Tuesdays with a farmer -- Science and Technology

Technology cannot go ahead of what there is. Technology is an application oriented thing. It doesn’t know how to do good for the society. It wants to do good for itself. People have been talking about having a connected India for around seven to 10 years now.
They[Govts] kept allocating smaller and smaller funds towards telecommunication in the villages. We presumed what the heck would happen. Anyways, in a typical village, the landlord would possess one phone which wouldn’t work often. It gets used as a paperweight. Governments thought why we should siphon money. Now suddenly, they are putting hundreds of crores into it. Because, there is, as you can see, money to be made out of it. 

We are not talking of science here. We are talking of Technology. Technology has no interest in pure nice things. It is only interested in having an application that would run in money into the coffers. That’s all. This is exactly the reason why we shouldn’t get fixated with the Internet. The internet is just one of the ways to connect with each other. So don’t keep harping on this idea that Internet is necessary for connectivity. Therefore the conclusion would be that many applications would not run as we don’t have Internet. Internet is going to be available to you not in the form of the Internet that was available to us even five to 10 years ago. Why is it like that?  It made more sense. So we moved on. Why has internet moved on to smart phone? Because, it is too much trouble to give you an internet connection and computer and uninterrupted power supply and. So many ands.  So let’s find a shorter and easier route. Let us put it up on something that is anyway going to reach anywhwere and we are going to go much further.

Most sociologists used to say that technology is the cause to change. It isn’t. It is the consequence of change. However, technology can well out a change slightly earlier. The way it does is, as it starts moving in many directions. All of which are potentially profitable. Some of them would start earning some profit and so they will start moving faster and you will see a whole lot of developments in there. Science is the cause of change.  Technology is the consequence of change.