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Darko Dragić

Slaves to slaves or where did we go wrong?

Author: Darko Dragić

As a civilization, we have always strived for progress and prosperity, perfected ourselves and tried to make life easier and better.



Do you remember the time when kids who got a unit in math or got dirty playing soccer with their friends in front of the building would get spanked? It wasn't long ago when parents called their children home from the balcony, because they had to go to school early in the morning. And when Marko took the ball from Danilo, without giving it back to him, Marko's parents would give him a good beating, then he would apologize to Danilo, and tomorrow they would score goals again by assisting each other.


Those times were not so long ago that one cannot remember what it was like to play Žmurka, Ice Uncle or just sit in front of the building and fantasize about where one will go to the beach with their parents when the summer vacation comes. Although not much has passed since those days, today it is almost impossible for us to imagine them.


Older people, as well as children who have grown up now, should remember what it was like in 2006 when the World Cup was played and the football team we cheered for. They would have to remember what it looked like when we got together, then went to a cafe, sang decent fan songs, and at halftime came up with tactics to fix the game in the rest of the game. That wealth of camaraderie is gone overnight. Or has it just been replaced by a new one, called the socialization of the digital age?


I almost heard two friends of high school age saying that it used to be more difficult, but now it's much easier because everything is available. For a moment I wondered what they meant by that? Maybe because they solve every problem through google search engine which can bring them valid information? Or that they use the Internet to connect with people who live on the other side of the planet? However, it seems to me that sooner or later it ends up in the company of close friends, instead of talking to each other, surfing the Internet. Or so that you reach girls, instead of live, by constantly scrolling through social networks.


As a civilization, we have always strived for progress and prosperity, perfected ourselves and tried to make life easier and better. It was thought, we will be richer and happier. The 21st century was supposed to be a century of prosperity where everything is at our fingertips. Looking at it that way, the two friends from above are right! However, a serious mistake sneaked up on us - technology seemed to get out of control and produced, in many cases, a counter-effect. Even our daily life slips out of our hands. As an example, I cite a perhaps banal, but in reality, unfortunately, frequent case - when the mother runs out of flour in the chaos of the kitchen and asks us for help to go to the store, we persistently ignore her, not wanting to leave the computer with the thought in our head Go alone! I have more important work to do!


Beatings for dirty clothes are no longer the greatest punishment for us. It's much worse when our router crashes, or God forbid a neighbor, if we steal the internet from him. Then a terrible problem arises - how on earth to finish browsing the stories of ex-girlfriends now!


In addition to these situations from everyday life, the consumption of the Internet has an adverse effect on much more complex things, and after that society falls into big problems, the consequences of which are felt for many years to come. One such thing is education. It is the key category of every society and everything starts from it. We know that true knowledge is acquired through exhaustive and detailed study of official and relevant literature. And today, it has become common to acquire knowledge mainly by reading extremely concise material offered on the Internet. The problem here is not the form of the medium itself, but the effort to shorten and simplify every content available on it as much as possible. By reading such materials, one cannot have an insight into the essence of the matter itself, nor can one gain a broader picture of what is being learned, so learning from similar materials can be freely called rote learning.


A big problem is also the phenomenon where the publication of, for example, someone's artistic works, is left with the possibility of free commenting, in which, instead of constructive criticism, we often come across extremely simple and sickly offensive comments.


All of the above leads to the devaluing of any serious work of those individuals who do not want to agree to the new rules of the game unofficially established by the advent of new technology.


Be that as it may, we cannot ignore that we are in an age where we cannot imagine a single day without modern technology devices. We are used to them doing most of the work for us. This means the constant purchase of more and more modern devices in order to keep up with modern technology and be able to access new supermodern programs. This is how we end up in a situation where most of us, especially the less experienced ones, constantly worry about the health of the technology, while often neglecting our own, losing many of the essential skills, especially the physical ones.


All this requires a considerable expense, which leads to a feeling of power and belonging to some kind of elite, while in fact it is an ordinary illusion. More precisely, it leads us to an ever-increasing spiritual poverty, which, unfortunately, has no end in sight.