A human being is distinguished from other living creatures in the sense that it has inbuilt thinking capabilities. Any act made by human is backed by a well-defined thought process. Humans use eyes and ears as sensors to perceive and sense things. Humans have the cognitive ability abilities to think and make decisions that are essential for their survival and adaptation. Take for an example of how people 50 years ago used to carry out their routine business activities whether it was selling of products or buying of commodities, which in comparison to today’s era may be considered a bit outdated, although the basic entities remain same in the entire process i.e., buyer, seller and store have not changed.
Today for a seller a buyer is a user interface with details and for buyer a seller may be mobile screen or laptop screen with various products displayed. This online market is flourishing with a very fast pace. As of now the e-business market has reached to a level of where we have a minimal human intervention, as machines are supposed to do major part of transactions in this entire buyer-seller process. This machine-to-machine communication has taken the dynamism of human civilization to a next level where everything in a particular unit of production is connected by machines from the start state of production to final state of disposal of goods. An evolved form of this machine to machine communication has resulted into a newer field called “Internet of things, where internet is extended to things of day to day life.
This evolution in terms of technology has brought compete shift how we carry out our daily transactions, for example if in an unfortunate case two cars collide, machines in the form of sensors and actuators will detect these colliding signals and instantly upon detection of this collision will send signals to recovery section and hospital to depute appropriate machinery for disposing off the crisis that occurred. Humans have seen the phases of hunting, food gatherers, nomadic life, urban labours to office workers, each phase of human history have associated with it typical patterns of living life. These living patterns with time have evolved and humans have always tried to evolve novel ways and means of living life. Prior to Agricultural Revolution human population was 6 to 10 million and was smaller in comparison to Human population of Cairo today. People at that time had limited relations, as means of communication were very not highly developed. Although the population was just 8 million but at the same time ethnic and cultural variety existed. People prior to Agricultural revolution lived a free and healthy life; loneliness and privacy were rear. People lived as members of a particular band and had maintained relations within the band. The members of a particular band knew each other very closely and had a limited interaction with people outside their bands, maybe probably were unaware of them. As technology has evolved from hand held calculators to machines that can interact with humans by way of natural languages, this on its own has brought us much closer, but with newer challenges. Imagine someone with a Facebook or Instagram account with thousands of followers and friends, although the no of people that account holder actually knows is very less. This sort of virtual relations has made our behaviour, our culture and our ethics machine dependent which with each passing day is increasing its domination. How can we not imagine a day where a machine will be interacting with another machine, although that machine will have a human name? Let us ponder on these things how to strike the balance to make the best use of technology without disturbing social bonds and social relationships, if not then mankind in near future will be replaced totally by machines in the value chain that makes “man a social animal”.
(Author is Assistant Professor, J&K Higher Education. Email: [email protected])
