Within a fraction of a moment, my life
flashed before my very eyes
I do not hold on to material possession too
much. If I lose money, or something of the sort, it ain’t the best day ever,
but I know I’ll survive. I hold on to health very strongly. As long as my
family, loved ones, and I are in good health, I consider the world to be
sunshine and rainbows. However, my one Achilles heel is my work.
After attending a cousin’s wedding in
Pakistan, I just finished transferring all the images and videos from my camera
to my laptop as I was waiting at the airport. I was looking through the
pictures, reflective and reminiscent over the last few days. It had been a
great trip. I had even managed to fulfill a dream of mine; filming to produce a
short video about a hospital that was built on the very back of my own
grandfather, who founded an NGO in Pakistan to treat children suffering with
Thalassemia.
Not five hours later, I arrived at the
breezy Emirati airport that brought back warm memories. I raced home and slumped on my bed, flicking my laptop open for a casual email check.
- No libraries available. Create new
library? -
I tried to click on 'Cancel' but I was not allowed to. IPhoto was open and this horrifying message just blared at me, taunting my existence.
Say wha’? Where ma shindig at, yo? My heart sank; I looked for every possible solution as the realization that every
picture and video I had taken for months had mysteriously disappeared. I was in
disbelief for many reasons, I thought that
I must just be technologically impaired. Deleting 5 GB from my computer
would at the very least take 5 seconds loading time, yet over 100GB of files
had just been made entirely redundant. No online solution seemed to work, and a
visit to the Apple stores brought some very consoling advice.
“Make sure you have a backup
next time”
This was an anomaly. There was no
explanation for this. Although a few more hours of research might have saved me
some expense, 75 pounds and a computer shop acquaintance brought me back every
last file.
This long-winded attempt at exposition made
me reflect on a few things. Technology rules us. Sure, we can produce a chip
the size of a fingernail that can hold our entire life but…. this is a chip the
size of a fingernail that holds our entire LIFE! Information has become
volatile. Memories have become fragile. Knowledge may have become more
decentralized, yet in a sense, it is corruptible. Maybe I am misconstruing the
situation, but all I know is, it’s sure as hell easier to lose Gigabytes worth
of information than it is to lose a few hundred papers. We are dependant.
My grandfather, God preserve him and bring
him joy and comfort, has all his contacts’ phone numbers in a chip far more
powerful than any; he can regurgitate them by memory. I can barely remember my
own. The great Sufi mystic, Imam Ghezali, was once robbed whilst in a caravan,
and the one thing he begged the thieves not to pillage was his book collection.
When one of the bandits jeered at him, remarking how knowledge has no value if
it can be lost in a moment, Ghezali vowed to memorise any further knowledge he
ever gained.
I started thinking of the difference
between one who is knowledgeable, and one who is wise. Who is better? If one is
able to apply knowledge, surely that is more useful than one who can blindly
regurgitate knowledge. The wise will always be reliant on his sources though.
The brilliant academic will still need to browse his libraries, and make the
same Google searches as us laymen. What happens when Google makes a no show,
and rare literature becomes impossibly difficult to find?
Sleepiness leads to pointlessness. These
are but thoughts. Thoughts remain temporal.
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