The impending danger of plastic utensils

 

watchmen

 

Abstraction, root of all evil

     The word abstraction conjures up so much complexities that many people do not want to use it in their vocabulary. This was particularly highlighted recently when a write-up was made to my superior. The written content was then edited over a long time to ensure that the remains of this word does not exist. So much pain was taken to ensure this. It was assumed that somehow the next reader would know that this word was used in the first draft. The resultant content was so much watered down that I could not stand near that content even for a micro second. Now, what happened here? What happened was that my writing was further abstracted without the superior understanding it. He did not reduce the abstraction but increased it. This is the un-becoming of many of the organizations today. 

     This applies particularly to traditional organizations who have made it to the present age based on the money amassed during their prime. Organizations should facilitate whistle blowing and suggestion system and incorporate them into the main fabric of the organization. This will remove the levels of abstraction between the lowest execution levels and the highest vision level. This will in turn bring out the shortcomings at both the levels and all the other levels between. 

    The entire world works on abstraction at the highest level. People feel comfortable at the highest level of abstraction. Truth comprehended by humans is already abstracted. As it flows down the communication chain, it is further abstracted. Once it reaches the target human, the target human again adds a level of abstraction based on his capabilities/influences and will try to influence others with this level of abstraction so on and so forth. The human language is made for this level of abstraction. In fact one of the most important programming paradigm the Object Oriented Programming has abstraction at its core. This paradigm is simply the human ability and least resistance path approach to understand any aspect in the most easiest way a human can understand, which in turn leaks out a major portion of the reality. People always tell they want the "real" information, the truth. This is far from what any human wants. 

All humans want an abstracted view which will make them comfortable or un-comfortable in the most comfortable way. There are many occasions wherein a certain group of people with a certain ideology wanting to prove that their idea is the best one. To do this what is the need of killing people who are no way connected to this level of abstraction and are abstracted in a much different way. Why cant this be told in the best possible abstraction, that is human language. Why should certain unrelated people die to get your point across. Why? Tell what you want to tell straight. Keep on telling it. When somebody wants to tell a strong point, it is always better to be at the lowest level of abstraction. 

    The governments take the opposite approach. They undermine the capability of understanding of its people and present the facts at the highest level of abstraction. The amount of effort required to peel of these layers of abstraction requires huge resources. This will be done by only a few. If these are identified and re-programmed then whatever data available to the common public is the one presented to them at the highest level of abstraction which is very easy to digest. 

    The assimilation of highly abstracted and 0 level abstracted data requires the same level of effort and is the absolute minimal. Humans should never forget the art of questioning/prodding/peeling off levels of abstraction and search for the absolute truth. Ideologies requiring abstraction requiring laying down of human lives are cowardly and would require further abstractions to stay in vogue and in this race, the resultant situation would at some point go out of control leading to chaos. It is not that chaos is bad, but to reach that many lives might be lost.

Profiteering from vaccines funded by tax payers money

    Majority of the governments funded the research and development of the vaccines which have yielded positive results. The first thing to talk here is that the governments money is the tax payers money. Whatif the investments made by the government did not yield results? Well, the funding from for the various companies would have evaporated. All the infrastructure developed as a consequence would have been wasted. However, majority of the vaccines funded have been succesful. Lucky taxpayers, Ha. Let us now see what is happening after this success. Now, the corporations want to make profit out of it. 

    Either the governments are naive or are in bed with these corporations. When the government agreed to bear all the risks of failure, cant the government add another clause for success? The clause for success would be to produce and sell the vaccines on cost of production and distribution only. The distribution, can again be taken up by the government, if the corporations feel that it is not strong point. So, the cost of production of the vaccine should be the selling price of the vaccine.

    However, the corporations and governments have different ideas. The corporations, particularly pharmaceuticals are seeing a cash cow. Majority of the vaccines are based on some information of the crown of the virus. As the virus updates the constituents of the crown, the information provided by the vaccine into the body becomes outdated. So, for every major mutation wherein the chemical formula of the crown changes in a major way, the human body cannot identify it as a virus, so the corporations are free to now produce an updated vaccine with this updated chemical structure. This can be an ifinite loop. This money source will become something like water, which is abundantly available and available whenever you are thirsty. 

    Why am I now talking corporations and governments, Well, that is the correct way. In fact you can combine both these terms and you will not find any difference at all. Let me give you an example. One vaccine vendor states the cost of vaccine in a particular country. When there is a backlash from the public, what does the government do? Well it decided to absorb certain portion of the price stated by the corporation. This decision was taken in split second. Why, elections are under way and it can have an adverse effect on the results. No communication happened between the government and the corporation. No discussions held. Well, is the public happy. Yes, why not? But, this is not as easy as it appears. You see, the government does not receive money from the gods. Whatever, the government has decided to absorb is the money from the tax payers. It is as good as paying what the corporation was asking.

