Gone Are The days

Gone are the days when the wealthy few were the only ones who owned bl a c k a nd wh i t e TV s e t s broadcasting a single TV channel and at particular hours of the day. Those were the days when cars like Volkswagen and Peugeot 504 were the latest models on the market. Gone are the days when it was unthinkable for someone to queue up at a public phone booth like they do today to call up a friend for a reason as flimsy as finding out what time it is. Those were the days when a decision to make a phone call was a matter of debate over its necessity and urgency in light of the other alternative of posting a letter while keeping in mind the costs involved. Gone are the days when we had to wait in long queues to withdraw or deposit money at banks. Those were the days when type writers were both computers and printers at the same time. I reminisce the days when ‘sound solo’ radios were broadcasting a single AM radio station. Those were the days of the gramophone disks and radio cassette players. Those were the days when the Beatles, the ABBA, the Bee Gees, UB40 and Boney M topped the music charts. Gone are the days of the bellbottom trousers, the mullet hair cuts and the large plastic frame spectacles. Gone are the days of the supersonic Concorde that is now no more and shall never be.

Gone are the days when having an email id and being able to type DOS commands was proof enough to be considered ‘computer literate’. Known as the ‘information age’, the present era has changed lifestyles around the world. For example, a day can hardly pass me by without checking my email or reading news from around the world or chatting. Banking is one area that information technology has made very easy and fast at the comfort of your home PC. Take internet banking for instance. It’s a matter of logging on to the net and there you can access all information on your account and even be able to send or receive money and pay your bills at the click of a button. Gone are the days when we had to wait in long queues to pay bills or receive or send money. The introduction of debit and credit cards into the market has supplemented on the comfort of shopping. You no longer have to carry that bulky cash anymore. Gone are the days when you used to. Now it’s a matter of picking up what you want from the super market and just present your card for swiping and the items are yours. It’s likewise simple when withdrawing cash from the ATM machines. You don’t need to have a master’s degree to operate the ATM. It’s a matter of following very simple instructions and out you go with your cash in hand. But this wasn’t the case back in the day.

For those of us who were born before mobile phones were invented, who could ever imagine there would be such technology like sending video messages, SMS and MMS messages using the same mobile phone? It was far from our imagination back in the day. I remember the first mobile phone I saw was as big as a walkie talkie. It had a very small display panel and it relied on power from the ordinary AA sized batteries. The batteries had to be recharged as frequently as there were calls to make or receive. But with time, the size of mobile phones has evolved into much smaller handsets. Many people now refer to their mobile phones as ‘my cell’ as if to epitomize the future look of their handsets. These days it has become common to find a school pupil carrying a mobile phone. Back in the day, mobile phones were confined only to a few successful business men and some top government officials. The price of a mobile phone in those days was enough to buy you a new car. But these days, it would only cost you a smile to walk away with one.

Let’s get a little wild with our imaginations into the future and project the trend of technological advancement in the world into the far future. What would it be like a thousand years from now? One of the things I am sure would have changed is the population of the world. Considering the rate at which the world population is increasing today, am certain it would reach some point in time where the land on earth cannot adequately sustain it. And what would man do about it? What to do may not be an issue for man considering his astuteness.

The area covered by water bodies on earth is more than twice the area covered by land. So floating cities would be built on top of the seas and at the bottom there would be submerged and specially enclosed cities that use the same technology as used by submarines. Of course, the earth is not the only planet in the universe. So mars would be another home for man who never runs out of options. Traveling between planets would be at supersonic speeds, more like the way you would board a plane today to go to another country.

In the far future, the problems we face in the world today like traffic jams and high fuel prices will be a thing of the past. There would be a type of car called the aerodynamic car where the driver has an option of flying it like a chopper in case of a traffic jam. Petrol banks, if they still exist, would be operating at losses as there would be hydro-fuel energy that works by converting freely available water into fuel by a process called electrolysis to separate hydrogen’s positively charged atoms from water in order to produce fuel at very low costs. That would be the time when people would say ‘gone are the days of high fuel prices’.

Mr. Edward Kasamba
Alumnus, B.Com
Batch 2003-04