My first taste of electronics: Well if you were a kid from my age then your first taste of electronics would be in the form of a transistor radio. My father had a NELCO transistor radio while my grandfather was still using a giant wooden radio that ran on vacuum tubes. Within a few years my father purchased a color TV and I was introduced to cartoons which I could see once a week for half an hour. This regimen continued till I went to middle school when cable TV was starting to emerge. After the introduction of cable TV in Delhi, my family spent more time watching TV together and as there were very few channels there were very few choices and there were no fights to confiscate the remote control .
The Early Computer age: Computers were introduced in my school when I was in 8th grade. The computers were treated like gods; only 10 kids were allowed to enter the computer room, that too after removing shoes. I was fascinated by the computer but the computer instructor we had was useless and he preferred teaching on the black board instead of in the computer lab. At that time there was no windows OS and we were learning DOS commands. Later on the instructor quit his job and the computer lab was locked down.
TV Games system: My dad bought me a Media TV game system when I was in 9th grade and it was a mind blowing experience. I could easily spend 4 hours playing games on it, mostly alone and sometimes with my friends. At that time my entire family was using 3 electronic devices 1) TV, 2) Philips 2 in 1 and 3) Media TV game system.
End of the repairable age: When I started going to college I got a desktop computer at home, I learned to assemble it and learned all the windows stuff along with computer programming. There was no internet at home and so my computer never got any virus for the next 4 years. In that time a few of its components like CD drive, PCI cards etc stopped working and I was introduced to the new age where repair meant replacement.
The golden age of electronics: As I started working, the advancements in electronics and the drop in their price led me to buy a cell phone followed by a laptop and MP3 player. But this is only the beginning as in the past 5 years my arsenal of electronics includes: 3 laptops, a Nintendo wii, GPS system, iphone, kindle, blu ray player, flash drives, external hard disks, a desktop, digital camera and a LED TV. These devices have also had their share of problems, 2 of the 3 laptops are not working, a few flash drives are lost somewhere in the closet, the Game console which was used incessantly sits idle, the digital camera and the GPS are seldom used thanks to the iphone which can do both the jobs.
If I think of the all the electronics, in the first 10 years of my life, my family had 2 electronic devices at home, in the next 10 years we added 2 more . By the age of 25 I had 3 electronic devices dedicated to me. Now I have so many that I get the same job done by any device at home I fancy, for example I can check my account on my laptop desktop and iphone, I can navigate using my iphone and my GPS, I can take pictures using my digital camera or my phone . I can watch movies on TV, on my laptop, on my phone or even on kindle, I can play games on at least 5 different devices, I can tell time by looking at my phone, kindle, laptop, desktop and wrist watch.
So where am I now? My life is no more happier than what it was in the 80s with just one radio at home, in fact it has become worse for the following reasons: my brain is like a popcorn as it needs to be stimulated constantly, when I am home I cannot watch TV without a laptop on my lap where I check my email, read news and play games while watching TV. I cannot sit in a restaurant and enjoy my food without fiddling with my iphone, I cannot cook food without listening to music from my mp3 player and biggest of all is the constant fear that my email/ bank account / credit account etc are being watched by someone with coke bottle glasses.
Is it worth it? The answer is Yes and NO.
YES, for one reason alone: I don’t want to be left behind in this race; if I am not up to date with technology then I may end up finishing last or never finish at all.
NO, because now something seems to always be missing in life, the magic of family life and human interaction is gone, there is no longer any inner peace as it never gets a chance to show up, there is no time to celebrate success and no time for time itself.
