the parents are not available for help), online chat-rooms for like-minded people (like there are no friendly people around) and a virtual world like Second Life (http://secondlife.com/).

Second Life allows users, referred to as ‘Residents’, to intermingle through characters and then replicate the same social network that already exists in the outside world, that is, the real world.

I have found few people agreeing with my point of view. “Better things can be done with the use of technology. But you see technology develops only with money. Money always chases money, and moneymaking need not be relevant and always through the right channels. We still add more than five million people in ‘the hungry’ list every year,” moans Latesh Vastu, a civil engineer working in Dubai.

My maid Sheela comes everyday at around 6 a.m. to do the daily chores. When she heard I was buying a new washing machine (because the dryer in the old one had apparently breathed its last), she was ecstatic. On questioning, she told me that the dryer took 10 minutes longer than it should. So?

Adding 10 minutes for 25 days a month, she had found that it virtually meant her take-home pay being reduced by an amount equivalent to more than a month’s pay every year, if she had utilised that time in another place. But all we do is sit in front of the TV and give TRP ratings a boost from all the time we save by employing a maid! Strange, is it not?

Sustained exposure to so much technology has also led to certain trends in kids. Apart from failing to pay close attention to details, children nowadays have trouble being focused during play or work. “Avoiding tasks that require greater mental effort and organisation, such as school projects,” says child counsellor Meera Dass.

This is why I opposed the introduction of a dish television set in my sister’s house. Apparently, my brother-in-law had delivered the last word to my sister’s arguments, saying that a certain provider has sets of mind-games, brainteasers and sport simulations that kids could learn from. Children would benefit from them, was his argument. Funny! Why do they need to simulate sports when they can go out and play to their heart’s content? On a lighter vein, with the dissatisfaction with cable TV growing, my sister, even with my technical support, might soon capitulate to her hubby’s wishes.

Readers may send their feedback on the column, mentioning their names and addresses, to swatilistening@gmail.com

Responses to Episode-175 on the issue: ‘Why judge people by their race’ (Business Line , January 21, 2008).

This kind of discrimination can be found all over, at homes, offices and especially in cultural meets. The oneness is reserved for rare occasion, that is, during crises such as tsunami, fire accidents as the one in a Kumbakonam school, etc. Let us answer frankly this question: “How many of us give the same quality of coffee and lunch to the housemaids?” Without them we cannot pull on even for a day.

Krishnamurthy S.