But my opinion is that this technological age is coming to an end. Not because there are no longer any things left to invent. That is far from over. The “technological dark age” will come to pass because of the way things currently are. There are forces in our world whose sole purpose is to maintain the status quo. And technology is a threat to those forces.

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A few centuries ago, the individual played a very important role in the advancement of Science. The greatest discoveries in the last century itself have all been due to individuals. Alexander Fleming, Heisenberg, Einstein, Dirak and too many more to mention. The greatest inventions all have the names of people attached to them. The light bulb (with a carbon filament), the aeroplane, the telephone, and the printing press.

In the modern day world however, the individual no longer has this claim to greatness. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, there are not many things that are unknown at first glance. Our ancestors could look around them and find questions. How high is the sky? Why is it blue? What are stars? How the heck is lightning formed? These days, all phenomena that is apparent to us is readily explained. There are still things to be discovered to be sure. However, in order to understand what we don’t know itself requires a considerable degree of expertise. For example, I know that we’re all searching for the elusive Higgs Boson. But to really understand why it’s so important and why it’s difficult to find requires a high degree of proficiency in theoretical physics. Simply getting to starting point is difficult enough.

Secondly, most technological inventions have been spurred by laziness. We thought candles were too much of a bother so we needed the light bulb. We thought that manual calculations were too difficult to so we made the computer. Walking is a pain, and so we built the automobile. There are many more things that can make our lives easier, and in that sense, there is certainly scope of innovation. But the rules have changed.

There are plenty of good ideas that we read about every day that will substantially increase the quality of our lives. Imagine for a moment that we find out we can easily harness Solar Energy for our energy requirements. In order to make it technologically feasible, considerable research needs to go into it. This research needs money. I can imagine Oil Companies being very interested in this research. Not in order to further it, but to throttle it. Nothing could be simpler for them, than to talk to one person, buy his or her patent for their latest invention, and let it collect dust on the shelves.

Suppose a new technique of communication was discovered that didn’t require us to use AT&T’s infrastructure? You can be quite sure that AT&T will lobby hard to throttle it pretty soon. Certain technologies take time to mature even though they may not be ideal at first. It took decades for the Airplane to be accepted as a viable way of travel even after the Wright Brothers had demonstrated their feasibility.

Another example is how major corporations like the RIAA are trying to throttle p2p. The RIAA would be exceedingly happy if the entire Bittorrent technology was scrapped, along with all the good that comes of it. But why go so far? The RIAA claims that even ripping CD’s to your harddisk is illegal. They would be happy if that technology was scrapped as well.

Similarly, corporations are trying hard to ensure that DVD’s can’t be copied.

The danger is something like Mark Elivins’ High Level Equilibrium Trap which attempts to describe why China’s technological growth came to an end and missed the industrial revolution. The current situation was just so comfortable that it didn’t warrant any need for future invention.

In my opinion, we are fast heading to a technological stagnation where only incremental changes on existing technology are allowed to flourish by those who benefit from it. Large corporations have every interest to see promising technologies crash and die in order to avoid the inevitable changes that they will bring if allowed to go forward.

In many respects, it seems vastly less developed than my own country – India. In this article, I will focus on just one aspect of it. Namely how consumers are happy to let big corporations walk all over them. I realize that coming from another country gives me a unique perspective on what I see is very wrong with the economic structure here.

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Let me take the first concrete example of what I mean. In India, a consumer has complete freedom as to which telecom company they want to stay with. Say I have a handset. Based on whose service I like, I can choose to use that handset with any telecom provider I choose. And next month if I want to change over to another one, I can do so immediately. I can just replace the SIM card with that of another company. This is perfectly legal and is very much the norm.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that in America you have to buy a phone attached to a particular firm (Either AT&T or T-Mobile or whatever)! Not only that, you are obligated to pay them every month, or else your credit history is tarnished. It’s amazing. How do customers put up with such shabby treatment? It seems as if the big telecom firms are holding customers to ransom. I say shabby, because compared to India where the consumer dictates terms, in America the big corporations call the shots. You can’t switch schemes without paying a contract breaking fee etc. In other words, the corporations have you locked in.

In addition, people here are forced to pay for incoming calls. Regular Americans seem to be okay with this. In India, if a telecom company started to charge incoming calls they would be laughed out of business. As I said, you can switch over anytime you want. In fact (and this is hilarious), a particular telecom provider (Virgin actually) pays consumers for incoming calls! Yet American consumers are unaware that they’re being fleeced. And in fact, what choice do they have? All telcos are the same. Even if they were willing to switch after paying the “Contract breaking fees”, it would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Moving on, I will now proceed to demonstrate that Internet companies also take advantage of their consumers and force their whims and fancies down their throats. As of now, what is to prevent say AT&T from imposing a cap of 50 GB download per month on their consumers? In fact, proposals to limit and even monitor traffic are in the pipeline. If Americans are outraged by such activities, who cares right? What choice do they have? Shifting to Comcast is no better! Once more, honest Americans seem unaware of the fact that service providers can do whatever they want by just imposing their policies down people’s throats.

This could never happen in India. And I know why. In India, most of the infrastructure for telephone lines and the Internet (Over 95%) is owned by the government and private companies lease it from the government. The government has it’s own telephone and Internet service (Called BSNL). If at any time the major Indian telcos decide to collaborate and shove a policy down the throats of the consumers (including raising the prices to any level they want), we will just shift en masse to the government service! For the government to change it’s policies is a different issue altogether. If the government suddenly decides to charge incoming calls, they will be voted out of power in a heartbeat. Thus it will never happen.

Before coming to America, I thought that complete privatisation was a good thing. Now after coming here I see that it leads to exploitation of consumers through cartels. Having certain infrastructure in the hands of the government is a saving grace for Indian consumers who love their freedom and hate restrictions. And the first opportunity I get, I am going back. America isn’t the land of the free that I thought it was. Enslavement by corporations, and being held to ransom by having your credit history checked at every point is the norm. And I never want someone to be looking over my shoulder like that.