TECHNOLOGY is necessary for growth and faster production, quicker communication and mostly better accuracy of information as well as uniformity of description internationally and expedited building progress, growth and wealth.
On the entertainment side, it aids with better audio and reproduction as well as clearer pictures, higher density videos, miniaturised and data carriers. Great, eh?
How one family of humans are constantly busy improving all of these technological innovations - bless them – while the other half of humanity struggles to cope with not just the side-effects of these advancements but which battles to ward off the head-on devastation brought on simultaneously by this giant Juggernaut.
The greatest paradox is obviously how that unfeeling speed of light is switching off all forms of employment and making a simple loaf of bread disappear from many billions of tables throughout the world, digitally.
But this letter is to rather focus on the debris of millions of discarded television sets that can’t handle digital signals; the millions of sluggish computers that are piling up higher and higher at dump sites; the millions of cassettes of audio and video that once stored beloved voices and faces of our idols; the Video Cassette Recorders (VCR) that we thought we would never part with, all now silently lying without voice, without face, in lonely graveyards.
The billions of carbon discs that can now only be used to induce toxin-induced sleep. They can also be used to hurl at scary American flying cockroaches and ugly green flies. But with not much success.
Shame! Sweet voices, intelligent, recorded information, important and vital secrets all strangled so treacherously, so bereft of all feeling. And to shockingly, sadly, realise that all these living robots were once intrinsic members of our family, oh, so friendly, but on close-up zoom, were discovered to be constructed of mostly poisonous, toxic, nonrecyclable and deadly elements.
Burning them releases hectically carcinogenic fumes. Just ignoring them and abandoning them in Kilimanjaro-height-dumps just creates eyesores and takes up our valuable space on this earth which is shrinking hyperbolically.
But we knew that would happen, didn’t we? And we know what’s going to happen tomorrow, too, don’t we?
EBRAHIM ESSA | Durban
Daily News