At the 30th Zakir Husain Memorial lecture at Zakir Husain Delhi College on Friday, Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum & library Shakti Sinha emphasised upon how the technology has changed the ways of our life.
Delivering the memorial lecture on the topic “Challenges of Technological Change”, Sinha said, “The smart phone in a very short time has completely replaced many things that were considered as part of our life. Things like cameras, tape-recorders, music players, address books, desktop computers etc that were considered indispensable are now no more a necessity.”
Instituted 29 years ago, Zakir Husain Memorial lectures have been delivered by distinguished scholars, who have engaged with critical issues that are the heart of contemporary life. The Zakir Husain Delhi College was established as the Madrasa Ghaziuddin in the closing years of the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb, it has repeatedly transformed itself in response to challenges with which it was confronted, over a long and turbulent period of Indian history.
Citing the book written by Alvin Toffler in 1970 “Future Shock” Sinha said : “ Alvin said in 70's that knowledge would be the key and not labour or material in future. He also said that knowledge would be transmitted through personal computers and this he said at the time when the total number of computers in US or all over the world would be no more than 500 or 1000. He also told that we will have personal computers at home which will be linked through a network” .
Sinha added that Toffler said all this when network does not exist. “He also coined a term information overload which means that we will not be able to work as we will have so much of information that we will not be able to realize what is important and what is not,” said Sinha. Sinha the former Indian Administrative Service official said that the future is of the “Sharing economy” where one need not own a thing in order to use it. “Uber , Ola etc all are indicating that we are fast moving into shared economy when we need not own a thing to use it,” said Sinha.
Adding, changes always caught us by surprise. “In 2005 we don't know that a job called App developer would be there. Ten years down the line we will have jobs that do not exist now. Technological changes happened very swiftly while on other hand it can also be slow and diffused and both of them go together,” said Sinha. Present on the occasion were Principal Dr. Sulekh Chandra and other faculty members.