Singularity – Who wants it ?

So what are the odds? You start off the day by visiting the doctor to take an allergy shot for a very convenient modern medical malady – allergic reaction to pollen spread by the birch trees. Ironically, this most ancient form of spreading life devised by nature, threatens the life of the modern-day man. Okay that’s stretching it a bit, but it does cause mild discomfort to thousands to people round the world, who rush to the swanky clinics of their doctors to alleviate the medical industry from the deep wounds inflicted upon it by the financial crisis (another modern malady).

While you are it, you spend your time at the waiting room, discovering the solitary english magazine hidden among the plethora of german language gibberish about celebrities, fashion, cookery, travel and luxury lifestyle. This magazine happens to be the latest issue of ‘Time’ in which the main story is about the possibility of life on earth achieving ‘Singularity’. This according to Mr Kurzweil, the world’s foremost expert on this topic, is a point in time during the evolution of life on earth, when technological computing power will overtake the combined intelligence of all human beings on this earth. At this point in time, computers will have the ability to create technological advances without the need of messy and dumb intervention from carbon based life forms – us Humans. He also goes on the predict that this will happen around 2045. The fact that this calculation is done on a today’s computer, using yesterday’s data makes it immensely questionable to my mind. Plus, combine it with the fact that the Mayans predicted that the world will end anyway in 2012, makes all this postulating pointless anyway.

Well … when and if  this happens nothing will be impossible – instant gratification will be the norm. If the computers allow it (who knows what they will be up to then) it will be possible to create medicines that reverse the ageing process. Even a 2 millisecond old baby computer at that time will know that it is just a simple act of replenishing the Telomeres at the end of every DNA strand, which are lost or depleted as a result of cell reproduction. Child’s play isn’t it? And it took the stupid humans their whole evolution history of some million years to figure it out!

Minor discomforts like allergic reaction to pollen will be so passé. You could be banished to milleniums of aimless loitering in the bitfields (data warehouses on Mars) for even mentioning such a stupid medical disorder (the word ‘disease‘ would have been deleted from the official Oxford dictionary).  The technological breakthroughs of today like the funky Apple iPad, will be displayed in the Museum of Ancient art in the section ‘Doofus inventions of stone age years’ next to the Casio digital watches, battery operated can openers and Flat screen 3-D TVs. The singularity thought movement even predicts that humans could merge with machines to become super intelligent Cyborgs who could live forever. It may look like a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator), Marvin the paranoid Android (Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy) and Keanu reeves (Matrix). My only hope is that they don’t get the characteristics mixed up and we don’t end up with the depression and boredom of Marvin, the intelligence of Arnold and deadpan expression of  Keanu. It certainly won’t make for an interesting stablemate.

Another possibility might be that you could have machines that conjure up anything that you think about or imagine. Hey, but i don’t need to wait for 2045 for that, i have it today! Here are a couple of proofs of that.

1. While coming out of the clinic, i picked up a brochure from an electronic store housed in the same building, which on its front page was screaming about some fantastic price for a LED television. As i entered the elevator and looked up, there were two guys in front of me, breathlessly lugging the exact same model
2. I walked out towards the tram stop and on seeing an ad about Dubai, my mind wandered towards a couple who had just moved here from Dubai. Lo and behold, 10 seconds later, the lady in question was walking towards me. I stopped and shook her hand and did some small talk. She was right there in flesh and blood – i wasn’t imagining her
3. My taste buds signaled to my brain, a desire for a chewing gum. I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket, there lurking there was a single stick of gum, brought and forgotten a millennium ago

Mr Kurzweil, thanks for your predictions. I am a big fan of the future and minor futurologist myself, but what you are asking me to wait for another 34 years, i have it right here right now, my all important piece of grey matter sitting squarely in my skull.

So all of you Singularity seekers, don’t fret and spend millions of dollars on research, drop me a line and i shall show you the path. But for all the instant gratification you seek, be a little patient. You see, the cricket world cup is currently on, and the immense powers of my brain are focussed on helping India win the world cup … Amen!

