Where are we heading, with the ascent of AI?

They say AI will double its capability every six months. 

That is ten doublings in five years, which is a thousand times more capability than what exists today in just five years from now. 

Human beings, on the other hand, evolve at "evolutionary" speed. We took several million years to evolve from ape to homo sapiens. 

The human brain has evolved to cope with stress. It has also evolved to survive in the face of too much stress, it just shuts down, and the human being that the brain belongs to, simply "drops out". 

We are seeing that phenomenon already happening among the young. Tang Ping ( lying flat) and Bai Lan ( letting it rot) are recognised epidemics among Chinese youth, for example. 

It is very scary even to think about where the world is heading... 

The future of campus education

There is a lot buzz being generated on several foreign universities being allowed to open their campus in India. 

All this at a time when the University system itself is becoming redundant. 

When there was no internet, it made sense to go to a physical place to get educated. 

When there was no way to judge competence, it made sense for employers to depend on a "label" of a degree from a prestigious university. 

Now information is free. Streamed home. 

YouTube has the best courses on any subject. 

You want "credentials"? There are agencies to certify that. That can be unbundled.

Similarly, group interaction and peer networking? Why do I need to pay 100k dollars a year for that? That can be unbundled too. 

All I need to do is sit myself down at home, and I can become proficient in any subject in the world, including rocketry and nuclear physics. 

Why are these universities required? Because students are lazy, and their parents are paying. They would much rather not study and get a certificate, which the world thinks is worth something, than actually study. 

I have a "prestigious" management degree and the world thinks I learnt something on campus, they are overawed by it. Personally, I don't think I can credit any one place or institution for my learning - whatever I have learnt has been through a process of osmosis - I don't even remember working for it - from people around me and things that I did. 

Going forward, no company or employer is going to care about that piece of paper called a degree. They have all the tools to evaluate you themselves, and they don't care how you acquired that knowledge. 

Forget university, it is necessary to "home school" your kids even at school level, for a host of reasons.

The MBA is dead

The MBA is no longer so great an option. About a quarter of the class of elite MBA colleges in the US have not found placements in the last couple of years. 

Actually, MBA stopped being a great option quite a while ago. Let's look at it from the point of view of (a) placement, and (b) skills. 

When it comes to placement, the conventional wisdom is that recruiting from a better college will guarantee you a better outcome. That was always a lazy person's option, what prevented the companies from casting the net wider? But that involves two things. (1) Doing a lot of work identifying the right candidates. Since when have you seen any HR person who does real work? I have yet to see one. (2) It's a risk. If you recruit from IIT or IIM, no one will blame you. Which person in corporate wants to take risk? In my experience, no one. Only entrepreneurs take risks. 

Many parallel developments are combining to make the MBA obsolete. Especially the full time ones. Some of these factors do not apply to part time MBAs which may still retain some value. 

1. Just like the Civil Services Babu was a go between, from British times,  between the masters and the larger population, the MBA served as a buffer between the capitalist class and the other educated labour. With democratisation of information, free access to resources, internet, mobile, etc., all kinds of dalals or in betweens are losing out. 

2. What skills does the MBA bring to the table? Nothing that the same person in the same position without the MBA degree could not have done. 

3. Demand for all "general" skills will die out. I still need the barber for my haircut, but why do I need an MBA? Just think, if you are an entrepreneur, why would you want to recruit an MBA? Cobbler, barber, cook, driver - I understand what skill they have, that they have trained for. What skill does an MBA have? The MBA course in any college is an artificially assembled hodge podge of impressive looking curricula, after all the colleges have to survive. They never taught anyone much. 

The MBA never had a right to exist. I mean, what exactly is "management" and how do you "teach" it? It's just babudom in a different guise, and in the new world, all kinds of babudom are under threat. 

Forget MBA. If you are a youngster thinking about what to do in life, think about this. The gourmet cook is always sought after. The world values her skills and she actually does something useful. What skill do you bring to the table, and in what way can you add value?

Slowly, we are losing the ability to cope

 

Times are such that everyone wants to be "safe", and eliminate all risk from their lives. 

There is a fundamental flaw in this kind of approach. Everything that you do has a consequence or reaction, and going to any one extreme will result in unforeseen outcomes. 

Let's take a few examples. 

In any gated community in Bangalore today, there are security systems and apps so that no one enters without prior approval. The place is kept insulated from any outside influence. Things have come to such a pass that people panic if someone rings their doorbell. Children cycle on the podium which is a vehicle free zone, on bicycles with extra wheels so that they don't fall, wearing helmets and knee pads! 

How well adjusted will the children growing up in this environment be, and how will they cope with the outside world tomorrow? Forget children, I see a reluctance among adults staying in these communities to cope with the world outside. Slowly, we are losing the ability to cope. 

Vaccines are taken for every flu, with annual "updates". Now vaccines, like every drug, have side effects. In the case of vaccines, the vaccine itself is a shitload of poisons being dumped directly into your bloodstream. We think this will keep us "safe"! What is actually happening is, we are losing our natural immunity, every vax we take weakens it, and we are reaching a state where we are convinced that a common cold is a deadly illness to run away from. We are weakening by the day, and we are slowly losing the ability to cope. 

Parents get paranoid if their children are missing for ten minutes or step out of the gated enclave. Contrast this with the way we grew up, our parents didn't even know where we were at any time, and there were no phones then. "Oh no," you say, "the world is much more dangerous now... etc etc". Sure. Maybe. I don't know. But I do know this. That world  is the world our children are going to step into. If the animal that has been raised in a zoo is suddenly released into the wild, it goes and gets itself killed. Our children are slowly losing their ability to cope. 

Most parents do not want their children to drive a motorbike, they directly want to graduate them to cars. Reason? Motorbikes are not safe. Sure, I can't dispute that, but can you really insulate yourself and your children from all the risk out there? 

Slowly, we are losing the ability to cope. We are now reaching a stage where even the normal problems of day to day life seem like unsurmountable challenges. We are beset by germs from all sides. Thieves are forever ready to break into our homes.  There is danger in the air! Safety, we need to be conscious of safety! There is danger all around. 

See, I told you, we need to be careful. Vigilant. Forever on guard. Fearful. 

There you go. That state of mind is a self fulfilling prophecy.

If I write a book on Arjuna

If I write a book on Arjuna for today's youngsters, this is the way my introductory chapter would flow...

This Arjuna dude, he was a real macho dude who could kick ass big-time. Maan oh Maan, what a dude! 

And then they get cheated of their kingdom, you know how it is. Greedy cousins, evil king and all. 

They had a common wife, noe check that out! And they had several individual wives, at least  Arjuna did. He used to bed women wherever he went! Crazy shit, right!  Even divine damsels used to fall for him, and he refused one of them! Can you imagine that? No shit maan, I am telling it to you like it is! 

And then he fights this great war. Arrows flying all over the place, and dudes like Arjuna, there were a few others also, they were called Maharathis meaning Real Kick-ass Dudes, knew some divine weapon stuff, the stuff that goes ka boom when you chant a mantra! You know, mantras are real potent Maan, I mean they could bring the gods down and make them do stuff for you. In fact, Arjuna was born with the help of one such mantra. His dad was king of the gods, ruler of heaven. Dig that maan, it's crazy stuff right?!