Now, what is the point of investing and supporting the entire excersize of design and development of the vaccine with public money and the same is sold to the public on profit. It is not wrong, if you have developed a comfort product. In this case you have produced a vaccine. This particular vaccine should be out of the profit strategy. You first ensure that you have enough people on the planet. Corporations and goverments dont exist in vaccum. They are agian people. But as the famous phrase goes "..Some people are more equal..". 

    The reason for profit has been touted as the inputs for increasing the outputs further. Instead of the profit margin, the government can decide whether this increase in production is justifiable. Instead, the government can support other manufacturers who already have the majority of the capabilities for producing such a vaccine by giving them just enough support to produce the vaccine. This will result in investment in that corporation and bring it upto a standard wherein it can be competitive. And, competition is always better.

Profiteering from a vaccine funded by the taxpayers money for the survival of the taxpayer is murder and nothing else.

Why are people obsessed or made to obsess about culture

Of all the chains around the present humans, no chain is stronger than the chain of culture. Culture has grown to such a level that it "is" the way of life. It is the "benchmark" with which you compare all your actions and thoughts. Benchmarking your actions is ... but benchmarking your thoughts which in turn would result in your actions is the dangerous thing. The narrowing of ones thoughts by culture is stifling. 

     The freedom from the chains of culture can be best expressed by a person who lives his country and settles in another country. The initial freedom experienced by the individual, cannot be expressed. He love it, he relishes it, he compares it. he sees that the culture in that country is so different. He is forced to compare it. If the foreign culture even give a little leeway to the existing tight cultural chains around the individual, the individual feels euphoria. What if there is a place with pure anarchy and the individual lands up in this planet. What would be the result on the individual is an interesting case study, and we have to wait until we accidentally step into such a planet. So until then ......... 

     Why should an individual and the society behave in set ways for any action from any constituent of the society? Why should all the actions and activities be so strictly established. Why does culture change across groups of people in one single society? Why is there no common culture among all the humans? Why do individuals who go from an older culture be "relieved" when he lands in a country with a recent culture or a country in which the culture has not been made "dogmatic"? The feeling when an individual transforms to a culture on the other way round, all that relief will reverse to stifling. We have seen the evolution of right and wrong over the years. We have seen human sacrifice justified and the entire society feeling that is right. We have seen that slavery was also justified and in certain cultures it was found to be right. Right and wrong have also evolved, but there is no right and wrong freely available for an individual. Should the individual not have his own morals, his ethics, his behaviors?

    Cultures are giving birth to robots. But the thing is there are certain individuals who have a feel that this is happening but somehow have a different explanation for following the culture. This group of individuals are more dangerous. Because these people have reasons for why the culture is so, and that reason is never upgraded. But continues to get more "dogmatic". If there are people who want to question, they will be termed impure and alienated. Once this is done the idea and the questions which arose in that individual dies with him. So, we have to wait several generations for another individual to come up with the same sets of questions and may be solutions. 

    The change in culture over the years have been brought about by bright individuals who had the grit and the knowledge of changing the perception of the entire race, while many more tried their best to hold on to the classic culture. However, the present days with un-paralleled information flow we have barriers which have not been seen over the entire human past, that is the number who want status quo has increased and have become vociferous because people can now read and write. This reading and writing ability has been turned on its heads by powerful people and have started to use this ability in controlling people. 

    Culture is the bottom line of all the changes over the history of a particular group. However, the changes, ideas have been weighted with the more weighty ones overruling the lessor weighed ideas, though they may be better. The same strategy is being used now. The more weighted idea is weighed by the reach it has. The more the reach the more the weight. So, do i suggest that all individuals with similar ideals be grouped together. I would say yes here, but we are talking about the most intelligent animal on the planet. 

    The individual is not the same tomorrow. Tomorrow his thought process might change something in his belief dictionary which does not warrant his stay with the present group. This does not stop any other individual with the thought process of this group join this as on date. However, ......... Well, you are spoiling the joy of anarchy. No, I am stressing anarchy in its purest form. You cannot tell that anarchy has to follow rules. If you follow that you will end up with another America. If we follow pure anarchy will we end up as our pre-historic society? Is that good? Is that the best? Will that save this planet from extinction? 

 

Long live the freedom software movement

There have been many examples of organizations taking up GPLd code and trying to spin a business model around it(Let us call it organization A). The catch here is that the code is available in the public under GPL. If an individual or another corporation(Let us call it organization B) sees that the offering is costly and the terms offered are too stifling they still have the access to the same code. Let us say that that A has now sweetened the deal with improvements and additions to the code base and offers that as the premium to B. Now, B has the option of taking the improved deal form A or asking for A to give out the improvements to the original code base since the original code base was GPLd. This is where A loses its head. This is where A drops its towel. This is where many organizations understand that it is not a viable model.

