Technology & Innovation: Human Need for (or) Advancement

“Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity — not a threat” — Steve Jobs

Change is the only constant in the universe. This holds even more importance in the world of technology. Since time immemorial, there have been constant innovations to bring new technology to the citizens of the world. Nobody in 20th century would have thought of having a smart phone, an electric car or anything from a technological standpoint that makes life easy for you (or makes you lazy). The constant need to differentiate and innovate something new has brought out the best technological inventions in the world ranging from smart phones to robots to electric cars. All this is very healthy for the world and is something every person would look forward to. However, the question that is begging for an answer is, are these new technologies needed out of a dire human need or is it a means to display advancement of human race?

Late 2021 and 2022 has been laden with discussions on metaverse and the impact of the same on our day to day lives. In simple words, metaverse is a simulated replication of our real-life events that we can view sitting in the comfort of our homes by leveraging augmented reality and virtual reality. This sounds very cool and a demonstration of the same makes one even more fascinated. All this points to the advancement of the human race, but it is a good to have thing in our lives and not something which we need for our survival. I am not an advocate against metaverse, but I feel that any invention should be correlated to a human need or a key problem. There will be multiple disagreements that an electric car was never needed, and the world was doing well with Nokia 3310s and Motorola flip phones. They still became successful, and humans have continued to embrace such changes.

Core for any product innovation in a technical field relies heavily on making a difference to the world. However, that is misunderstood as force fitting something new in the name of advancement. The focus for any technological innovation has always supposed to be on addressing a human need or resolving a key problem in our day to day lives. New additions of technology are often tied with other scenarios across the world to build a compelling case for consumers to adopt these introductions. Back in 2010, no one would have thought of possessing an electric car or a self-drive car. In fact, people were content with their cars having gears and driving involved shifting through the gears. Fast forward to 2022, automatic cars have become a norm in most nations while electric cars are a trendy automobile to possess because of its design, but more so because it is environmental friendly. By correlating with climate change and reduced EV emissions, companies like Tesla have captured the imagination of people by making them emotionally connected to electric cars owing to its environmental friendliness. There was never a human need for electric cars. It has been built and imbibed within us by portraying climate change as a problem to address indirectly.

Let’s rewind to 1990s and early 2000s. People had black and white phone or color phones with keypads or some high-end variants which had touch enabled. However, there were barely any phones that had a camera, a mp3 player and easy access to internet. Life was going on smoothly for everyone with the existing portfolio of phones from Nokia, Motorola, etc. Sony had a flourishing business in digital cameras and video cameras. Apple and Sony were progressing well with iPod and Walkman. No one ever desired a device that had everything embedded in it. There was never an inherent human need, and the world was not getting affected by the absence of such a device. 2 decades later, it is impossible for a person to have a phone without any of the above-mentioned items. Consumers look at the camera quality in the phone before making any purchase. We are constantly looking for new variants of phones to come in the market and September of every year is much waited for launch of the iPhone. What was never a need has become a habit for consumers. Companies across the world never thought that they would have to build incremental models of phones every year. There was no external problem that was there to be solved in the 1990s or early 2000s. However, the pulse of the consumers was the key aspect to be understood. Economies were growing, employment was at an all time high. Cultures were getting intermixed. Corporate behemoths like Samsung and Apple saw an opportunity to target the laziness and comfort of the consumers and introduced iPhone and Samsung Galaxy series which completely transformed the way world communicated or perceived a phone to be. In this instance, we can again say that technology was advanced owing to a latent problem which could remain unsolved, and world would have run status quo. However, the level of advancement would have been minimal in such a scenario.

The above 2 scenarios clearly indicate that technologically innovations are not only introduced owing to an unsolved problem or a pressing need. They also come to address a problem which can remain unsolved but can lead to advancement if addressed in the right manner. At present, we do not see a lot of viability in metaverse or even self-driving cars, but we will not be having the same opinion in 2040. Technological innovations are less of a hype and more of an effort by the companies to advance human race while resolving a good to solve hidden problem. We should embrace these innovations and be patient with anything new that comes by before completely adopting it or making it a part of our lives. Constancy in technology will cease to exist and it is important that we make technological innovations a part and parcel of our lives as we set our eyes on having a civilization on Mars.