A friend once asked me," You are an Electronics Engineer. What is your contribution to humanity?" I did not know what to say and had no retort, because he was a doctor. I mumbled something about the telephone and the internet, but that answer did not satisfy either him or me. I was unsure about the moral credentials of my profession.
Historically, the evolution of Electronics was in close association with armed conflicts all over the world, especially World War(II). Even today the biggest chunk of the funds for research in Electronics and Telecommunications comes from defence and allied organisations. For instance, in India we have DRDO and ISRO. ISRO is not in defence as such, but the importance of satellite communications in times of war( and in times of peace) must not be underestimated. How many spy satellites does India have? Surely, not zero?
Even in classrooms we are reminded of the strong bond between electronics and war. A Prof was once explaining how Circuit A was better than Circuit B: when used in the apparatus for firing at aeroplanes, Circuit A would bring down double the number of planes that Circuit B did, and in half the time."That's how they brought down the Germans in WWII", he explained, looking gleefully at an enthralled audience. The audience consisted of a class of India's most brilliant
students in India's most famous institute. And they were enthralled. I was not feeling buoyed at all; for me, a plane is not just a metal foil rolled out to optimize its aerodynamic capabilities-it is a flying box containing living beings, human beings in fact. But to all others the plane was a metaphysical entity, a problem to be solved. That day I got an inkling of how scientists involved in the Manhattan project would have thought about the nuke. It would have been a paper entity, just numbers and more numbers. After all, it was not detonated in their backyards.
Some people claim that computers and mobile phones have made our lives better. Have they? True, a lot more information is available, cheaper and easier than it was in the past. But that's about all, I guess. These days people have friends who they rarely see (or even call) but 'meet' on the web. The 'human' aspect in relationships is dying out, in some sense. We are all nodes in a gigantic network, with six degrees of separation. Sometimes I think of Communication as some kind of Orwellian device, increasing distances between people while loudly proclaiming that it is decreasing it. Not to mention how all of us have come to become users of technology, though as to how it works, we are absolutely clueless. An electric bulb is a simple device,a nd anyone who wants to learn how it works can do so in very little time. Not so the shiny Laptop or the new multimillionpixel camera phone.
Of course, there are spinoffs. Like monitors that talk to help visually challenged or illiterate people; solar devices that will save power and help keep us going. But the fact remains that they are spinoffs, they are offshoots and not the ends. The same technology that guides a missile to its target can help guide a lost child to her house. But do we really need GPS to move around in our world, in our streets and in our homes?
I am not judging; it is not a question of good or bad. I feel like an instrument of war, and I do not like it.