But there have been examples of organizations making money out of GPLd software. The important ones coming to the mind is Redhat and Suse. At a time when even redhat didnt have a commercial offering, suse had only the commercial offering. All these people started working "around" GPLd software. They did not work much "on" the GPLd software. Whatever utilities they developed to wrap around the GPLd software making the users adopt GPLd software was aimed with ease of use and technical support and customization for the clients. This worked and companies were successful with this. The object of business is profit maximization. There are plenty of strategies to do it. The problems while doing business with GPLd software is the ethical dilemmas. You want to be true to the GNU philosophy and you have to maximize shareholders profits. As you start wanting more returns from GPLd software that is where you start spiraling down. That is where you are extracting blood instead of milk from the cow's udder. Now, the money you are making is blood money.

Now comes a biggie who thinks that he knows how to make more money from GPLd software and buys the smaller and a better ethical vendor. Without even having a plan to integrate the ethics and the working of this company. The integration plan is one of the most vital thing for a successful takeover. You decide whether you want the smaller firm to continue with its ethics or completely break it down and merge with your profit making culture. There is no road in between. Many mergers and acquisitions have failed because of this. For big corporations it is better you kill it totally like google or microsoft. Take out whatever assets that can be proprietarized and throw out the GPLd ones. The problem arises when you think of proprietarizing GPLd code. There might be plenty of code written by the acquired company under GPL. But just because you wrote it, you dont own it. It is in the GNU world.

Efforts are on to kill the free software movement. Efforts are on to destroy the free software foundation. Efforts are on to kill the GPL. And this time it is a totally co-ordinated effort from all the bigs. We dont know how it is going to end. But we know for sure that the GPL document has stood its test of time. It has been framed with the core human societal values at its core. It has not been framed for profiteering. It has been framed with the basic human ethic of "sharing". They all thought that they bring down RMS they bring down GPL. They are wrong. They should have done it the other way round, then it might have worked. But, now it is not working. People are sratching their heads. All their lawyers and PRs are working overtime to malign the GPL.

So, clearly now is the time to advertise freedom software. Now is the time for all the individuals and ethical groups to spread the word of freedom software. Now is the time to share. Now is the time to side with the free software foundation and identify the blobs in the free software foundation and replace them with GPLd code since we have already lost the Linux foundation for the blobs. Now is the time to start GPLd software. Yes they are not flashy, Yes they are not easy to use. Now is the time to make them flashy. Make them more usable. Make them more known to the public. Now is the time to celebrate the contributions of one and all made to the freedom software world. Now is the time to provide due recognition to all the developers who work both for earning and for human ethics. Now is the time to spread the names across the public network. Now is the time to dig out the the name sof the contributors on which all the proprietary world of software is standing. Now is the time to tell that Macos and ios are visual shells on BSD code. Now is the time to shout that the flashy PS4s are just an interface to the awesome BSD code. Above all now is the time I request all developers developing for fun for serious ethics to please release their code under GPL and not under any other permissive licenses.

As a long time GPLd software user, I salute all the freedom software developers and thank them from the bottom of my heart for providing the world an ethical alternative.

Long live GPL. Long live RMS. Long live the sharing ethos.

Education and logic

All this while the world has been telling that education is what is going to save the world from illogical conclusions. Yes, education has been successful on many accounts. It has been instrumental in telling the people about their past follies. It has been instrumental in making the people to read what is being presented to them. Is education the know-how of reading? Is education the imbibing of logical thought? Is education the know-how of writing a language. Is the result of education to read? What is education. In India there are night classes for the under-privileged and the senior people. The stress is on learning the alphabet, framing words and understand the dictionary meaning of the words. So once they can read a newspaper, they are educated. Now, what after the person can read a newspaper? Is education not bothered about how he should interpret it? Or should education not bother about the interpretation. Should the interpretation be forced on to the reader like in some countries? Should the interpretation be allowed to run free in all directions like in some countries. What is really the purpose of education? Is it to create a more radical consumer of goods/services/information?

Majority of our educational tools rely on "laws". We are told that we are not to question them. If this is not accepted by the child then the future of his education is a mess. Because all the future information he will get will be based on these laws. If the basic premise is not accepted then the kid will have a hard time to come to terms with the present world. If he accepts, it is smooth travel. He will come out a brick in the wall. Now, the thing is if given an option of accepting or not accepting, if the child chooses non-acceptance of the present laws of physics, of moral sciences, of mathematics, of logic, he has to make some of his own and he does make them as he progresses over his journey of life. This will be made based on his experiences, his interactions, his feedback, his successes, his failures,....The resultant human might become a brick in the wall, a special brick in the wall, a hammer which breaks and disturbs the wall, a builder who brings more brick into the wall. So the result can be pro-system and anti-system. Now, again, the meaning of system and anti-system might be different for different people based on their education.

