Daily Times

Hydrogels are three-dimensional water-swollen polymeric materials that exist naturally in the form of collagen or gelatin. They can also be made synthetically. The everyday jelly made with custard at home is an example of the hydrogel. The seemingly innocuous hydrogel now has very diverse and sophisticated usage.

Hydrogels are used in a wide range of biomedical applications, including drug delivery, regenerative medicine, and sensing. Owing to their tunability, biocompatibility, and tissue-like mechanical properties, they are promising candidates for realizing biologically-integrated devices. These are some very positive and useful applications of this technology. However, there is a very frightening application in the test stage.

Hydrogel and an Analytic particle in its inside are now being tested on humans for surveillance and preventive policing.

American Osteopath Dr Carrie Madej says it is to spy on the experimental population group. The purpose is to gather data from biosensors and accumulate it on a supercomputer in the AI program. The supercomputer will analyze if you are a good or bad person. If you are not a good person as per their narrative, then you get reprimanded. The exact methodology of the reprimand has not been specified. However, if you are locked out of the system then access to many things can be blocked.

All this sounds like some science fiction film with a far-fetched plot, which we watch for two hours to be immersed in a futuristic world where the powers that be control the population with the frightening use of technology. It sounds like a 2023 version of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. However, it is not dystopian fiction or sci-fi fantasy. These are very real developments already taking place in our world.

Our smartphones listen to our conversations and target advertisements to us across user platforms.

Surveillance is a frightening reality in today’s world. Our smartphones listen to our conversations and target advertisements to us across user platforms. We have all experienced seeing advertisements for things we talked about in the presence of our smartphone or something we searched on Google. However, surveillance has gone much further and is now connecting humans to a national database. This is happening in many African countries.

Nigeria is among dozens of African countries including Ghana, Egypt and Kenya with SIM registration laws that authorities say are necessary for security purposes, but digital rights experts in those countries say, it increases surveillance and hurts privacy.

Nigeria has been rolling out 11-digit electronic national identity cards for almost a decade, which record an individual’s personal and biometric data, including fingerprints and photos.

The National Identity Number (NIN) is required to open a bank account, apply for a driver’s license, vote, get health insurance, and file tax returns. Not registering means being locked out of the system and being deprived of access to these crucial services.

Last year about 73 million – more than a third of the 198 million in Nigeria – were barred from making outgoing calls because they have not been registered in the national digital identity database.

Nigeria is part of the Bill Gates program. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has been struggling to get the economy on its feet and stamp out the persistent threat of the Islamist group Boko Haram in the northeast. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending $ 1.6 billion on Nigeria’s health sector. They have been successful in eradicating polio from northeastern Nigeria. Nigeria’s political and socio-economic landscape is very similar to Pakistan with corruption, poverty, high birth rates, poor educational facilities and militant political Islam fighting the state.

Due to his clout gained through humanitarian assistance, Bill Gates is presently testing the surveillance network in Nigeria. The American public is not particularly concerned because they do not see it affecting their own lives. However, Bill Gates said that once the system was perfected there then all developed nations would get this. It is not just Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, the UN and Davos, all are saying that by 2027 every human on this planet will be connected via wifi.

As Pakistan plunges deeper into chaos due to the volatile political situation, we are not in sync with the rest of the world. Bangladesh and India have caught up with the twenty-first century while we are living like it is still 1960.

Pakistan needs to get up to speed about the way the world is rapidly changing and we need to be proactive when it comes to technology and its use by the state, foreign foundations and tech giants.

We lack able leadership hence academia and public intellectuals must rise to take charge and take the initiative to provide the state with a proposal for a framework. If we fail to do so, then we would be at the mercy of outsiders who can never have our best interests at heart.

The Saylani Foundation has done commendable work in the field of Information Communication Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology. Moulana Abdul Bashir Farooqi, the founder of Saylani Trust even proposed to the state to develop the high-tech industrial sector in Pakistan with the manufacturing of laptops and their potential export. However, the absence of state patronage and the lack of academia-industry linkages prevented Pakistan from taking this much-needed leap in technology.

We are living in times where we need to shape up to face the challenges of the technology-driven world we are living in.

The writer is an independent researcher, author and columnist. She can be reached at aliya1924@gmail.com