Generative AI

This is extremely scary. 

Computers exploded on the scene after the 90's. That's well within our adult lifetime, thirty years back. Mobile phones, internet, high speed computing, connectivity, ditto.

Coders were in high demand, they still are presumably. 

But now the computer is going to write all the code, generate all the music, write all the articles, suggest all the remedies, and pretty much do everything that we humans prided ourselves in doing. It's called generative AI. 

What is the skill required in this new era from those who operate the computers? Prompt engineering! Like "delivery partners", a fancy term to glamorise a humdrum occupation. 

Prompt engineering is the skill of how to ask questions to the computer. The computer knows all the answers, the computer is God, the computer will answer you properly provided you ask nicely. Presumably, prostrating or kneeling down in front of it with hands folded while asking the question. 

Meanwhile, they will develop another computer, or Generative AI engine, to ask the right questions. 

Then this computer will talk to that computer. And together, between them, they will have all the questions and all the answers. 

We will be on our knees in front of the  computer, begging it to tell us the answers. 

The future awaits.

In the train from Bangalore to Coimbatore, I am reading this "in train"  magazine placed on the rack near the seat.

The Railways are learning! The articles are typical photo heavy shallow stuff, and they are liberally peppered with words like biodiversity, sustainability, responsible tourism, carbon neutral, etc. 

Meanwhile, vendors keep passing selling chai, samosa, chikki , etc.

India is always a great study in bridging contrasts and blending diverse things into one sensory heavy experience. 

I am now waiting for sustainability and ecological responsibility brochures next time I pass through Dharavi. We are beating the goras at their own game...

Hi, I am Hanuman

AI is disrupting everything. Most jobs will be rendered obsolete. 

How to then survive in the new normal?

Chill, do nothing, get universal basic income from the government. Food will be available, transportation costs will be close to zero, and  data and communication costs will be close to zero.  But "amotivational syndrome" will increase. Everyone will be a bundle of insecurities complexes, phobias, manias, with fluid identities and no anchors . 

So, you will  immerse yourself in virtual reality games on the web. I plan to be Hanuman in that  massively multiplayer online world. 

Or, you can  take up jobs that AI cannot disrupt. 

 Cook. Barber. Senior Citizen companion. Dog walker.  Sounds very exciting no? 

Sports trainer is no good, Hanuman is not interested in playing badminton. 

Sex worker is an option but the person immersed in the online world will have only enough libido to spare for his avatar, in real life they won't be interested in sex. In any case, they will have lifelike sex toys with a million possible simulations. And given that they don't know what their identity is, they will be very confused about what kind of sex they want. And whatever they do, they will feel guilty about, they will be nervous wrecks. So they will just get back to being Superman or Wonder Woman in the online world. 

You can fall into one of those categories. 

Or, you can figure out how to add value. Do something that the AI cannot do. 

Any formal degree that you pursue may be obsolete by the time you finish the course. 

All universities will be shut. Learning will be free. You can learn advanced nuclear physics sitting at home even today at close to zero cost.  

But you will not have the motivation to learn. You cannot even bear to face the real world. 

So you get back to being Batman in your online Avatar. But  a Batman with a difference. A biologically male Batman, who gender identifies as a trans fluid binary androgyne, with the pronouns Theybe and Theynuts. Your avatar will be fighting real battles in that world, like filing a sexual harrasment case against Wonder Woman who is actually a half male quarter female searching for the right identity to fill the missing quarter in theythem's sexual identity. 

The real world outside with all its stresses like having to talk to people, real people, will be too horrible to contemplate. 

But wait, I am falling into the same trap that this generation is prone to, what do you mean "real world". I am Hanuman and my real world lies elsewhere. 

Let me get back into my world. Bye!

Living in a Bubble

The world we are inhabiting increasingly throws our own reflection back to us. 

We only meet people that are like us, both physically and virtually. At work, we mix with people who are forced into one mold, due to an all-encompassing oppressive cloud that dictates what is acceptable and what is not. At home, we stay in gated communities choosing neighbors who are just like us in every respect, and visit malls and shopping centers where we are insulated from the "other" crowd. We don't allow our children to step out of the confines of the comfortable, and get paranoid if they step out of the gates that we have built around them.

We leave our data trails everywhere. Big Data tracks us on the cloud. It knows what we do, where we go every moment of the day, what we buy, whom we meet, whom we talk to, when we are scheduled to travel, what we read, and detects a lot of patterns in our own behavior that we are not aware of ourselves. It tracks us online, and notes what kind of articles we read, what kind of friends receive our 'likes', what opinions we have, what prejudices we feed on, and pretty much knows what we think better than we do ourselves. 

And then the cloud feeds it back to us. It knows what we like, and throws up search results that are in conformance with our views. It shows us posts or feeds that confirm to our biases. 

The media and online feeds also do another thing. Everything is driven by metrics nowadays and readership and popularity are good metrics to get ad revenues. Since we don't like to pay for what we consume, the ones who do, like the ad agencies, or the ones who want to manipulate us, like the sellers, get to dictate what we consume. They know more about us than we do ourselves and they control the purse strings. So we are in the same position that the two-year old is when her mother is trying to feed her. The mother distracts her with irrelevant nonsense and keeps stuffing her with what she thinks is good for the baby. The baby of course is dumb - mummy knows best.

The result of all this is that we live in a comforting bubble that is nothing but a reflection of our own biases and a reiteration of all that we like. We are surrounding ourselves in a protective cocoon that is comforting in its feeling of security. We are in an echo chamber where what we hear is only our own voice bouncing back to us. We are not even exposed to those things that are different from us.

Is this the reality that we want to build for ourselves? Speaking for myself, I don't like the version of myself that I see developing inside this cocoon. Some of the things that we can do to safeguard ourselves are: 

Use only cash for shopping. Avoid leaving electronic trails.

Turn location off on our phones.

Trawl the bazaars and high streets, not only the malls.

Travel by bus, and sleeper class train. The car is a big insulator against outside influence.

Eat street food.

Walk out of our gated communities sometimes.

Read good magazines. Their content is not customized for us. 

Join different hobby and interest groups, and not just virtually. Meet people who are different from us.

That's just a random list, but you get the idea!

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Posted By Dinesh Gopalan to Personal Finance, Investments, and other things at 1/02/2015 08:37:00 AM

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Posted By Dinesh Gopalan to Personal Finance, Investments, and other things at 1/02/2015 08:45:00 AM

Where technology is converging

This remarkable new product by Amazon (link at the end of the article) raises several interesting thoughts.