So how should the educational system work? Should the system put only the questions and extract answers for all the questions from the student? Where does the student search for the answers? If he searches it within the present system, he will agree or disagree. If he disagrees will the educational system allow it and allow him to continue to the next question or try to play logic with his answers? Once the kid comes out with his answers how will he be able to cross-check his results? How is he going to cross-reference his conclusion. How is he going to validate his conclusion. Normally conclusions related to politics/society happens immediately. Either you like it or dont or you are not concerned/affected by the conclusions. Drawing a conclusion is one thing but pushing it down the throat of others is another. There are plenty of people in the "not concerned" sphere. These people can be very easily converted to the other side with a slight nudge normally through emotion altering strategies. The happiness of making people agree on your ideals is un-parallelled and this is exactly what is happening with f^&*b*&* and other walled social networks. All these networks are feeding on exactly this aspect of human education. Either they re-inforce the previous education or try to negate it emotionally. All this is again happening for identity. So, is the job of education to give identity, The general syllabus for all the students point to the fact that we want all kids to grow up in the same "particular" way, the same identity.

Will education save the world? Will education give the superpower of reading what is offered and analyze it, fact check it, prove it right or wrong. Will education make all people logicians? Will all the people of the world be logicians? Will logic rule the world and beat out all the ready to eat "isms"?Will.....?

Money, money, money

        What is it about money? How much of it is necessary. How much is enough. How much is bad. How much is good. Does it depend on the individual and his place in the society. Does it depend on the money an individual is already having. Is money the means of consumerism. Is money the mother of all evils. Is the burning man which rejects money and brings back the barter system the answer to all the evils of money. Does barter bring about equality among people. Does barter reduce the rich and the super rich. Will people start honoring relations and human emotions if money is taken out of the equation. Will the removal of money bring in Anarchism which is supposed to mimic the "ultimate order" in chaos. Is money the first aspect of blinding of logic of humans resulting from emotions.

        Actually what does money bring to the table of human society. At the last mile of human society, majority of human emotions are expressed w.r.t money. It can be giving voluntarily, taking by force, taking without the knowledge of the present owner. Happiness, boredom, anger, love, time for love, condition for love, maintaining relations all change at the drop of a hat with change in the money holding power of the individual. Are human relations still strong enough to transcend the issues arising out of the effects of money on the same relations. Is money akin to God. If somebody has all the money in the world, would he have seen god. Since God is supposed to be everything. Is money greater than all the dark energy in the universe since money is what is required to research and find out about dark energy. 

         You are telling me that a genius might be born who would start spurting out all the details regarding the dark energy in the universe. But you forgot that he has to be born and he has to be bought up to this level. At least up to the time he can talk. There can be another option wherein god himself surfaces and shows us the dark matter of the universe Is money and Economics the greatest science of all time. Since this is what allows us to carry out science. If the journey is more valuable than the destination then money and its study is the most valuable study of all time. Should we commit more resources to concentrate more on this path than the destination. But there is a catch. If science is the destination of all the money based activities the path we have been discussing about is limited by the state of science. If this path has to extend then we have to extend the state of science. 

         Majority of investment from the biggest investors is towards this only. The extension of this path again re-iterates the importance of money. It is a chicken egg situation and cannot be solved that easily. Normally both have gone hand in hand and continue to do so. The rate at which the path is lengthening is greater in the modern times and so are the complications of money based issues. The human race is submerged in this path and its destination. Well I have asked enough questions. Are they related. In fact what is this post about. Is it about the human race, the human relationships, Is it about science or economics. Is it about behavioral theory which has found its way into economics as well as science. 

         How will humans battle the science and economics and maintain sanity in relationships and feelings. So humans changing their relations and their feelings according to the economic models and advancement of science a given. Does it remain same even in and anarchic setup. Why is there no study regarding anarchy. There have been many writings regarding this topic but never practiced in reality. The burning man which tries to do it is a capital intensive arrangement carried out by capitalists. Will humans start valuing relations/feelings more in an anarchic setup. If every man has a purpose will the it change in a capital setup or remains the same in anarchic setup. Money, the end of older relationships, beginning of newer ones, starting bitter ones, starting sweeter ones all in the name of increasing the amount of money. This is the present model of the human setup. Can this model be changed. Are there better models negating the use of money. Are there better models wherein an individual does not think that increasing what he has is the only way to be happy.

Should people work to live

There is one common thread in all of the world's religion. Work. Every living being has its purpose. This purpose is nothing but something to be done, work, again. All theologians talk about a super being and all the rules to worship that deity. They just differ in minor ways but the intent is to direct you towards an all encompassing entity. But, religion cannot exist out in thin air. It requires people, alive. How do you keep people alive. How do you provide for this. You make them work. Include passages/writings/rules in the framework which somehow tells this is one way to reach the one. In fact you can afford the path to the one only if you work. It is like a minimum requirement to be part of the religion. In fact work has created rifts among the people over the entire human history and continue to do so. With written knowledge now available to all the human beings, The classification is going to be different in the near future. We are going to have a world wherein everybody will be educated. There will no more be a situation where a select few can read the written knowledge being passed on from previous generations. Suddenly this generation can read all the knowledge generated over all the 20 centuries and is available to everybody with minimum effort. With this it will be difficult to get people to work based on old rules of caste/color/region etc. There have to be other means where you have to create dependency which in turn will force people to work willfully without knowing it. It will be more efficient compared to the older models where you forced them to work.

