One common complaint is that the young generation today is hooked on online screens and they have turned robotic, shallow and incapable of emotional attachment. This general labelling may have exceptions but it is mostly true. However the question that is hardly asked, is the young ones solely to blame for this? They have been caught in the whirlwind of technology that has swept the world out of its feet. It is indeed difficult to stay immune to the aggressive technological march ahead.
Judicious and controlled use of technology can, however, reverse the picture for unprecedented benefit. Advanced and all comprehensive technologies have always knocked at the doors of this technologically backward nation. But never before did it gatecrash like it has done of late with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) now about to take over from the rest. When ChatGPT is answering questions on any subject and even learning to venture into less known and uncharted territories of knowledge, there may be yet another shift in the smartphone habit. Machine learning has already reached a stage where computer is doing the creative exercises like essays for students' homework, articles for writers, songs for composers and musicians and paintings for artists. But can the AI-equipped machine or robot feel like a human being or experience emotional exuberance or breakdown?
Whatever may be the range and scope of advanced technologies including the much vaunted AI, the question that remains unanswered is the responsibility of the complaining older generation in the technological transition. People with their mooring firmly attached to tradition and culture are unlikely to lose their ways into wilderness. Has Bangladesh's first generation of educated class been able to consolidate its socio-cultural gains comparable to that of the economic?
Divorced from reality and marked with exclusivity, the country's education failed miserably. In terms of fine arts and drama ---not cinema---the country's achievement was impressive right from the beginning. But this was confined to an exclusive class most in the two large urban centres. It still is. Only lately has cinema started to leave its footprints courtesy of a few talented young directors. In the land of Bauls and mystics, however, little has been added to other branches of music with universal appeal.
However, where the omission has been most glaring is in literature and more particularly maintaining the passion for reading books as a national pastime. Even in the colonial British and Pakistani time, public and even private libraries were a centre of attraction for people of all ages. Not only in towns and cities but also in villages libraries were well maintained in order to satisfy the thirst for knowledge. That tradition was snapping first with the introduction of education focusing on scoring high in examinations only. It can be observed that high scores or GPA 5 or other higher grades have proved of little use when it comes to contribution to science and technology or other creative fields.
The first generation chased money frantically ignoring their role to guide their wards. Instead, it left young learners to the care of technically perfect and commercially profitable coaching centres or tutors. The learners blindly followed the sure recipe for success at the cost of knowledge. Villagers with no such facilities and money to buy their wards the short-cut success lagged behind. Of late they have started following suit but for reasons understandable, there is a dearth of the men with the magic wand.
The first generation has forgotten the virtue of reading books and so has it to inculcate it in the minds of their children. The result has been disastrous. It was a shame that the nation which once claimed the credit of launching a little magazine movement, gradually withdrew from such regular literary exercises? What was a rich vein of literary works in the sixties with a number of little magazines contributing to creation of appreciative minds as well as providing a platform for budding writers dried up in the post-independent Bangladesh. That was the greatest loss the nation had to sustain in terms of taste for literature. If little magazines with their innovative style and probing perception shapes minds and bring about changes in collective outlooks, literary magazines give those a consolidated shape and urge for higher mental pursuit. This is where the country has failed most of all and the nation is counting heavy losses. Aberrations and uncultured mentality now get the better of sophistication and refinement of personality.
It is sad that the nation cannot produce a magazine like the Desh published from Kolkata. There are more little magazines and other periodicals published in West Bengal, many of which are doing quite well. This means they have their readership. Here we need to think how a magazine like Bichitra could not survive.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