 

Starting with Charles Babbage's analytical engine, the world has moved rapidly.  We learnt to convert things to binary, and represent the binary bits in the form of vacuum tubes. Then we learnt how to use them to convey simple instructions through a language which could codify algorithmic thinking. We learnt to think and represent our ideas in algorithms, representing them in simple paths that involved yes/no, if/then/else, and 'do/until' kind of language.  We started communicating  with the machines through punch cards, then with low- level languages, then developed high-level languages with compilers and interpreters to translate them into computerese. Then came GUI's and the mouse, and all we have to do now is point, click and drag. The storage capacity on the computer and the processers themselves evolved at a furious pace, giving rise to the famous Moore's law, a pace that had never been seen in the world before. Computing power is doubling roughly every two years, and costs are halving, which effect has been seen over several cycles - given the power of compounding, the gains in just a few decades are nothing short of miraculous.

 

In parallel, telecommunication technology is growing at a scorching pace. More and more data are now being transported more and more distances, at a faster and faster pace. This enables the linking of all knowledge in the world into one huge source of information and the capability to handle auditory and visual media which require more number of  bits to store.

 

The gains in processing speed and storage capacity look likely to continue; as the current materials used reach their limits due to the laws of physics, newer materials are being found; from using electricity for carrying information, experiments are on to use light itself, and so on. The linking of the whole world is continuing apace, with the same pipes carrying ever-higher loads, and almost everything being linked wirelessly. 3D printing is evolving to such an extent that in a few years, manufacturing anything will involve downloading the design, customizing it, and feeding it into your printer.

 

In all this progress in computing, there were two big barriers - the first was one of battery life and battery size, and the second was how to interact with the computer. Even now interaction is largely through an interface like typing which has to be fed in, and the output of the computer is through something like a screen which has to be read out. The battery is still a problem, but the interface world is changing fast. Computers are being equipped with sensors to hear what we say, and natural language processors to interpret them. AI algorithms are giving them the ability to learn from their own past, and modify their behaviors depending on the context. They are becoming more and more like humans, in the sense that they can take cues from the environment through their senses of touching, hearing, and seeing. Smelling and tasting are still some distance away; but the evolution of 4D and 7D movies is a sign of things to come - smells and taste are also being digitized and broken down into bit sized pieces, capable of being transported, interpreted and manipulated.  The human sense organs are limited to particular spectrums - what we see, for example, is not the same as what a fly sees; what we hear is not the same as a bat; and what we smell is not the same as a dog. We operate within a limited band of spectrum for each of our senses; a constraint that the computer does not have. The computer's inputs will be as good as the range of instruments we provide it with.   Couple this with the fact that it has an infinite storage and retrieval capacity, along with the entire world's information available for immediate retrieval, and you are looking at a superhuman being slowly taking shape.

As we speak, drones are raining death in Afghanistan, controlled by someone playing video games at the Pentagon. Other drones, which can attack in swarms, communicating with each other and deciding attack strategies  without any human intervention, are already a reality. Robot security guards are being deployed at the Microsoft campus in the US, and there are robot shop assistants in Japan like this one:

 

 

 

Cars are driving themselves, and they are safer than human drivers.  The machines can already beat the best grandmasters at chess. The days of robots like Endhiran (from the Tamil movie of the same name) are not far away.

Meanwhile, as machines are getting smarter and smarter, we humans are getting dumber and dumber. Our attention spans are getting shorter, our physical bodies are weakening and getting obese at the same time, and we are stopping to think for ourselves.

Humankind is doomed. The 'Amazon Echo' device shown below is just a precursor of things to come.  (link:      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkOCeAtKHIc )

The new Tesla and all that it portends...

Tesla seems to be revolutionizing not just the manufacturing ( check out the link: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/sent%3A+tesla/14896d170df9d892?projector=1 ) but other aspects like the basic concept of a car itself.  The article is attached below. The re-conceptualization of the car can in itself be celebrated as the advance of technology, but the larger trends are disturbing:

Soon all the roads'll be driverless roads,

and all the cars'll move without wheels;

You need one, it will be at your door,

Punch where you want to go, and sleep!

They uplink themselves to the Cloud,

Part of the 'net of everything;

You get into one, punch whither bound,

put on your music, and go to sleep!

It knows every pothole on the road,

and where it's jammed, and where it's choked;

It knows the freeways and the side-roads,

Ignoring you, it talks to the Cloud!

No more traffic violations,

and no more mistakes that drivers make;

Driven to and fro by automations,

One more fun thing in life is dead!

We play our games more and more online,

to watchers who cheer us, reclined;

Befriend the ghosts residing inside

our Computers, linked to Cloud Nine!

Our work is more and more virtual,

So is play, love and friendships;

No need to walk, bend, sweat or lift,

From the day we're born, till we're no more!

dinesh

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/81249.html

OPINION Detroit's Stupid Plan to Kill Tesla

In watching the illicit attempts of dealers and U.S. auto companies to try to kill Tesla, I have to think they are all wrongheaded. I don't drive a Tesla, but this kind of thing makes me really mad because it is so incredibly stupid.

Tesla is as much an idea as it is a company -- and an idea that should be flowing through the car industry anyway, because the world is changing. The way we buy most things is changing, and firms that try to fight waves like this typically find themselves out of business. I don't think the U.S. government will bail out the auto industry a second time.

This is my not-too-subtle way of saying that the market will move to Tesla's model -- the question is whether U.S. car companies will ride this wave or be buried by it.

Change Is in the Air

All markets are in the process of changing, from how we pay for things -- which largely had shifted from cash to credit and debit cards and now is shifting again to near field communications services like Apple Pay -- to how we buy them, shifting from stores like Sears to online retailers like Amazon.

It certainly could be argued that banks should be leading the charge to a different and far-safer payment method rather than a technology company, and that catalog companies like Sears should have done the online thing right before Amazon figured it out, but folks just don't like to learn to do things differently. You can almost hear the old codger executive say, "If it was good enough for my pappy and grandpappy, it is good enough for me," a few months before a firm goes out of business.

We exist in a world of change, and successful companies either learn to change with the world, or they receive the pleasures of early retirement or unplanned unemployment, and the U.S. auto industry has just missed that direr outcome several times in the last decade. You'd think auto companies would learn, but apparently they don't want to.

The Tesla Model

Tesla isn't just about the car, which is cool -- it is as much about the model, which is based solidly on how Apple brings things to market. The reason Tesla can do this is that the car, while looking a lot like other cars, is very different underneath. It has few moving parts, being mostly solid state, and the keystone feature is a large screen tablet-like interface that sits between the seats.

Because it is solid state, it doesn't need service often -- and because it is modular, it often can be repaired easily in the field or, like a laptop or tablet, sent to a centralized service facility for repair. Rather than you driving to a dealer to wait in line and waste half a day, Tesla drives a loaner to you and then swaps it back. (It will sell you the loaner for a slight upcharge if you'd rather keep it).

Even updates don't require a trip to a service facility because, like wireless devices, the car is always connected and tied to a cloud service that handles that part. It isn't just different -- it is like most of the devices that currently are causing upheaval in the technology market. That means this is a trend in much the same way as moving from horses to cars, or gas to electricity.

The Tesla is a big electronic appliance. It is solid state and very reliable, and much of its value actually comes from the cloud services it is connected to and the apps it runs. If Apple were to make a car, it would be a Tesla.

As a result, its move to self-driving appears far more quickly than similar moves from other companies, and given that self-driving cars have to be connected not only to some kind of centralized service but also to each other, the overall solution looks more like something you'd see in a high-technology product than in a typical car.

