Technology Growth: A Scare

Knowledge is information, fact and talents obtained through experience or learning. According to Albert Einstein/Encyclopedia Britannica, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.” It is also a popular cliché that knowledge is power. This births the question how much knowledge is too much?.

Over the last two decades there has been an exponential growth in technology and its application. Call it an explosion. I recall when the Global system for mobile communication (GSM) became a thing in Nigeria about two decades ago. Nokia was one of the first to play in the GSM field in Nigeria. Then came the Motorola and Siemens; these successfully attempted to introduce colors to the phone screens. Then the competition among the brands became stiff as various phone brands started the introduction of inbuilt cameras, torch, radios etc. I recall a friend who particularly would not buy phones with all such add-ins on the premise that such phones wouldn’t be durable because of the many built-in applications. Today, over fifteen years after, we have seen more introduction of built in applications in phones; from the ability to record, calculators, games, Facebook, health monitoring applications etc.

Away from mobile phones, is the advent of Goggle; a search engine that attempts to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible. With Google, the world’s information seems to be within the palms of everyone. Though Google has been around for a little over two decades, the development of the mobile phone and the introduction of the IOS and android operating systems has made it a household name. With Google, research has become a lot faster too, but so have cyber nuisances increased too.

In recent times artificial intelligence (AI) has become even more sophisticated and accessible. With the recent introduction of the GPT chatbots, AI in health care (with ability to diagnose and carry out surgical operations to high precision), autonomous vehicles, gaming experiences, cyber security, the metaverse, autonomous deliveries, etc.

While automations are good for the comfort, efficiency and speed they provide, the downside effect of making the human brain gradually become redundant is of great concern. With the ability to use AI for voice and image cloning, creating algorithms advertising, etc., soon, there will be no more privacy. Humans will have to learn to live with all the cyber noise as the space for quiet is fast eroding. The coming generation might have their lives so normalized with cyber noise that they do not even notice the noise. How this will affect their behavior and lifestyle is yet to be known. I sincerely do hope that these noises do not end up aggravating mental stress and creating worsened personality disorders in them.

To worsen the effects of these is the recent crave for freedom; freedom to express, freedom of identity, just a desire to be free from self. The rate of absorption and acceptance of this quest is even more alarming as it continues to spread like wild fire. If this pursuit spread as quickly as technology and AI, given these are the medium being mostly used to propagate the desire for this freedom, then human sanity as we know it today, may fast becoming extinct. I am tempted to conclude that we are in the phase of “knowledge being a lot”, or a little too much, hence the danger as stated by Albert.