SHREYA VATSA
“Technology does not determine outcomes, it opens doors.”
- Historian Lynn White, Jr.
This year, especially for young voters, the creeks in our democracy have been exposed like never before. Never before have we felt so completely and worldly aware and yet divided as we approach our means to resolve the increasing global challenges. While technology has made the world feel smaller or more close-knit, we use it to ‘speak our minds’ and to influence people in our circuit and vicinity dangerously. We know very well how opinions carried out in this realm can shape one’s mindset. With the freedom of speech turning into the freedom of reach and unverified opinions, I wonder if monetary profit and donation are reason enough to justify and allow technology to shape warfare inconsiderably. Technology was meant to bring order to the world. It has quickly become the means of revealing our madness and unleashing toxicity into the world—influencing and instigating entire countries! Wars, violent acts, and laws in countries are also being glorified on-screen in a way that doesn’t even compare to video games. So, this obsession with augmented reality, does it really benefit us all? Except for resolving the substantive and select issues of disease, global warming, and systemic racism—it may not really help us that much. And while responsibility is expected from each of us as citizens of the Earth (that needs our attention urgently), we must hold the people who govern these social platforms responsible too and provoke them to change their policies that inundate and burden entire populations with conflict and incentivizing warfare.
7