Of a World Gone Smart

The world is always in an evolutionary state. History reveals man going through various steps of technology, from the Neolithic era through the Renaissance age, the Industrial Age and now the Age of Information. All these are direct or indirect means to make things easier for man. And if man is always in a bid to make things easier for himself, it is because he is smart. If by the end of the 1990s the world had become electronically wired, the beginning of the 21st century ushered in the wireless era, reconnecting all that had been wired into a cordless network of devices. Through the WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, and other wireless connections, electronic media is transferred even quicker, irrespective of time and distance. Web based, smarter versions of human activities keep growing and expanding, freeing up time required to do work and hassles involved in moving from place to place. When seeming rumours of people working from the comfort of their homes and earning money was new, it was almost unbelievable to a people who have been long in a tradition of earning from manual labour. Software applications, or apps for short, have been developed for use in almost every sphere. In medicine for instance, there are devices which have corresponding apps in smart devices like phones, tablets and laptops through which one can check insulin levels, blood pressure or the presence of germs. There are online courses in online schools; people do not need to travel far to study. And with the click of a few buttons, payments can be made at online markets for almost anything. Cars have gone driverless, banks have gone automated, and people are being relieved of manual activities. In the near future, home automation with devices letting us know when to wake up or preparing meals for us whilst we are away from home would not be something strange, as strange as when phones or washing machines were new. During the industrial era, workers were upset about how the machine did most of their jobs faster and better and how it turned out that they lost their jobs as a result. With the advent and evolution of the computer, the rate is much faster what smart devices are doing in today’s smart world. With the increasing nature of how the internet is permeating most spheres of our modern world, the extent to which the digital revolution affects the arts, commerce, sciences and technology as a whole remains unknown. If machines are designed to do all that doctors are meant to do, what will now be the use of doctors? However, whatever doubts we may have about digital advancement, we certainly cannot imagine living without it now even as we look forward to better devices. Yet smart seems a conclusive term. It would rather pass for a state which we yet aspire to attain since evolution is progressive. What happens if man has yet a thousand more years to live on earth? Since he is constantly in a state of discovering new things, he certainly would not be expected to remain smart.   About the writer:  Nnenna Okeke is a fine artist and writer. She has a passion for creativity in the arts, which she believes has the ability to heal our souls, and aspires to give her best towards it.

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This article was first published on 31st December 2015 and updated on February 25th, 2016 at 3:03 pm

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