All the economic theories/political theories are not alien to it. In fact these ideologies talk about work in a direct sense. Working people is the basis of all the present economic/political frameworks. Even Marx's thoery starts and ends with work and workers. In fact it starts to quantify work in the best possible way. Ok...ok, I got it. You are telling me that there have been recent experiments where a minimum amount is paid as a "wage" and the individual is not required to work in the traditional sense. Why are the people in these experiments being paid. This is an ideology wherein the system is expecting contributions from the individual on his own. It is pressurizing the individual to contribute out of commitment by paying advance salary. It is a proven fact that actions/efforts happening unconsciously/willfully takes minimum effort of the brain. This arrangement of work can be utilized to increase the throughput of the effort required to complete a job.

Are we born to work. Should we work to survive. Are we not entitled to live on this planet without doing any work. Is minimum wage the answer for the 1% to keep the 99% working. Should the 99% work.

All oppressions start with an idea and dont die

We have all come across news regarding multinationals/individuals/corporations being sensitive/insensitive to human existence/development/status quo etc... Yes, that sentence was a mouthful. I couldn't write it any other way. All those terms are so tightly tied that you can add way more to the same sentence. Why do people do what they do. It all starts with an Idea. Th idea of existence/persistence/growth/identity. now, when people talk about idea, they normally associate it with a huge business/science/technological idea. But these ideas are based on smaller ideas and also the other way. There have been smaller ideas coming out as branches from bigger ideas. The ideas i am talking about here are the destructive ones. The ideas are about taking inputs which are un-ethical. The output will definitely be something valuable in the real world for the oppressor. For the oppressed(input) the result would be devastation. The oppressor will never know and want to know that this devastation will hit him in the immediate future or a little ahead. The idea is so damn shortsighted

Well, what are we exactly talking about here. We are talking everything which is labelled under non-sustainable development. The problem here is two fold. One is the team carrying out the devastation with the core general idea.The other is the devastation surrounding the group trying to correct the whole non-sustainable thing. The thing concerning the core idea is that even if the idea generator gives the whole plan up, the idea is still up for use. The other complication is the branching from this core idea, the subsidiaries. In fact these subsidiaries have more at stake compared to the bigger ones. The bigger ones bail out once the hurdles for returns increase. The smaller ones continue and in fact all the smaller ones can coalesce and form one big juggernaut. These smaller ones never give up. This gives an impression that the problem is bigger and there is only one big oppressor

These smaller ones are like the hydra. You get one another takes his place. This is known by all the stake holders. So, they just continue. The more educated these are the more clean and polished the oppression. What are the roles of the oppressed, the government, the general public, the press and the international community at large to stop this. Who are responsible for stopping this. Who is responsible for the situation in the first place. What are the roles of these people in resolving this. Cant we live without technology which is at the core of this oppressor/oppressed scenario. Can the world be stable without this. Is the world not stable because of this. Is the world stable. Why are the majority oppressed and the minority the oppressor. Are humans such. Are all the animals such. Why is it that equality so difficult to incorporate in living beings. Marx who started with equality had to adjust to the superiority of a few. Wont the superior ones be constrained if they have to maintain equality with the mundane.

If this has to continue, then why question it in the first place. Why show it as something wrong. Why show people who do it as if they are wrong. Does anybody become right by just telling that this is wrong. What is actually "wrong". Do we understand the right and wrong. Are we programmed with points to clearly spell out right and wrong. If we are clear on this why is everybody bearing the wrongs. Why are people doing the wrongs. If a rule is beneficial to the majority is it any excuse for the minority to bear the brunt of it. Both the groups will have their own right and wrong which are totally incompatible.

Until a time every action of all living beings happen for general good without changing the status quo or improvement chances of all living beings.........

Are we humans any more?

People fighting over borders, religion, caste, color, race, position and what not. All the possible classifications even things like fat, thin, short can bring out bitter fights. Add to this the economic position of the individuals. Since the day purpose of human life changed from livelihood to hoarding to finding that USP of one human has over another. Since the day people forgot their whole capability by people bringing in division of labor, there has been no perfect man. People produce components without knowing what the end product is. What is the joy in that. Even the livelihood of people has these reflections. People run around small incremental aspects which will never give that ultimate happiness, the feeling of seeing and feeling the one. Even spirituality has been borught down to steps, of course since that feeling of joining the one results from a continium of thoughts and acts, people rarely feel it. Whoever felt it can never describe a continium of thoughts and feelings. You can always discretely descrbe the steps to reach there. But, what about the things which are in between which was lost in the incapability of human speech. Which is again a half hearted attempt. Improvements have rarely happened in this most important aspect of human nature.

