IN THE WAKE OF COVID-19, WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF HUMAN RACE SURVIVING THROUGH THE 21st CENTURY?
Posted on: April 12, 2020
To answer this question, we have to first understand the dangers of the world, choices we possibly make in the future, the role of technology and external forces of nature to estimate the odds of human race survival.
My one half of the brain is fairly optimistic in the sense that less than 1% of the world’s population (who I call ‘superhumans’) has enough will and wisdom to overpower the future threats, which have the potential to wipe out humans from the face of Earth. My other half is equally pessimist in the sense that the never-ending greed of over 99% of the world’s population (who I call ‘hungry hamsters’) will make it harder and harder for superhumans to be successful in their mission.
I don’t fear an asteroid bolting into the earth and demolishing us because such incidents happen once in millions of years and our life is too short on this planet to even worry about this. I don’t even fear a series of nuclear attacks as a result of world war III and wipe out the human race because we have made enough checks and balances through international treaties to safeguard the human race.
I think the main threats are going to come from our own actions. We are rapidly and at exponentially increasing rate digging our own grave – much so by the actions of ‘hungry hamsters’. Let me first accept that I am one of the ‘hungry hamsters’ before I speak more about them.
Our wants are unlimited and never seem to be satisfied. When I was growing up, people I know had only basic items necessary to live life with dignity and the shops in the neighborhood carried a limited number of essential items. Today, when I look around, people have every possible comfort in the house, ultra-luxury cars parked in the garage and retail stores have multitudes of items stacked up on the shelf. Yet people are not satisfied. Our wants are virtually unlimited.
Not too far ago, people traveled mostly in and around cities and in rare cases outside the city. Family and friends lived in the same city or neighborhood. Today, cities have expanded horizontally, family members are living in different countries, sometimes continents for work. Frequent air, rail, and road commute to work or meet with friends and family has put excessive stress on the environment.
The technological advancements (e.g.: powerful chainsaw, earthmovers, icebreaker ships, super trawlers) have increased the capacity per capita to destroy the earth at a much faster rate than ever before. Though technology improves our productivity and helps us get more of what we want but doesn’t tell us what we should want to keep the planet safe.
The economic race between countries makes the matter even worse. The gap between the incentives driving our behavior and our actual interests in protecting the earth is growing. Some of the measures that have far more positive impacts on the environment are beyond an individual’s capacity. These measures require a foresighted government with a strong will to prioritize the environment over the economy. In some cases, one country alone cannot bring about change. It needs a collective will and coordinated actions of many major countries and long-term planning to even slow down the deteriorating impact on the environment. It seems next to impossible to convince governments because governments have no choice but to fulfill the greed of ‘hungry hamsters’ to stay in power. Therefore my pessimist half has no hopes from them.
Another possible threat to the human race is a virus. It may seem an exaggeration but it is honestly not. If you go back in time, in the 2nd century Antonine Plague killed 5M, in the 6th century Plague of Justinian killed 25M, in the 14th century The Black Death killed up to 200M, and in the 20th century AIDS and Flu Pandemic killed about 75-100M. In the first quarter of the 21st century alone, we have seen in numerous attacks of viruses such as Ebola, Zika, SARS, Encephalitis and now COVID-19 that have threatened the existence of the human race on earth.
In the most recent COVID-19 attack, once it gets beyond the capacity of hospitals to cope with all the cases, then I think it will lead to a pile-up of dead bodies at an unprecedented rate. We are already witnessing this in some of the countries. We are so interconnected today that a small change in one part of the world can have a ripple effect on the rest of the world at a much greater magnitude. Such threats are growing at a much faster rate than ever before. Based on my past experience, I don’t think we will ever be incentivized appropriately to change the course of these threats.
My other half of the brain, which is fairly optimist, thinks that we can exploit the same technology, which has the potential to destroy the earth, to potentially save the human race from extinction. This is where comes the role of ‘Super Humans’ who can effectively coordinate among themselves because they are driven by the same mission and equal passion to bring about the change we all need to survive. Elon Musk is one of those who is making every possible effort to make humans flee Earth before all is over. There is a 50% chance that we will survive through the 21st century. If we survive, there is a 50% chance that we will see ourselves thriving in Mars. Remember, Mars weather is several times more hostile than the most hostile place on Earth.
