Category: Tech

I was amazed as a kid playing the video game Crash Bandicoot on Sony’s Playstation-1, how can that little box show all of those cool worlds and characters that I could interact with, it felt like magic.

25 Years later, I now know how that little box did what it did, and it still feels like magic.

Digital technology has changed how humans live their lives, it is an incredible, strange time to be in especially given that (based on what we know) for thousands of years humans did not possess this superpower-like technology, and had lifestyles of either hunting, raising cattle, farming and trading.

The ability to call anyone in the world and see them in real-time through a glass screen, interact with AI chatbots with more general knowledge than any other human and deep specialized knowledge in many fields, access a huge network of shared content and information that is essentially a collection of human knowledge … the list of incredible technologies goes on and on.

However, as time went on, with cumulative scientific advancements and increasing investment in R&D, the technology is much more powerful and we are now starting to see the true cost of these superpowers, as if living through a bug in our social system.

The New Loneliness

The “glass screen” that lets us see someone across the ocean has, ironically, made it harder to see the person sitting across the dinner table. We are the most connected generation in history, yet we’re arguably the loneliest. Our social lives are overwhelmed with “digital social lives” through social media apps, interacting with pixels on a screen, We are losing the real feeling of a human touch or just sitting together in silence.

Humans may not be built for socializing exclusively through digital mediums, you can see the proof of that by taking a quick scroll in any social media app and witness some of the thousands of online battles happening everyday,

Bullying, racial slurs and simply mean comments hurling in every direction, I would strongly argue that if these online warriors were talking together in a room they would not be that mean to each other, but this “inorganic” communication through a screen lacks a human connection.

The issue is that big tech is spending billions to design their apps to make user spend more and more time using them, essentially working hard to hack humans brains to use their apps

The Attention Economy

The more time you spend using a social media app means more time seeing ads, which makes the app more attractive for advertisers, the more time you spend using any digital product is a net positive for the company that made that product, so for the majority of technology companies in the world with trillions of combined capital:

Your time using their product = Revenue

Capitalism that is usually a driver of innovation now drives technology companies to basically hack our brains into using them, lately as TikTok introduced a new way to consume content with attention-grabbing design patterns (Instantly playing videos, endless feed, revolutionary algorithm that adapts to user interest) other social media companies had to fight for your attention: YouTube introduced Shorts, Snapchat introduced Spotlight, Instagram introduced Reels, which are basically copies of TikTok within their apps, even X introduced the “For You” feed where an algorithm shows posts based on your interests, which to me seemed more like showing controversial content that got you to be dragged in an online battle.

So what if we spend more time using social media or any digital product?

We are losing our ability to be bored. In the past, boredom led to creativity and new ideas. Today, the moment we have a free second, we pull out our phones. This constant stimulation means our brains never get a chance to rest or process information. We are becoming “consumers” of content rather than “creators” of our own lives.

Constant notifications and the pressure to look perfect online are hurting people especially the most vulnerable (teenagers). Many people feel anxious if they are not “online” all the time. This digital lifestyle is very different from how humans lived for thousands of years. Our brains are not built for this much noise and constant comparison to others.

The “highlight reel” of other people’s lives makes us feel like we are failing. We compare our low moments to the perfect, filtered photos of everyone else. This leads to a cycle of anxiety and low self-esteem. We are using 21st-century technology with brains that are still wired for a world of small tribes and simple lifestyles.

Also, apps continuously gather user behaviour data, every millisecond of you watching a post is tracked, every click and interaction is accounted for, and all activity is considered.

The Loss of Privacy

We have traded our privacy for convenience. Our habits and even our fears are now products for sale. These digital products, and in general our phones that we use for hours daily are now a one-way mirror. We are constantly watched by the tools we use to make our lives easier.

Even the objects in our homes are watching us now. From smart fridges to voice assistants, everything is a sensor. This “strange” data collection means that companies often know more about us than our own families do, and frighteningly, they may know more about us than we know ourselves.

The New Frontier: AI and The Threat to Truth

The advancement in Artificial Intelligence, particularly in Large Language Models (LLMs) and chatbots, represents one of the most significant technical leaps in history. In just a few years, we have moved from simple pattern recognition to AI chatbot systems that can reason, write code, and synthesize complex information across nearly every field.

These chatbots now allow anyone with an internet connection to access a wise and knowledgeable assistant capable of accelerating research, education, and creative work. It is a remarkable achievement in engineering, one that scales human intelligence and productivity in ways we are only beginning to understand.

However, the very mechanisms that make these chatbots so effective, their ability to predict and generate human-like content based on massive datasets also introduce significant practical risks.

AI-generated pictures of world leaders dressed in ridiculous outfits or videos of them fighting in a boxing ring are quite realistic and believable for someone without an understanding of the context of recent AI advancements, and even for some who does know it is getting increasingly hard to tell the difference, even voice is AI-generated as voice cloning is used now by scammers asking for urgent pleas of money or OTPs.

This represents a challenge to our shared reality. When the authenticity of a voice on a phone or the video of a world leader can no longer be taken for granted. If we cannot reach a consensus on basic facts, truth turns into a mirage.

Furthermore, these AI models are trained on the vast repositories of data. They act as a mirror held up to humanity, reflecting our collective knowledge but also includes our deepest systemic biases. When these biases are integrated into powerful, automated algorithms, we aren’t just spreading misinformation, we are industrializing it. We risk moving to where truth is determined by whoever possesses the most computing power. The technology that was designed to spread universal knowledge is now capable of manufacturing personalized confusion at an unprecedented scale.

