The Internet of Things

The internet can be a double-edged sword. So learn to use it with wisdom or else it will consume your life, says Sujatha Rao

- Sujatha Rao

Both my kids have their heads perpetually buried in their phones. The only family conversations we have are on our WhatsApp family group."

"My son has started falling behind in his academics. With some of the classes and assignments shifted to the online platform, I simply don't know what he is doing on his devices all the time."

"Since the time she hit puberty, my daughter is constantly stressed out. She feels she is not pretty enough. Her insecurity is making her spend a lot of time on Instagram, hankering after likes for her photos."

Hearing these refrains from my friends and relatives from the younger generation, I have been feeling lucky to have raised my child before the advent of mobile phones. I empathised with these young parents, often joining the bandwagon of thrashing the so-called mobile generation’ and their addiction to the internet.

And then I read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari, where he talks about how the world expected people to be living in space colonies on Mars and Pluto by the end of the century against the backdrop of Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind” in 1969, but nobody foresaw the coming of the internet.

This realisation jolted me like nothing else did in recent times, and it set me thinking. Even if mankind had managed to inhabit space as expected, it would have been accessible only to the lucky few, whereas the internet is made accessible and affordable to almost everyone today irrespective of financial, geographical, racial, or cultural differences.

Then images of those much-hated long queues in front of movie theatres, railway counters, or almost any counter for that matter, flashed in front of me, unleashing the following thoughts: