It has been said that speed is
the craze of modern man, while no one has said that speed is also the
craze of nature. The latter fact, however, is the greater Truth. Man is
still far behind nature in this craze. Will man ever be able to attain
the speed of any of the terrestrial objects flying at great speeds in
the sky.
It is always from the past that we judge the future. But applying this
for the speed of progress, we forget that the speed of progress has been
subject to an acceleration which is beyond human imagination. If a man
living in the seventeenth century had been asked to speculate the future
of communications, he might have at best guessed that there would come a
day when people would travel in carriages driven without horses and men
would fly in the air without wings. But that would be mere speculation
and he would have been called a person with a fertile brain. Few would
have believed him, a greater number would have been inclined to call him
a lunatic. In any case he, himself would not have believed if he was
told that such or even greater progress would be achieved within a span
of only a few centuries.
We see, however that events have progressed faster than even
imagination. Today, vehicles without horses are a common sight. Flying
has been made so easy. Men have been shot into space, have circled round
the earth in sputniks and space shuttles at incredibly high speeds, and
have even landed on the moon. Rockets have been sent to planets in far
off location to obtain data and determine the conditions that exist
there.
If the common mode of travel on land formerly was a post chase with an
average speed of 10 miles an hour, today it is an electric train running
at six to ten times that speed. Nay, the Tokyo Express on the New
Tokaido line does it at double that speed. If the means of travel on the
sea then were sail trips traveling at the mercy of the winds, today it
is the fast liner doing it in much shorter period, which does it
independent of the weather. Greater and greater speed has been attained
by the help of transport through air. Distances which took months to
cover have been reduced to days. Nay, sometimes only hours. Round the
World in 80 Days, imagined by Jules Verne is now possible in less than
80 hours and might even, within a foreseeable future, be covered in 80
minutes. The means of communicating news have made much greater
progress, with the help of wireless. Now it takes only a few moments to
circulate the news from one part of the world to another, which earlier
took months.
All this was done so fast that it has been difficult for the human mind
to digest. There is a feeling that developments have reached the point
of saturation and there is not much scope left for future. We could only
perfect the modern achievements and make them cheaper. Sitting down to
imagine, the best we could do is to think of communications a century
later, and whatever we think will be the extreme possibility. And yet we
may be defeated.
Having the past progress in view, we might say that air travel will be
the most common mode of travel for the common man throughout the world.
The richer will own private planes for themselves (as a few already do).
Such planes could land on their own roofs, made possible by vertical
landing through gyroscopic principles. To avoid collisions in mid-air,
Air Traffic Control would be needed by International Police. There would
be regular city and cross country routes with well controlled traffic
passing on them. Different speed lanes and different speed zones. The
roads, and the motor cars running on them will be used only by the
poorest class of people. (We have not reached that stage yet)
In respect of postal communications and correspondence, the postal
department will be there only for official correspondence and carrying
parcel traffic. All written records will be transmitted via FAX, and
conversations done over the telephone. Tele-video-phones would be a
common means for corresponding with each other and holding conferences
where they wish to see as well as talk to each other . In fact this
already has started to be introduced.
One can even imagine that people from Earth will migrate to different
planets and set up fresh colonies and inter- planetary travel will
become common. There might even be inter- planetary wars if the racial
prejudice, hatred and greed continue to gain control of the better side
of Mankind. This is already being shown in science fiction movies such
as Star Trek & Star Wars.
All these are direct inferences from the modern scientific developments
and the progress that has been taking place. In fact quite a lot has
already been achieved and perfected. For, if this is the only progress
in the means of communications, it would be nothing beyond our
expectations and one does not require much imagination for it.
But seeing that all progress in the past has been beyond expectation,
imagination must be made to run at much faster speed than that at which
our minds work. If we have to be taken by surprise, there should be
newer, faster and more novel means. We must be able to travel not merely
by the help of steam petrol and electricity or even atomic power, but
should be able to produce planes which could travel on radio waves at
their speed. Who can wonder, that scientists will one day help us swim
with radio waves? The moon, the planets and the stars will then be only
different bodies of one single system with easy communication between
them as we have between different cities today. If human beings could
make such phenomenal progress, will they not be almost one with God?
Will they still continue to have lust for power, racial prejudices,
hatred and greed?
Was this not the state which, in the past, our Yogis had achieved? Or
was it just their imagination?
February 26,
2006
This was first written while
preparing for my IRSE examination in 1940. It has seen several changes
while looking at the various developments that have taken place and made
me visualize the future. Could anyone have imagined in 1940 that mobile
phones would spread like cobwebs all over the world? And on top of that
the Digital Photography has created wonders. How fast these changes are
taking place is mind boggling. But now it is for the humans to utilize
this progress in improving the condition of humanity or use all this for
destruction. Being an optimist, I think, that we will all wake up and
save ourselves from destruction.
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