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So? What’s the Solution?

Hope requires us to take action. We must move toward Humane Technology, technology that is designed to support our humanity rather than exploit it, this is a term that we should be hearing much, much more than we do today, we must be mindful of this and create a better future

• Choose Human Connection We can reclaim our “analog” lives. Join local hobby clubs, go on digital detoxes, and remember that a positive physical presence with a loved one is worth more than a thousand likes.
• Demand Better Design We should support developers who build “Digital Well-being” into their products. In 2025, we should expect tools that respect our focus, our mental health and overall well-being by default.
• AI Safety As AI systems rapidly advance, a global AI safety field is emerging in response, spanning researchers, policymakers, and technologists working on alignment, robustness, and misuse prevention. These efforts must move faster and become more visible, with transparency and bias evaluation

Spread The Message The Center for Humane Technology (HumaneTech.com) is doing an incredible work in advocating for Humane Technology, “The Social Dilemma” is an eye-opening documentary that the center produced, I highly recommend watching it and participate in spreading the message for people to be mindful of the adverse effects on technology, to actively engage in “digital detox” whenever possible, and demand responsibility and accountability from big tech

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The magic I felt as a kid playing video games hasn’t disappeared, it has just been crowded out by noise, algorithms, and profit margins. We don’t have to throw away our “superpowers” or go back to the middle ages, but we do need to remember that technology was made for us, not the other way around.

By being mindful of how we spend our time and demanding better from the companies that build our digital world, we can turn the “trap” back into a tool. It’s time to put the phone down, look at the person across the table, and start living our own stories again.

If you look closely at the history of technology infrastructure, you’ll notice a consistent pattern: abstraction.

Abstraction simply means hiding the complex parts to simplify the user’s experience. For example, you don’t need to know how a combustion engine works to drive to the supermarket. You just press the pedal and go. In the tech world, this trend is happening fast. If we look at the history, we can actually make some solid predictions about the future.

To understand where we are going, we have to look at how we got here.

1. Physical Servers (The Iron Age of Tech)

Computing devices based on mechanical or analog tools have been used for thousands of years, like the abacus. However, it took two World Wars and decades of research to produce the first commercial digital computer, the “Ferranti Mark 1,” in the early 1950s.

While physical servers fundamentally changed how organizations operate, they weren’t immediately adopted everywhere. Paper dominated many industries well into the early 1990s. Eventually, paper lost to digital. Institutions began relying on servers to store data, automate processes, and run critical business applications.

Following “Moore’s Law” (the observation that computing power doubles roughly every two years), computers became immensely powerful. However, they were often inefficient because they typically ran one OS for one application. This resulted in a lot of “underutilized” machines sitting around doing nothing.

2. Virtualization

Virtualization started as university research before being commercialized by companies like VMware in the early 2000s, Virtualization software is deployed on a physical server and allows us to run multiple “Virtual Machines” (VMs) on a single physical server.

This was a massive jump in efficiency and it transformed the IT industry. costs were slashed because companies didn’t need to buy as much hardware, and it made management smoother. If a server broke, you could just move the VM to another one.

But as time went on, even VMs started to feel too heavy. Every VM needed its own full operating system (Guest OS), which hogged storage and RAM. Furthermore, as applications became more complex, developers struggled with their ‘monolithic’ nature. If one part of the code needed fixing, it could break the whole app. Developers needed something more granular.

3. Containers & Microservices

Containers are like lightweight VMs that share the OS kernel. They only hold the specific part of the app they need to run.

This allowed the industry to move to “microservices.” Instead of building an app as one giant block of code (a monolith), developers began breaking apps into small, independent parts. If one part breaks, the whole app doesn’t crash. It made fixing things much easier.

4. Serverless

The trend continued. We stopped worrying about the server, then the OS, and now, with Function-as-a-Service (Serverless), we don’t even worry about the infrastructure.

With functions, you only write your specific piece of code, upload it to the cloud, define the endpoint within your application where you want the function to be called and now you’re good to go. You don’t pay for a server sitting idle at 3 AM. You only pay for the milliseconds the code is actually running. The infrastructure is basically invisible now.

The Future: Three Predictions

1. Business-as-a-Service (BaaS)

We are moving toward a future where non-technical users can spin up an entire organization as easily as we currently spin up a server. Imagine an interface where you define the purpose of your business, and the system automatically provisions the applications (CRM, Sales, ERP) and the AI agents required to run them. The “tech stack” will become a utility, as simple as electricity.

2. Natural Language is the New Compiler

As abstraction continues, “coding” as we know it will disappear for 90% of people. We moved from Machine Code → Assembly → Python. The final layer is Human Language. In the future, you won’t need to learn syntax. You will simply describe what you want in English (or your native language), and AI agents will deploy the infrastructure for you.

3. Disposable Software

Today, we build software like monuments—meant to last for years. But as creating software becomes instant and free (thanks to BaaS and AI), we will see the rise of Disposable Software. We will spin up a custom app for a specific 3-day conference or a weekend project, use it, and then discard it.

Conclusion

The trend of abstraction follows the goal of making the “how” invisible so we can focus on the “why.” We are rapidly approaching a time where the barrier to entry for building an application is zero. The technology of tomorrow will be faster, smarter, and almost invisible.