Technology killed the Dodo

An expose on why the Dodo and other creatures couldn’t avoid extinction…

Long before Intel came into existence, the primary responsibility for making processors was shouldered by God. Of course, he had his own proprietary line-up called neurons, with which he created animals that roamed the surface of this earth. At around 85 billion neurons, he got a little experimental – and man was born.

Unfortunately, man hunted animals for various reasons – from KFC to Versace. Soon animals became extinct. From the Caribbean Monk Seal to the Caspian Tiger. From the Pile-builder Megapode to the Passenger Pigeon. From the Thylacine to the Toolache Wallaby. None of them could escape being wiped out. The result was devastating - 99.9% of all animal species that had ever walked the earth had disappeared.

It was up to man to do something about it. He examined the choices before him. He could storm abattoirs and animal labs and free the animals. He could camp out in the forests and protect them. He could stop taking his kids to the circus. He could travel to remote areas and campaign against animal slaughter.

All this required time and effort. It was about dedication and devotion, about turning all the night time into the day… But that would put him in dire straits - he would have to take time off from work and from watching Desperate Housewives, desperate news channels and desperate cricketers. 

Then man created Facebook. It could serve dual purposes, giving millions the option of expressing their support and opinion for a cause without actually having to do something about it – and also helping them reduce their guilt about their crocodile skin bags, alligator shoes and other leather accessories. There was also the added incentive of Bill Gates donating 1000 dollars to anyone who posted ‘Facebook kills time, but saves animals’ as their status message for 20 minutes.

Now, millions could sit in the comforts of their living rooms and support a cause, simply by clicking a ‘Like’ button. The miracle of new-age technology had arrived – one could prevent a species from being lost forever, right in the middle of a cricket match, between overs.

Thousands of Facebook pages came up to save animals. Millions extended their support from their homes and offices. As expected, it dented the psyche of the smugglers and traders heavily and in their next General Body Meeting, a resolution was proposed to stop further activities involving animal products. “We’ve decided that we’ll not even have animated discussions from now on,” said a senior member on conditions of anonymity. The campaign hit the hunters hard too. They put down their arms and decided to spend the rest of their lives supplying bullets to PowerPoint presentations.

Meanwhile, the cruel animal trainers were flooded with YouTube links to ‘Two Brothers’, a movie about a couple of tiger cubs separated when they were, well, cubs and later reuniting as adult tigers. In response, the trainers filed a case against the makers of the movie for having lifted the lost-and-found plot and the ‘two brothers separated at birth, united in the climax’ storyline from over 200 Manmohan Desai movies. They then filed individual cases against all those who had uploaded the ‘Two Brothers’ movie online without permission. So everyone kept everyone else busy and the animals breathed easy.

Thus technology successfully saved millions of animals from extinction. Suddenly championing a cause became so simple - keeping roads clean, preventing pollution, fighting corruption and stopping the mining mafia could all be done from home.

If only such technology existed when the Dodo was going extinct…  

From the dork era to the dark ages

A brief Asimov-esque history of the digital era – from the very beginning – and all that which followed…

First there was nothing. I mean, what else would you call 640 kB of memory, despite the fact that Bill Gates is supposed to have stated that ‘640K ought to be enough for anybody’? He never did, but as Mark Twain purportedly said, why let facts get in the way of a good story?

Then came primitive computers with floppy disks – and evolution chugged along at the speed of Mega Hertz. The arrival of the Stone Age was announced by the assault of the Stone virus. The Iron Age began when Big Irons, as mainframe computers were called, bullied their smaller counterparts in tech labs.

All this technology was alienating people from one another. Man being a social animal, had to network. He began one-to-one communication with select people, sending long, passionate pieces to his ex-girlfriends, sharing spicy gossip with his college friends and shooting off angry rants to his colleagues. Since anything that’s passionate, spicy or ill-tempered generally increases ambient temperature, he wanted to call this phenomenon hotmail. But it turned out that the name was already taken, so he took a different route. ‘What do my ex-flames, friends and colleagues have in common?’ he asked himself. It turned out to be the two letters, ‘e’ and ‘s’. A name like ‘smail’ would remind people of a slow slug, so he named his creation email.

But emails could be sent only to people whose ids he had. He wanted to clog the cyberworld with his strong opinions on everything. It didn’t matter whether people liked it or not – he would bash on regardless. ‘Boldly clog’ became his mantra which, as with all things tech, was abbreviated to blog.  Soon, all those who fancied themselves as writers began blogging. The converse also became true - all those who blogged began fancying themselves as writers and began getting their blogs published as books. Since no one reads books, this unwise move sounded the death knell for blogs.

Suddenly people wanted something shorter - no one had the time for long-winding rants. It was a huge challenge. “If you can manage it, you should give us all a tweat,” said Elmer J Fudd, Bugs Bunny’s nemesis, obviously referring to a party without carrots. Soon 140 characters came together and created short messages that came to be known as tweets. And so life went on.

Then came the Dark Ages – power cuts. Without electricity, mails, blogs and tweets became virtually impossible. The elders went into their customary huddle, fanning themselves with their MacBook Air – there was little else they could do with it now. After days of debate, they finally emerged, tired but triumphant.

“We’ve created the perfect alternative to email, blogs and tweets,” they announced and held up three sheets of paper. “This blue one will carry your email,” they proclaimed. “Once you’ve composed your mail, just fold it, stick it and send it. This yellow one,” they held up an A5 sized rectangular sheet of thicker paper, “will carry your blog”. And this white sheet of folded paper will carry your tweets like a ticker tape message pasted on it. We have even created standard tweets for you to choose from, for specific occasions.”

That was how the inland letter, postcard and telegram came to be. And technology reigned supreme ever after.