Confucius - praying for Singularity and India's victory in the world cup. Image via Wikipedia

What a busy sunday morning !

When god created Sunday mornings, he was probably thinking of the following :

1. freshly baked croissants
2. waking up late (if your kids allow you this luxury)
3. nice music like Bap Kennedy, Joan Baez or Gordon Lightfoot (my wife does not agree to the last musical choice though)
4. spend as much time in pyjamas
5. read ‘The Economist’ from cover to cover
6. possibly write a new blog post

 

Surely not this :

That is a busy flight schedule !

For a small quaint swiss town to be subjected to this kind of torture is surely uncalled for. 6 or 7 airplanes simultaneously crossing over our otherwise restricted airspace, further adding to the global warming to which I had such a remarkable solution yesterday. What has the world come to? and where are all these people off to anyway? If anyone of  you were in these planes and saw a guy with a long zoom lens in pjs clicking away to glory, drop me a line. We have something to talk about.

Now let me go back to the sunday grind.

Global warming, here i come

I am about to rake in millions now…. for I have discovered the answer to the issue that the world is struggling with today. Imagine the odds? Yours truly sitting here, tapping into a GRS, listening to muddy waters tormenting his Fender Telecaster through the Cadence Amayas – has done what hundreds of world leaders could not achieve at the Copenhagen climate council in 2009. I must patent it quickly before anyone discovers the secret, but not before i share it with you.

The brilliant discovery that i have just made is how to solve global warming. Probably your hearts are racing, for this is a momentous discovery, and i certainly don’t want to keep you waiting with bated breath. Because by doing that, you are adding to global warming, the very problem i and all my fellow scientists, leaders & thinkers are trying to solve.

global warming temperature change, Image via Wikipedia

The answer lies in the second law of thermodynamics …………………….. Confused? ‘Elementary, my dear Watson‘, as the great Sherlock Holmes would say (well not the scruffy version depicted by Robert Downey Jr recently).

Now most of you learnt this during the incredibly boring physics lessons at school (and promptly forgot when the question did not appear in the final exams paper). The second law of thermodynamics simply states that any physical system cannot convert all energy from one form to another efficiently. It must produce heat as a byproduct. What is the most abundant form of physical system on this planet? – us humans. There are six billion of us. Another thousand were probably added by the time you finished reading this sentence.  That is the root of all problem, not the cars, factories, machines, aerosol cans that they want you to believe. Stay with me now, don’t click the little red cross on the corner of the browser window, not yet.

So, what do all of us do all day long – produce heat, and humongous amounts it. All the paranthas, sausages, pasta, pizzas, beer etc sitting in our stomachs are being converted to energy that we need to be able to run about or read this blog, but as the second law states most of it is being converted into heat that is dissipated out. An average human body generates heat equal to a 60 watt incandescent bulb. Don’t believe me, ask Einstein. Now imagine, 6 billion 60 watt light bulbs – that’s a helluva lot of heat.

So my solution to global warming – DO NOTHING….yes, nothing! Quite simple and brilliant, isn’t it? You eat and make merry as usual, but after that –  don’t do anything. Go find the most comfortable coach, bed, seat etc and then stay there till the next meal time. No need for movement = no energy conversion = no heat production = no global warming.

I certainly ‘Walk the talk’ and try to do exactly this on most weekends (to the utmost annoyance of my lovely wife though). So the next time your boss, spouse or anyone for that matter gives you a shakedown for just sitting there and doing nothing, relax take another deep breath, send them the link to this article. Remind them that you are serving a higher purpose.  Then go back to helping mother nature fight global warming. Isn’t a cooler and quieter world, a better place?

The day the finger tappers took over the world

The other day while posting an entry on my blog, John Lennon’s Imagine was playing on the Cadence Amayas, and a freakish vision appeared – Mr Lennon’s apparition magically manifested from the electrostatic panels and asked me “Imagine a world which has been taken over by WordPress!”, but before i could offer an opinion, he vanished and was off to sign autographs in some remote parts of the andromeda galaxy.