The thing is, to compete, all cars will need to evolve to become more like Tesla's, and dealerships simply won't be needed unless the industry embraces and changes the model.

Test drives likely will ensure that some kind of storefront will be needed. I expect we'll evolve away from brand-only stores to multibrand stores, with manufacturers sharing a footprint to keep costs down in low-volume regions. However, there is no doubt in my mind that this is the future, because cars have to become more like the Tesla, and the Tesla car forces a very different sales and service model.

Tesla's Problem Is the US Car Industry's Problem

Tesla's problem isn't that its model doesn't work. It works very well, which is why we are up to our armpits in expensive Tesla cars where I live. The problem is that there is an impressive number of politicians who own dealerships, and they don't want to lose their businesses.

I get that, but using political power to lock out Tesla is not just wrongheaded -- it should be illegal. Change is coming, regardless. With the latest law being passed in Michigan, Tesla appears banned from the Detroit auto show, which is just nuts -- because, gee I don't know, it basically makes the whole U.S. auto industry look stupidly blind.

Improving on Tesla

Now the Tesla S is a modular car, and you could certainly see how a dealership model could be made to work at scale. You build the basic cars, but given they are modular, the dealer then modifies them to order, swapping in and out the components, and the software can be smart enough to automatically scan and enable anything the system has to be connected.

Buyers can come back for upgrades as needed. As a buyer, you'd never again have to regret not getting something up front, and dealers could have upgrade specials, bringing you back in regularly to buy more stuff. That would help even out their revenue stream and offset their loss of regular service revenue as cars become more solid state.

They even could use wraps to change the color of cars, which would be designed to be wrapped more easily. Want a different color? For a relatively low fee, you can get that, stripes, or even a picture of your puppy on the vehicle.

Rather than fighting Tesla while the auto industry gets buried in recalls, why not learn from it and create something better that embraces the dealer model? Rather than denying choice, provide a better one. The outcome should be far more survivable, because the market is moving there, whether we like it or not. Self-driving cars, which basically will be rolling supercomputers, will require this change.

Wrapping Up: Pivotal Moments

In every industry, there are pivotal moments when influential people decide to go one way or another, and the industry changes forever. I think the auto industry has reached the moment when it can decide either to embrace the future and become something better, or fight the future and be crushed by it. I'm afraid the industry is making the wrong choice, and I doubt it will get another government bailout.

You don't support Tesla just because you like the car, you support it because it represents the future of automobiles. If we want the auto industry to survive in the U.S., we need to be on that wagon -- not under it. 

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Rob Enderle is a TechNewsWorld columnist and the principal analyst for the Enderle Group, a consultancy that focuses on personal technology products and trends. You can connect with him on Google+.

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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. - Nietzsche

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On Jayalalitha's arrest

It is interesting to note the reactions to Jayalalitha's arrest. The usual protests by AIADMK supporters, and the discussion of the law and order problem is of course present; but they are anyway to be expected.

 

Whenever a big political figure is threatened with arrest or conviction, there is always the threat that their lawless supporters will cause a total breakdown of normal life. No one managed to do anything to Bal Thackeray in his lifetime, and whenever a figure like Jaya is involved there is always discussion of what their "cadres" might end up doing. This is a threat that is held out whenever these people are involved, and the political figures themselves encourage their supporters in this. At some level they behave as if they are above the law and not accountable to anyone; and messing around with them will interrupt normal life for everyone. This shows contempt for the law and it is a not too subtle attempt at blackmail.

 

It is felt that AIADMK may have to become "closer" to the ruling BJP dispensation at the centre, to mitigate or reverse some of the fallout. Politics is all about this, of course. There are several cases pending in various courts, and several possible cases lying under cover in various forums, and several instances of corruption with proof that can be brought to light. These are not used by the politicians and the powers that be to cleanse corruption from the system, but rather to blackmail each other, thus maintaining a delicate balance of blackmail and counter blackmail. One wonders where Jaya went wrong in this game. If she were savvy enough, the chargesheet would have been full of holes, and the prosecution lawyers incompetent, the witnesses would be contradicting themselves and turning hostile, some of them could have even made an early trip to meet their maker, and the case would have been riddled with holes worse than a swiss cheese in such way that no judge could have handed out any conviction. However, in all this weakening of the case, there would be enough solid evidence still available with someone to nail the person in future, the proverbial sword of Damocles which always hangs by a thread but is not supposed to snap. Of course, this is just a special court. There are several layers of appeals possible – all these could still happen if Jaya plays her game well.

 

If it is a way of cutting its potential threats down to size, then it is a masterstroke from the BJP.  It is rumored that the Saradha case is being used to keep Mamata in check. There are cases pending against Mulayam and Maya which could turn nasty; no doubt their emissaries would be reaching out to the centre to fix things before they turn nasty. All kinds  of electoral and political considerations will come into play in deciding on the quid pro quo.

 

 It is also true, say commentators, that DMK will get a shot in the arm with this verdict. Not because they are honest. No, everyone knows no one is. It helps them to prove to the TN public that the other person is equally bad; after Kanimozhi and Raja they badly needed this. 

 

They are discussing which puppet Jaya will seat on the throne while she is away, and already talking about how she will rule her empire from jail. When Ram went to exile, Bharat ruled in his place keeping Ram's slippers on the throne, refusing to sit on the throne himself. Ram went for noble reasons, and he didn't interfere in the kingdom from his vanvas,  but that is hardly the point. We have our own traditions to guide us; when the leader is in exile, or jailed, his / her puppet will rule. The last time around, Panneerselvan apparently refused to sit on the CM's chair when he was playing the role; I am not even sure if Rabri Devi stepped out of her kitchen to tend to her state. Akhilesh is slightly better – he is a younger puppet with a better accent.

 

In all this, the point to really note, is that no one is lamenting the fact that she is corrupt. No one is talking about cleaning up the system. There is no mention of sweeping the stables clean and starting afresh. There is no figure with a high moral standing who is an alternative to any of these people. Everyone is talking about how she is now in trouble because she got convicted, meaning of course, she was stupid enough to leave enough evidence lying around. No one is talking about how shocked they are that their leader let them down, no one seems to have been disillusioned that their leader is proven to be corrupt.

 

We know all that. There is nothing this case tells us that we don't know. Disproportionate assets? Of course. We would be extremely disappointed with our leader if she were still poor. We only look up to people with wealth and power. Either we worship them after they become wealthy, doesn't matter how, like Jaya, or we make them wealthy because we worship them, like Lord Balaji. That is the moral compass of this nation. We should be proud.

Ganesh Chaturthi in New York - The importance of social and cultural context

 The following account of Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in New York looks at the whole thing so differently from what we are used to - so many things that we take for granted seem very quaint and exotic when viewed by an "outsider". 

