The Process of Self-discovery has now been Technologically Outsourced Akanksha Srivastava UPSC Preparation Tue, Feb 08, 2022, at ,09:39 PM Self-discovery means exploring one’s ideas, values, thoughts, preferences, opinions, etc. regarding the society in which we live. Thus it is very important to open up our minds to learn different aspects in us to find our idea. A child needs to study different subjects in school to discover his area of interest. A man learns different ways to deal with the different situations with the experiences of life. We often ask others not to interfere in our life as we want to learn from our own experiences and mistakes. We need freedom of mind to explore these ideas and experiences. Introspection use to be a very crucial tool for self-discovery as it would give a lot of time to the individual to deeply think in isolation about life and what is his purpose in life. People has so many questions and they use to leave everything in search of the answer to their questions. For example, Gautama Buddha left his kingdom at a young age to discover the truth of life and he attained enlightenment in the process. There were Rishis who used to meditate to discover themselves. Indian culture has self-discovery deeply rooted in the culture itself. For Mahatma Gandhi, the process of self-discovery was “experimenting with the truth”. Self-discovery helps people in eradication of evil practices from societies and help in doing public good at large. Hiuen Tsang who came to India in the 7th century during the reign of Harshvardhana to discover himself by gaining knowledge. In today’s world technology plays a crucial role in shaping our minds and lives. Internet is the most important technological advancement for changing human lives. We don’t have to hassle much to find out answers to our questions. We can google it out. Suppose a child has a question about how he should behave during an interview and he wants to discover the answer. Instead of exploring ideas he would rather go to the internet and search it on google or YouTube. No doubt that it has made life easier because we have an ample amount of wide range of knowledge and information available on the internet. But to what extent it is a gift depends on how we limit its interference in our lives and our development. It is not only knowledge that makes out life better but the process of acquiring that knowledge is also equally important for human development. “It’s not that we use technology, we live technology.” — Godfrey ReggioWe have to decide how we balance the technology and traditional process of learning. The process of self-discovery is related to what we think and how we value ourselves. It’s more on the process while in today’s world it has changed. We often see the aspect of virtual reality. We discover ourselves in the way we want others to see ourselves. For example, I would make such a profile on Facebook which will increase the possibility of others liking and admiring me. We represent ourselves in an ideal way that others want us to see. We interact with them in the way they want us to interact. It somehow destroys the process of self-discovery. We know what we like and what we don’t like. As a result, we often lead a life of emptiness because we cannot get something we like unless we know what we like. Socrates has said that “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Self-knowledge is the essence of what makes us human, so it’s no surprise that we’ve looked for ways to better understand ourselves for as long as there have been humans.Technology has provided us with various applications and techniques to find out our character, personality, and psychology. We just need to give some answers to the question asked on the technological platforms, and the app will give results telling us about how we are as a person how our personality is, etc. thus technology has solved this problem as well. But the question that remains is how much it is reliable and shall we depend on it completely without indulging ourselves in the process of self-discovering ourselves. We have the option to visit the world sitting in a room with the help of YouTube and blogging channels. Industries are also testing the behavioural pattern of people with the use of online aptitude tests. Errors of spelling are also getting corrected by the use of technology. Technology has changed the social behaviour of people. The cohesiveness of a joint family is getting depleted day by day. Technology plays role in the engagement and disengagement with the social sites followed by the process of self-discovery. There is one more very important which is advancement of technology that is Artificial Intelligence which we can call as future of self-discovery. There are AI personal assistants with which we will be interacting in a way the previous generation could not have imagined. It is true that self-discovery is a very critical and crucial part of human growth and development and getting the help of technology in the process would help in making people happy. But there is another side of the coin which is destroying the human self-discovery process as a whole as people are living the technology and forgetting the core of their existence. However, technological advancements, if it seen as source of knowledge and not a source of dependency for conveniences, it leads to an enriching process of self discovery.