Advances are often to our detriment

“VIDEO killed the radio star”, a popular song in the early 80s, was actually an unintended warning that “advances” in technology would progressively, but eventually eradicate just about everything we had become used to over most of our human sojourn on Earth.

Machines replaced muscle power, and electricity saved some firewood. The USB device replaced the DVD which in turn caused the VHS and celluloid film to become mostly unrecyclable mountains of junk.

Now the WhatsApp method of making mobile calls using just “data” is making the sale of “airtime re-charge” for cellphone calls just about obsolete.

This may explain why cellphone operators are relentlessly hanging on to the astronomical price of data. I am highly suspicious of a monopolistic, blackmailing, strategy until a newer technological invention replaces “data”.

Then greedy, capitalist companies can again hold us to ransom with another concept they make us believe we cannot do without and which costs the Earth.

Is this, then, the objective of ongoing development in all fields – education, banking, entertainment and medicine?

To experiment, develop new techniques, invent new short cuts, but not with the primary view of protecting the environment, which includes, first and foremost, other human beings, and to make life a little less painful, but amass great wealth from a helpless majority? ES ESSA Durban