Has Technology Taken Over Your Life?

Do you use technology wisely? Or has it taken over your life and made you a prisoner?

- Raja Bhavanishankar

Irecall a joke that reads – what is life? And the answer is, “Life is nothing but time available for you after WhatsApp.” I learnt that the hard way after sailing through a flood of messages daily in 50 plus groups of varied interests, from collegemates to colleagues, community friends to family, peers and unclassified ones and, not to leave the one to one messages from countless people. My frustration knew no bounds when I moved recently to a new location and my apartment complex that contained 150 flats, not having adequate amenities and not having been painted in decades with pathways damaged everywhere, had a huge WhatsApp group of 150+ members relaying junk messages all day and discussing everything under the sun. They added me to the group even before I landed there and I was a recipient of all the stuff from politics to petty jokes, opinions to big fights, all without a single known number in the whole group. I thought for a while and asked myself if we have a new religion called Whatsappism or was I suffering from WhatsApp-phobia?

If somebody is sitting or moving around with a hands-on mobile posture, head held downwards and deeply immersed in his own world, forgetting his location, movements, priorities, and even doing so in the middle of the road, unworried about traffic, pedestrians or a passing bull, be sure he or she is in a WhatsApp world and your sounding the horn or even patting him or her gently will not work. A minimum 10,000 decibel sound or a quintal of RDX or something similar is needed to wake him up and bring him back to this mortal hotchpotch world.