Human race is unique in differntiationg components of its own. It is very difficult to find a parallel in other animals. We are evolving to lead a lonely life among lesser people. If there are people above we tend to grow in a manner to enslave the people above or be enslaved by the same. All th while doing it alone. Why has conscience taken a back seat. In fact i am hearing that particular word rarely. What had to be in abundance has become a rarity. The entire human race is behind rare things and wants it to be abundant. The rich desist the poor, the poor have so much anger within them, what is going to happen is anybody's guess. People are becoming plasticky. They can fake good manners like pros. Now again we come to the most important, Good and Bad. What is good and bad. The context keeps changing every day. Mass opinion can change anything to each other. The concept of democracy being utilized at its worst. What am I writing about. Is it good, is it bad, should it be written, Should it be read, should it be hated. What should w do? What are we going to do? What will be our fate. Wil we ever do what we are supposed to do in this multiverse. Are we doing exactly what is to be done. Is fate a reality? Are we in a simulation? Cant we control anything? Why have the oracles of the world failed in making us understand this world? Why do people who have seen and felt the one unable to communicate the same to everybody? When are we going to stop killing our own. When are we going to know what is really good and bad. When are we going to know that there is nothing like good and bad. Is morality a requirement? Why do humans dislike anarchy. Are they afraid it is going to bring harmony henceforth. Why do we love order so much and hate anybody who breaks this order. Why dont we understand the order of the person who is breaking it. Oh my.... Oh my......... What am I doing in all this, What am I TO do in all this..........The same question is also to you.........

AI

AI

The cursor blinking after the two letters are typed waiting for the user input at the slave terminal is so yesterday. But for how many days the computers will be slaves to human beings. There is lack of original work being published and the research is merely incremental improvements over the past "Path breaking" findings. I am always worried about the day when the cursor just continues to type and no longer blinks. Maybe the blink waits for a infinitesimal time which a human cannot comprehend. I have been typing on the terminal since so may years. It is endearing to see the terminal waiting on me, begging for input, computing power laying at the users disposal. When the computing power of humans are being utilized in the negligible percentage how will be able to harness the huge untiring computing power at out disposal. All the recent AI is all about collecting information from various people by infringing on their privat issues. If the AI learns from us people who are using nearly nothing of our computing power will it be powerfull enough to think about this in the future? Will it learn that we its creators are so obsessed with our physical well being and our physical connections that our mental capabilities are near to nothing. Will the self-teaching, self-evolutionary AI jump towards the "intelligence blast" which we are thinking will happen. Will humans be able to comprehend this level of intelligence explosion and control/curtail it.

Are humans ready for surviving in an intelligent world? If darwins theory still holds good, were we created to create the ultimate intelligence? Can we go only so far as creating a system which self learns iteratively? If so, at what pace will the learning of self aware/iterative AI be. What will the distribution of learning be. How many of the human race can understand the things happening. Will the formula of 99% keep its head up again. Will that 1% know everything and enslave the remaining 99% as it is today? Since the AI we created is learning from us, will it be the purest form of intelligence? Will it be flawed like us? Will it start with our flawed model and go to the pure one. Oh, what, "Pure intelligence"? Now, what was that? The limited amount of brain usage in us is a clear indication that we are just beginning to understand intelligence and whatever little we know, we think we know everything. How is this happening? Why are we stopping ourselves and all the 99% is finding happiness and the purpose to live the life with this limiting know how. Are we only surrounded by air? Is Ether around? What else are we surrounded by? It took years for life on earth to know that there is light and warmth around them. How may years will we take to understand the other things around us. Colonizing mars is one thing. But do we know everything on our planet or we are taking a chance by travelling to a farther planet to understand what we have at home. Many a times it happens to us humans.

Why have we been unsuccesful in finding life forms more intelligent than us. We always cherish in finding duds than us and shout at the top of our voice regarding the partly intelligence we have. When and how will the human kind achieve that quantum leap to start utilizing our entire potential of our brain. Will we then see more than light, air and warmth around us. Will the intelligence we create out of machines be able to reach this level of intelligence and in the process upgrade our brains also to understand what the AI has understood. Or, the AI is already around us without our knowing and we are already its slaves. Maybe some individual had a feel regarding its existence around us. But by the time we crack this AI thing, will the existing AI be static. Would it not evolve to a better one and allow the human race to own a primitive copy of itself.

The existing societal setup is based on the harsh threads of morals. What if these morals are the rules with the which the AI around us is ruling us? Morals pose the most difficulties for any AI. Morals are the goto statements. Every individual have their own different goto statements. How will the AI behave? What are the morals it is going to take over. Is it going to make its own? How many conditional statements can we feed and answer to the AI's growth?