Hmm … world domination by WordPress, a scary or welcome thought, depending on which way you swing. For the sake of not monopolizing the creative space, I leave the description of life on earth in such a scenario to a future George Orwell clone to think it up in another book like 1984. But using my immense powers of prediction, I can safely bet that following will be the national anthem for this new world.

Warning – The following may sound outright cheesy, stupid or funny to you, but remember beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder :-) …. For best results, sing along to the tune of ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon

Imagine there’s no conversation
Its easy if you write
No sounds surround us
Around us only words

Imagine all the people blogging for today
Imagine there’s no telephones
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to speak or hear for
And no shouted arguments too

Imagine all the people
Blogging away in peace …
You may say I’m a blogger
But I am not the only one
I hope some day you’ll blog like us
And the world will read as one

Imagine only muses and observations
I wonder if you can
No need for ears and tongues
A bloggerhood of man

Imagine all the people
Reporting all the world
You may say I’m a blogger
But I am not the only one
I hope some day you’ll blog like us
And the world will read as one …

I think we might soon come to this. The following cartoon convinced me.

A penny for your thoughts …

Were they ever enemies?

This was the first phrase that popped into my head when I saw this now ubiquitous message proclaiming to the world on facebook that ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are now friends. Chances are most of you reading this have a facebook account (who doesn’t these days … huh?) and seen this super-friendly message a trillion times. So why is there a need to write about it? Since the question is purely rhetorical, we will let it pass for now.

I cannot help but wonder that thanks to facebook, before they became ‘friends’, were they ever enemies? And why is this important for me to know that someone whose existence I am only reminded of when I read of his/her latest exploits like ‘just had 3 tequila shots straight up…yohooo!‘ and I see a grainy, barely recognizable picture taken in a dimly lit bar and uploaded from his/her uber-cool mobile gadget, has now become friends with another person, whose existence i was blissfully unaware of before now and of whom I will probably never hear again? … and to top it all what is there to ‘like’ about it? (I wish some of these sites have an ‘unlike’ button)

Now don’t get me wrong and report me to Mark Zuckerberg. I do love this modern day invention from the bottom of my heart (okay this was a little over the top). I have been able to find some folks with whom I had been out of touch for a long time, and I have even been guilty of sharing some photos occasionally. As with all of these modern day social media inventions, this one also comes with it’s own set of ironies. The best one I have heard of recently is about someone who ‘tricked’ her friends into wishing her a happy birthday on FB second time in 3 months, by just changing her birthday in her profile. The same people who had wished her 3 months back, got a reminder and robotically went to her wall (what a cool name for something that does not even exist in real life) and promptly posted a heartfelt birthday greetings message.

I wonder sometimes if we are pushing the envelope a bit too far at times? Why is it so important for us to be perennially socially-connected with a tool whose name, even my dumb Microsoft word processor does not recognize and shows as spelling mistake? Is there anyone readying this who does not have a facebook account and still has real friends?…. and why am I bothered about this, its late and I should be in bed!

Crash like a Swissgyptian

3 days to go from an Skiing novice to effortlessly gliding down the slopes and crashing into any conceivable object in sight is quite an achievement .. or not, depends on how you look at it. But before we get too far ahead with passing judgement let me share with you some revelations i have had in the last 3 days, since i started my skiing lessons.

1. Those Skis aren’t evil : While they may look so to a novice with all those sharp edges, dangerously curved sides, scary inscriptions like ‘Speed demon’, ‘Race carving’ complete with fiery and devilish motifs etc…. i can assure you in this case looks are deceptive. The scary clicking sound the bindings make as they clamp onto your ski boots – which sound very close to the devil smacking his lips as he waits for his prey to slide into his open mouth is purely a coincidence. The way they will automatically start to move towards a direction unintended by you as you stand on a slope with an incline greater than 0.5 degrees is completely down to your lack of control rather than them answering to their master’s call and pulling you into the dungeons lurking below the pretty alpine slopes.

