Rickshaws that goes Tech Tech….

It’s always amazing how technology has integrated itself into the fabric of our everyday, ordinary lives. While the news continues to show a crippling, backward society, the ground reality doesn’t quite match. March through any street at random, and you’ll find computer peripherals, accessories and expertise available to reinstall your machine or redo your networking. That’s in addition to the panshop and the pharmacy. It could be a Sunday or the wee hours of the morning, if you have the damaged model for them to follow, the average Karim engineer  in the Electronics Market in Saddar, Karachi, will build you what you need, from scratch.

As Pakistanis, we probably don’t have enough niceties in our vocabulary to accurately express just how awesomely technology has weaved into our lives. It’s flowed out of the isolated silos of engineering schools and computer marts, and spilled everywhere. Anyone who can dream, has one foot resting on a motherboard somewhere. We’re THAT connected. And I haven’t even started talking about mobile connectivity yet. We’ll leave that for another day.

A couple of years ago, I had traveled with the P@SHA delegation to NASSCOM in Mumbai, India. As forgetful as I am, I had left my nifty optical mouse behind. I consoled myself that since I was going to the regional capital of IT, I’d be able to find enough optical mouse gadgets to last me a lifetime. I asked the rickie to stop at random shops that weren’t computer shops… I was in Mumbai for 13 days. I found myself an overpriced traveler, A4Tech mouse on day 7.

We might criticize that we have no documented evidence of how far and widely technology is impacting our society, but where I live, I can find DDR RAM at the stationary shop. Whether or not the small ration dukaan has sugar or wheat, he will always have a superfluous stock of pre-paid phone cards. The smallest photocopy shop can offer to make me a thousand copies of whatever I send them as an email attachment. And I can spot Rickshaws that go Tech Tech.