My belief is that we are in our last hour. The choices we make today and in the near future will more or less decide the face of human life on earth. Especially after the COVID-19 incident, the race to go to Mars will accelerate and the rich will be in the forefront to take the first risk as only they can afford to take it financially.
It will be interesting to see whether ‘Super Humans’ will be able to convince ‘Hungry Hamsters’ and take them along with them in the journey of ‘reversal of environment’ or give up hope and succumb to ever-increasing greed of ‘Hungry Hamsters’.
What do you think of the odds of the human race surviving through the 21st century? How will we survive, if we do? Will ‘Super Humans’ like Elon Musk be successful in their mission?
Romancing in the midst of political turmoil and crumbling civil-military regimes of Middle East
Posted on: January 3, 2015
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(a night we would never forget…)
Middle East: is gone as we know it. Over the past few years, it has changed so rapidly that even Egyptian civilization wouldn’t have changed so much in thousand years. Borders are blurred, rebels and militants are on the rise and regional powers are losing ground as never seen before. Egypt, which recently experienced Arab uprising, overthrowing Hosini Mubarak and giving way to an elected president, Mohamed Morsi, had quickly lost faith in democracy and preferred military regime. Today, Egypt is grappling with multiple facets of terrorism: ISIS from the east (Sinai region), claiming control on large part of Sinai region; Libyan terrorists from the west, massacring several hundred Egyptian army men in the past few months; And, Egypt rebels (members of Muslim Brotherhood) from within the country, demanding freedom and justice, while fighting against their own army.
Tanks guarding the streets of Cairo. View from our hotel’s balcony.
In the midst of this turmoil, Shipra and I decided to spend our to-be-most-remembered days in Egypt as part of our honeymoon trip. You may ask me “why Egypt! Have all the beautiful islands in the world drowned in ocean?” And I have no answer to it. May be, my love for adventure traveling sets me sailing on such trips.
On 28th November, we set out for a three-country (Egypt, Jordan and Turkey) trip.
That night (also our first night of the honeymoon trip, realistically), we were traveling from Cairo to Minya along the western side of Nile, which runs through the Saharan desert. Both of us were completely exhausted after a day-trip to pyramids of Giza. I was feeling sleepy and my eyes were tired of driving in the night. In fact, I had not slept for 40 hours. Three hours after we left Cairo, I gave up. I told Shipra to look for a spot off the road where we can take a power nap of 30 minutes and regain energy to reach upto the nearest town. We found a place 300 feet off the highway, a good enough distance to keep us hiding. Shipra might have expected the first night somewhat better, if not a five-star hotel, but at least a bed and four walls for privacy.
Alarm was set for 30 minutes. At 29th minute and few seconds later (I can say with surety because few seconds later the alarm rang off), there was knocking on our windows from both sides. We got up to our shock to realize that we have been surrounded by 5 men. They were young, may be in early 30s, and wearing civilian dress. The man next to Shipra was holding an assault automatic rifle, AK-47. I had no clue how to react to this situation. Though, it wasn’t my first such experience, I had faced a similar one on Mexico-Guatemala border but definitely a first one with wife.
I chose not to attempt anything that may excite them, instead, followed as they said. So, I opened my side of the door. The guy (who seemed the leader of the group) asked what we are doing here. Thank goodness I could speak a bit of Arabic and explained him in a mix of Arabic and English. When I told him that I felt sleepy and stopped here to sleep, he kept repeatedly saying “you feel sleepy, come with me!” That was the point when my confidence shook and I was short of words. I was clueless about what to say. So, I started saying sorry. I told him I will not stop for sleep again (pretty much pleading for life). He then asked me where you from. I replied in Arabic ‘Aana Hindi’ (I am Indian). India is one of those few major countries, who have the least enemies.
Something seemed to have changed in him after I said ‘I am Indian’. He decided to let us go. His last words to us were ‘don’t stop, very risky’. This was the night Shipra and I would never forget. After that we drove 3000 kms across Egypt (East, West, North, South), including 1500 km western Sahara route without a petrol pump, and everywhere we got the same advice “don’t stop on the highway, unless it is an army check post”.
If we leave aside the terrorism for a while, no country in the world can offer what Egypt can offer. You would be amazed to see magnanimity of Pyramids, vastness of Sahara, corals of Red Sea and temples of Pharaohs. I would hope that these things remain intact, just as they did for centuries, regardless of who claims the control on Egypt.