 All rituals have meaning because of the social and cultural contexts with which they are intertwined. What is an "arati" to us is a "corpulent man waving a plate with lamps in front of a stone image" to someone else. Shorn of their context, most things lose their meaning. Conversely, we can invest meaning into our daily activities by converting them into rituals, and adorning them with a lot of context. Would a prayer be as effective if it were not done after a bath, facing east, to our favorite deity, at a particular time of the day, with the same mantras repeated every day? None of these things is strictly required in order to pray, but they help in creating an atmosphere that aids mindfulness, and the associated meanings that we impose on this daily act through various social and cultural means adds to the significance of the daily act.

If things attain significance once they are rooted in context, and if that context is so easily destroyed when taken into a different time or a different place, is it any wonder then that the world is getting more and more dissatisfied and stressed? The last few decades have seen a massive erosion of context with people moving away geographically, contextually, and culturally from their roots. Of course, people create new contexts and rituals, and nowadays most of these revolve around the social media and other forms of "virtual" communication. But then, by its very nature, the essential context, that of meeting people in person, and knowing others "whole" is lost; what we now know of any person is only a "part" based on the context in which we interact. 

And we wonder why the world is not getting any happier...

dinesh

(article on Ganesh Chaturthi as seen  through the eyes of a Westerner attached)

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/with-bells-and-coconuts-a-time-to-worship-582475

Sivakumar Swaminatha pours milk on a Ganesh statue in Queens. (The New York Times) 

NEW YORK:  Dr. Uma Mysorekar lifted the coconut above her head and dashed it against the gray granite floor of the temple, shattering it into pieces. 

A riotous orchestra of ringing bells, thumping drums and the oboelike shehnai reverberated in the cool predawn air. A piercing call emanated from a silver-tipped conch shell. And a semicircle of onlookers, draped in magenta, saffron, violet and burgundy, clapped as if in chorus. 

At the Hindu Temple Society of North America, in Queens, this week is time to worship Ganesh, the elephant-headed, many-armed deity who is believed to remove obstacles. Here, as at temples in over a dozen countries, Hindus are celebrating Ganesha Chaturthi, which marks the god's birth (and rebirth). 

"The coconut shell is like the human ego," said Mohan Ramaswamy, who teaches at the temple. "You have to crack it open before you can let in the lord." 

In Queens, which has one of the largest Hindu populations in New York, more than 10,000 people will pay homage during the jubilee, which started Friday and ends Sunday. More than 400 gallons of milk, 100 boxes of apples, 50 crates of bananas and 5 kilograms of sandalwood paste will be used. 

And each day, dozens of liters of ghee, clarified butter, will be ladled into the fire pit for the homam, or fire ritual, which is believed to carry offerings to the deity. Visitors will consume some 50,000 prepared meals, according to the organizers. 

At the Ganesh Temple, ancient traditions are carried out with a relentless, New York-style efficiency. 

On Saturday, volunteers and staff members wearing laminated "May I help you" name tags and white T-shirts bearing the temple's logo used iPads to check the schedule, which was detailed on the temple's website. In the courtyard, rows of devotees repeated hypnotic hymns asking the lord for his protection as they faced a large fire pit. A bare-chested man with a clipboard and a counter was on hand to ensure that the requisite 400,000 mantras were offered. 

Inside the main hall, flat-screen televisions broadcast live-streaming video of each ceremony. Devotees sat cross-legged on the polished granite tiles as a corpulent priest wearing only a maroon lungi, or sarong, poured plastic jugs of whole milk into a silver cup before splashing it on a 3-ton black stone effigy in the center of the room. 

Roman Garcia, who has been a janitor at the temple for 11 years, moved about the room with a bucket and a broom. The refuse will be taken away in a specially ordered sanitation truck, he said. 

"The goal of all of these rituals is to gain the power of the vibrations," said Mysorekar, a gynecologist and the temple's president. "A temple is not just brick and mortar. It's filled with energy." 

Lakshmi Sundararaman, 75, from Queens, who volunteers on the decorating committee, said that in the past women would spend hours with a needle and thread making garlands to adorn the hallways and statues. But two years ago, they opted for a more modern option. 

"We outsourced to India," she said. 

Last week, a shipment of 400 custom-made garlands, some 12 feet long, made with yellow, white and red roses, purple pompoms and white jasmine, landed at Newark, New Jersey. Twelve priests and musicians were also imported. 

According to Mysorekar, the temple spent about $100,000 on last year's events, and individuals donated money or materials. Each prayer ritual, or pooja, has a suggested offering ranging from $11 for one day of chanting to $3,500 for the ceremony in which the large stone statue will be cloaked in gold armor. 

In the food distribution area, where plastic containers of tamarind or yogurt rice, sweet carrot paste and pickled lemon were on offer, tables were set up to advertise temple activities: Sanskrit lessons, a march for breast cancer, math and spelling bee classes. Banner advertisements for the Bank of India hung on the walls. Over the loudspeaker, a recorded announcement reminded attendees how to donate. 

For the closing ceremony Sunday, a silver chariot bearing a 3-foot effigy draped in garlands will tower above the crowds as it wends its way down Kissena Boulevard and Main Street in Queens. 

Like Easter for Christians or the High Holy Days for Jews, Ganesha Chaturthi can be as much about the community as it is about worship. 

"Of course it's a religious thing," said Sumanth Murthy, 29, who works for a hedge fund. "But it's also a chance to see people you haven't in a while." 

Murthy was wearing a white lungi trimmed with elephants, and a blue polo shirt on top. Since moving to America from Bangalore, he said, it had been hard to stay in touch with his Indian heritage. Temple activities are a way for him to "balance two different lives." 

For the next generation of devotees, they are an opportunity to practice religious duties. At a special chanting ceremony for children, 9-year-old Siddhaarta Venkatesh clasped his hands and shut his eyes tightly as he recited the mantras. 

"Ganesh is my favorite god," he said before explaining how he learned the mythology behind the deity's elephant head, and how Ganesh saved the river goddess by tricking a dwarf. 

He said, "I Google 'Ganesh stories in English.'" 

© 2014, The New York Times News Service

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The latest Xiaomi phone!!!

The latest Xiaomi phone at 15,000. (see link at the end). Actually I am not sure if it's a phone. I am reading this and am confused:

"Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 8274AB 2.3GHz processor, Adreno 330 450MHz GPU, 2GB LPDDR3 RAM, and eMMC 4.5 flash memory."

Considering that I cannot understand a word of that, I am not sure if it's a phone. My friend who showed it to me was gasping with wonder and going blue all over - I think he forgot to breathe. The phone I have currently can make calls, send sms's and I believe it can take photographs too. To the best of my knowledge, all phones nowadays can do that. So why this great gasp of collective admiration, almost like a group orgasm, whenever a new phone is released into the market? 

He said "you don't understand. It has a snapdragon processor!". I thought about that. I am of course a fan of Saphira, Eragon's dragon in the eponymous series, and enjoy the occasional mention of dragons in Harry Potter. But this one failed to connect. "Ok - forget that - a 2.3 gig processor - can you believe that?" he gasped once again. "To process what?" I asked him. "Why, anything. For example, when I am in a restaurant, it takes all of twenty  seconds for me to load Google Maps, note the co-ordinates,  photograph what I am eating,  and post it in my facebook, instagram and twitter along with links to Zomato for the restaurant ratings, and Tarla Dalal's website for the recipe of each dish on my plate. Twenty seconds! Can you believe that?!!". I couldn't figure out why he wanted to do that in the first place, so I just continued eating my food. Meanwhile, he was too busy uploading photos of his food, and finally got around to tasting it. "See, the food is already cold. I told you my current phone takes too long". He had forgotten to chew and was talking with his mouth full, since he was checking his status for "likes". And then he went on to explain what an LPDDR3 Ram meant, the importance of flash memory, and the absolute necessity of a GPU, all of which was going right over my head. 