2. The T-bars on the Ski lifts are not fishing hooks laid down by the devil: Yes at first glance the ski-lift, with its never-ending rows of contraptions that look like two-sided fishing hooks tied to a giant fishing line laid down by the devil himself, can be a bit intimidating. The slight smirk given to you by the man handing you the T-bar at the beginning of the ski-lift is not a sign that you are done for – It’s just that the poor man stands there everyday for 6-8 hours every day in sub-zero temperatures, and his features have permanently frozen into that look. The huge tug that the T-bar will give occasionally as it pulls you upward is not the devil yanking his catch off the snow – it’s to keep you focussed on the job at hand, rather than you drifting off and enjoying the views of the pretty alpine vistas or the swiss beauties gliding down the slopes in their bright ensembles.

the devilish ski lift T-bars

3. The ski instructors are not devil’s assistants : Again the classic case of looks being deceptive. They do dress up in red from head to toe – but that’s just their uniform as ordained by the ski school. The helmets they wear is not to hide the horns on their head – it’s just for safety. Their eyes look every shade of orange, purple and blue – it’s only because of your and their ski goggles playing tricks on your vision (being partially colour blind like me doesn’t make it easier). When they encourage you to slide down a slope that looks gentle to them but like deathly hallows to you – they are not trying to cripple you. They are trying to get you to grips with the concept that skiing means gliding down slopes, not just standing there on top of the slope and shivering with a mixture of cold and fear. (BTW .. Don’t tell my wife I even had these unkind thoughts about them, she finds all of them very cool and good-looking)

4. The orange cones placed on the slope are not targets to be knocked over : This is difficult one to grasp, but worth a shot anyway. Those bright little orange cones placed on the slope are meant for little kids to do a slalom run around them. It is great fun and very tempting to whizz over the snow at full speed straight like an arrow and watching every single one of them fly in different directions. But think of the hapless kids who are now standing there confused not knowing what to do and the poor and heartbroken ski instructor who painstakingly placed them with unerring swiss precision watching his hard work being destroyed.

5. It is more fun to be standing-up rather than lying face down on the snow: While this may conjure up all kinds of unwarranted images and ideas in your head, the point is simple – You paid a fortune for the skis, boots, lessons etc.  Now show some courage and ability to master a new skill. Learn to stay upright on the snow for a few seconds, make use of all the technology gone into your gear and enjoy the sensation of being able to gracefully glide over the perfectly frozen snow, leaving tracks that the whole world will follow …. before a sharp turn beckons, gravity and panic take over, you forget all the techniques and land face down on the snow, only to watch 4 yr olds speed past you while grinning and waving at you!

…. Now having read a fascinating discourse about the secrets of skiing, I am sure a question must have popped into some of your inquisitive brains – Why am I not utilizing my newly acquired knowledge and skills and enjoying wafting down the sun-kissed slopes rather than typing into this GRS? Well the answer is quite simple …. I did master the mythical art in a short span of two days, made numerous practice runs, turns, stops, traverses etc (don’t believe me? ask my wife). But on my first run down a real blue ski slope, having negotiated the most difficult parts, a pole standing in the middle of the slope wanted to make an acquaintance with me. I obliged and met it head on, and resulted with a sprained/mild hairline fracture on the little finger on my right hand :-( So here i am sitting at home listening to Buddy Guy belting out his blues on my Cadence Amayas.

But fret not, in a week i shall be back on the slopes… till then, a happy new year to all.

Walk like a Skigyptian

Having come back from a day of ‘Skiing acclimatization trip’, i truly feel like a skigyptian … that is to say an egyptian mummy being thrown onto a ski slope and being asked to do the walk made famous by ‘The Bangles’ song (I wonder if this new word is worthy of an entry in the Modern Cambridge English dictionary)

My feet still feel like they are bound by the huge ski boots that easily weigh the best part of a 100 kg each. I must make a very funny figure clad in infinite layers of wind/snow/water proof clothing (all in black – topped by a white beanie cap making my face looking like the famous Mr Potato head), trying to guide myself down a prior-to-beginner-level-and-fit-for-only-4yr-olds slope of a gigantic length 10 m. Those some german made ‘liquidmetal’ engineering marvels fitted under my shoes (normally referred as skis)  have a mind of their own, as at any given moment they are pointing at an angle of 45 degrees to the general direction where i want to go. Judging by the numerous times i ended up in positions on the snow that could have made any Yoga instructor proud, i am convinced they are designed by der Teufel (the devil) himself. Now whoever said skiing was fun?

