I love my iPhone 5S, I love my iPad2 (both 64 GB), and
I love my Mac Book Pro. Thanks to Puja, we are an Apple family. From the 4S to
the 6, we cover all models of the iPhone.
I also have a Kindle e-reader, and the Kindle App on
all my devices. I read my book on the Kindle, enjoying Pune’s evening breeze on
my terrace. When it gets too dark, I simply switch to the iPad, which remembers
exactly where I left off on the Kindle. Sitting in the ECHS Waiting Room, I
switch to the iPhone, and of course he too knows exactly which page I’m on!
I pay my bills, check my bank accounts, transfer funds
from here to there, chat with my friends, electronically check in, update my fb
status, tweet to all my 165 followers - all in this wonderful digital maze. It is
choc-a-bloc with its wow moments.
Travelling from Poona to Bombay on the
Expressway, I realised it was the last day to pay my Credit Card bill. No
sweat. I whipped out my iPhone, and in a matter of 45 seconds flat, the HDFC
Bank was thanking me for my prompt payment. Via an sms, naturally!
Using Face Time, Puja was laboriously hand walked
through the intricate steps of the sabudana
khichdi that she was attempting to whip up - in San Francisco! Why anyone
in SF would want to eat sabudana khichdi
is the subject for a separate post!!
So logically, God should be in Heaven, and all should
be well with the Earth, right? Not if the likes of Edward Snowden are to be
believed.
The digital processes that make life such a breeze
also mean that we now live in an Orwellian world, that `Big Brother’ is
watching every move, reading every mail/sms, scrutinising every tweet that we
make!
Every digital platform that we use can be tracked.
Every document, every mail, every sms, every conversation can be seen, heard,
listened to, and spot lighted.
So has technology actually freed us, or bound us in
chains? We hear of phone hacking scandals in UK, Snoop Gates, Wiki leaks, and
the NSA even hacking into Angela Mercel’s phone!
The world’s most famous whistle blower, Edward Snowden,
blew the whistle on NSA’s `snooping’. (Do watch `Citizenfour’, the Cinema Verite style documentary on
Snowden, it is compelling). Along with Julian Assange, Snowden must count as
the biggest heroes/traitors of the digital era – depending on which side of the
prism you look at them from.
9/11 obviously turned the entire security paradigm on
its head. Ethical questions began to take the back burner to the more important
security concerns.
So are we really better off in the digital age? Anyone
who has stood in the serpentine queues to pay BSNL or MSEB bills would
obviously scream in the affirmative.
Progress is inexorable, it is relentless, it will
brook no hurdles. You cannot wish it away. An Arnab Goswami may make you yearn
for the good old Doordarshan days, but let’s face it - his obnoxious, high
decibel, in your face persona is here to stay.
And security issues should, of course, trump all other
concerns. Removing your shoes at London’s Heathrow airport can be irksome, but
if you’re confident your socks don’t have gaping holes in them, you bear it
with a grin.
Personally, I think the Americans are taking this `privacy’
angle way too far. The only eyes I’d want to keep squarely away from my phone
would be those of my spouse! Otherwise, how does it matter if the Government of India, or
even USA’s National Security Agency knows the details of my Credit Card bills,
or who I message in the darkness of the night?
An aside here. A friend had just bought a smart phone,
and being rather technologically challenged, asked me to set it up for him. To
pull the wool over the prying eyes of his extremely inquisitive spouse, his Contact
List was full of codes, ie James for Jyotsna, and so on. Great, until he
received a WhatsApp message from `James’. To his utter horror, there was the
delectable Jyotsna, smiling oh so provocatively at him through her Display
Picture!! He promptly switched back to his primitive Nokia!
To Jennifer Lawrence and her ilk whose nude pics were
hacked from iCloud and spread all over the internet, my simple rejoinder – why
would you do something so silly in the first place?
So it’s progress on the one hand, and loss of privacy
on the other. With the need for Security looming over both. It is a Faustian
bargain as some would have us believe?
Hardly. Keep your house in order, keep your nose
clean. The Government can watch, no problem. Big Brother can scrutinise as much as
he likes to.
Of course, your spouse is a different matter
altogether!!
