Role of Technology in creating a balance between stability and growth

Growth and stability are considered as the complementary of each other. We can not achieve 100% growth and 100% stability at the same time. For example, we can not expect a very stable environment in an industrial area or a top tier heavy industry with a pure atmosphere. We find a common assumption that technology leads to growth compromising stability. But in my point, it is not true. Rather it is a continuous effort to provide a balance between growth and stability.

As a lover of mathematics and computer science, I can compare technology similar to steps followed in the Newton-Raphson method or binary search. Those methods are used to find the accurate result or best approximation by following some steps forward and some steps backward. For example, suppose we have to find 100 in a sequence of numbers from 1 to 1000 in which we can make a random forward or backward jump. Suppose we start from 1, since 100 is ahead of 1 we jump to the high end and unfortunately find ourselves at 700, again to reach 100 we jump backward and reach some point below 100 and follow the same process. 

Similarly, let’s take a real-life example of technology in the agriculture sector. In initial days there was no chemical fertilizer, we are really producing crops with no impact on soil. Later we feel that that was not sufficient to satisfy our needs. Again we moved one step forward and started using chemical fertilizer. With this use, we were definitely able to satisfy our food requirement, but at the expense we polluted the quality of the soil heavily. At that time we felt that we can move one step backward, instead of complete chemical we can use a mix of chemical and organic fertilizer to create a balance between the soil quality and food need. In this way, we can see technology playing an excellent role in balancing between growth and stability.

But truly speaking technology is not a very simple two or three steps process to achieve this kind of balance. Rather it is a never-ending process but a useful one. Research is still going on for decades to achieve movement of vehicle with minimum pollution and maximum speed, the best way to design a computer to achieve maximum speed with minimum memory cost, so and so on.

Even in today's world, because of technology some people are able to work even in a lockdown situation. It creates a medium for learning for many. As a conclusion, I feel that we should never blame technology for instability, at the same time we should not break the inherent balancing factor resides within technology. We should analyze how much time we should use a computer, how much time we spend on mobile to retain the inherent balance of technology. Truly speaking it can be neither all nor none. That balance may not be perfect in the initial days. However, we can learn to reach the best approximation with our experience like the way technology is learning.