But i have only got myself to blame. Having been here 5 years and procastrinating as a typical Indian proudly does, i haven’t bothered to acquaint myself with the mythical art of gracefully gliding down the pristine alpine slopes. The feeling isn’t helped by a snow-sledging accident resulting in a broken collar bone earlier this year and the fact that my lovely wife and kids waft down the slopes looking every bit like born skiers.

Hmm … things better change. So starting tomorrow, i have enrolled myself for a full week of skiing lessons and practice. If I live to tell the tale, I’ll be back with more updates and hopefully triumphant news of your’s truly having conquered the pistes (german for ski slopes) in a few days time.

Till that time wish me luck …..

The weirdness of you

This started off in my head as ‘The nearness of you’ (A famous jazz tune from the forties made famous by The Glenn miller band, and more recently vandalized by the likes of Norah Jones). I heard faint traces of this tune in the background score of a documentary made on Salvador Dali. By the time the documentary ended, the phrase “the nearness of you” had morphed into “the weirdness of you“. So fittingly Dali, i thought, and could not resist the thought of penning it down (or as in today’s world – keying) it down.

If you have seen Dali’s paintings (see them in real life, photos do not do justice to the life they contain), one cannot  help but wonder what was the source idea that he started with it and what did it morph into by the time he had finished with it a few days, or in some case a few months later. My favorite one being his ‘Soft self portrait with grilled bacon’. My (non professional) take on that painting is as follows –

Dali 'Soft self portrait with grilled bacon' Image courtesy http://web.sbu.edu

The idea probably took root in head as he was waiting for a fried egg with grilled bacon at his breakfast table. Instead he received an indescribably mutilated and disfigured piece of coagulated albumin with rashers of grilled bacon adorning it. His life flashed by in front of his eyes and he saw a melting distorted image of himself. He flung aside the plate, grabbed his bread roll (of which he famously said – “Bread has been one of the oldest objects  of fetishism and obsession in my work, the one to which i have been most faithful”) and dashed off to his room to frantically start painting his self-portrait.

But to call his art weird is an insult, he is usually referred to as a ‘surrealist’, which some people think of as a polite name for weirdness (there … we coming back to this word again and again). But why should you take my word for it? Shun all your other holiday plans, buy a ticket to Spain, take a bus to his hometown Figueres, grab a breadroll from a local bakery and while munching upon it, feast your senses in the  museum. Did i call it a museum? In Dali’s words – “The museum should not be considered a museum. It is a giant surrealist object, everything inside it is coherent, there is nothing that escapes the webs of my understanding”. Heck … you don’t even need to enter, the outer walls adorned with giant eggs and bread-rolls will convince you of his vision

… breads off to you, O’ great weird one.

The Dali museum Figueres, Spain. Image courtesy Wikipedia

There are strange rivers

It is truly one of life’s great mysteries how things pop out of the blue and connect with each other. Call it serendipity, randomness, luck, fortune .. whatever, but there are forces that are continuously at work, unknown to you. Joan Baez, the great folk singer of 60’s, put it so well in her song ‘Strange rivers’

“Have You Ever Turned the Corner and wondered Why You Did?
You Haven’t Been That Way Since You Were Just a Kid

Oh, There Are Strange Rivers, Rivers That We Cannot See
There Are Strange Rivers Who Know Our Destiny”

I am sitting here in Switzerland tapping away. 5 yrs ago, it started with one call from a friend on an autumn evening in Budapest – while we were getting ready to move back to India after a brief stint of 1.5 yrs –  mentioning an opening here, another follow-up call, and bang one lands up in Switzerland!

