There is no other way to fool someone better than to speak of these two in antagonistic sense. Technology is not in antagonism with tradition nor is tradition antagonistic to technology. They are in mutual alignment. In fact, their mutual correlation even surpasses those devices and symbols that come to our minds when we contemplate these two universal notions. Let me elaborate on what I have already said with a new example.
Occasionally, my Computer breaks down. I use an old desktop version of it. I am no computer savvy. But I use this legend of technology whenever I can. The limits to which it could help us have no limits. Therefore, when this device breaks down I feel great anxiety. What would happen to all my readers’ souls across the universe that are at this moment in dire need to peruse some wise damn pearl of wisdom that I puke out random! This worries me a great deal, as it might, any self-confident writer, blogger, or columnist. One of the many painful realities they endure on a daily basis.
I worry a great deal about my own soul that would rot and degenerate without the help of the Internet or the writing mechanism that I am addicted to: the Word Doc. There really is no other way around if your desktop breaks down, is there? Your android cell phone, you think, might help you hit out a quick 200 words passage. But once you paddle around with that virtual, touch key pad, you discover for the umpteenth time that these gadgets look cool but are clumsy in reality.
Ultimately, I run with the heart of the mice caught in a trap for salvation. My escape route is through a telephone number. I dialed the number and the messenger of peace answers: “Hello, Computer Service.”
This phone call does not mean that everything is sorted out clean though. Peace of mind after the clean sorting out of things wouldn’t bless me yet. I must wait. The service person said before hanging up the phone that he wouldn’t be available until the next two days.
It was disappointing. The immediate ally on such an occasion would be what Dr. Viktor E Frankl called, an ‘existential vacuum’. Although not a computer savvy, I still spent my fair share of time in front of my personal computer to get things done. The vacuum created in the place of the computer was the first challenge I had to deal with. What surprised me in my own reaction to the situation was that I preferred to deal with the existential vacuum rather than dealing with the work to be done.
My focus was tuned to curb my psyche from wandering off at the edge of the darkness of the emptiness created by the malfunction of the computer. I adopted a strategy that one may call traditional. I decided to spend time with books, my favourite remedy for all issues- reading.
Elizabeth L Eisenstein in her book Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe presents a technological advancement that washed over the European society in the early 15thcentury. This technological advancement transformed the whole of humanity, just like how the internet today.
Books are equally a product of technological advancement, just as the computer and the internet. To consider books and publishing a matter of tradition is only relative with reference to the computer technology- and not entirely true. What we understand and pass along as tradition in the present, therefore, might be a cutting edge technology in the past. Perhaps, Familiarity Breeds Blindness too. What we take for granted as ‘tradition,’ therefore, is not antagonistic with technology.
My reading experience was fabulous. The breakdown of the computer was indeed a blessing in unexpected garb.
