ROUND ABOUT
Is there any limit to
Information Technology?
W
hat is the final frontier of
information technology? Has
it reached its peak? Going by the latest
reports coming out from various corners
of the world, the future of IT is a mixed
bag of hopes, challenges, concerns and, if
one can say so, of despair. Let us start
off with the most optimistic assessment:
the growth of the sector is seamless and
no force on earth can stop its momentum
upwards. Every incremental innovation
is going to add value to the quality of life
and technological excellence accumulated
over the years. The other day, I read
that 5G communication configuration
will redefine how people work, think,
indulge in entertainment and leisure of
their choice and liking, how surgeries are
conducted, etc.
If the claims of Qualcom are to be
believed, 5G will hit the market sometime
in the middle of next year. While the details
of the new technology are still wrapped
up in mystery, Qualcom has put in the
public domain how the new technol ogy
will get rolled out. It will be faster and
swifter and can be deployed for a vast
array of operations and manoeuverings,
such as driverless cars, pilotless aircraft,
robotic surgeries, equipping the mobile
telephony with a number of complex
and delicate tasks, including Internet of
Things. Let us wait for the rollout of the
wonder chip to make assessment of its
impact.
No one can deny the fact that
technology is playing an important role
in electioneering. In India, electioneering
has become high-tech with every passing
election. A new crop of industry has
sprung up around the elections in
India, besides the normal chorus of
advertisements, public relations, speech
writings, handbills, wayside speeches,
by using electronic media to beam the
eulogies of every political party. A hybrid
of advertisements and news packages also
had been surfaced known as paid news,
though there are restrictions on printing
and telecasting such news. But there are
surrogate methods through which you
can camouflage the paid news through
crafty journalistic gimmicks.
Why have Indian elections and
political parties suddenly become techie
savvy? I am not talking about the mobile
telephony that transmits to every voter
about candidates and political parties,
what they have done and what others
have not done. Some political parties in
the coming elections in states like UP
16
November 2016
www.varindia.com
in election analytics and in predicting
trends and swings. I am told a political
party has appointed an agency to assess
the mood of the electorate on a weekly
basis. The agency has been tasked to find
out the acceptability of a list of potential
candidates based on the feedback from the
people. How such exercise would help in
winning elections is something one has to
wait and see.
have created information superhighways,
which attempt to break down the
details of each constituency village/
municipal level, block level and so on.
Such databases contain details, such as
the number of voters, caste formation,
predominant families and their areas of
influence, schools, colleges, religious
places, educational background of each
voter with value-added information
about their likely political leniency, how
they can be influenced, profile of opinion
makers and their outreach, what could
be the pitch point to swing the votes and
so on. One political party has engaged
a foreign consultant as their campaign
chief. Experts say, this has not happened
earlier in India and predict that henceforth
technology may become a differentiator
in deciding the outcome.
It is also important to see how
information is collated. A good part
of the assets and other endowments of
the villages are drawn from published
sources like data from the government
sources, research outfits, think tanks, etc.
A substantial chunk of the data collated
are primary information collected with
laborious efforts by employing scores
of youngsters to go from household to
household, shop to shop, etc. They say
that such data can be extrapolated to find
the swings and moods of the voters. What
it portends is that the coming elections
will be a warfare not necessarily based on
decibels, demagogue and posters, but also
aided by technology, brain power and
subtle strategies.
The use of technology does not end
there. It can be of considerable help
This also can open up tremendous
business opportunities, particularly in the
IT domain. Creation of such a technology
platform is not that simple. Having regard
to the fact that we have several layers of
elections, such as Parliament, assembly,
municipal and panchayat and all these
elections are keenly fought, one can very
well imagine the type of business that the
elections may garner in the future. Many
such services can be outsourced to other
countries, where elections are fought.
Let us surmise the contemporaneous
relevance of their findings to the
information technology. We have to
introspect how much IT is intruding into
the privacy of individuals, groups and
states. The word “hacking” seems to have
emerged as more potent than warfare.
We are experiencing how great forces
have succumbed to hacking. But there is
the other side also, which some others
call it as ethical hacking. Wikileaks is an
example. Those who support such ethical
hacking claim that such invasions into
privacy do more good than harm to the
society. Opinions differ. But still people
who hold such opinion are in multitude.
They point out the revelations of covert
and overt operations which the Wikileaks
have put on the public domain are most
relevant and expose the underbelly of
political and diplomatic manoeuvering.
The paranoid created in the US elections
because of hacking refuses to die even
at the last hour of election, making a
prediction hazardous. Public mood is
changing by the minute. Not many
months ago, the US has imposed a ban on
import of digital technologies from China
fearing presence of embedded spyware
and malware and chips that can indulge in
espionage without having easily noticed.
The fear of hacking and manipulating
the outcome will not let us to switch
over to the system. That is the limit of
information technology that I am talking
about. I will be the happiest man if it does
not happen since information technology
is my bread and butter and technology is
my enabler and benefactor.