Tech Trends

Rohan Ramesh

The mindboggling pace at which technology is evolving globally is an exciting prospect and a challenge too. The world has seen how communication technology has changed the way humans live, work, communicate and spend their leisure time. The strides made by innovations in health care, education, food production, travel and defence applications have been equally exciting.

At the same time, the speed with which technology is innovating raises ethical concerns too. While gene mapping and pharmaceutical research has helped in medical treatment, genetic engineering has led to concerns too. Communication revolution was a tool to bring about free access to information, such as internet, but at the same time, it has led to worries about intrusion into personal spaces. Genetically modified food promises to meet the challenge of the burgeoning population the world over, and yet there are fears that it can lead to unforeseen mutations. Defence research has always been a matter of concern, with technology looking to new ways of mass destruction under the guise of weapons for legitimate defence. Space research to find life elsewhere is always fraught with the danger of attracting hostile forms of life elsewhere in the space, a warning sounded by none other than Prof. Stephen Hawking.

Many of these questions were debated at last year’s Carnegie Global Summit held in Bengaluru. The summit opened on December 18 with welcome remarks by Rudra Chaudhri, Director Carnegie India and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Managing Director, Biocon. This was followed by a keynote address by A. Gitesh Sarma, Secretary (West), Ministry of External Affairs (GOI).

“Science can create, it can improve, it can heal but science can also destroy,” warned Sarma. “It has been said that a Smith and Wesson makes all men equal so why deny a Smith and Wesson to the others”, he argued