Beating the Rhetoric
Life in the modern times has considerably changed, thanks to technology. The pace at which life moves has become considerably faster. Major success has been achieved in modern times in the field of medicine, nuclear science, computers and automation at various levels. Technology and its boon has always been propagated in such a voracious manner that we tend to forget or overlook its harm. It too comes with its own set of problems. One of the major harms it has done is that it has given man the power of mass destruction which was hitherto unknown .It has also affected the environment to a very large extent. Another major defect of technology is that it has created isolation in the society. In times to come this is going to be a major influential factor.
Karl Marx gave the concept ‘alienation’ which was central to his theories while defining class conflict in the capitalist economy. Marx claimed that in a capitalist economy each worker had a restricted or limited role .He or she no longer applied total human capacities of hands, the mind and the emotion at work. This created a sense of isolation which was explained in four stages. When the worker has reached the fourth stage he was no longer attached to either himself or the society and this gave birth to social isolation. Marx’s definition of social alienation is very much true in today’s modern world where extreme levels of mechanization and specialization have forced humans to become socially isolated to a large extent.
Technology has also affected human thinking to a large extent. It has clouded his patience. Today man wants work done so fast that the mere concept of waiting seems obsolete to him. It has altered his very basic nature thereby affecting his psyche. Patience which is a very important word in any relationship is slowly vanishing from the dictionaries of modern man. This has thus created a sense of isolation because people don’t have the required patience to build any relationship anymore. This is an indirect attack of technology on society, thereby leading to social isolation.
Advocates of technology might demonstrate that technology like social networking sites have bought about a revolution in human interactions but the real picture has been truly summarized above. An American company has developed a machine which leaves voice recorded messages. They say that they have replaced the text messaging system but what they have actually mastered is the art of leaving a voice recorded message without having to undergo the ordeal of engaging in a conversation. All these and many others, point towards one simple fact – that use of technology in modern times has actually given rise to social isolation.
Social isolation nowadays is defined in the broader terms as the absence of social interactions, contacts, and relationships with family and friends, with neighbours on an individual level, and with ”society at large” on a broader level including with the environment. The last part ‘environment’ leads to a different discussion in terms of social isolation .Development can be attributed to two major sources nature and technology. Nature’s concept of development is based on abundance like air, water land etc. Technology’s concept of development has largely been around scarcity like expensive medical treatment. Thus this very basic difference in nature led to the emergence of conflict between technology and environment. In this conflict technology has successfully created havoc on the environment .Thus when nature gets destroyed man feels alienated which brings an altogether different direction to the term of social isolation.
The friction between technological development and the social bonding of man in particular and the influence of the former upon the course of social and cultural changes have been a great source of controversy. Today, human life is an industrial life. In this life which is governed by technical relations, all products are interrelated and interdependent, where the purchase of a product commits one to the purchase of another. Technology advances constantly and rapidly; what has been useful and favoured one day runs out of style next day. This rapid stride has bought about a sense of detachment of man from goods .Thus his feeling of belongingness to the materialistic things begins to decrease since the products change so rapidly that he is not able to associate himself with any of them. All these are the major harbingers of social isolation.
Thus in the above we see that in modern times man has actually been able to alienate himself from the society with the help of technology. Science and technology provide no panacea for the problems of the world. If those problems have to be solved then men and women have to work and not machines. They will be better equipped to do so if they have a sense of solidarity and a common sense of their own past. The lesson of history is not that it never repeats itself. The lesson is rather, that the present can be clearly perceived and the future intelligently planned for only when those responsible understand the basic working of human nature. Man is a social animal and for knowledge and insight of this simple fascinating mechanism, it is not technology but a common sense of history achieved through a simple concept called togetherness.
– Ibu Sanjeeb Garg ( Views expressed by the author are personal)