Cruising The Information Technology Superhighway

As I watched the news on the tube last evening I couldn’t help but appreciate the efforts and resources that media houses are putting into their businesses in a bid to stay afloat in the competition as well as stay relevant. Giant screens at every corner, cutting edge furniture and even iPads for the news anchors. This station has gone as far as showing the robotic cameras in every corner of the newsroom! Real-time news streaming is also offered in a strip at the bottom of the screen. While this is a common phenomenon almost everywhere in the third world, much more is in the offing in the first world. Fast rewind some years back we only had one national broadcaster and things were quite analog then. Behind the anchor was a placard with the name of the station roughly inscribed on it. The furniture was quite standard and the news were on many sheets of paper that were carefully set aside one after the other until all the news were read!

This might be a crude description of the situation today, but I believe it paints the picture as is. The world of information technology is on a relentless hurry, with what is hot today losing its appeal by the next week. Take the mobile phone industry for example. Just the other day it was hot and prestigious to own one. Today it is more of a necessity than a gadget of prestige. In fact, the battle is now on how much your mobile phone can do for you, apart from making and receiving calls! Thinking of function, I do all my banking on my mobile phone today. All my bills are usually cleared at the comfort of my sitting room and visiting the bank is more of the exception than the rule!

Technology has brought the world to our finger tips especially through the internet. And this is getting more and more simplified each passing day. What was science fiction yesterday is reality today. The magic of the Knight of Knight-rider fame is possibly in the making somewhere in Japan! It will not be a very strange phenomenon anyway. And many more technological breakthroughs are obviously coming tomorrow. It is an unstoppable industry, partly owing to business competition as we as human’s quest for a more comfortable and convenient living. My only worry is that compliance is not an option in the modern living and it looks to me like we are in the end days and that we are already getting booked for the rapture. But what choice are we getting to opt out?