Science Time

The Journey of Technology

The first seed of technology sprouted when the cave man invented the wheel. Had there been media in those times, searching the archives today would probably give us an idea that 'Man Invents Wheel' was as important a landmark as 'Man decodes Human Genome'.

Development of technology has been synonymous with the development of man. In whatever phase man has been, there has also been a corresponding state of technology. If the man of 5500 years ago invented the wheel, Bill Gates has given us Microsoft. In 1769, Nicholas Cugnot designed the first car with a steam-powered engine and by 1932, JRD Tata had established Tata Aviation Service in India. From the 'difference engine machine' of Charles Babbage, popularly known as the 'Father of Computer', in 1822, we now have approached the so-called Fourth Generation Computers. In fact, only with the help of computational science can we make sense of the plethora of data that the computers themselves have enabled us to collect.

We have simplified the cumbersome process of bill payments, banking and other financial dealings. Automated systems finish things within half of the earlier time. Book hunting in libraries is no longer tiring with the advent of electronic cataloguing. Kilos of paper have transformed to bytes and megabytes of diskette space.

The sentience of distance is no more, thanks to the technology of electronic postage. And with the advent of the Internet, there's no topic under the sun that remains out of the reach of man. With the help of search engines, we can find almost any word hidden somewhere in the huge information labyrinth.

To beat Graham Bell's invention of the telephone that mockery of distances, there came the mobile phones. Spirited brains are racking to usher the world's first lip-reading cellphone. All you have to do is move your lips silently and the technology will decipher the electrical signals being sent out around the muscles of your mouth .

Cybernetics in Biology has appeared with the name of Bioinformatics combining the tools of Mathematics, Computer Science and Biology. Medical technology has come up like a growing plant extending its branches near and far and coming out with the ingenious Gene therapy that encompasses a broad range of technologies that may eventually be applied not only to cancer but also to a diverse group of other genetic disorders. Laboratory wonders reflect the zenith of technology.

We have gone and explored the rest of the universe. In fact, George Stephen's train of 1825 is being dressed up for a journey to the Moon. Technology is definitely soaring. The higher we go, we realize there is scope for still high. For here, sky is not the limit!