Innovation, Invention or Annihilation

I would hate myself for quoting the one of the most hated villain of Harry Potter – “Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged”. But what was dangerous in that context is very much relevant in today’s context.

The meaning of progress might differ from person to person. For someone moving towards betterment, some might define it as finding solution and solving problem or for some it is just moving from status quo. We might not realize but in today’s world the term progress sugar coated in jargons like innovation, invention etc has reduced to nothing but giving push to “status quo”. A slicker phone, a device that could take command from your eye movement, making Nano devices into Pico, femto or atto device – it’s just how far you can think. It’s all about what next, not about what purpose the progress is serving.

Many of you sneer at me for being so anti-technological. You would love to brand person like me as anti-progress, traditionalist etc etc. Remember the middle century, when church used to persecute scientists. That was the religious crusade. Today is the world of science crusade, anyone having doubt about so called scientific progress deserve social and political crucification. I would still put my thought forward. Take a step back and think what purpose these 250 years (taking industrial revolution as base) of scientific progress has served? At first lets just talk about the indicators of Human Development Index (HDI), which is a generally acceptable criteria.

Mean year of schooling of the world as a whole is not more than 5 years (lowest being less than 1 year for Burkina Faso and Highest for UK 13.8 years). In Ancient Greece, China and India children used to get on an average 5 years of education. Worldwide life expectancy is 71 years but there are around 30 countries whose life expectancy vary within 45-55 years. That’s certainly not better than what we had in before and early Christian era. We have made phenomenal progress in terms of getting cure of diseases and controlling spread of many communicable diseases that has contributed in increasing life expectancy. But at that front also (which is actually a genuine scientific achievement) we have nonetheless become prisoner of our own so called broad mindset – “progress for the sake of progress”. Once we didn’t have enough problem to find solution we started creating problem and that is what is happening in world of pharmaceutical research today. One pill for every damn problem, who cares for the source of the problems or the consequences of solution being creator of more problems.

Moving to the next indicator – that is GNP per capita. Talking about wealth, are we wealthier or well off today? Wealth is a relative term and counting them in terms of rupees or dollars would be as misleading as terming Voldemort as source of all evil. Your wealth should be able to fulfill all your needs, wants and desires. If we quantify those criteria then certainly we are much poorer than our predecessors and our wants and desires are multiplying faster than increase in our wealth.

So all in all we are not better off than what we were before. There was a time when progress was necessary to save children, to ward off diseases, to remove ignorance etc. I wouldn’t list hunger, as earth has always provided us enough to lead a healthy life and men has always found a way to get it from nature either its primitive agriculture, hunting or gathering, technology has broadened the choice of food and that doesn’t mean it has made it better. So there was a time when technological progress was a tool to problem solving. When we had less problems, then technology transformed itself problem solver to problem creator. More the merrier, and hence it remained relevant, not only relevant it has become next god. We might talk and talk about human achievement but a cursory glance at our surrounding would tell us that nothing has changed. The more we are connected, the more distant we are, the more we are safe, the more prone to danger we are, the more we achieve, the more we are losing, the more we solve, the more problem we are creating. It’s just a battle of moving to and fro from your status quo. You move an inch forward and you are hurled 2 inches backward.

The hell has opened. I am ready to be crucified :P