Living in the age of technology, it is very easy to keep our eyes glued on the future and what it has in store for us as a species but it also means that we seldom look back and appreciate how far we’ve come already.

When was the last time you discussed among friends and family about how much the world has changed in recent times in contrast to discussing where we are headed and how our lives would be in the future? I certainly do it a lot less than I would like to.

Technology really has a habit of constantly changing our lives. A person, within his lifetime, experiences such ‘different worlds’ from his childhood to his old age, that it almost feels like we have started experiencing 500 years worth of progress within a lifetime of a person. Such is the pace of technology.

Technology - The Changer of the World

Like most parents, my parents like to share stories about their childhood, which I just love to hear. It really paints a picture in my head as to how life was, back in the 70s and 80s.

Some of the things that they have told me really made me realise how easy our lives have become over the course of just a few decades and has made me appreciate my life even more.

They have seen and lived through days when they had no telephone, no TV, no internet and of course none of the modern day devices that have become a part and parcel of our daily lives and that we can’t live without.

This is the power of technology. It is constantly changing the world for the better and making life just that much easier to live. Convenience has surely been one of the biggest gifts of technology.

We Lead Comfortable Lives, But Are We Peaceful?

There is no doubt that the current generation of people live the most comfortable lives in the history of humanity. Just think about all the facilities that are available to us at any given time thanks to the internet, smartphone and other fruits of technology.

Despite all this, what we can all observe in the world today, is that we are not really peaceful. No, I am not talking about war and stuff. I am talking about contentment, happiness, joy and peace in day to day life.

We all know how fast paced today’s world is. In a way, the world has become a large factory, and we, robots working on the production line. I can’t help but feel how human life has become monotonous, stressful, suffocating and tiring.

Compare that to the lives our parents and grandparents lived, and the stark difference becomes even clearer. Granted they had a lot less facilities or convenience, but they sure were peaceful and life certainly didn’t feel more like a chore.

I think this is one of those side effects of technology where in trying to make lives better, easier, healthier, more fun, it ends up incorporating all the opposites anyways. Ironical really, how that worked out.

Will We Ever Know Peace?

The thing is, the pace of technology keeps on getting faster and faster. That means even more rapid change. Sure it will bring a lot of good with it but I wonder if it will make life more stressful or less.

Right now, one of the biggest side-effects of developing technology is the loss of jobs due to increasing automation. This will get severe in the future and that will be another source of stress for humanity.

But as they say, every cloud has a silver lining and this might just end up as an opportunity to rethink our economic structure where we wouldn’t need to spend most of our life working for a living.

Programmes like Universal Basic Income or blockchain technologies like Bitcoin and Steemit can help immensely in that regard. Maybe technology will help solve its own side effects one day and humanity will finally know peace.

For now, if the elderly people tell you how easy you have it today, tell them how peaceful they had it in their days!!

All images are taken from the public domain.