Today’s advantage is tomorrow’s tribulation

We created many facilities for our better comfort and easy life only. As we grab everything slowly to build a paradise for ourselves, we deprive other living beings of their natural rights. Now we have started ruling them and invaded their space. We continue to move up with our activities with no concern about ensuing results. We are aware that every addiction has its adverse consequences. Yet we are unprepared for fending off the adversities.

Success has many definitions and interpretations. The success of today may be a failure of tomorrow. Every enviable achievement of today may result in the agony of tomorrow. The US and Europe fought against all odds last century to build a high standard of living through economic growth. Today a third of the deaths caused by the top 10 diseases, including heart diseases, diabetes and dementia emerge from these economic wonderlands. They boast about possessing the best-in-class research and development (R&D) centres. Research after research says cellphone devices cause 74 per cent of brain tumours, 80 per cent of ear dysfunction, and 45 per cent of heart diseases. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases are on the rise. None could quantify the psychological and behavioural defects that cell phones have rendered.

But no ugly reports intimidate us. Our lust for cell phones masks our fears. Now we are too addicted to this necessary evil. Until two decades ago, we could live without cell phones, or most of us did not want this. Life was peaceful. Our dependence on cell phones increased to an unavoidable level. Along with it, our life became turbulent and our minds restless.

Years ago, IDEA, then a leading cell phone company, had an idea that could change a life. That was the truth, IDEA proved it before it disappeared. All baneful ideas ruin people. It had another advertisement. Everyone started identifying each other with mobile numbers instead of by names. The prophetic advertisements became true. If you don’t have a mobile phone you are ineligible for many of your rights as a citizen.

Everything happened in the last quarter of a century. We have stopped our interpersonal verbal communication, the unique human nature. All are living online. That caused the data transmission of roughly 800 Gbit per second. If someone stopped using a mobile, they are considered no more. What is more, if a person misplaced his phone or avoided responding to a call for a personal purpose, his family and close relatives may begin to worry and make the situation worse with missing complaints and massive searches. A few hours of disconnection as a result of some health eventualities or accidents was enough to create a ruckus and even misunderstanding. Once you stay disconnected people will write you off as someone unfit for modern society.

Our over-dependence on the online system driven by our cell phones has huge potential for inflicting incalculable damages on us. Such damage and irregularities cannot be fixed so long as our phones authorize all transactions without being in our hands. One can do the transaction on behalf of another one who is no more. A mobile phone is a good instrument for impersonation. A huge bank balance can be transferred or siphoned off into someone without their knowledge as we could see in the controversial case of Sheena Bora case. Indrani Mukherjee, by using her murdered daughter Sheena’s mobile phone could create an impression that Sheena went to the US.

Today, on the mobile phone a person keeps everything, including personal secrets, confidential data and details of wealth. It is the data pool of the device owner but hoisted on the master’s data warehouse. In a foreign media interview, Bill Gates once admitted that he did not allow his children to own cell phones until the age of 14. The world’s average children’s phone ownership age is less than 11 years. Mughals are cleverer men. They make us do what they are reluctant to do. One’s forbidden things become another’s fashion, as today’s advantage is tomorrow’s tribulation.