Yours Truly,
Sanket
From Street Dramatist to World’s Most Influential Personality’ 2014 – Arvind Kejriwal
Posted on: April 29, 2014
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Importance of social media in social & political reforms
The traditional ways to spread the word through TV, radio and newspaper advertisement for a social reform still exist; in fact they do a better job in many contexts. But with the advancement in social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – one can get the message out to the millions much quickly at cheaper rates to a well targeted audience.
Arvind Kejriwal is a prime example of success that can be achieved through a strategic, comprehensive and all round approach to stay in touch with fans, followers and media. Utilizing social media channels such as Youtube channels, Facebook and Twitter, Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal has been directly or indirectly able to reach 1.2 billion people of India with the message of ‘India Against Corruption’.
India Against Corruption Movement
In 2011, a group of social activist came together to launch a movement called India Against Corruption (IAC) to mobilize the masses in support of a strong anti-corruption bill that on passing will make India corruption free. Their proposal for creation of strong anti-corruption bill would have had the powers to arrest and charge government officials accused of corruption.
In late 2012, there was a split in the IAC movement caused by differences of opinion among the central figures regarding its lack of practical success and how much this might have been due to its unwillingness to be directly engaged in the political system. These differences, leading to Arvind Kejriwal and some others splitting to form the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in order to clean the system from within.
Ideology of Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)
Arvind Kejriwal believes that through Swaraj (self governance), the government will be directly accountable to the people instead of higher officials. The Swaraj model lays stress on self governance, community building and decentralization. Strong anti corruption law on the other hand will help sustain Swaraj model.
Role of social media in spreading the message of Arvind Kejriwal to masses
There were several challenges ahead of Arvind Kejriwal in fighting against the mighty opposition parties. Starting from scratch, without any resources, it seemed almost impossible to win the elections and make the necessary amendments in the constitution. Financial and human resources are usually very tight for a new-born party, who wants to fight elections with white money, so the low-cost social media platforms give an amazing opportunity to spread the word and stay in touch with fans, followers and media. In the past, the model was different: you had to cut a hefty check on an ad campaign. If one knows how to skillfully tackle it then it can be really effective.
Kejriwal pulled together a bunch of interns to form an IT cell, who will manage every aspect of social media communication. Based on the target audience engagement with social media, Kejriwal chose Youtube, Facebook and Twitter as the primary channels of communication. Most of the India’s vote bank falls under 18 – 35 years bracket.
IT cell found an opportunity to leverage YouTube channel as party’s Live TV channel. Party started to create and broadcast AAP related news, which mostly covered press conferences, speeches, political rallies, debates and party advertisement.
1000 Facebook pages were created for every state, constituency and AAP candidate to engage with the locals, post local political developments and publish tailor-made constituency-wise manifestos to create effective campaign. This allowed party to bridge the gap between the political party and the local voters. AAP quickly made changes to their strategy depending on the voices of the people. IT cell worked 24×7 to address the questions of voters on party’s vision, manifesto and stand on critical issues of the country.
Twitter was used mostly by the senior leaders of the party to connect with mainly fans and followers. It was mostly used to clarify stand on on-going issues.
In one year’s time, the whole movement turned into a crowdsourcing platform where every supporter of AAP started sharing videos, posts and images to build the momentum. Today there are billions of FB posts, blogs, tweets and videos about the vision, mission and working of Arvind Kejriwal.
Soon Arvind Kejriwal was able to gather support from sizeable share of voters in the election through social media, public rallies and TV debates. One year after the party’s formation, Arvind Kejriwal fought the election, won the elections and formed the government. He made a history by forming the government in the very first election of any party.
Until few years ago he was unknown to most of us but last week he won one of the most prestigious award, World’s Most Influential Personality’ 2014.
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Good evening faculty members, staff members, friends and closest to my heart this evening, the graduating class of 2009.
At the outset I would like to thank the third year students for these wonderful arrangements. It’s an honor to be standing here on this podium where some of my idols gave their speeches from here before passing into the history of IIIT-H, and I thank the organizers for this wonderful opportunity.
Today I am not going to give a speech as in the one ‘papa kehte hai beta hamara bada naam karega’. Nor am I looking for votes. I am, instead giving a vote of thanks.
It is hard to believe that, 4 years ago, I first set foot on this campus and in the next two weeks I will be walking out. How time flies! It looks like a blink of an eye! But look closely enough and you will realize how much has happened! There have been ups and downs, achievements and pitfalls, celebrations and mournings and at the end of it, there stand in front of you, 176 lives, and I bet every single one of them, COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED!
