The technology storm is arriving!

We all are accustomed to a regular use of technology instruments. We like it when with the minimum of effort, we are able to extract the maximum amount of output. Try asking the professionals active through the 1980s and 90s about the effort it would take just to make phone calls and receive fax messages! One had to put aside work, and focus and destroy one's energy on contacting people and getting others to prepare documents (and then the copies!). Things very pretty slow. Compared to today, work-efficiencies were not even 10%. Then came the storm called the internet. In just a decade, this storm simplified certain basic complications related to getting work done to such an extent that professionals and entrepreneurs could now focus their energies on more constructive and positive aspects of new work. The quality of life and work rose significantly. Then the arrival of social media made us feel that life without it would not even have been one. We modern humans totally accustomed to smartphones now believe that technology is now at its peak. But, the real storm is yet to arrive. Over the next 10 to 20 years, five major changes will become a part of our lives, which few have even imagined or thought about, today.

Times are changing!

Change 1. Money becoming invisible. The generations to come will wonder about their ancestors who carried physical money (notes, coins) in their wallets. This is now nearing its end. The coming days belong to virtual money. You will be making payments through just one card to anyone - including the vegetable vendor! If all businesses have the type of machines (that take such electronic payments), it would be quite possible. Work already has commenced. India has evolved its own payment system frameworks, and its own payment card too has arrived (the RuPay card). It is obvious that the government will slowly evolve rules and regulations to minimise and eliminate the physical transaction of currency. The benefits are many - instant accounting, a check on black money, procedural ease, ease of transferring subsidies (first to the bank account and then to the cards), etc. Hence, all these things, in an invisible form, will reside inside the card!

Machine, Man, Manmachine

Change 2. Things and humans talking to each other. The Internet of Things has already knocked on the doors of humanity! The integration and unification of disparate technology standards will give birth to a system where omnipresent sensors will let machines speak to humans. Sensors in your shoes will keep your entire record (how many steps taken), etc. Sensors installed in the garden will switch on / switch off the water sprinklers as per the weather needs. Your watch will speak with the lighting instruments in the room to turn them on or off. It will also constantly monitor your blood pressure and sugar levels and display them on a continuous basis on your doctor's console. When crimes take place, accurate information will be available to the police automatically. Garbage cans will intimate the collectors when they fill up, and our refrigerator will warn us the moment it senses the fouling of food. Imagine the scale of change! Yes indeed, the whole concept of privacy will be destroyed. Good news - if struck by a heart-attack, a driverless ambulance will soon arrive, and negotiate with the traffic signals on the road to take you to the hospital at the earliest!

Change 3. Humans turning into data. In a world where machines would be doing most of our work, what would we be doing? In such a world made and shaped by information technology and machines, humans will first of all turn into a number or data. The Aadhar card is just a beginning. The moment a baby would be born, the government machinery will map its DNA and feed it into the central computer, and will instantly issue the baby an Aadhar number, a mobile number (to be allotted later), and a bank account number. And the baby will now become a part of the system. She will be identified at each stage by these numbers - from school admissions to her doctorate-level education, from taking subsidies to paying taxes.

Change 4. Government services becoming paperless and transparent. This can actually happen very fast, and is happening. Various certificates you own will now be in a digital format inside a digital locker. While applying for any government (or private sector) opening, you'll be able to authenticate your electronic certificate pulled from the digilocker via a signature made through your mobile phone, and apply without using a single sheet of paper. This is a powerful idea, that will improve Indians' lives qualitatively. This is the vision that appears as a pillar in the 'Digital India' programme of the government.

Electronic Transactions eTaal

Change 5. Big Bang changes. Just imagine, if all this is happening, and each citizen can be uniquely identified by a mobile number and an Aadhar identity, his/her police record too can be verified online and our own GPS system (the Navik IRNSS satellite system) is already functional, then why not imagine a day when the voting for General Elections of India are completed in an hour through mobile phones? Every voter will vote in a few seconds / minutes, and get back to work. The Election Commission won't struggle for weeks and months, and the nation will save thousands of crores!

You are smiling, right? Remember, in the 1980s, if someone were bold enough to say that using a small hand-held machine weighing a few hundred grams, he would send documents worth thousands of pages to someone else across the globe, with just a click, and then do a video-conferencing with the other side using the same machine, we all would have laughed out loud! The reality of today is that newer dimensions of technology are opening up every day, and the right exploitation of the same can help us solve a lot of our problems rapidly. The coming age is full of a promise, that the most knotty problems of this world can be tackled, and solved.
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