Technology And The Estrangement from Self

Keeping in view the contemporary times, technology, to my mind, can be defined as the true elixir of life and the virtual enlightenment. It is because of technology that contemporary society interacts with each other. It acts both as a cultural and economic force throughout the world. Technology is more than a virtual concept associated with more advanced tools and systems that are used to control and monitor complex tasks. It has developed both simple tools as well as complex ones and so far as simple tools are concerned, we can think of wheels, irrigation systems, chariots, and complex tools such as computers, cell phones, internet, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, virtual reality, machine learning, and even the deep learning and I feel one should be compulsorily aware of such terminologies.

It is so obvious that everything comes with both pros and cons and so is the case of technology also. If we discuss the internet and mobile devices particularly, they have radically altered the way the people interact with each other and have created a particular abstract form called, “The Virtual Self ”.

Impact Of Technology On Human Relationships:

It is so usual for the people to prefer human to machine interaction over human to human interaction. No doubt, it has reduced the global gaps between many people and predicted their tastes and preferences through their searches, likes, dislikes but at the same time it has created larger disconnect between people by reducing social interactions with each other. One can think of technology as a monopolist over people’s minds.

It has helped to modify human behavior by making their emotions technocratic that is the world has become so digital and technocratic that they post their feelings and consider it as sensible overexpressing their views or feelings to the people face to face. Even If i will talk about myself, I feel so comfortable in texting people other than having healthy face to face interaction, this is where actual alienation happens to us and it leads to lack of understanding and has made our real feelings merely a souvenir.Instead of experiencing the emotions in real sense or physically, majority of the people who prefer technology for interactions rely on emoticons, they don’t even waste their energy in texting but replace it with just emoticons and this is where we become so cold and technocratic. Apparently it strengthens the connectivity but substantially it is the main cause of disconnect among the people who instead of having face to face interaction prefer to chat through text with each other.

But nowadays , phubbing is so relevant that you feel it everywhere, be it your friends, family or any other social gatherings. The thumb rule of human interaction is this, that you should give the person you are with full attention and not phub them.

Impact Of Technology On Children:

I feel mobile phones and tablets raise children more than parents do, it reflects the inability of the parents to interact directly with their children that results in a asocial behaviour and lack of social skills on the part of their children.

Philosophical View Of Technology And The Estrangement from Self:

I believe we all have so many selves in this technocratic era like our actual self, real self, inner self and the virtual self, that we have completely forgotten our natural self that is where the actual estrangement happens.

Above all, the virtual personality is more focused and is the first priority in today’s world, as nobody can imagine their life without becoming digital, even the Governments have become omnipresent because of the mobile phones that performs the work of surveillance very well and it is all because of the virtual enlightenment that has gifted us alienation of every form. In a Marxian sense, it’s a modern means of production and domination, control and exploitation that threatens the survival of humanity that has replaced the class of Haves with Technocratic class .

Apart from the Internet, social media that comes under the ambit of technology, there is Artificial Intelligence(AI) which is also posing serious threats like technological unemployment where jobs are replaced by the machines based on AI technology, Deepfake technology and the internet of things (IOT) and easy access to one’s online activity data and the challenges posed by Big Data which includes:

• Invasion of privacy that is net neutrality and data privacy
• Data Security
• Technical Challenges.

I will not conclude it by saying, that

I am not a huge phone fan so you won’t catch me phubbing any one and it is up to us how we use technology or we should use technology in such a manner that it doesn’t affect us at all but the harsh truth is this it hijacks our mind so brutally that we are ready to exploit ourselves with our prior consent because we all are blinded by technology so much that we can only see the glory of self excitement.

Qurat.