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It’s little over an hour into the evening power cut. I’m staring at the road from my balcony. Just aimlessly looking for something worth loo...

Monday, July 8, 2019

Good Feeling

Knowing in general, as opposed to being kept in the dark, has been the go-to option for us throughout the history. Regardless of how something came about or whether people needed it in the first place, We, humans always had a craving for this feel-good sensation of knowing everything. We want it to tame the mysterious mother nature and all the wonders of the universe so that we can put them in another fairy tale, or a tedious piece of paper with words and calculations. Scale of such efforts needed to conquer the unknown, didn't seems to matter against the fear of the unknown felt brutally unbearable. Hence, many many oceans, deserts, space and even moral lines were crossed in pursuit of an ultimate knowledge. As the old line would go, Knowledge really was/is power.

In vain, many have tried to pull answers out of trees, rocks and even stars. But being such intuitive creatures, such efforts must have felt puny as the time went on. We just needed something better. And since no one left us a good answer for life, the universe and everything, Bravely, we took on the challenge. And boy did stuff came out of our brains!.

Few centuries from this revelation and a lot of answers later, People who identified themselves as non believers would emerge, embracing the good old unknown. A void of faith, was clearly there but for these folks it looked like an opportunity. So these folk, who were better in tune with the rational parts of the brain, gave birth to something called science, marking the starting point in a divulging journey and they couldn't ask for a better start than the one they couldn't see the end of. But they were a smart lot so some ground rules were necessary to keep the creativity in check, So out of the brains came the scientific method, which was created to be the rails to keep things on track.

Proving credibility and necessity, Science is taking us to a promise land that we've surely never been before. But whether all of us need to be there or not, is out of the question, it seems. With most of the world on-board, our future is shaping up inside test tubes and computer simulations as it did for the better part of last centuries. 

Today life for an average Joe, seems impossible without some of the stuff of science, that looks like they were invented to improve health, happiness and overall betterment of the entire human race. But are we happy now? I mean really?. Think about all the scientific achievements and more to the point, the rate of which they emerge. In theory we should be the happiest yet in the list of generations. But we not are we?. Instead we are so desperately and hopelessly depended on our own creations, that one could ask "What is the difference of a man or a woman who is so scared of loosing their job and having to live out on streets without any of the creature comfort, Than someone who lived in the past who was scared of a tree god that it would stop giving them food in the coming season?" Answer is, this time we know the truth. We know theres no tree gods but only the relentless competition to survive. And happiness is overrated.  

Sad old truth is knowing about everything will not make us any happier. But it will put us in the right place in the universe and show us that we are just insignificant dust and have no business poking around somethings that our brains are just too small to comprehend. So let the chasers find what they want and see that happiness and inner peace doesn't align with our present path to the future. Many of us will soon forget there ever was such things. Yes! another dystopian future alert!. And again try and see that its our egotistical hunger for things that ultimately holds no value to our lives at all, that keeps us from breaking the chains. Remember that as our hunger grows our souls are slowly being destroyed by our very own creations. Going after an ultimate knowledge is like chasing a mirage, while knowing its a mirage and its not really there. 

I really do need some inner peace!

Good feeling, 
Won't you stay with me just a little longer..
It always seems like your leaving,
When I need you here just a little longer..

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Pale Blue

Chapter 1

“Is it really happening?, I thought this was a science thing.”

“Yes! As far as we know.”

Jack smiled sarcastically and sat down with his coffee. Even though work he did for the agency was questionable at best, his training always took control at these situations.

“You don't really believe those conspiracy stories, do you?. I mean aliens in middle east, of all places? ”

“No. Not really, but I do believe in Americans sticking their noses in places, where they don't belong.”

Raj really had nothing to protect or to be afraid of, so he didn't hesitate to express his feelings about
anything. But this was Jack, so he knew where the line was.

“Word is, there is this magical mountain close to the border, covered with trees and plants that nobody has ever seen before.”

