Mind and Technology

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: I want to ask something about the generation of Wi-Fi, What is doing that with people, with the earth, with all those invisible things (Swirls hand in air). If you can say something.

Acharya Prashant (AP): Do you mean the technical aspects of that, or, are you really bothered about what the continuous prevalence and availability of information, is doing to the human mind?

Listener: Yes (latter).

AP: So, it is not the particular technology that you are talking about, you are rather talking of the continuous bombardment of information on man’s mind.

Man has an urge to keep absorbing, to keep sucking in stuff from outside. Now, why does that happen? That happens because of a certain fear. A fear that if I do not know, then I will miss out, that if I do not know then there would be something reduced from my being. So, you want to know. Knowledge makes you feel happy, complete, confident.

The technology that you just named, and the technology will change, so it is not about one particular technology, it is about the basic urge of man for knowledge, for information, for security. One keeps on feeling that way. The question is, “What if no technology is made available?”

Unfortunately, that won’t help because the urge will still remain. You do not give anything to man from where he can channelize knowledge to himself, yet he would keep on providing himself with knowledge.

If he has nothing, he at least has the eyes, if he has nothing, he at least has the ears. The ears will keep on sucking in knowledge. The eyes will keep on taking in views, pictures, and scenes. And the mind will keep on processing them.

It doesn’t matter from where the news, events, information is coming to the mind, that channel is irrelevant, what is relevant is that we desperately want knowledge.

The technology that you talked of was most probably not there a few decades back. Equally probably, it won’t be there a few decades hence. But, the urge of man is ancient and is likely to continue.

Hence, it is hardly any point naming a particular gadget or a particular technology, or…