We have gained so much from IIIT!
And as we walk out of here, on strong and confident feet, it’s time to take one final look at our lives in IIIT. The lives that we all have lived!
It is also time, to express our appreciation towards those who made it happen.
As a batch, we have several reasons to be proud of ourselves. Students from our batch have had 13 no. of research papers published, the highest by any batch so far in IIIT. The fact that some of these have been in top conferences like CVPR that adds more feathers to our cap. Seven from our B.Tech batch have converted to dual program. Further, around ten B.Tech students will be going abroad to continue their research.
Despite the changed criteria for selection in IIMs, with less preference being given to fresher, our batchmates secured 24 IIM calls, out of which 5 calls got converted. 3 of the B.Tech students have got admission to various IIMs.
Success stories do not end here. Varun Jampani has got an internship in Micsrosoft, Redmond. Sahiti got the Google women engineering award, 5 of our batchmates so far have been selected for Google Summer of Code.
A word about placements. It’s true that our batch placements haven’t been as good as that of our seniors, but we all know, that is because of reasons beyond our control. What is indeed commendable is that despite of the slowdown, our placements have still been better than any other Institute of national repute, with the average salary being offered to the BTech batch crossing the 6.25 Lakh figure.
Students from our batch have won laurels in sports tournaments like Ichathlon, All AP womens TT tournament and CBIT football tournament. We carried forward the different club activities. The new IIIT Rock Band ‘Avante Garde’ owes a lot to the tireless efforts of one of our batchmates, Atul Dwivedi, who had the support of the entire batch with him.
Even among all these achievements there is something in which our batch has stood out. That is, the imagination to think something different, and the guts to take those thoughts to their execution. In totally unprecedented developments, and in this recession period, our batchmates have launched two companies, Pacare and Muse. And it’s not just companies that we have started. Let me introduce you to Samvedana. It is an NGO started only recently by Deepti, Charan and Prateek. It has grown to a community of 146 members and is undertaking several social projects as of now. I am also proud to tell you about Gopal Koduri’s vision 2020, who is working towards providing computing facilities in regional languages.
For you and for me, my dear batchmates, things will never be the same now.
1. There will be no UG4 mailing list to spam.
2. Bhargava, sambhav, piyush will not design another batch t-shirt.
3. Maroo, harsha, and prudhvi will no longer redefine celebrations.
4. There will be no more birthday bumps in the corridors.
5. Satya will not hit another square cut for our batch cricket team.
6. Sainani will no longer be around to defend himself with non-stop PJs.
7. There will be no public news manufactured and broadcasted on gtalk status messages.
8. DJ Ranga won’t perform in any of the DJ nights now.
9. Amit Kabra will not ask you any more doubts.
10. There will be no LAN to play multiplayer games.
11. Never again will Jawahar Sir scare you of a copy case.
12. After tonight, Govindrajulu sir will never remind you the importance of ‘quest for knowledge’.
13. There will be no more coffee shop to sit together for hours.
14. There will be no wing mates, hostel mates, house mates, no more inter batch competitions, inter house competitions, no more Ikka Bikka Cikka grading, no more night out BC sessions, and most importantly, now there will never be hundred doors you could knock on, whenever you wanted to talk.
It’s time to leave, and although we can never repay them enough for their kindness, I would like to make my humble efforts to appreciate all those who made our lives here so fruitful. On behalf of the entire batch, I thank all the faculty members for guiding us through these four years.
I thank all the staff members, for making our lives possible. I thank the Physical Education Department, placements officer, server staff, academic, finance and administrative officers, library staff and hostel administration for so patiently helping us out whenever the need be.
I thank the Security and housekeping staff members for making our lives safe and comfortable. Last but not the least, I have to thank the contribution of the people who run the shops in the campus.
Dear faculty and staff members, batchmates, juniors, it’s time to move on for us, but we’ll all remain in touch in one form of the other. We’ll always remain a part of the great IIIT family.
Let the Banyan tree always guide us all.
Farewell!
Sanket Sharma
25th April 2009
IIIT Hyderabad
PS: I hope I could do justice to all my batchmates and cover every possible achievements and characteristics of our batch. Thanks for all that cheer, I could not ask for anything more.
PS: Special Thanks to Aniket for his valuable inputs.
PS: Friends Goodbye to all of you. We all will miss each other for life long :).
just another blog!!! 