Technology

The clock struck five and a melodious salutation greeted my ears. 'Good morning,' said the electronic watch and within a few seconds, a robotic arm presented before me my bed tea. Jenie, my personal robot, arranged hot water for me to bathe while Quennie, my robot, to whom I had entrusted the management of the kitchen, came on its wheels and took my order for breakfast While Jenie stirred sugar in my tea with her shining steel alloyed arms, i took the newspaper and started glancing through the news. I was stunned on reading that the Talibans bombarded New York city and its adjoining areas with chemical weapons even though they had caused great havoc by destroying the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The thought that technology has given birth to fierce techno-wars between nations makes my head spin. So severe was the impact of the dreadful news on me that when i turned towards Jenie to lift the teacup from its steel alloyed arms, I imagined its arm splitting into bone-shaped rods and trying to reach my neck. I wondered whether I would have to face a fateful day when these gifts of technology would become the messenger of my death.

Whether it is the new millennium or the eighteenth century, there has always been a debate about the two "faces of science. When AK 47 was invented, who couid have imagined that a group of school going children would use it to kill pupils on the campus itselL When the Nobel Prize was named after Alfred Nobel for his invention of the dynamite, who could have thought that someday, the sparks of the same gunpowder would burn down our peaceful earth into ashes and bring about a catastrophe? These questions must have been debated and will again be discussed in the coming years. But the need of the hour is to control the technological lunacy so that our planet does not turn into a graveyard.

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first destructive spectacle of technology was witnessed by the world. When man...