Mind over Matters: Rumbles of my mind.. Echo in this blog..

Its amazing how technology can change your life. It has been integrating with our lives unnoticed that we dont notice how dependent we have become on these things. I always thought that there wasnt any big technology advent in my life ever since the land phone. But i have to admit i am wrong. Take for example the cellular phone technology. Until about 2 years ago, i didnt own one(!!) but i think without one, life would be pretty hard now.I dont want to go running in search for a PCO (telephone booth) whenever i want to contact some one or some body else wait for me to get home until they have to call me on my land line. I am sure patience would run out on any one these days.

The same actually holds true for these things called ATMs. When i started working and had a bank account, these ATM thingies had actually come into existence (well i dont know about other countries, but before 10 years ATMs werent common in india) Before when i was in college,and they didnt have ATMs over there inside the campus, we had to go to a bank counter during their working hours and withdraw money. Those counters were invariably crowded and i had to wait for hours to get my money (which meant i had to cut some classes). When i came down to bangalore and started working and got another bank account, ATMs were very prevalent and i have never even visited the branch where i started my bank account for any reason (of course internet banking plays a big factor too but i'll come to that later). Now that i am used to this,i cant imagine what it would have been for me to go stand in a long queue in a branch and wait for hours to withdraw some money or deposit money. I guess again technology has changed my life.

Even though all this has changed our lives, nothing has changed our lives like the internet. (SUN actually has played major roles in all these things mentioned!) I didnt have a chance to get my hands on computer and logon to the internet until i finished my schooling and entered college. Till then internet was something only rich people used (it cost around 30k per year for a connection). After i laid my hands on this amazing thing (which scott adams refers to as "mother abode of all entertainment", life definetely changed. I could get information on my finger tips without having to wait for the library to open and search for books and borrow books and pay fines for late returns. Gradually i began to do more of my stuff online like paying bills, sending emails (instead of writing letters though i still LOVE writing letters) and banking (which i mentioned above) and i now think internet has also gradually entwined into my daily existence.

Note that all the above mentioned changes happened after i was atleast 18 and before that i had no idea about cell phones/internet/ATMs.. But take the case of the "next-gen" folks.. i.e. people who are born in late 1990's. These technologies have been around ever since they have been born and somehow i think, they have started to take these technologies as much more a part of their life (more than people lik me are used to). To give a comparsion, its something like the way people like me in their 20's take television sets as a part of the life. I dont know whether it is good or bad, but i think this will not be the last stage. There are going to be more developments and improvements happening in the coming years much faster than it used to happen before and we are going to become more and more dependent on them and take these things for granted. One such thing i wrote about in my previous blogs about next gen mashups. Its going to be interesting to see what that is going to be tho.
 

Update: Came across this article which mentioned mobile phones are dumbing down brain memory power.Maybe some one was thinking what i was thinking.