We all instinctively know that technology must be used to serve and improve our lives, but it should never be let in control in other words technology is a good servant but a bad, really bad master. Now that we have ever growing technology which gets improved on DAILY basis, it’s best when we develop some technology we maintain basic human ethics and standards so that we don’t harm our selves, fellow human beings and certainly our mother earth. Now ethics and morals may sound like child’s game, and it might be a cringe term but imagine a where where there is no right or wrong, and only the strong ones survive and family of poor and weak perish.
Now this sounds amazing and limitless until we are not on the weak side, and suddenly we feel despair and complain things are unfair. Some of you might also argue that certainly even in 2024 things are the same, the strong ones survive and the weak perish, but certainly things are not bad as it was 1000 years ago where slavery was abolished, and where the weak were still oppressed not to mention the constant chaos among the citizens and chaos of the war is really depressing, and compared to those days now we are living and leading a comfortable life, thanks to the civic sense and moral code of conduct that has been normalised in our society. Arguably King Solomon is considered as the wisest man on this planet, and in his words he quoted the following:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
It really take religion to understand ethics, morals and common sense, but we will have a talk about these topics on some other day, for now let’s focus on ethical considerations that are imposed on Technology Development.
If you google the topic of this blog, you will see quite a handful of terminologies related to ethical considerations such as privacy, security, trust , reliability, not hurting the environment, etc and it does take a lot to document and have each of them, and trust me no one likes a long boring list of do’s and don’ts. I mean honestly we all love being unrestricted, and no one loves to be under authority and follow a list of to do’s and not do’s, certainly there has to be a better way of living right? but at same time we can’t do as we please and take into consideration of our actions and their impact and consequences that they bring when they are executed, else the world would be one hell of a place to live in right? so the golden rule of thumb when it comes down to ethical considerations and morality is that Do on to others as you would
expect them to do unto you . Now this is not to say that do something good by expecting something in return. The phrase does deeper than the surface level saying, what it really means is do actions that is acceptable to you. If you don’t like getting yelled and being be belittled by someone then don’t the same with other person, just be a nice guy and draw strong The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Boundaries. This golden rule also applies for the technology development, don’t do anything crazy enough that would destroy ourselves.
We all know that advancement in technology made us distracted from our main goal, and who in the world does not wake up to their phone notifications and be eager to know what happened last time in group chat or see the latest video from your favourite content creater? maybe less than 1% of population who have high levels of self control or have strict parents do but the rest of us are hooked to these electrical gadgets, and no wonder why we feel anxious, less energetic and depressive.
Luckily we have digital well being tools that are integrated in our phones which you can have a look from your phone settings or from your app widgets, and you could block apps like instagram or youtube by putting on focused mode and selectively blocking these applications or you would set timer from digital well being tools which block access to the app after certain time, which ranges from 5 min to few hours. If you spend countless hours watching youtube shorts and instagram reels you could block reels by using apps like regain or stopscroll, trust me there are countless ways to get around decreasing your screen time and these tools really work if and only if you have strong will not to get distracted and work on something productive like learning that one skill which you have always wanted to learn, or picking up that one task that you were procrastinating for so long. That was cognitive concern for technology development and not to mention the health concerns that come with long screen time and sitting at one single place for too long.
Again these would be over come with regular exercise and instead of sitting selecting an standing desk and reducing screen time or using blue light filter to filter out harmful blue ray light that our screen constantly emits which makes our eyes really uncomfortable and disrupts our sleep schedule. Lastly one grey area of technological development is AI or artificial intelligence.
People say it’s going to take our lives, but most importantly what about the music artists and digital artists that live of from digital products. If AI start making them for cheap then what will happen to them? it is easy to point finger and say hey learn some valuable skill and shift, but if one has spent all their life that they are truly passionate about, and now some machine comes and take over then it’s not good right. And academically speaking students relying on ready made answer instead of searching for answer on text books and multiple sources on exam may restrict their cognitive abilities.
Again the main goal of technology must be to ease our lives, not make us slaves to them, and instead of pointing fingers on the people who make technology that makes us hooked to their products, we all can take proactive steps to use technology to create something more meaningful, instead of us getting attached to us. Now this does not mean to abandon technology completely and live in woods, that ain’t practical. Modern era in which we live is digitised, and instead of becoming a customer of a product we all must aim to create something meaningful, again this does not mean to become an online influence but we all can learn some valuable skill and offer it online for millions of people. I really do hope that this blog gave you the initiative to take the first step to change oneself and remember one does not have to know the entire path to do something amazing, the path will unfold itself after you have successfully taken your first steps. Peace
