I HAVE recently had to have a comprehensive upgrade of my computer system.

In the year 2000 I acquired what was then a fully up-to-date integrated suite of computer applications, which I have since watched, with some dismay, gradually recede from being state-of-the-art to all-but-obsolescent.

Granted that this may be attributable partly to “built-in-obsolescence”, yet there is no doubt that it is attributable also to the relentless march of technology, which in only a few decades has revolutionised our lives with all kinds of innovations that previously we could only dream of: instantaneous searches; video conferencing; live television from around the world; online shopping; remote working; route-planning; virtual reality; the world at one’s fingertips; the ability to fly as on a magic carpet to see where someone lives; access to a whole library of books; the list goes on and on – and still the technology is progressing at an exponential rate.

In a word, the new technology has, as never before, reduced this planet to a single interconnected global village: yet how woefully are the moral and spiritual dimensions of man’s progress, that should accompany and harness this explosion of technology, lagging behind!

Any observer of the world today might be excused for feeling that we have scarcely moved on since the time of the Congress of Vienna.

In the view of Bahá’ís, all these wondrous technical inventions and discoveries are the sign that mankind has, although unwittingly, perhaps even unwillingly, entered ineluctably upon a new phase in its development – a phase encapsulated by Bahá’u’lláh’s affirmation, uttered more than a century ago: “The world is one country, and mankind its citizens.”

Mark Hellaby

Skipton Bahá’í Group