Oh. This cursor is mocking me. Very clearly shouting at me for my limited intelligence. It is continously laughing. It is waiting to spit on my face. It is waiting to gobble up whatever miniscule intelligence is in me and make me the terminal where it will start giving me commands relentlessly, apolegiticaly and intelligently for the most optimum usage of the resource in front of it. Stop that. Let me switch to the GUI, may be I will ba at Peace. Now the mouse cursor is mocking me. I just imagined the cursor moving all by itself and doing something meaningful maybe open a terminal again and code away a very simple AI completely representing me in just a few seconds with a huge pixelated smiley with rolling eyes.

What is happening? It is as though some unknown force is making me write this. This gibberish. No start and end but an infinite continium of time. Those two words, I cannot fathom their real meaning and the time dimension is making me all hazy. My back is aching and I come back to my finite world. What was it that I just saw and experienced. What is happening? What will happen? What has happened? Is there an end? Is there a beginning or the end and the beginning are so near or just too far to comprehend in a single life time. I cannot write further. The number of questions are increasing. If my brain cannot take the questions how will it be capable of finding answers.

FUD of potable water.

So, Water has been downgraded and termes as a "need". That is it is not critical for the survival of mankind and that it can be industrialized, trademarked and sold at many times the cost of bottling it. So, we will have stars endrosing different variants of bottled water suited to hte whims and fancies of the elite. If humans could intake gold in solid form, then we mahy have bottled water with gold dust. Some countries could come out with medicnal bottled water with precious body parts of various endangered species stored withing the bottled water.

This is an awesome indusry. The beauty of this industry is the wide spectrum of investment possible. You can have a cottage industry serving the local area or an MNC bottling in one country and selling it across the world. The domestic filteration companies in a bid to sell their kits have classified tap water as non-potable. Governments have not done anything in clearing this FUD. Right from  ultra developed countries to the developing ones and stagnated ones. They have not tried to educate the people nor improve the arcane technology being used to clean water and make it potable. No action has been taken by any government to stop this FUD regarding water in any way.

We now have people drinking nearly De-mineralized water and then to compensate for the minerals, we have doctors prescribing vitamins and other processed foods.

Now, the thing about bottled water is, you cannot start with De-mineralized water as a base and then star adding the required amounts of nutrients which were already present. If this was possible all these companies would have harvested the sea and humanity would definitely be happy with this endeavour. Since this is not the case, the base of any bottled water has to be , naturally occuring water. This is then to be treated to selectively eliminate the supposedly harmful constituents and then add a propreitory mixture of supposedly healthy constituents which in the end should have a pleasing effect on the sensory organs.

The argument in monetizing water is only one. That is, people are wasting it. Whenever anything is in abudance we tend to waste it. Now, bottled water is sold at geographical locations where water is definitely available in abundance. It is sold at a premium both at the areas of abundance and also where it is meagre in availability.

There was a time I enjoyed drinking water from a flowing river. Now, I a cant do that. That is because now I know that there are various industries along the flow path of the river which dump unprocessed industrial waste right into the river. Plain business. Plain bottom line.

I also always thought that smaller companies in their rush to grow up do not follow certain ethics towards the environment, will cut corners and end up damaging the external environment. But as they grow, they become more responsible(like humans). But it is not so, the larger organizations are cutting bigger corners in order to grow bigger(like humans). All this dumping makes the traditional water treatment and transport facility outdated. This in turn feeds the filteration mafia and in turn the bottle water industry. Modern business are waiting for any new demand being created. They are ready to supply to the demand. Just show me the demand. Here you have exceptional demand where doctors also join in by qouting the ill-effects of tap water. So, maintaining one's health is a great demand. With countries being told that globalization is the way to grow and survive in future economic scenarios, It is very easy for trans-national companies to heed the demand of countries across the world. If the FUD worked in one country it will work in another.

In the bottling industry investment can be minimum and also very high. For MNC's it is as easy as gobbling up a local bottling plant. Since a bottle of water is costlier than the same volume of soft drinks there is no doubt as to the reason of all the soft drinks companies having their own brand of bottled water. All these comapanies have cordoned off portions of rivers, springs and put their stamp of ownership on these natural resources, keeping it out of reach of the common man.

FUD related to air ended up with setting of oxygen bars. This failed miserably owing to the "un-controllable" natue of air. But water, can be contained, cordoned off. The time is not far off where we will have water bottled with a tinge of lemon, orange, strawberry etc. So, what about the common man? He makes up 99% of the world population, what about animals, birds......... Governments allowing bottling of water and then allowing it to be exported to other countries risk the natural rain cycle.

With no clouds, natural rain cycle, we will be a "RED" planet in the future and nobody will be there to see it.

Productivity and innovation for sustainable development

The three factors considered in this writeup seem to contradict each other at the outset. Let us start by thinking that they do contradict each other. We shall proceed and find out whether our Null hypothesis holds good.

