The past with its nascent technology
or the present that is ruled by it? The argument never ends...
AD: Hi, I've been trying your number
for a long time...
BC: I was speaking to my cousin Arun
from Bengaluru... He was lamenting the fact that his daughter was
growing up without the little joys that he had experienced as a kid.
AD: Why do I get the feeling that you
are going to blame it on technology?
BC: Well, back then, we had one TV
channel, went to the theatres once a month, had lots of friends,
played outdoors, read lots of books – that was so much fun! And
now...
AD: Kids are having more fun now -
almost 200 channels on TV, computer games, chats, social networking
sites... There's so much to do...
BC: Isn't it eerie to live in a world
where your best friend is a computer?
AD: Look back at your college days,
when you used to wait for days for a letter from your folks or send
them telegrams when you needed money. Today, all it takes is an
e-mail or an sms...
BC: It's been decades since I passed
out and I still have those letters and birthday cards preserved for
posterity. You can't do that to mails and sms-es...
AD: Well, we're saving trees for
sure...
BC: Possibly true, but why would you
want technology to kill the most charming form of personal
communication when you can use it to make recycled paper?
AD: Hey, we are all moving towards a
paperless world...
BC: Looks like it will not just be
paperless, but also friendless. Kids seem to be more interested in
messaging their 'friends' on social networking sites than stepping
out to make friends in their neighbourhood.
AD: Crowded neighbourhoods... cramped
spaces...
BC: During my times, space was measured
in terms of distance and area. Then we started launching rockets and
satellites and space came to be measured in light years. Now, we live
in an era where servers and hard disks rule, and space is measured
in GB...
AD: But technology has helped medical
science come a long way. Everything can be cured...
BC: ...except the common cold!
AD: You are mocking science now...
BC: You are entitled to your views, but
I still pity these kids...
AD: You are wasting your time. The last
time I heard Arun's daughter talking to her friends, they were all
feeling sorry for you.
BC: What? But why?
AD: They were shocked to know that you
grew up in a world without Facebook and mobile phones. They were
curious to know how you managed to keep in touch with friends who
were abroad, what you did when you desperately wanted to speak to a
friend in the middle of the night...
BC: I didn't, I used to sleep when it
was night.
AD: But how did you search without
Google?
BC: There were libraries, encyclopedia
volumes...
AD: You would have had to wait for a
whole day for the latest news. No twitter, no mobile updates, no
breaking news...
BC: Well, the wait didn't kill us...
AD: They had another question – with
no iPods, YouTube, mp3 and streaming formats, what did you do for
entertainment?
BC: Have you listened to all the
remixes going around today? Just tell them that back then, we
listened to the originals.
