Translated to English from Marathi
Where Are We Going………
We all are well aware that the IT industry has made a great impact on the Indian culture and economy. The whole world is so close that many times we feel everything is just about few seconds away…
With brilliant and hardworking
brains in
When I think about the world in 2020………. and ponder our past when the computer was just an amazing thing, then today when it has become integral part of our lives, I just think, what will the world be in 2020 will we get divided into two categories human and computer…. If super computers with emotions own thinking and decision making power will really exist… will world be much different.
I think 2020 will be world much different than now. There will not remain any boundary of country, life will be much faster than now and no country will have their own specific culture. I am positive about thinking that next generation is going to change the world with more practical existence except they will be smarter and more efficient in working with machines.
Agriculture is our main source of living It will make great impact on agricultural field all the farmers in India will use the computer and internet very efficiently for cultivation.
As a coin, every invention has two sides good and bad as we progressing in each field we also becoming lazy and slave of machinery. And I am afraid if the machine which is more powerful than man, if it has its own emotions, thinking and decision making power will it rule us? I am just crazy for science and inventions, professionally an engineer but, at the same time am human, grown in a culture where human love for the beauty of nature and respect and love for nature IS. In this machine life we run on seconds and milliseconds and we have no time to care and love the most valuable resource to survive nature and the environment ... we don’t care about our own Earth. Money $ Rs. Becoming first priority. Degrading of culture and very important thing which is negatively affecting us is our fast lifestyle. Working on machines we just start to love machines and forget sometimes, we are human.
In India, we in the software field work for more than 12 hrs a day sitting in front of a PC playing with code. Many of us are suffering from headaches, migraine, acidity, hypertension, and BP with no time to have lunch or dinner. No time for exercise…... No doubt we are earning good money but we are loosing the wealth of health. I am not against progress, not even against super computers but against over use of everything.
Companies have good earnings. Software workers are getting good salaries and good opportunities to use their minds and creativity but at the same time they do not have time for family. Either they can earn or they can give time to family there is no balance anywhere. Because every where in world the human race is getting last priority.
It is amazing the things which we are inventing for our own good many times more effective to destroy us. Press a button and you can destroy any country, you can kill as many lives. All are living under tension and don’t know if we go out to work that day we can see our home again. Though the conditions are their not worst yet, we are all a world progressing towards it very fast….
Just get powerful or show our power we are easily killing many lives we don’t know…our intensions are not clear: are they what they want or are they just doing it for fun… who do they want to frighten and for what…..?
Just one example of our very good inventions…. is television and films. We watch the movies showing 10- 15 murders, cheaters and murderers are heroes of film. It’s natural that kids like to follow them. If they see violence instead of love they think its life and nothing odd in lying, killing …….. We need to think of many small things before we put this before our generation…
As we are progressing we are loosing the power to handle the situations in real life… the person who is a genius in his/ her field will commit suicide for simple reasons which indicate that we are not able to handle small sorrows, small frustrations… and looking at the graph of suicides.. .. I am really not sure what we are going to give the next generation... a life with automation, with no trees near by and very speedy practical life or life with a beautiful natural working environment with advanced technologies and life where the priority will be family and culture... we need to decide.
We need to make a revolutionary change in our educational paradigm as it is making and destroying the next generation. Along with all the advanced technology, we need to prepare for our kids to face life, they need to teach and experience living. They should feel they are secure in this world and it’s their own. They must learn to share, to win, to defeat, to loose and accept it, to accept challenge, to fight and to forgive, to work hard, and to understand the facts. They should be able to use there valuable studies in real life experiences to earn their bread and butter so that there will not be any crime. We must consider that every human on the Earth has the right to at least get food and shelter and luxury they can earn with there hard work. They should not need to beg for this. This is the responsibility of each and every human to take care that he is helping to make this world beautiful.
If we succeed in doing this then the year 2020 will welcome us into a most beautiful world….where man is using the brain which the most valuable thing he has distinguishing him from other animals for his amazing inventions and by thinking of the long range impact of them. We should not play with nature because that is most important and that we can not create like magic...
Professor Sangita Awari, Eng
Department of Computer Science
Pune University
Pune, India