“See... that is exactly what I'm saying... Even if that's true, which is really unlikely, what is that has to do with us? ”

Jack was hoping that the story about quarantine teams and American scientists hadn't reached Raj yet.

“Oh! Come on. You know what I'm on about. Rest of the world is not that dumb, despite what you guys think. also people I work for are very interested in this.”

“Yeah! I thought so. But the truth is I'm in the dark too. I'm not exactly in the loop anymore and even if I was, I doubt anybody would read me in to something like this. ”

Raj had to pickup his sister from the mall, he really wanted to keep talking, but he knew how the conversation is going to end.

Relationship between Raj and Jack never had any crossings with their professions. In fact they've only had vague ideas about each others work lives. Raj was born in Southern Sri Lanka but he was
raised in London where his parents lived. This made him very attractive to college girls, because they all wanted the guy with caramel skin and the quirky British accent. Jack on the other hand, was a born and raised New Yorker and everyone at NYU knew who he was because his father was a known politician.

Jack and Raj met in a strange and a bit awkward situation when both of them were dating the same girl. But years went by and they became best friends and even roommates, in their 30s. They often went through lot of wine and beer, trying to remember the name of their matchmaker. It was a lost cause.

“is it still in the shop?”

“Yeah, it's taking longer than I thought, that can't be a good sign.”

“Take mine, just bring it back in one piece.”

“Yeah, yeah.. that joke is not getting old.”

Raj had small a bump-in with another car in a parking lot. His car was fine but being a car guy, his pride was a little hurt.

“I'm off. One of these days, We are going to sit down, and have an honest chat about our work.”

“Amen, Brother!”

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Fiction


Back when I was starting to discover science fiction, in one of the first books i read, there was a small piece at the end about another book that the translator had published. In there, Arthur C. Clarke was describing a machine that could build anything from atomic level just by pressing a button. He was a genius at making people believe his wonders from the future, all the way to a point where people actually started trying to make those things. This machine, while in real world, might be way out of our reach, still made sense to me. I remember thinking "why couldn't it be possible?". If we managed to survive another thousand years, aren't we capable of making such things?. Looking at what came out our civilization, to anyone who lived 100 years back from now, most of our technology will be unrecognizable. A millennium on earth could bring almost anything we can imagine to life. 

So, this machine in my head looked like a huge coffee maker with a big glass covered hole in the middle and a computer hooked-up to it. And the paragraph that described this incredible machine, made me buy the book. It was a hard find. 

The book was a wonderful mix of Clarke's imagination and his scientific knowledge. But even from teleportation and time travel to galactic colonization, this machine found its way to my mind and there it settled forever. That meant most of the nights I was lying in bed and 3D-printing the most ridiculous things I could think of. I even thought about saving current state of a sports car to a data file, so I could restore it every time I crashed or just had to service.

Even though Clarke's estimations about time, sometimes seems to be off, Few of his imaginary machines are becoming or already became a reality in past years. Satellite technology is a well known example but even smaller things like escalators were wonderfully explained in his early novels, where people would simply stop walking but the pavement will move instead, to get them to where they wanted to go.

Today i see people using 3D printers to make plasticky things in their homes, and i couldn't be more amazed to see one of my favorite imaginary toys come to life. I know it's not the same thing as building things from atomic level, but again, I see people printing human ears with live cells and i think to myself may be Sir Arthur C. Clarke's not that far off.

Technology is only good as its creator and based on our track record, Whatever use we can make out of something like this, will surely cause more damage to our civilization.

Be that as it may, the lesson to be learned here is that, Fiction is made out of imagination and intuition, and those two used to be strong factors of our civilization in passed years. Today we built on those ideas that laid up foundations for years to come. But just like fossil fuel, we might run out of those, sooner than we think.

So instead of watching crappy space movies, we might want to pickup some old sci-fi novels and magazines to see what we miss today and may be try to figure out, why we stopped imagining how cities, transportation, colonization or just life on earth would look like in a thousand years from now.

Peace!