Technology as A Change Agent

The very existence of human race was found with the making of Fire and Wheel. There was no information source and still people were curious to make something interesting with their own hands. People started building houses, cutlery, pottery, art developed. People wanted to build more and more. There was no stopping them and there were creators in every house. We also saw some of the great minds in the history like:

• ·        Leonardo Da Vinci – Sketches of technology that was 500 years earlier of the time and it was scary for humans,
• ·        Thomas Edison – Many know him as the inventor of Electric bulb but he also has 1093 patents on his name,
• ·        Alfred Nobel – Invented Dynamite
• ·        Karl Benz – Invented the First Modern Automobile,

These are the people that we know and have studied in depth about them. There are long lists of people since the birth of our human race who have made our living easier. We might not even know the name of the person who invented chairs, beds, tables, windows, doors, and your everyday things that you might never wonder, who made it easier for you to live. One thing that was common among all these people and the above list of extraordinary people was that they were working with their hands.

Now let’s talk about the people who were the enablers in making globalization seem like a cup of tea. These were the people who were determined to make the things that seemed impossible.

• ·        Konrad Zuse – Creator of the first electro-mechanical binary programmable (modern) computer in 1936 to 1938.
• ·        Tim Berners Lee – Inventor of popular World Wide Web (www).
• ·        Dennis Ritchie – Developer of C programming language with Ken Thompson.
• ·        Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce – Developers of SQL and were working in IBM
• ·        Bill Gates – Founder of Microsoft and proclaimed as world’s richest man for more than 15 times in the last 20 years.
• ·        Steve Jobs – Founder of Apple and many describe him as Futurist, Visionary, and Legendary.

These are some of the people who were able to change the course of humans via the means technology. Now let’s look at the table below showing with the year how things are changing:

Sr. No.	Name	Year	Wealth in Billions of $	Company	Sector
1	John D. Rockfellar	1839	318.3	Standard Oil	Oil
2	Moses Taylor	1840	79.3	Citibank	Banking
3	Andrew Carnegie	1885-1900	298.3	Carnegie Steel Co.	Steel
4	William Henry Vanderbilt	1860	231.6	Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad	Railroad
5	Henry Ford	1920	188.1	Ford Motor Co.	Automobile
6	Sam Walton	1982-1988	128	Wal-Mart	Retail
7	Bill Gates	1999	60	Microsoft	Computer
8	Larry Ellison	2000	47	Oracle	Computer
9	Laxmi Mittal	2006	23.5	Mittal Steel Co.	Steel
10	Mukesh Ambani	2009	43	Reliance Industries	Diversified
11	Carlos Slim Helu	2014	72	Telmex and América Móvil.	Telecom
12	Jeff Bezos	2014	32	Amazon	E-Commerce
13	Mark Zuckerberg	2014	27.9	Facebook	Computer
14	Azim Premji	2014	15.3	Wipro	Computer
15	Laurene Powell Jobs & family	2014	14	Apple and Disney	Computer

          I have randomly selected some of the World’s Richest People from 18^th Century till Today and if you see minutely, out of 15 there are 6, who have done amazing in the field which was completely ruled by owners of Railways, Oil, and Steel Plants. You can see that in last 200 years the paradigm has shifted from the hard core manufacturing industry to more of a Digital World.

          But where is the Digital World leading us to? Many might be knowing the invention of 3D Printers. Well for those who don’t, 3D Printers are capable of making a live model with a FMD Thermoplastics, PolyJet Photopolymers for high end quality of printing. While a range of other materials include nylon, glass filled polyamide, epoxy resins, and wax.

          Engineers and Designers have been in existence since the time we cannot imagine. Now with the 3D Printers, the requirement of such professionals is not more required. We just need to have a good knowledge of how to make a 3D model on a computer and the complete model will come out in a specific time depending on the time it takes and the complexity of the model to be printed. You must have heard about the clay models that are being built in an automobile industry before making an actual car. There are some specialized people who are involved in making them, but with this technology all over the world the people who are specialized in this will be no more required. Think of designers and architects who are required to build demo models, they can be replaced by an expert on 3D Printer. You can imagine the use of this technology in your day to day life. In future 3D Printers might become a part of our daily life but I cannot imagine the artistic people who have the real talent towards making models. Imagine Picasso using 3D printers to make his clay models. Will you still buy them at such a high price? No! Because there is no personal touch or feeling of love that the model is carved out from. There are also some advantages of 3D Printers but which new technology doesn’t have, it is up to us how much and to what extent to use it.

          We say that the technology is making our life easier but we are losing the touch of making a thing with our own hand. Children in schools are given computers at a very young age and they start taking it to schools and colleges, but can anything be better than our own handwriting? The touch of paper is gradually being lost by introduction of technology like Amazon Kindle and iPads. The enjoyment of playing with friends in the garden and dirt is lost.

Are we making our next generation crippled of every expertise that we have right now to use our hands and body to make something better? We need to balance on the things we do and teach our next generation to take a break from technology from time to time and enjoy what is around them.