Changes

Last year, my professor in Public International Law asked us to submit an essay on Customary International Law. However, he wanted it hand-written. It would have made no difference to me whether it was hand-written or type-written. After all, I came from a generation where we had no computers growing up. The exception when I was in college was the typewritten essays. Most are submitted hand-written. If the paper is required to be in type written form, everyone would first complete a hand-written final draft and copy this draft using a manual typewriter (the IBM Selectrics were expensive tools that were not available to households). Drafting the paper by long hand was easier. The alternative if done directly through the typewriter would be minutes erasing the error with an ordinary eraser (we had no Typex or the liquid correcting fluid yet) or pulling out the bond paper altogether and starting all over again. The exercise would be made complicated if we wanted a copy of the paper for ourselves.

Advances in computer technology have changed all that. In doing the paper for my Public International Law subject, I found myself doing the reverse of what I used to do while in college. Instead of drafting and finalizing the paper by long hand, I found myself drafting the paper using the computer instead. Only after that did I transcribe the draft long hand.

This is just an example of changes in the way we do thing that occurred with the advent of computer technology. There are many more and changes will continue to occur as technology further improves.

However, most, if not all, of us are not very conscious of the ramifications of these changes in our everyday life. When I was still in the corporate world and we were rapidly switching to e-mails as the main mode of communicating with clients, I was very worried about paper trails to evidence transactions. The evidence, so to speak, is lodged somewhere in the hard drive and could be lost either due to a computer virus through the inadvertent or wilful use of the delete key. A system had to be designed and implemented to preserve these important documents just to be safe.

While it is impossible to anticipate the changes that will be brought about in the future by technological innovations, it would be disastrous if we do not acknowledge that these changes may affect our individual rights and duties which need to be protected or enforced at all times. We must therefore be even more vigilant in preserving these rights as the unstoppable developments in computer technology continue.