Technology advances take place every day, every second in the world. It makes our life easier; provides us with new and innovative products/ services. The twentieth century saw more momentous change than any previous century: change for better, change for worse; change that brought enormous benefits to human beings, change that threatens the very existence of the human species. Many factors contributed to this change but – in my opinion – the most important factor is the progress in Information Technology. Technology – the application of science – has made fantastic advances that have affected us beneficially in nearly every aspect of life: better health, more wealth, less drudgery, greater access to information.
Rapid increase of technology in today’s society has brought good things. The luxury of emailing, chatting, paying phone bills and making railway and airline reservation online is more appealing. Checking news, weather, and sports via the internet is a convenience that information technology has given us. Universities and colleges through the world share their academic resource through web. Students in any part of world can participate in virtual classes, irrespective of geographical constraints. We find technology in use everywhere, whether we go to hotel reservation, to a bank, hospital, college university, shopping malls, cinema, book stores, restaurant, cafeteria everywhere. The world, as we call it now Global Village, is result of technology which removed geographically barriers and linked it together is Technology. If we remove it we will come back to Stone Age.
Sadly, however, there is another side to the picture. The creativity of this field of Science, Information Technology, has been employed to the detriment of mankind. The application of science and technology to the development and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction has created a real threat to the continued existence of the human race on this planet. We have seen this happen in the case of nuclear weapons. Although their actual use in combat has so far occurred only in 1945- when two Japanese cities were destroyed – during the four decades of the Cold War, obscenely huge arsenals of nuclear weapons had actually been detonated the result could have been the complete extinction of the human species, as well as of many animal species. William Shakespeare said: “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”The above brief review of the application of only one strand of human activities Information technology seems to bear out this adage.
In exercising our technological powers we have to be responsible for the social impact of our work. Responsibility for one’s action is of course, an ethical responsibility of every citizen, not just of scientists. Each of us must be accountable for our deeds. But the need for such responsibility is particularly imperative for scientists and technologists, if only because scientists and technologists understand the technical problems better than the average citizens and politicians. And knowledge brings responsibility.
We should try to use this technology for the betterment of human kind, enhance our cultural and intellectual heritage, and at the same time, protect the environment and improve the material lot of human beings, thus helping the establishment of an equitable and peaceful world.
Author: Sheikh Aqib Farooq
