BY KHADIJAH BAWAZEER The Internet and smartphones are slowly declaring the death of television. For a long time, television was a human dream, a fantasy, a prophecy in the collective human psyche that was eventually fulfilled. When it became a reality, the machine resided proudly in the middle of affluent people's homes, then later in the middle of living rooms throughout the world. However, it is now being replaced by much smaller personal computers and smartphones especially with the younger generation. You can almost determine people's generation by their TV habits or lack of them. It was not long ago when TV was such a wonder that extended families congregated to watch a cartoon. At that time, people put the radio aside, which was the human wonder just before television. I still remember older people listening to the news and dramas on the radio and waiting for them just as some people now wait for TV sitcoms or soap operas. State-of-the-art computers offer an all-in-one service that performs all the functions of fax machines, TVs and radios. And in a few years with the spread of smaller and easier to carry tablets and smartphones, computers may be superseded. I wonder if this is the end of the road for this line of development and what will next become obsolete? Television and radio broadcasting still exists and there are still radio fans and people who watch TV and use telephone landlines. However, landline phones have changed shape and some technologies like fax machines are outdated because they have been replaced by much more efficient emails. Will radio and television be completely replaced in the future or will they be reserved for special occasions like when one is driving a car and can only listen but neither hold nor watch anything other than the road in order to be safe? In the last 100 years some machines have been replaced, while other machines, like automobiles have gone through a series of modifications to make them more effective, sleeker looking and user friendly. It all depends upon what is needed and what is not. When each of these machines first came into existence, they were touted as powerful tools which would liberate humanity and give it a stronger voice but none of them really fulfilled the promised dream. In some ways, they entrapped people by dominating their relations with other human beings and by becoming image tags that associate people with a certain social status. Furthermore, what does this kind of fulfillment of old human dreams do to today's youth who, in so many ways, have lost such visions? What can they aspire to and dream of in order to have fulfillment and overcome the pains of reality? — The writer can be reached at [email protected] __