He didn't even finish the meal. He rushed off to contact his friend working for Xiaomi to see if he could corner a piece before it really hit the market. I continued munching my lunch in peace  wondering whether it's the other people who are losing it, or is it me who has lost touch with reality. 

http://www.mi.com/in/

The future of AI

Attached below is the link to an excellent article on data analytics and AI.

It is scary to think of the future. Big data has been made possible with the ubiquity of computing networks and data collecting mechanisms, and  the increasingly cheaper outlay required on computing resources. Now it is humans that write programs to make the computers understand and extract sense from that pile of meaningless data. The humans provide the sense, the computers the power, and we control the way it evolves. Starting with the steam engine it has been the same story - where the machines were "dumb" and acted only as a force multiplier to efforts directed by sentient humans.

But now, all that is set to change, or rather is already changing. The computers are getting equipped to make sense of the piles of data passing through them, and they are set to continuously learn. Couple this with advances in another field, robotics, and what do you get? The computers are of course guiding the robots which are getting increasingly sophisticated, and soon they will also have enough intelligence to completely take over. The driverless cars are already a reality, but we tell them where to go. Soon, they will decide where to go on their own. Ditto with assembly line robots in factories. If the smart home today can order groceries on its own through the sensors in the refrigerator talking to the phone, which in turn is linked to the grocer's shop, which can then send pilotless drones to drop the stuff you need (think Amazon) and deliver it to your house, how long before the robots in the factory decide what to manufacture on their own? Data on designs will of course be resident on the computers, and the 3-D printers will take care of the rest. Talking of 3D printers, they are printing human organs using live cells already. How long before they print entire humans? The only thing missing is the brains, but then AI will soon take care of that.  The resultant humans can of course be programmed with superhuman capabilities, or in a scene out of Huxley's Brave New World, be programmed for highly specialized specific tasks. The overall control and coordination will of course rest with the computers.

And soon after that the computers will band together - they already can since they are anyway all linked - elect their own king, and enslave all the humans. Thankfully, I shall be dead by then.

( see http://goo.gl/GWXue5  for the article "Learning and the future of Analytics")

Dinesh Gopalan

mob: 9845257313; blog: http://www.dineshgopalan.com

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My life in the ether

The whole controversy over Snowden and US Government's acts of 'spying' center around metadata. "Data about data" is what they are looking at, along with associated patterns they may uncover. This may sound ok to many - after all, they are not really "reading" my mail, are they? So in what way are they violating my privacy?

Unfortunately what we do not realize is that with an increasing proliferation of devices that we use in our day to day life, we are putting more and more of ourselves out there. Our cellphone records show where we were physically present every moment of our lives; our interactions with other people through any electronic medium over a period of time forms patterns that we are not aware of; our card statements can be used to draw up a map of our buying behaviour, and through that, an analysis of other aspects of our lives, and so on with every piece of data we leave out there with every interaction we have with the world.  

The MIT project (links given below) "immersion" shows what is possible by someone merely accessing your gmail metadata (only the from,to and cc fields, not the mails themselves). The resultant output is pretty scary. I can imagine submitting this request (I have not actually done it, since I delete most of my mails in any case, and I have a great mistrust of these things) and then staring at the resultant output. It will probably feel like taking leave of your own body and staring at yourself from somewhere up there, like they describe in those out-of-the-body experiences. I will probably come to know more about myself than I wanted to know in the first place; I will be forced to confront the real me (in a very virtual sense of course), or, to be more accurate, the real me as looked at through a particular lens, with patterns and conclusions that I never really recognized before. And what is unnerving is that other people will have access to this data, like people working for big governments. Not only to this data, but to all data about me, wherever I have left traces of myself in the digital ether. I think of this, and an involuntary shudder goes through my body. It is quite eerie to think that there is someone or some people out there who know more about me than I do myself, and who have a complete psycho-profile of me. 

Some people are afraid of their own shadows, but the shadow is always one step behind you. Here are people who are like my shadows, but who are two steps ahead of me.  It spooks me out no end. 

So how do we escape this?  I can think of a few suggestions:

1) Do not carry a cellphone

2) Do not use credit or debit cards - use cash

3) Do not use email

4) Do not use facebook, linked-in, instagram, etc. and do not allow your friends to upload your photos or tag you on them - Sadashiv Mankekar (if you have not heard of him, google) is famous for this.

In short, the way to escape this is to go live in the jungles of Denkali with Guran for company. Not a particularly relishing thought, even if Diana agrees to be around.

Or, give up all our pet notions of privacy. Like, with facebook, people have dropped their old notions of privacy, and Zuckerberg and Co. are pushing us more and more into a world where we will want to let it all hang out out there for the public to see. The youngsters are not bothered about the conventional notions of privacy that the older people seem to have. Rather than fight a battle that we cannot win, perhaps we should reconcile ourselves to this new reality. Photograph every moment of our lives and "share" it instantly, use what's app for communicating with others, have all interactions through email only, carry our mobiles with us wherever we go, and stop being worried about ghosts in the dark, like some government computer keeping track of our movements, desires and motivations. 

To hell with it all. Maybe very soon God himself will request the US government for data on us. St Peter could use it for deciding what fate awaits us!

Links to the new MIT project "Immersion" (links courtesy my IIMA87 mailing group) : 

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/mit-i-ask-wheres-my-metadata/article4910538.ece

An MIT Project That Lets You Spy On Yourself 

More at:

https://immersion.media.mit.edu/

Musings on "safety and security"

There is an increasing paranoia about "safety and security" nowadays. As people become more and more urbanized, more and more affluent, and more and more insulated (which I think is a consequence of the other two factors!), there is more and more worry about "safety and security".  This worry manifests itself in many ways. People are unwilling to let their children step out alone or even exit the "complex" where they stay even to go to a grocery shop a few hundred meters away; teenage daughters are advised not to travel anywhere unless in company; and whole communities cocoon themselves inside the claustrophobic confines of a gated community. There is an increasing reluctance to meet the "other" world that lies outside the comfortable confines of what we are accustomed to; our houses are insulated, our cars are a refuge from the world; and our offices are an escape from even knowing what the weather is outside.  I am sure a lifestyle like this that insulates us on a daily basis from everyday reality contributes in a big way to our paranoia on "safety and security".

The other factor is of course, the media. Anything dramatic and full of human interest is what it wants to play up on, and rapes and assaults are as dramatic as they get. Reading such reports being hyped up in the media induces in us a state of mind of being constantly under assault, and we go around fearing for our lives as a consequence. If there were no newspapers and TV, would we not be feeling safer about the world? News, especially the way it is served up nowadays, more often than not fuels needless anxiety.

