On the Spot: Smart World - Tech Monks

Today, more people have a mobile phone than access to clean water. This film explores how the telecommunication buzz changed the way of life in different traditional communities around the globe from a tribe in the rainforest where the first mobile phones arrived recently, to the biggest slum of India, to the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the Himalayaswhere young monks are tempted to post on Instagram instead of attending their meditation class. The episode filmed in Dharamshala gives a rare insight to the tech perspective of a monk’s life and reflects the everyday challenges of smart technology all of us face in the modern world. The programme also introduces the masterminds behind the Tibetan dictionary application which was developed by monks over the past six years - with the blessing and financial support of the Dalai Lama, who also appears in the film for a short interview. While His Holiness supports the application to save Tibetan culture for the digital world, he often asks monks how much time they spend on their smartphones and how much time they spend meditating. The film is about the co-existence of technology and Tibetan Buddhism in the 21st century.