Humans + Technology

By Ahmed Dodo

As a kid growing up in Africa in the 70s, I was lucky to be among the fortunate kids in my community to have the privilege to come across the TV. Then, television was one of the most expensive awed striking man-made devices on earth. And to many of us in the then developing and still developing Africa continent, the TV was not only a privilege to own or have the opportunity to view, it was also a magical box with some hidden mysteries in the eyes of many of us.
The television to me was something out of the ordinary, just like the telephone and I could remember those tiny TV toys and imagined being able to speak back to the static images that stared back lifeless at me. And true to some of my imaginations the world today could speak back to each other via SKYPE and other 21st century technological inventions across the globe.
The power of tweeting ourselves across anywhere our spirits decides to prod us to and see first-hand in visual some of the wonderful things going on across the world  through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and other various sites would mesmerize our ancestors. The fact that we can now sit down in the comfort of our zones, view and read some of the good, bad and ugly sides of life, I believe still remains one of the greatest triumphs of human existence on earth.
 Again, the reality that we can find ourselves participating in these human activities from our distances or in some cases coming to meet in physical flesh after all the oral and visual contacts seems like something out of those old science-fiction books or movies long visualized by intelligent writers and scientists across our planet.
However, just like everything man made, the social media has also exposed our weakness and put into doubt our claim of being the most superior creature on earth.  Our intelligence could not stop the daily criminal activities going in the cyber world. We now have e-thieves daily milking people off millions of dollars through the internet, hackers hacking their ways into protected accounts and broken relationships and marriages, including terrorism and loss of innocent lives now rampant via the social media.
Our lives are no longer private or secure as it used to be. There is the damning BIG EYES that seems to see everything we now do under the sun, while our activities and sentences are no longer restrictive to ourselves as we are now under the influence of information syndrome and a global movement of technology.
But as the pendulum of our time daily swings ,enticing us to each other technologically, so also is our fate playing openly before us as we daily fulfils our destiny on earth with unexpected serendipity of events through new inventions that will continue to shrink us closer via the intelligent cobwebs of the internet. May be someday, someone, somewhere would be gifted with the intelligence to invent a technology app that will make it possible for us to have a friendly handshake across the Atlantic without stepping out of our bedrooms.

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