Man seems to be his own enemy. We constantly seek ways to make life more comfortable for ourselves. The solutions that we seek for our comfort sow the seeds of our discomfiture.The march to contemporary progress is defined in terms of our ability to find solutions to outsource work which we otherwise would do ourselves. The skills acquired by working people are now being provided by machines.
What traditionally took several skilled man-days to complete can be performed in a few minutes. This so-called progress in the post-industrial world is measured by the use of technology as an enabler to provide for solutions to problems that confront us. This is what artificial intelligence is all about. We allow machines to think for us, to work for us, to give us space for comfort. Yet, in our relentless pursuit of progress, we do not have enough leisure to enjoy the bounties of Earth as we move towards our own destruction. As we seek to conquer our environment, it will in the end conquer us.
We have been moving towards a civilisation which, instead of liberating us, seeks to entrap us. The discovery of the steam engine was path breaking. It represented a paradigm shift in the nature of economic development. It particularly impacted the agricultural economy where the traditional methods of agricultural production were replaced by more efficient means. It helped in transforming agricultural economies. It sowed the seeds for the industrial age. What followed was the industrial revolution, which transformed agrarian economies into highly industrialised economies.
We use our natural resources for the transportation of goods or to keep our homes warm, to build factories, to ensure that we live in an environment which seeks to protect us temporarily from the scourge of nature. The industrial revolution led to the birth of empires. Industrial economies exploited colonies for their own prosperity. It resulted in great inequalities reflected in today’s world order. National movements led to the dismantling of colonies. But the obvious virtues of industrialisation fuelled market economies. Progress was measured in terms of productivity, leading to countries seeking dominance through trade.
Today, in the post-industrial world, we are in the midst of an environmental crisis—a legacy of the irresponsible use of the bounties of nature. We are indeed in an existential crisis. The same industrial revolution that helped us live a so-called better life seeks to pollute our environment, melt the snow in mountains, destroy climate patterns, become a threat to the very planet that we occupy.
Yet, we are looking for solutions to our existential problems. Every so-called step towards progress led to challenges for which we strive for solutions which, in effect, create more challenges. This dialectical pattern leads to the constant need for seeking to exploit nature for self-satisfaction.
It was hoped that the perceived progress of the industrial revolution would result in prosperity, allowing for ordinary men and women to live better lives. Instead, we have seen huge disparities that are slowly increasing the gap between the haves and the have nots. Billions live in poverty and a small percentage seeks to thrive in this unequal world. The benefits of industrial revolution have not trickled down.
In essence, the legacy of the industrial revolution prompts us to re-evaluate the nature of progress itself. Can progress be measured solely by economic and technological growth even though unsustainable, or should it also encompass human welfare, environmental sustainability and social harmony?
We are moving away from an industrial world to a mechanised world with promises of liberation. The emergence of mechanisation allows for us to dream of a world where machines will solve our problems, where computational devices give us data, on the basis of which we can take decisions. With the rise of robotics, we need lesser manpower. It is these machines that will seek to solve our problems. We live in a world where a push of the button brings us images from around the world, where the flow of seamless information is instantly accessible, where false propaganda seems to give rise to hatred, where lives and minds of individuals are governed by this flow of information. We strive for a utopian world.
Mindless reliance on technology, instead of liberating the mind, has in fact entrapped it. We need to be careful. Overreliance on technology could potentially lead to our own extinction. It is a beast that needs to be tamed. We are facing an ecological holocaust that may result in human disaster. Excessive use of machines may result in a world without means of livelihoods.
So what do we do? We cannot go back and embrace the patterns of life before the industrial revolution. We must fundamentally ask the question which we have failed to ask: why we are here and what is meant by this journey we are gifted with. Instead, the State and big conglomerates seek, through the power of machines, to dominate our lives. The State seeks to control our minds and actions. Instead of being a benefactor, the State seeks to dominate our lives by spying on us, delving into our minds, being aware of our habits and controlling our actions. If we embrace the machine age, it will make the State so powerful that its diktats will make us prisoners in our homes. We would have lost our freedom of thought.
The existential question that we must ask ourselves is whether this dystopian world is merely transient or here to stay. How it will be fought is the challenge of the 21st century.
Kapil Sibal
Senior lawyer and member of Rajya Sabha
Follow him on X @KapilSibal