President’s Message
EVEN DINOSAURS NEED DIGITAL
I can still remember the day when I got my first mobile phone sometime in the mid-1990s. It was chunky, clunky, seemed like a small ‘truncheon’ and better suited to being a weapon than a communication device!
In contrast, on Tuesday the 7th of July, I used my very ‘smart phone’ to connect and log onto my installation ceremony as President of this Club via Zoom, where I could not only hear, but also see hundreds of my fellow Rotarians and friends. We were treated to virtual videos and presentations, with a rather rousing online karaoke session from our members at the very end. What device I once quipped was a weapon and now with accompanying technology, I see as an indispensable tool!
And, as electronic and digital devices have evolved so, too, has technology leap-frogged into our lives. Laptops and
tablets have become essential for work – whether it be word processing applications for letters and drafts, spreadsheets for budgets and accounts, e-mail for official communication, or video conferencing. Devices got smaller, lighter and more powerful in terms of computing. Wonder how long Moore’s first law will be effective in reality?
They facilitate our consumption of news and other media – importantly, we are now not limited to local content, but can easily access foreign material as well. Staying in touch with family and friends, sharing photos and videos of loved ones or even e-mailing each other virtual cards and greetings is now also quite simple. And I do not dare think what we would do if we didn’t have our mobile phones to play all those games and receive all those messages, jokes and memes!
Who would have imagined an ‘Alexa’ or a ‘Siri’ and speech to text software, instead of physical typing?
It is clear to see that the internet pervades every aspect of our daily functioning. Checking internet and broadband speed and available data have become as important as checking our electricity or water meter readings. The efficacy and reliability of our Wi-Fi routers and Wi-Fi devices, particularly when we all have multiple devices connected at the same time, have become crucial. The efficiency of the customer service provided by our internet providers is equally important.
We also need to keep close track of the battery life of our devices, the younger generation strangely calls it ‘juice’. The en vogue lithium batteries, this is one thing technology still has to crack. Hopefully, technology may
bring out newer kind of storage cells. It is important not to forget our chargers wherever we go. The advent of portable chargers and power banks has also made recharging on the go easy. Mobile, charger, power bank, wallet, and keys are now the new order of priority of things not to forget when leaving the house.
Although laptops crashing, phones running out of ‘juice’ and the internet being down, have probably caused us more stress and anxiety than we ever thought possible. These things are worth dealing with or, rather, tolerating for all the benefits that being digital brings with it.
Many of us remember the times of having to write letters (the art of penmanship, the choice of flowery words, the choice of stationery, the requirement of postage stamps, etc.) and use of analogue phones, phone booths and making trunk calls (lightning, urgent or ordinary), the use of telegrams (the use of the word ‘stop’) and those fancy telex machines to communicate and function; we probably are dinosaurs. But now, even dinosaurs are digital. Of course, then there are the technologically ‘challenged’.
Framroze Mehta
President