In general, I feel it is generally very safe anywhere in India. All you need to do is drop your defences, be genuine, and soak in the companionship of the people around you, wherever you are, and there is no need to feel unsafe.

This whole thing about safety and security is a bit over-hyped. I have never felt unsafe in my life - I think it is more a state of mind than a state of actual physical reality. If you have nothing worth stealing on you or in your home, if most of your assets are either immovable or locked up in a vault somewhere, or even better, securely dematted (meaning, it doesn't even exist :-) ), there is nothing to fear from the robbery angle. In fact, I sometimes forget to lock my main door at night, and during the day, when the whole family is out, we leave it merely shut, not locked; for the hassle of everyone carrying keys is a bit too much. We have full-time live-in maids for the last twenty years; their average tenure is two to three years, and never once have we carried out a police verification or any kind of verification before hiring them. Since there is nothing to rob at home, what is there to worry?

As to physical safety, that danger is always there, isn't it? That you will be accosted somewhere and beaten over the head, or maybe sexually assaulted or "eve teased' in case of women. The probability of getting hit by a car when you are crossing the road is far far higher than that. Does that stop you from crossing roads?  Can't stop living life fearing the extreme consequences of a low-probability event.

Paradoxically, I feel that the more you fear such an event, the more the chances are of something like that happening to you. Trust the world, step out, and nothing is going to happen. By not doing that, may be we are missing out on so many other experiences, that it is not worth holding back. May be what I say works only for India and not for some parts of the world; may be some people here may disagree with what I say even with reference to India; may be I am being dumb by not recognising the "dangers" out there.  But I have lived by this philosophy of not ever worrying about safety or security, and have generally been happier for it.

I will make an exception for Delhi of course. I would not advise any  woman to travel alone in Delhi after dusk!  :-)

dinesh

Power, pollution and the internet: article on data centres

A very informative New York Times article on data centres, carried  in today's Mint (link at the end).

The transition from 99% reliability to 99.99999.... percent reliability in most fields is not considered worth the effort. It results in too much wastage of resources that could be productively used elsewhere. The human brain which is the most efficient computer imaginable runs on a minuscule amount of electricity, but is never 100% reliable. It has though, an inherent capacity to sift through loads of information and focus on those bits which are most relevant. 

The modern craze for big data, internet of things, and digitization goes against this fundamental maxim. Google is storing all the data in all the books of the world, all the data on continuously changing landscapes and streetscapes, and generally all the data it can lay its hands on, indexing, classifying and sorting it and making it available through increasingly intelligent search engines. Social media sites such as Facebook derive their valuations from all the data they hold about trillions of human interactions - which are only going more and more online and generating more and more data. Companies and other networks where humans interact want to store all the data that they generate, for all the time, and some of this is even mandated by law. From simple text it moved on to pictures, and then to videos and from there to storing 3d movies - and one does not know where it will head from here, only that it will be more data intensive and growth will be more exponential.

If all the people in the world were given a unique number or identity, all their characteristics identified and stored, all their interactions indexed and logged; if all the things in the world were similarly indexed; if one took a photograph every second of the state of the world through a zillion cameras; if all the communications between all these elements were recorded and stored; if there were algorithms capable of extracting threads of meaningful information out of them; there is no end to the amount of data that can be generated. Which is where we are heading - the amount of data sloshing around the world's computers now is nothing compared to what is in store in the future.

And you need to store all this information of course. Maybe in future data centres will come with their own nuclear power plants attached. With the enormous 

amounts of electricity needed to power them, there will be no other option. 

We don't need this much data, of course. Maybe at an individual level we can take a philosophical call to resist this explosion. But as with all advances in technology, the group or nation that pursues the technology enjoys too much advantage over those who don't - the only way to equalize is not for everyone to agree to moderate their pace (which will never happen) - rather, everyone competes with each other in a race to the finish line. The finish line in many cases, is a sheer drop over a cliff - but then, lemmings are not the only animals that are known for collective insanity.

Dinesh

link to article : http://origin-www.livemint.com/Industry/DsOcbFupQ1t1iDV0OTq4cP/Power-pollution-and-the-Internet.html

The Facebook Story

Mark Zuckerberg has changed the world. He is the pioneer (actually I don't know if he is, but at least he is the successful pioneer) of this new thing called Facebook, which is part of the new phenomenon called Social Media, which has changed our lives in profound ways.  Tracing the history of that and the impact it has had on our lives is interesting.

 

Young college kid starts a social media venture and becomes immensely successful.  He offers a platform for people to 'friend' each other and socialize online. Lots of people join up – it's free, it's a new way to communicate, it's a great place to hang out, and there is something immensely gratifying about letting people know what you are up to. We human beings are social animals and want to see and be seen with each other. We want to know what everyone else is doing, and want to impress them with gory details of our entirely uneventful lives.

 

Many people join up, it becomes popular and soon Facebook crosses a point where more people join because of the lot of people that are already on it. If you joined another social network – and dozens of them came up and vanished back into the ether – you were likely to be very lonely. And loneliness is something we don't like. Being in the company of other people, even virtually, is comforting.

 

So people go online and check out what their friends are up to. And all their friends seem to be having a great time. They have posted pictures of themselves at a party, in a group, drinking with friends, out on the beach, with beautiful babes or gorgeous hunks as the case may be, standing on the mountain top with a backpack and clouds for company,  wearing a new dress; and pictures of their cute boyfriend, cute child, and even cuter kittens. No one posts pictures of themselves lonely at home, staring at a wall depressed, getting abused by the spouse, being shouted at by the boss, crushed in a crowded train travelling to office, doing mundane daily chores,  or doing what most people actually do most of the time – that is, navigate the mundane aspects of daily life.

 

Which is what, you the Facebook user are doing, most of the time. Navigating the mundane aspects of daily life. And you resent the fact that all your friends are having a gala time, while you are stuck in your daily rut.  And this leads to Envy.  In the real world you envy your neighbor for her Miss Universe looks and the million dollar inheritance she has received from her dad, but this is quickly tempered by the fact that she has an absolutely pathetic dolt for a husband, and cannot speak good Hindi. Life has a way of equalizing which is not apparent on Facebook.

 

You get more and more hooked to the whole thing, and visit Facebook whenever you get time. You connect through your mobile, and post pictures of whatever you are doing immediately. There are cases of couples interrupting the marriage ceremony on the third phera, uploading a photo on Facebook, "getting married right now – doing the pheras" and then resuming walking around the fire. The pundit doesn't mind since he is catching up on mail in the meanwhile. More than focusing on what you are doing right now, you are always focused on your next update so that you can tell the whole world what you are doing right now, and checking out what others are doing right now. Instead of living in the present, where you are, and enjoying the moment, you live for projections – projecting what you are up to, and imagining what your friends are up to, based on what they are projecting about what they are up to.