I just finished the mercurial ‘Kafka on the shore‘ by Murakami, and it

Kafka on the shore Haruki Murakami. Image courtesy Amazon.com

captures the essence of how things/people are connected by invisible strings. The central character in that book is a Mr Nakata, a shy old man, short statured, short cropped graying hair, always wears a gray coat and carries a black umbrella in his hand. He avoids talking to people as he finds it too complicated, cannot read and is always lost in his own world. A few days back coming back home on the train at around 9 in the evening, i see this man standing in the middle of the almost empty train compartment and i could have sworn he is Mr Nakata who has materialized out that book. As i got up from my seat and started towards the door, you could see the same  spaced out feeling on his face that Murakami describes, clutching his black umbrella tightly and wrapping his gray overcoat even more snugly around him, he starts to move back, his eyes scanning the scene around him, moving into a corner where he can be alone. He quickly crossed over into the other compartment, but still all the time watching me and the other people with a questioning, shy look on his face through the mirrored partition. Was he really the Mr Nakata (Or the Swiss version of him?), one will never know.

Today afternoon, while stacking that book back on the bookshelf, I remembered that i have a book written by the original Franz Kafka somewhere, but had no recollection of when or where i had bought it. A quick search and the book is unearthed. As i open the first page, a handwritten note stares back at me. It was a gift from 13 yrs back by a friend. Whom I have not been in touch with ever since we parted ways back in Chennai India, where we had spent a fantastic 3 months, getting to terms with a (then) strange city that seemed to fight back resolutely for the first couple of weeks to let us in. It started from the first day where we were mobbed by the taxi driver, the house where we were staying in was almost broken into, struggling to find a decent place to eat where we could get something recognizable and edible …. the list is endless. But suddenly one day it all snapped in together, perhaps thanks to that steward at the restaurant next door, whom we used to tip generously everyday as he served us copious amounts of our favorite curries. The city seemed to have dropped it’s guard, welcomed us in and we got to know it  like the back of our hands. So this friend – we recently got in touch again this year, thanks to a mis-spelt Google search that led me to his blog. And there it was today afternoon again, his writing starting back to me on the inner cover from a book that I haven’t touched in nearly 13 yrs.

Maybe there’s a message in here somewhere that I cannot decipher yet. The inimitable Joan did put it correctly … there are strange rivers.

Help! Lego has taken over our house

It is indeed strange to be sending over this plea for help into the giant black hole of the WWW (World Wide Web) … but i guess it is worth a shot. This reminds of how in the late 70’s, NASA on one of their many missions to explore the GWU (Great Wide Universe), sent a gold record (LP, vinyl, schalplatter… whatever you want to call it) with music and messages from the people of the earth. The paradox is quite staggering – a civilisation advanced enough to send a mission to outer space but still backward enough to use LPs as a sound storage medium. I am sure that ship was captured by two alien kids 200 light-years away out on their morning stroll, and they used that LP to scrape off space bugs splattered on the windscreen of their infinite-synergetic-drive space scooter.

Anyway, my immediate concern is not the alien kids or the gold LP, but Lego®, yes Lego, those wonderful blocks/connectable shapes that those kindered souls in Denmark create for the kids world over, which is multiplying at this moment in my house using the same infinte-synergetic-drive-multiplication principle.

Let’s start with this …

This flying Lego car is always waiting next to the main door, springing unannounced upon hapless family members (read mum & dad) as they dare to set foot in its kingdom. Once you get past it unhurt, you have to dodge past this desert storm racer/chaser whose only aim in life is turn a corner at a 100 miles an hour and shoot round pellets at you.

At any given point in time there are at least two races going on in different rooms, which have such a huge following that Bernie Ecclestone (the F1 supremo) will gladly give his leftover hair for even a fraction of that fan base. Then there are indescribable contraptions that only a 7 yr old (my son) can understand.

Heck, Lego men have even descended from the sky and are hiding in our christmas tree!

Santa has surely received his hundred page gift catalog by now and is on his way from the north pole with another truckload of their brethren. So if there is anyone out there who has lived through this or knows what these Lego men are upto, drop me a line. And don’t tell my son that I complained about this – for even a greater storm of Lego will be unleashed and your’s truly will be well and truly buried.