The world we live in today is perhaps best defined by our tremendous technological advances – particularly in the world of IT, the internet, social networking sites and email.

There is no doubt at all, technology has made us more efficient, faster, and closer to each other, but on the flipside, it has also made us far more dependent than we have ever been before.

There are many ways in which we have become so dependent on IT and the first issue we will tackle is that of work. Gone are the days of faxes, while face to face meetings have largely been replaced by email exchanges. As we have already mentioned, there is no doubt at all that IT has made the world more efficient and ‘reachable’ – but what happens when things don’t quite go to plan? To put it simply: Technology is fantastic when it works.

But we have seen what can happen when we suddenly ‘go offline’. This has happened on a few occasions in Malta – power failures, internet provider faults and damaged undersea cables have all played their part.

Apart from the fact that one has to revert to doing things manually – physically picking up documents, re-typing faxes; there is a very pertinent point to add. The younger ‘techie’ generation has been brought up on mobile phones, internet, programmable TVs, internet TV, email and chat. One does not doubt that these skills are important, but what happens when there is a job to be done and there is no access to the web or email? Invariably, most people who do not remember life without mobile phones, CDs, MP3s and whatever else, tend to flounder. Perhaps it is time to revisit some of the skills that were acquired in the pre-digital age.

There is another facet to this argument and that is leisure time. A very common sight nowadays is kids clutching hand-held consoles when out with the family. They sit down to have lunch or dinner or a coffee and instead of family conversation, many of the kids have their heads buried in games. The same holds true for computers and home consoles. Far too many children (teens and adults) are hopelessly addicted to games. While they are innocuous enough when used in moderation (like anything else in life), they do become a problem when they take over people’s lives to the extent of them not leaving the house because they want to play.

An extreme case was recorded in South Korea – known for high internet/games addiction – whereby a couple let their own newborn slowly starve to death as they cared for a ‘virtual baby’ on an online game. Their own child was left in their apartment for hours on end with just one feed a day while they went to internet cafes to ‘feed the virtual child’. The case beggars belief, but it does illustrate the point we are trying to make.

Humankind has become as addicted to technology as it is to oil and fossil fuels. The truth is that human beings are, in themselves, an addictive species. While there are other species which do get addicted to substances, we are perhaps the only ones that seek addiction to anything ranging from sex, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, television, internet and a whole plethora of other things. One wonders whether Hollywood films such as Surrogates (people use a fake body looking fabulous and young) and The Matrix (people live in a virtual world run by machines) are so far-fetched after all.