Productivity, normally is associated with the rate of production. If we leave the mathematical definition alone and try to spread the petals, we see that it has various layers to it. It is more related to the efficient and effective use of limited resources at our disposal. "Limited" because there is no need of productivity measure for "Unlimited" resources.

Is productivity the conren of only the corporates and the business they run?. No. It is the concern of every living being. It is the tactic of squeezing the last drop from the resource.

Innovation, the desire to see things in a new light, with a new perspective, or invent a whole new way of ding things resulting in improved efficiency and effectiveness. Does innovation(the process of innovating) happen at the cost of productivity? Yes. It happens. That minor glitch has to be borne to result in a qyantum leap. There are industries who have embedded innovation in their "way of work". It is apart of the job, to think, out of the box. The result of innovation, thus is "always" an improvement in the way things are done which indirectly lead to better utilization of resources, which again is nothing but improvement in productivity.

Innovation deals with the creative part of the "improvement in productivity", wherein the present way of doing the job is given a re-thought. Well, well, well, that sounds like BPR.

BPR strategies are normally associated with Big Bang approaches to improvement aimed at matching the "best practises" in the indsutry. This process is not frequent. BPR normally precedes the process of modernizing an existing plant. Like, implementing ERP, changing the business model from traditional to E-commerce.

We have now studied the inter-operability of these two factors and their mutual dependence. Now, let us take up the catch phrase of the century, "Sustainable development"

"Sustainable development" was coined by the bruntland commission in their paper "Our common future" in 1987(No, No, This is not out of my memory, This info is from wikipedia)

Sustainable development is the development/improvement of product/service organizations with the limitations/brakes applied by the development/betterment of the surrounding environment.

While we were on the subject of defining sustainable development, we notice that there is a lot of cross-referencing between the three terms we have taken up already. They cannot exist independently, If they do, we will not be here for long. So, if it is so obvious why are we discussing their relatinship here? The thing is, we neglect/ignore the term  which dont get along with our business plan/strategy. These aspects are not to be forced into the business plan/strategy just to meet the statutory requirements. These three ideas are to be embedded in the business plan, They should be the base to the business plan along with the obvious, "profit"

Sustainable development is an encapsulating term which includes all the optimization techniques like TQM, Lean strategies, EMS, Other statutory laws of democratic nations. If we take up the study of these techniques we will see that they are themselves once again based on innovation, productivity and sustainable development. In a way, the dependency is recursive. The sustainable development function has a limit and it is the status qou of the environment(or its improvement). In summary sustainable development puts a limit switch to the activity of productivity which can be bettered further only by innovation. In the race to better products/services, we should consider the entire environment not just the target market.

It is time we started innovating new products/services or improving existing ones with an onus on Sustainable development and thereby longetivity of mother earth. She is referred to as God, the force(whatever you want to call her), But today, we know she has her limitations. In other ways, strategic development should be taken as the new GOD.

Sustainable development is a relatively new term. Industrial revolution ignored all the relations between the environment and the humans(Since when man is "out" of the environment, I would like to hear from anybody). Before the industrial revolution, mass production concept was not that big. Produce would be made aimed at the "real" customer. Industries catered only to the rich and the military. If we rewind our clock further, man grew whatever he "needed". The first industry stated when human stopped moving(stopped being nomads) and they formed into groups related to the kind of work they are specialized in. Now, people started producing more than they "needed" and in turn exchanged goods produced with similar results. But people honored their environment and took steps to keep their land cultivable.

As people started thinking about new issues like power, prestige, level, the first signs of strained relations among themselves and with the environment started. With the growth of democracy and removal of barriers between people, caste, countries and continents reduced, the market for products/services blew out of proportion by using latest productivity improvement techniques and innovations culminated with the Industrial revolution and capitalism(No money is enough money). To start with the industrial revolution had a generous supply of raw materials at cheaper costs owing to the discovery of fertile countries. The strategy was to produce and produce and produce and ............ owing to the gurantee of them being sold.

As the raw materials started shrinking in supply and competing capitalists entered, industrial revolutionists turned to Production managers to optimize the production time, giving vent to scientific management techniques. These techniques concentrated more on the ability of HR and their dexterity. Never a thought was spared for the environment.

If we come back to the present times, the present businesses are putting up a half hearted attempt at considering the environment in their overall strategy. Normally the attempts are cosmetic and on paper. We, now are staring at a market growing every moment. Every baby born is a potential customer. The productivity as a quantitative measure is passe. Raw materials are ever shrinking, competition is every increasing and environment is getting &^%$#d like anything.

We have realized, rather late, that the resources in this planet are limited unless the renewable resources are made to renew and No-renewable resources are taken very very seriously.

So, How do we produce/service right? Well, by thinking towards development which is sustainable for a long long loooooooooooooong time. DO IT. NOW.