Guess we’re losing IT...

It hasn’t been too long since the day I was first introduced to a cell phone and I still remember how I was captivated by the sheer technology the device had got, as now humans could connect to each other on the move! That was yet another day I bowed to the great masterminds of technology for bringing this world closer and making it a better place.

But that was then when the world saw a revolution, when science portrayed itself as art with the beauty of human connect. But alas! Most of it that followed seems to be driven more by commerce than by the idea for enriching lives. Guess that’s the reason why, when it wasn’t enough selling high definition LCD TV for 4 years in a country with no HD signal so far, they decided to make our 2 inch movie actors on tiny mobile screens sparkle in HD! (If only they also provided magnifying lenses with it)

It may be that since I have just started swimming and nudging only the shallow waters, I am quite oblivious to what lies in this deep, dark ocean of IT. So it’s fairly possible that my vision of IT is a consequence of the deviation due to the change in refractive index between my ‘solid’ eye v/s their ‘liquid’ business. But then, as they say, ‘the first impression may not always be the last impression, but it sure is the lasting one’, I am a victim of my own disparity..

Not considering (while acknowledging) the few of the bunch who are actually trying hard researching good for the society, I guess most among the rest of us are busy reinventing the early man’s iconic wheel and, despite searching on the great ‘G’ to get the specifications for that perfect design, end up delivering a bumpy ride to the customer. And then when the poor soul comes back with his misery, we always have an ‘upgrade’ or ‘change request’ waiting for him… After all, the guy ‘we hired’ to decide ‘our vision’ had written customer centricity on the top of other statements!

And all thanks to the great business schools of the world that taught some the art (yes they claim it be an art) of selling refrigerators in Alaska, now our customers have got more ‘solutions’ than their problems, which eventually becomes a bigger problem, for which of course our geniuses would have another solution.

Remembering the prayer from my school that read “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins...” it feels ironical how we skip our lunch for work, put in late hours depriving our loved ones of our presence at dinner and yet claim to be “earning for our daily bread”. Isn’t it too much of a sin to beg pardon for? And the greater paradox comes from our corporate giant’s mission statements, while some proclaim making the “world a smarter planet”, others blow their horns about spreading “information” and “applying thoughts” which at times appears so fancy, it makes us completely overlook the intention printed between those lines that they as well as we vowed to ourselves the day we entered these air-conditioned, access regulated, fully carpeted, cubicle separated, electronically driven flamboyant jungles with coffee fountains that “We couldn’t care less about innovation before our own pockets to flood out and the business cards to read a designation more important than the name! ”

Concluding IT, and borrowing the spirit from Mr. Perfectionist’s recently released art that embarked upon the spirit of striving for excellence and let success follow, I lift my eyes above & beyond these high rise enterprises, lighting up its windows as the sun fades away, "mocking stars of this pseudo galaxy..."

- Sarthak