Role of technology in revolutionizing the human connection

The need for human connection has never been stronger than after the outbreak of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdown brought upon us a challenge of forced loneliness on the scale that was unprecedented. 

From Apache warriors sending smoke cloud signals to ham radios and morse-coded telegrams to social media and virtual reality, technology has been revolutionising human connections since recorded history. Is it still just a tool, or has it reshaped and helped reimagine human connections? If yes then which aspects of human lives has technology caused a shift in?

Remember the first time you used technology to create a human bond. For millennials it might be that letter you wrote at school as part of your English prose writing exercise and the one that your teacher helped you send across. For other generations it could have been a telegram, the physical one using morse-coded messages and not the app. There’s another generation who has grown on apps like Telegram, Whatsapp and the messengers. The quality, speed and reach of our communication has improved thanks to technological evolution.

Connecting family, friends and sub-cultures

The telegrams of yesteryear brought news to Indians generally of newborns or death of a family member. Today Telegram the app or Whatsapp serves the same purpose of connecting us to our kintree, distant cousins, families and friends. Both new and older generations are today seeking less social and more niche, closed groups that help fast connections with loved ones while ensuring privacy.

The all-popular Reddit is a great example of the perfect app for every imaginable subculture. Do you love Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli animes, Rumi’s shayari, Bollywood fight scenes, punk rock, or you belong to a niche LGBTQ group? There’s a reddit group for that and several more. Redditors are one of the most active and helpful among social networks. Closed groups on Facebook, Tumblr, Discord, and other social networks are growing in popularity, largely showing the need for ingroups connecting niche needs.

Scientific and Educational Connections

From UNESCO to Berkeley and beyond, scientific and educational data and white papers are no longer limited to the archives of the elite organisations anymore. These organisations are making detailed research available for learners across the globe. Technology is helping democratise knowledge for self-learning. Armed with a simple affordable mobile handset or laptop connected to even a free public Wi-Fi can today help any individual with a true drive for learning to absorb complex knowledge from across the world.

Sites like Project Gutenberg give access to thousands of books. Organisations like Mystic are helping build a community health analytics platform using GrimoireLab, an open-source toolkit to provide analytics for open-source projects. Who knows maybe the next pandemic vaccine maybe developed by a group of eager scientists collaborating across the globe. As a working professional you’re currently using some paid tech solution for communication like Slack or Microsoft Teams, but have you heard of Mattermost? It’s a self-hostable online messaging service with file sharing, search, and integrations. Designed as an internal chat for organisations, it’s an open-source alternative to Slack and Microsoft Teams. Essentially, this just goes on to say that if you are a bootstrapped startup or just strongly believe in being in the open-source system, then there’s an alternative for every solution you may be looking for right from Linux like OS to tools like Mattermost. Technology is truly helping bridge the need gap between those with abundant resources and those without.  

Socio-economic Connections via Crowdsourcing

Perhaps when our grandparents read about a great famine in another nation they simply turned the newspaper page or flicked onto the next news channel. But technology has changed that. Today any willing human can get involved with other human connections that go beyond geographical distances. I’d heard of volunteers who came seeking financial aid for the building of the Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari, India, from my grandmother. Today the beautiful Rock Memorial Complex stands as a great architectural example of perhaps India’s very first crowdsourced project where Indians like my grandma gave ₹5-10 towards the construction. Today tech-powered crowdsourcing platforms like Kickstarter, Ketto, Milaap, are helping start-ups kick-off their entrepreneurial dreams, aiding rural schools get support, helping the underprivileged gain access to better medical treatment and so much more. Jessica Hansen from Kiva (online crowdfunding platform) urges our generation to truly get “riled up” to bring the change that we want to see. And while we read about natural disasters, wars and social injustice that hurt human connections, we can’t ignore the good Samaritans using technology to heal humanities wounds.

Technology Shift and the Upcoming Revolution

I remember starkly the day that Mumbai was flooded and absolute strangers took to Twitter and via Google Sheets helped share rides home for the stranded. Organisations started by teenagers are helping villages in Africa access drinking water. Apps like Be My Eyes have brought together people with vision to help the blind with everyday decision making. Jordan Nguyen, a biomedical engineer, has invented a mind-controlled wheelchair to help the disabled with mobility and communication. The massive technology shift is opening possibilities backed by technology that were impossible to imagine even a decade ago. Imagine being able to meet your favourite celebrity through a virtual tech connection that harnesses AI to recreate the exact responses as the real person. Imagine the possibility of being able to see and talk to your great great grandmother as her mannerisms and looks are saved for eternity for her successors to connect with! That dream of immortality seems within reach like so many fiction stories have spoken about.

“Technology is just a tool.” We’ve heard that all our lives. But like any tool it can be used in the service of good or to exploit others, depending on who uses it and why. It is therefore the WHY that matters most, it’s not how we use technology and for what, it is why we use it. The "why” behind harnessing any technology will reflect and uphold real human connections.

The article has been written by Iftikhar Khan, Founder, Kintree