The notion that ” Man is born free ” is nothing but a myth. Technology has caught him in a chokehold – silencing him and suffocating him. His existence has been reduced to a mere spare part of the mechanical world. Machines were meant to ease our burden. Instead, they traded muscular fatigue for nerve-wracking stress, pushing our mental, spiritual, and even physical health to the breaking point.
What look like ornaments have become our chains. The necklace of gadgets is but the ugly yoke of technological servitude. Technology spares none – Neither the environment nor its custodians. Even the subtle human emotions are being trampled by technology’s callous and inhuman force. The Industrial Revolution has pushed mankind to the brink of ruination.
No wonder the divide between those who praise it and those who condemn it is so wide, but the contemporary world corroborates the fact that technology has become a perpetual eyesore for all of humanity. Its hazards have outweighed its comforts. So, yesterday’s exponents and pioneers have become its critics of today. And why not? It has landed us in deep trouble. From the eradication and exhaustion of human values, the techno era has put our existence at stake.
Ever-increasing machines, vehicles and industrial units using fossil fuels to propel them have almost suffocated our lungs, and consequently, we are about to get annihilated by the obnoxious climate change. Our water resources are vanishing too, and the fallout is beyond our imagination. about to dry up, and the consequences thereof are beyond our imagination. If God had bestowed the Middle East with black gold – crude oil treasures, we had been given the blue gold – The rich water deposits. But, tragically, the custodians of the world’s richest water resources are craving for drops. And the worst is in store for us. Drastic climate events, viz heat waves, frequent cloudbursts, scanty rainfall, erratic snowfall, high-velocity winds, hailstorms and floods, are not natural calamities but man-made catastrophes.
Technology should have been our servant, but we surrendered our sovereignty to it. Once it became the master, we lost the crown conferred upon us by the Lord of the universe. Our prominence in the Cosmos has deteriorated badly. We are but only the puppets that move, act and even now think as per prompts and codes.
We are but the mere pawns of the labyrinthine chessboard where technology has assumed the position of king. The shackles have strengthened, and we have been handcuffed. The brainless monster has brought us under its feet, because we have been too complacent and careless to handle the mechanisation. It didn’t stop here. Our nerves have fallen prey to it.
The technology crushed the tender pulse of compassion, trampled Ehsaasi Murrawat – that fragile sense of empathy. Now its dominion has expanded beyond limitations. It has invaded our logic, dulled our intellect, sedated our curiosity, mortgaged our creativity algorithms, clipped our imagination, and our decision-making ability, once the mark of our brain’s sovereignty, is outsourced to prompts and Codes. The ugly pangs of this invasion are not confined to mathematics alone; the ethereal dimensions of human intellect have all fallen prey to it.
The moment we cease to think, analyse, imagine and compare, we descend. We become ordinary. Indistinguishable from the countless species that live but do not reflect. Our crown of kingship – Rason, Wonder, Conscience lies on the floor, unclaimed. So I ask you: At this crossroad of silicon and soul, should we celebrate the ease, or lament the eclipse?
(The Author is a Teacher and a Columnist from Naidkhai, Bandipora. He can be reached at: mushtaqhurra143@gmail.com)
