Humans - Keeping Up with the Pace of Technology
Published on: 15 Jun 2025
Rightly said by Daniel Bell, “Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.” In this ever-dynamic world, technology has been evolving over the years at lightning speed. This has led to the surge of innovation at an unprecedented rate, arising the need for us to adapt to various advancements.
Today’s world cannot be imagined without technology. It has become an integral part of our lives. Everywhere, we are flooded with technological advancements. Be it electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and many more, all owe their presence to technology. Significant improvements in technology are aimed at improving our lives, making our work effortless and helping us maintain long distance relationships. However, technology is a shade of grey, with almost proportionate shades of black and white, hence also bringing with itself some critical challenges, besides making our lives easy. The world is moving fast, but are we moving along with it? In such case, it is of immense need to keep up with the pace of this updating world.
There have been countless discoveries as of late. Taking into account some, one of the best examples to start with is the electric vehicles.
Vehicles were made to ease mobilisation. Electric vehicles are eco-friendly and sustainable and thereby aim at curbing the carbon emissions and also deliver a better and durable performance than petrol and CNG operated ones. However, there are many challenges that we face presently in updating ourselves to this new technology. One of the major problems is the lithium-ion batteries. Lithium- ion batteries pose a big threat in future. Unlike plastics, we currently are facing a big threat to be an e-waste hub as the recycling rate of lithium-ion batteries is 5% which is significantly low.
Coming to the next technology, we have the ever-talking artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence, with it, has bridged the gap between complexities and solutions. Bringing with it many solutions, it has helped in giving quick solutions various problems like medicine, industry and business. Here also, we face problems in adaptability. Some of the biggest challenges we face are loss of job and difficulty to adapt. Switching to robots with this technology is seemingly difficult as it requires a huge mental compromise. Shifting to technology requires adequate information which is a big problem to gain in a very little span of time given.
Another example of modern development is the innovation of Augmented and Virtual reality. These technologies have completely changed the way we visualise the current world opening a plethora of ideas and new thought processes. The need for such technology was to explore the unexplored, giving youngsters an entire view of a world which is completely different from theirs, giving significant inroads to undeveloped technologies. However, along with this, Virtual and Augmented realities pose some major problems to us. Children and people are currently living in virtual realities remain ignorant to the real world. The fascinations of reel world so engross them that they forget about everything. Young generation currently visualise the world as they want to see, unaware of the forthcoming challenges in their lives. For people, living in such realities to which they are unaccustomed seems a very big issue.
The other significant issue with this advancement is that in this race, we are slowly edging out the rural areas. Currently, modern technologies are accessible mostly to urban areas while the rural people have very limited access to the best of technologies. The rural development still remains a very big issue. However, with this technology we are graving the current situation. Even today, a significant population lives in rural areas. Considering their migration to cities, they find it very difficult to adapt to the changing technologies, and hence, are forced to majorly live in poverty. Rural development serves as the major key to an overall development of a country.
Technological advancements are a significant boon to mankind. Currently, we face a big issue ahead of us. As we all know that, with the problems come their solutions. Here, the need to solve this major issue comes up. Commonwealth values can be of significant use in giving a solution to these major problems.
At the core of the commonwealth values lies the principle of equality and equity. Equality and equity serve as one of the best tools to bridge this gap of rural access to modern technology. While the world is changing, it becomes immensely important, especially for the rural people to change their way of viewing the world and look at it with a new outlook and adjusting their mind sets accordingly. Making technology affordable in rural areas can ease the pressure of the eradication of rural divide to some extent.
Moreover, the commonwealth values of democracy and good governance can be very handy in tackling the situations pertaining to cyber security, which indeed is required to prevent the malfunction or misuse of the technology and make the shifting journey of humans to them a bit easy. The government, in collaboration with many industries, can move towards making technology available at an affordable cost to all areas. As we move to this technical world, government policies can help to launch certain security measures to protect our privacy. Also, government provisions of education help a lot in this change from one lifestyle to other.
Moving on to the next value which is to cater education, health and shelter to all. This is one of the most important commonwealth values which can actually pave way to all our solutions. Rightly said by Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Indeed, at this point of development, education plays a pivotal role in helping us to move on. Provisions for good education educate us about the uses and consequences which is brought by every technology. Education can be used to help the adults adapt to these changes and use them efficiently to make their work easy. Education, especially mass education develops us into a matured and independent individual. This helps us to exist in this competitive word, where the principle of the survival of the fittest is clearly seen. It also prevents us from being cheated at the hands of cyber bullies, who have emerged as new threats with these technologies.
However, with the advancing world, the role of youth also gains a significant place. The youth of a nation are its future. Here, it becomes the responsibility of the youth to gain as much knowledge as they can get and spread it wide among the people. Children can help their parents in using their knowledge combined with the knowledge of their parents to create something big which might reduce the work of, say one hour, into a few minutes. This way, they apply their knowledge in a good cause and help us to develop ourselves into something better with every advancing day.
Another major aspect of commonwealth values is the spirit of collaboration and mutual support. With each day passing, we get advanced. However, this problem of advancement cannot be solved alone. Therefore, the collaboration with various countries helps us to open up our minds to various solutions and give an ear to potential upcoming challenges.
The commonwealth value of tolerance and respect for diversity is very essential in helping us to combat this problem. Cultivating the values of empathy and tolerance among various people helps us to promote digital literacy and critical thinking skills among people of various culture which ensures that no one is left behind and everyone moves ahead in this ever-developing world.
Keeping up with the pace of technology has become very important, requiring an inquisitive outlook and develop a comprehensive approach. Commonwealth values, in this scenario, help a lot in making quick adjustments and making this expedition with technical advances a formidable one. Let us all embrace these values and move towards a better and skilful world without further delay.
