Musings about how tech has influenced and altered our lives
A few days ago, I was thinking about life before information technology and asking myself some questions. What was life like before mobile phones, laptops, and the internet? How did we get to places without location apps or know when our friends were home so we could visit? How did we access the information that we needed for assignments and dissertations? How did we apply for jobs, how were we invited for interviews, and how were we contacted when our applications were successful? We got up and went out!
It’s amazing how technology has significantly changed the way we interact with the world these days. Once upon a time, if I had to get some information from a friend quickly, I would have to call their home telephone AKA landline. To do that, I would either go to my uncle’s house to use the phone or go and queue at a NITEL office because we didn’t have one at home. If my friend wasn’t at home and no one else was home, then I wouldn’t be able to get the information that I needed. Now, if my friend also didn’t have a telephone at home, I would probably have to go to his house. I remember this happening once. I went all the way to Abule-Egba from Anthony Village, and my friend wasn’t home, and no one else was home.
Then the internet arrived but it wasn’t accessible to everyone. Only companies, institutions, and maybe wealthy individuals had dial-up services. Then cybercafes became a thing and for a certain amount per hour (or even 30 minutes), one could browse the internet. You could send emails or search for whatever information you need. I remember being so enamoured by the internet that I would go to cybercafes to surf different websites just to discover new things. Apps didn’t exist at first, just websites and chat rooms, and eventually, social networking sites debuted.
The GSM revolution which heralded mobile telephone service brought instant connection to other people. No more going to someone else’s house to make a call or queuing at the NITEL office. One dial and you would be connected. An immediate response was sure, after all, it was a mobile phone. The major challenge was the initial cost of the devices and call rates which were both quite high. The landlines were still there but fewer people were using them. One still had to use a computer to access the internet though because it wasn’t yet available on the mobile phone.
Soon after, the internet became accessible on mobile phones and we got one step closer to everyone else in the world. The BlackBerry Messenger phone became all the rage with everyone asking: “What’s your BBPIN?”. Apps arrived and made the mobile phone an even more useful tool for almost all purposes. At the touch of an icon, we could access people and information in real-time. Practically everything one wanted could be found online. If you couldn’t find it, it was most likely because you didn’t know where to look or how to search. Life as we knew it was a whole discovery.
This has been our lives in the last two decades. The speed at which humans have become connected and gained access to an unlimited amount of information is amazing. When I share my experience of life before tech disrupted the world, younger ones find it hard to believe. What do I mean by an on-demand lifestyle not being the standard? How did people survive without tech? But survive we did and I dare say we made the best of it.
And now, we have Artificial Intelligence (AI) which has been touted as the game changer to disrupt the world as we know it. We have heard all sorts; AI will take away all the traditional jobs, AI will make people redundant, AI will do all of your work for you, and so on. Truly, AI will change the way we do things. Understanding AI is key to not only surviving in this current age but also adapting to life as it will become. Learning, education, and media production are already going through major upheavals with tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Suno AI, and Mid-Journey.
I have always wondered if we are better off with all of these tech tools and platforms or if life was better the way it used to be. Many of us will say life is better now because we recognise the improvements in productivity and service delivery that tech has encouraged but have we considered all of the impacts that technology has also enabled?
Social media, for example, has brought us closer and yet, built walls amongst us. We are so close to people we ordinarily may never have thought of gaining access to and yet so far from people who live beside us because we spend more time online. People can access new markets, promoting their products and services in places they couldn’t access before. Conversely, some others also use the same platforms to promote diverse agendas that may be unacceptable or harmful to certain societies.
Influencers who have developed popular personality profiles online can use the opportunity to promote or support causes and initiatives that contribute towards societal development. Some other influencers, whilst living their normal lives or in their bid to attract huge followings, have been known to encourage lifestyles that may not augur well for everyone. Impressionable people see such influencers and desire to live like them, sometimes at a grave cost to themselves.
Education and access to information have improved significantly through the use of tech tools but also, some have used these same tools to further their agenda of miseducation and misinformation. Accelerated development has come to many places across the world because technology was deployed but some remote societies have also decried the impact of access to new media on the lifestyle of their citizens.
AI is still unravelling and as we discover its benefits, we also see potential downsides. You can write a speech using an AI bot and at the same time, write a complete dissertation if you feed it with the right prompts. You can record a full-length song with lyrics and instrumentals and you can clone a person’s voice, making it seem as though they said something they didn’t say. Deepfakes are truly a problem as some people have recreated visuals of personalities in compromising positions all to discredit them.
Necessity is the mother of invention so it’s safe to say that humanity will always aspire to seek ways of improving our livelihood. We are better with tech even though it, like anything else, has potential opportunities for misuse. Tech isn’t the problem, people are, and ensuring people interact ethically with tech is key to ensuring a more wholesome society. This is the way I see things today.