The industrial revolution in the 19th century has created profound growth in all sectors including major developments in transportation and manufacturing. We can see the impact of the technological growth in the improvement of socio-economic conditions. The growth has literally fused the boundaries between various cultures and has enabled us to call ourselves as citizens of a global village. This kind of technological advancement is certainly laudable, but at the same time we have made ourselves more dependent on the myriads of new technologies that keep mushrooming every day.
The technological growth in the recent years has been unprecedented by any such growth in the past. Be it planning a brand new house or urbanizing a town, we cannot make much progress without implementing the latest technologies lest we may be isolated from the global community. A person in a remote under-developed location is able to implement a technology that was invented on some other part of the globe, it is a remarkable achievement. At the same time, are we making ourselves too much dependent on unknown star-war like technologies, which holds the key to control us all? Here are some remarkable technological developments, which has affected our day-to-day living.
1. NASA’s Landstat program: This program was launched with a goal to acquire images of different parts of the earth from the outer space. So far, the satellite has captured almost millions of images of earth, which has been archived with a purpose to do more research in major areas including agriculture, surveillance, geology, regional planning, and national security. Building an instrument with eight spectral bands with spatial resolutions of 15 meters that can take clear pictures of planet earth from outer space is certainly more than a laudable feat. Whether you are in London or in the remote forest of Papua Guinea, now you know that a satellite from the outer space is scanning you. What makes us give a second thought about this is, even though Land Remote Sensing Policy Act powers this program, do we need this kind of remote monitoring to make progress in agriculture and learn about terrains in our own planet? When the same program collects data for the purpose of surveillance and national security, isn’t it actually causing an intrusion in our privacy by collecting data about ourselves without our knowledge? What we have taught ourselves is if we want more comfort in living, then we need to forgo some privacy.
2. GPS: Global positioning, a satellite based system to exactly position an object on earth from outer space, is yet another major breakthrough in the recent years. GPS can pinpoint any location on the surface of earth but its signal cannot penetrate subterranean location, caves, or underwater. The advantage of GPS is, once you find out the location of a person using a GPS device, you literally have a plethora of benefits at your hand including finding the nearest pizza shop, shortest route to the nearest hotel or anything that you look for from that location. Google map has similar kind of technology which generates a map for a location based on a huge set of images that were already taken covering the entire earth. The latest addition to the kit is reality augmentation. The latest Android phones are enabled with this technology, which allows you to input information into your phone, which can display the nearest shop that can match your query. Reality augmentation is much more than this. On the down side, advanced applications of augmented reality can produce images that really don’t exist at all in reality, but can still make it appear, a feature certainly bound to confuse us by literally diffusing the difference between real and virtual images.
The capabilities of the latest technologies and the impact they have on every individual is overwhelming. At the same time, it scares us of a machine-age where machine could rule human beings. Too much dependence on technology implies a future where we could literally be allowing unknown entities to control ourselves. Technological growth isn’t happening in one field, it is happening almost in all fields including genetic engineering experiments, genetically modified crop, and creating human like robots.
The main goal of any invention should be to promote overall growth and not to overpower us; otherwise, we would lose our identity. There isn’t anything wrong in advocating technological growth as far it is beneficial for the entire planet and can promote harmonious growth.
About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger whose love for gadgets is beyond words. She loves shopping for latest gadgets and cool tech apparels for her iPad. Currently her wish is to buy a custom made home theater system soon.