The Great Leap Forward or Status Quo?

 

Technology has always been at the forefront of mankind’s endeavors. From ancient cave dwellings to our modern cities, humans have always tried to improve their life by adopting new technology. So, it should be no surprise that a new age of technology is upon us after the pause forced on us by the pandemic.

 Since the beginning of human civilization in this world, the march of technology has never stopped. This unrelenting momentum has taken its toll on human civilization. Pollution is at an all-time high and now threatens the human survival on this planet.  However, progress is not in human hands. It is a process which feeds on itself. Making progress is in the human DNA. The human race cannot remain static in terms of development.

Therefore, the race has intensified of late as nations scramble to win an edge over others. Since the beginning of civilization, it could never be controlled. It is even less controlled now. Humans have never been able to halt their technological progress. Because human nature is oriented towards development. It could be technological cultural, or any other field. We cannot stop ourselves from making progress. Many times, progress in hindsight has been a mixed blessing.

Nevertheless, the human civilisation has sustained itself on progress.

After the pandemic people have realized the importance of technology in their lives. How humans controlled the pandemic with determination and technology. Huge investments are being made to roll out new technology in all spheres of human activity. The pace of discoveries and inventions will be accelerated as more money pours into research and development.

Medicine and health care are now top priorities, but other fields will not lack funding either. Defence has always been a no-compromise issue, where funding is provided for new weapons and systems. The Russia – Ukraine war will bring to the fore, lacunae in weapons and systems as any war does, which nations will have to overcome by making fresh investments in new military technology.

Of course, all this comes at a price. Technological development is always incremental and never a leap forward.  Progress brings in its wake ill effects. The industrial revolution brought about a huge change in the standards of living of the people of the world in general, but has been the root cause of pollution which we are scrambling to mitigate. The burning of fossil fuels for energy has helped man progress but at an enormous cost.

Even the new clean technologies which are just around the corner and which the world is expecting to adopt in a few years, are probably not so clean. Solar, Wind Energy, Hydrogen, are yet to prove themselves. But the scale at which they will have to be produced and distributed to be effective, will need new investments and new methodologies to deal with the waste products.

In fact, one of the first things man is going to do when he sets foot on another planet to colonise it, is to start polluting it. This may sound pessimistic and it probably is the wrong way to look at things. The fact however remains that we are a polluting race. Have been all along, throughout our evolution. The animals in the jungle also pollute the planet. However, their pollution does not deteriorate the overall atmospheric conditions on the planet.  

So has man made any real progress at all? This is a difficult question to answer. If there were no motor cars and industries, there would be no pollution and man need not have gone after clean energy. If medical science had not progressed, man would have died early, and diseases would have kept the human population in check. It seems human progress in actually inconsequential, i.e. progress has not made the human race any better off. It has not improved his his life in any way in real terms. The Red Indian on the plains of America were not unhappy in any way before the white man came and exposed him to progress. The Red man had perfectly adapted his way of life which could have sustained him for a long time. He had found his equilibrium with nature. Something the modern and so called progressive man has not been able to do. 

Man will eventually colonise other planets. The human race will jump from one planet to another discarding them as they become inhospitable due to his polluting ways. This reflects the reality that we as a human race face today.  So even as we talk about mending our ways in order to save our only home, the Earth, from man-made pollution, the reality is that we cannot do much about it, period. Nobody has admitted it, but the sooner we call a spade by its name the better.

As the adage goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same.