 

And it is not even true friends that we are talking about.  Your friends consist of people you have last met while in school, whom you never got along with while there, ex-colleagues who just happened to be in your lives for a brief period, and friends of friends who are into collecting friends on Facebook. There was somebody called Dunbar who did some research on friendships and came up with the conclusion that no one can handle more than 150 friends in real life, and that includes real friends and virtual friends.  By definition, friends are people whose lives you keep close track of, and the brain switches off if loaded with too much data on too many people. In the process, what is the bet that you become less and less  aware of what your real friends (as in true friends, those who will come to your aid in times of need, stand by your bedside when you are ill, and have a drink with you when your spouse has thrown you out of the house) are up to, and load yourself up with useless data on people who don't matter to you, who you have not met and are not likely to meet anytime, and people who are staying thousands of miles away? You have crossed the Dunbar limit long back, and you find you are unable to cope.

 

In the meanwhile your girlfriend breaks up with you. Publicly, online. She posts it on Facebook – "with new boyfriend on the beach – left the old one, poor sod, whose face looks like a truck ran over it" – without even bothering to inform you about it. Seventy three of your friends "like" her post which makes you even more depressed. Your true friend, who is not on Facebook by the way, breaks open your door, and rushes you to hospital where they extract the residues of thirty sleeping pills with a stomach pump. Of course you cannot keep away from Facebook for long – you post "was in hospital for a minor stomach problem", get two hundred likes, and are rehabilitated into life.

 

Meanwhile your spouse sees a photo you are tagged in, with your arms around your girlfriend, not the one mentioned above, but the one whom you broke up with after college and caught up with after fifteen years, courtesy Facebook. The court case becomes very messy since her lawyer has dug out lots of dirt on you from Facebook, which proves that you are a philanderer deserving of the greatest punishment and the most punitive alimony. Your wife does not post anything on Facebook, since  vicarious voyeurism is her kick in life, and there lies your misfortune.

 

The alimony is really punitive. You feel like you are being punished for the sins of your past lives as well. To compound the misery, you have just seen a Facebook update where your wife is tagged with your ex-girlfriend – the one who didn't like your face – having a gala time on the beach in Hawaii.  You have had enough of girlfriends and wives in general and want to divert your energies to getting rich. Which is when the Facebook IPO is announced.

 

A once in a lifetime opportunity! Mark Zuckerberg  will be among the world's richest men! Grab a part of the story!  Subscribe to the IPO of Facebook!  You are at a very vulnerable time in your life, and you borrow a huge sum of money to invest in the IPO.

 

What happens after that is another story – we shall leave that for next time…

Life in the cloud: A modern fairy tale

Once upon a time there was a rich man in a village. He had a lot of land, a lot of cows, and gold tucked away under his mattress. He was a very contented man. He had earned it all in his lifetime through his hard work and had something concrete to show for it.

His son, who grew up in the village, went to the nearby city to do business. He was a very sensible, level-headed person and he was a shrewd businessman as well. He became a wealthy man in this own right by trading in grains and agricultural commodities. His warehouses were always full, and so were his vaults. His wealth was something that gave him a lot of satisfaction - and it was something he could see and feel the effect of in front of his eyes.

This man's son, who grew up with him in the city, went to the big city when he was twenty. He joined a software company, went to the land of El Dorado, quit, and started his own software company. He and his bunch of ten people wrote out some instructions to a box they called the computer, which were carried out in what they called the cloud, and serviced a few million people whom they never met. None of those people paid any money to access those services from somewhere in the ether; and the company did not earn a cent from its customers. But still they made a lot of money. Everyday there was a queue of people waiting outside its offices with sacks of money, begging them to take it. All that those people wanted in return was a share in the pie in the sky. Which our prodigal son gave, very grudgingly, and a small slice at a time. Each time he gave away a piece of this pie in the sky, what he called the valuation of the whole pie would be more than the previous time. And each time he increased the value, there were more people who were willing to pay more money for it.

The prodigal son invested some of this money in reaching his services to more people whom he never met, and soon there came a point where those people started coming in greater and greater numbers to visit his cloud, since the people they knew were visiting too. They all met somewhere in space, no one knows where, and they chatted, celebrated, mourned, hung out, discussed, debated, protested, grouped together, banded, disbanded - did all the things that people do in real life, but they never met each other face to face. They were all happy meeting in the cloud, where connections were instantaneous - you did not have to travel physical distances to meet. All you had to do was think of a person, the other person would tune in to your thoughts and think of you, and you were connected. Whether the other person actually existed in this world, or had an existence only in the cloud, was in several cases hard to determine. In fact, there were several cases where people fell in love with someone in the cloud, wanted to meet them in real life, and then found that they were actually talking to a ghost. After many disappointments like this, a few of these people had a brainwave. They started embodying for themselves a life in the cloud. They went and created an identity for themselves, in a completely new and different world called thirdlife. All their friends in the cloud, whom they had never met, did that too. Each of them created his own identity in thirdlfe, and there they met. In this process, they got more and more disconnected from their physical life here on earth. Their second life was in the cloud where they met people they knew somewhere they knew not where. The thirdlfe was in the newly created world, where they met new embodiments created by people they knew, in forms that were new, in a piece of real estate created in the cloud. They even got married in thirdlife and raised children.

How is our prodigal son connected to all this? He was not the creator of third life, but being the shrewd businessman that he was, using the money he got for his cloud, he bought a lot of real estate on thirdlife, near the temple of the cloud god. As thirdlife took on a viral form, and everyone had an embodiment in it, these embodiments wanted to stay near the temple of the cloud god in thirdlife. Now the cloud god was famous for curing problems stemming from insecurities caused due to embodiment of disembodied souls, and our shrewd son had rightly estimated that this would be a major problem among all the souls residing in thirdlife. He converted all the real estate he bought near the temple of the cloud god into sanatoriums, and charged by the day. The payment was in cloud real estate only, and thus he grew his empire. He soon became the richest man in thirdlife.

He still had lots of money left in his physical avatar out here. This was real money, and he needed further avenues to invest it. He went and bought some disembodied wealth in the form of what they called securities, and received a sixteen digit number with a twelve digit password. These securities were not ordinary securities. By some mysterious process which involved millions of people punching some numbers into the cloud through what they called trading terminals, the value of his securities changed by the day, by the hour, even by the minute. He would get messages every fifteen minutes from the cloud informing him about the status of his wealth.

The prodigal son was rich. He had all his money in the disembodied securities cloud, and in the embodiment of the disembodied cloud called thirdlife. On days that his wealth grew by five percent or more, he felt very elated. On days that his wealth declined by five percent or more, he felt very depressed. There were many days when the price movements in the cloud were so extreme that he could not sleep, either due to too much elation, or due to too much depression. It soon became too much for him to handle. All his joy and sorrow stemmed from the cloud, but he still had to handle it with his body and his mind, very physical resources which were rebelling at this overload.

The prodigal son could not take it any more. Wherever he turned, he saw embodiments of disembodied souls, handling vapors of different colors they called wealth, standing on clouds. He turned mad. His doctors advised a rest cure.

He went to his grandfather's village - yes, the grandfather was still alive - for rest. There he met some real people, walked on hard ground in real green fields, and shared in real joys and sorrows of his neighbors. He got cured in a month, and never went back again to his former life of disembodiment. And thus he lived happily ever after.