Skip to main content

Sometimes technology does not work

I spent part of my Sunday watching this podcast with Marques Brownlee and Hasan Minhaj and I am glad I did. I am all about learning and becoming better. I stumbled on a sketch that led me to the podcast. I think Hasan is cool and it is also cool that we share a first name. What I took away was that tech is not perfect and tech has problems and it affects some more than others. Watching this has challenged me to always keep this in mind. I am a tech evangelist and the last thing I want is persons turning into technophobes. At the end of the day people want solutions to their problems and I think tech can help but we dont want to be creating bigger problems.

Sometimes the tech does not work but how do we know if we don't try different things and experiment. I do believe sometimes it boils down to being patient. Perfection requires practice and it might be unreasonable to expect things to work without any effort. I do understand that no one shoe fits all and it is extremely difficult to make everyone happy. Some are going to be happy with the tech. Some are going to be angry. Some are going to use the tech for good and some are going to use it for bad.

Through ideation and iteration we can make things better. I am an optimist. We all have different perspectives and different experiences. My primary perspective is that of a techie and tech blogger. I have to big up the tech to balance the discourse. Generally I share the positive because I see too much of the negative already. Hasan is an end user. The takeaway is look at things from all sides and balance is a key to life.

Go check out my review of the book Technopoly. Technology is just a tool. Technology is just an enabler. Are we going to blame the technology or the humans behind the technology. I understand where Hasan is coming from. I am all ears. And I say where there are problems and we agree lets come together and address these problems. We just have to be careful that we dont lose the positives while addressing the negatives. Dont throw out the baby with the bath water so to speak. Lets do that now. Watch the podcast, read my article and share your comments below. Lets have a conversation about this. Is it a technology problem or a people problem? I kind of explored the topic before but differently in a previous blog post.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Talking to God

If you want real answers to things in life then talk to God. It is 639pm on a holiday and I have decided to write. God listens. God truly listens. God has the entire context. God is wise. God wants us to talk to Him. God wants us to rely on Him. I also think about God talking to me. I am a good listener. I listen plenty more than I talk. I have started asking God to talk to me. But how would God talk to me? We have his revelations through the holy book. We have the example of prophets. But what else? How do I listen to what God has to say? Where and when can I hear God? Are my thoughts from God? I try to feed my mind with good things. Things that will not corrupt my mind. It seems that we have to use our intuition to separate what is from God and what is not from God. My friend Chatty says that in Islam, Allah speaks to us not through new revelations or voices, but through guidance: the Quran and the Sunnah, which become personally meaningful through understanding Allah places in the h...

Life on Earth

I was reading through the Quran and came to the story of Adam, Eve, Satan, and the forbidden fruit tree. I had thought that life on Earth was created as a test. But as I reflected on the story, I began to wonder whether we are only here because Adam and Eve failed. However, that is not the case, as my friend Gemini explained to me. While the story of the forbidden fruit is a central event, the Quran indicates that humanity’s presence on Earth was part of the original divine plan, rather than a backup plan or a punishment for sin. Before Adam was even created, God announced His intention to place a steward (khalifah) on Earth. This suggests that the Garden was a temporary training ground—designed to teach Adam and Eve about free will, temptation, and the path of repentance. Even if they had not eaten from the tree, they were destined for Earth to fulfill their roles as moral agents. The incident simply served as a necessary first lesson in human frailty and God’s immediate forgiveness. ...

The success of failure

It is 358am and I have decided to write. Context matters. Our context matters when we write and read. We could read the same thing and get different meanings. Definitions matter also. We may define things differently. For example, what is success? What is failure? Also, do I just define success and say that anything that is not success is failure? What about something like the success of failure? What does that mean? My friend Chatty tells me that this is something writers, philosophers, and even scientists keep rediscovering: meaning is not fixed—it is negotiated by context and definition. Life is a stew of success and failure and in between but never one or the other. We see what we are looking for and things become what we see. This reminds me of something I came across online, "Whoever looks for the good qualities in others will acquire all good qualities within himself," from Habib Umar Bin Hafiz. Do you look for failure or success within others? Take context as the lens...