Smarting under smartness

Interacting with others over long distances without the aid of any communication device such as telephone, travelling by aircrafts with seating capacity not exceeding a limit, reaching destinations at the speed of mind (manovega) and many other happenings sourced from the land’s ancient scripts, including the narratives in the epics and puranas have been written about by scholarly authors.  While the veracity of the many happenings in reality have been questioned in some circles of academics, downgrading the achievements of the land’s people in the long past as fiction, one cannot miss a few that have turned facts, such as wireless communication, travel by air, exploration of space to learn about the planets in the solar system, that are common knowledge in our times, thanks to the innovations in the field of electronics.

Even as lay people find it beyond their comprehension to grasp the language of digital technology, one of its products namely the smart phone has proved to be their intimate companion in life. Not being familiar with the compulsions of using the device nowadays has led to smarting under smartness as it were.

The oft-stated expression urban-rural divide has tended to get narrowed on many counts. The divide between the literates using electronic devices marked for their comfort and convenience in daily life (such as paying bills, online ordering consumer goods, withdrawing cash from ATM machines and so on) and the illiterates has become the cause for smarting under inescapable presence of devices based on digital technology, among which television first and  smart phone next stand out, given two facts of our times namely, (a) No dwelling without a television set and (b) Rare sight of Indians without flaunting a smart phone.

The all-conquering digital technology with its face of electronic gadgets (phones, laptops, television sets, iPads and what have you) has created the compulsion of innovating new technologies of dealing with e-waste comprising discarded devices accumulating to millions of tonnes globally. Not addressing this Frankenstein urgently is bound to witness everyone smarting under smartness.