Technology and Terrorists

A couple of years ago in school, we were all preparing a list of topics for our ‘English’ paper. A couple of topics were highlighted as being the hot topics for the exam that year; they were- 1. Emergence of Terrorism; 2. Technology: boon or bane. Those topics actually came in the paper, not that it helped because I didn’t study them anyways.

Anyways, the point of this article is to focus on the actual relevance of these topics in today’s world. People are afraid to walk on the streets, let alone go out for outings.
It’s no longer the people suffering from agoraphobia who are afraid to step out of their houses; terrorists and technology have together unleashed an unseen fear among us. It’s easy to fear when you know who the enemy is, when he is visible. But what do you do, when he lives among you, looks like you, talks like you, helps you, assists you and you still don’t recognise him. We accuse, we protest, while slowly but steadily we help in assisting the spread of these two Terrible T’s (cliché unintended).

We want to be more technologically advanced; we want to live in a developed world, the likes of which have never been seen before. We have the latest technology for capturing killers, robbers, thieves etc. but they likewise have similar technology for evading us. The old school cat and mouse game is played as always, but in a newer arena with newer tools and machines. We all want to be advanced, but we don’t want to fear because of such advancements too. It’s a double edged sword whichever way you look at it.

Terrorism is increasing day by day, security is getting tighter week by week, we are not living under curfew but it seems like it. We all protest by candle-lit marches, by wearing black/white as a sign of protest while we handicap ourselves by depending more and more on technology. Many say, it’s the age of the modern terrorist, it has always been the age of the modern terrorists since their emergence. They don’t always have to use their own weapons to spread fear among us all; sometimes in our pursuit for obtaining more and more, we discard aside for nominal use what we already have. We may have technology-new and obsolete, but we always want for more, I don’t need economics to remind me that our wants are unlimited. We always think of the future and forget to secure what we already have.

The terrible T’s are what make us stay indoors on a fine day; one of them secretly saps away our life while the other takes away life in a direct manner. Their emergence was not sudden, but well thought of over the decades. One is promoted by us, the other is promoted by others. Existence without either of them is debatable, but we wonder whether it is favourable. It’s one of those things which can’t be answered with a simple monosyllable; there are various inter-related aspects which have to be considered. It’s not a mere run of the mill million dollar question, it is one, on which depend the lives of innumerable people, the future itself.

Tech and terror- their inherent duality is what this is all about, like harry potter and lord voldemort; while one lives the other cannot survive. It seems so simple, yet it took 7 books and 18 years to sort it out. One cannot say how long will this take and which will prevail after all has been said and done.