Lunar Outsourcing

Far beyond the obvious realities of our bustling planet, lies an endless stretch of insolvable mysteries. The realm of the innumerable celestial bodies in the form of planets, asteroids, galaxies, stars etc conceals the inexplicable events in a manner so complex that even the most technologically advanced gadgets fall flat on their chassis. Humankind still has not been able to unravel the shrouds of mystery that blur any avenue of approach. As we celebrate the spirit of our existence in the lively corridors our planet, we seem not to get even with the fact that earth is a negligibly tiny speck of cosmic dust tucked away in some corner of the unfathomable universe.

Well, human beings are superior in the department of thinking ability as compared to all other organisms discovered so far. Hence, rather than being pessimistic at our share in the cosmic Diaspora, why cannot we utilize the assets we are endowed with? By assets, I mean the inter-galactic resources that surround our planet. The planets, asteroids etc are home to some impressive architecture in the form of rugged landmass and exorbitant space. Am I forgetting the most special one? Yes, our very own Moon. The planet has long been standing as a symbol of romantic inclinations. Be it literature or emotions, the moon has always prevailed over any other similar structure, by virtue of reflected glory. The reflected beams of the sun bathe the satellite white when darkness engulfs the inhabitants our planet thus, spreading visions of love, peace and solitude.

Poetry apart, the business implications of this ball of cream are aplenty. A satellite with amazing landscape can definitely be considered to serve as a hub of business activities. Owing to it’s proximity to our planet, transportation would not be a problem at all as space cabs shuttling at ultra-mach speeds would reduce the concept of time and distance to naught. Special purpose Incubators could be developed to breed artificial lifeform in the form of robots, androids etc. All sorts of business activities can then be outsourced there thus shrinking the burden on the population of our planet. As land is virtually unexplored, monetary intervention regarding land acquisition may arise. But, then lunar law as controlled by visionaries of our planet can enforce regulations in this regard. Since, artificial lifeform are responsible for the back end support, cost can trimmed by a marginal extent. Godowns can be constructed to house inventories and emergency stock. In case of any natural or man-made calamity wreaking havoc on our planet, these can be fetched to meet the demand in our planet. In other words, the entire process if streamlined, would act as a life-saving buffer. Lunar outsourcing though can create unemployment in our planet. But, these problems can be taken care of by instituting a policy wherein every learned individual takes the task of designing a suitable artificial entity that, to a considerable extent, deploys equivalent or more effort in achieving the assigned objective.

Sounds highly improbable, but then, hasn’t necessity always been the mother of invention?

Name of the Game - II

Continuing from where I had left earlier, I will hereby present two more investment games that would work towards providing the participants an astute overview of the real life. The third in line of the game series is romantically titled the “Moonlighting Game”. In this investment game, Player1 can only transfer positive amounts of money to Player2. Here, both players begin with a positive endowment. Player1 can give an amount g or take away an amount t from the 2nd player. The amount increases by a multiple R, an amount taken away is simply transferred to Player1. Player2 can then return or take money away from the 1st player. An amount b given back costs b to Player2 while the punishment in the form of an amount P taken away costs 3P. Since Player1 is a Moonlighter, his activity cannot be legally enforced. The game allows the study of positive and negative reciprocity.

The last one to be discussed here is named the “Peasant-Dictator Game”. Here, Player1 is a peasant and Player2, a dictator. The peasant decides the amount of investment K he makes out of an available amount W. The investment produces an income worth (1+r)K. Then, the 2nd player (dictator) moves, he can impose a tax t on the income produced and the amount t(1+r)K goes to him and (1-t)(1+r)K returns to the peasant and is added to W-K.

Here, two treatments are possible. First, the dictator can commit to a level of taxes before the peasant decides or doesn’t commit. A slightly different but economically equivalent formation is the one where the dictator announces the level of taxes before the investment. In one treatment, he’s committed to the announcement made; in the other he is not. When the announcement has no binding force and the rational choice for the dictator for any level of investment is to tax the entire amount produced. In the 2nd case, the dictator knows that a tax level, too high, would induce the peasant to make no investment.

While phrased differently, this game with no commitment is equivalent to the trust game. The amount invested by the peasant in the P-D game is equivalent to the transfer made by 1 in the “Money-Exchange Game” and the amount left after taxation corresponds to the amount returned by 2 in the investment game. The specific parameters are matched by a rate of return R=2 in the P-D game and W equals the initial endowment of the 1st mover. A possible important difference in the description of the game is the nature of the amount decided by the 1st mover. In the instructions reported for the P-D game, the amount is described as an investment, while in the “Money-Exchange Game” it’s described as a transfer from the 1st to the 2nd mover.

After all, it depends on the navigator which direction he steers the ship towards...

Name of the Game - I

Business is a good game – lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
Atari Corporation founder Nolan Bushnell

With these lines, I begin a journey to the flamboyant world of business games where the dice throbs to the tune of sheer shrewdness. It is immaterial whether the player has the most coveted degrees up his sleeves. What really matters is the amount of cunningness and tact one can employ to emerge victorious. While we talk about “innovating at the frontier”, we must understand that the boundary demarcating the level of practicality from that of madness consummates at what can be equated with the Horizon. In order to step upon a smooth transition, transient though, from the former to the latter and vice versa, one should be extremely quick at judging the sensitivity of the either.

Well, innovation must never stop at any milestone for it is a lasting process. As the player buckles up his shoes to jump into the arena, he must realize that it’s the magnitude of his sheer persistence that will ultimately see him through. He should have hardened his soul with innumerable sessions of practice beforehand, just to get the right kind of feel of what awaits him. As with any business management student, the concept of defining theories and testing hypotheses are not the only avenues to achieve the prowess of a visionary. The most important skill he needs to improvise on is the ability to sense and sniff. The sensory reactivity of the player to an impending problem would eventually fetch him the most optimal solution. This very aspect has to be ingrained in the individual from a very tender age when the mind is at it’s receptive best. The Shaolin brand of martial arts schools absorb the students when they are in the age of infantile celebration. The students are gradually exposed to various degrees of physical and mental endurance techniques that subsequently sharpen their ability to concentrate.

The same applies to the students pursuing management degrees. In order to be able to get a good grasp over the chaotic deliberations of the stock market or the meshed locales of supply chain system, they need to have a pre-cognitive understanding of the happenings there. They need to have played games in the same spirit as that of a teenager drooling over a pokemon or an age of empires. Only the structure of the game is a little different wherein the settings are inherently realistic not fantastic.

One such investment game is the “Money Exchange Game”. Two players move in sequence. Player1 has an initial monetary endowment A. Player1 decides the amount x of A to transfer to Player2. The transfer x is a productive investment; it increases by a multiple R (larger than one) before reaching Player2. Then, Player2 decides how much of a of Rx to return to Player1. Player1 leaves with A-x+a and Player2 leaves with Rx-a. If Player1 initially has $10 and decides to transfer $5, Player2 would receive $15. If Player2 decides to return $8 out of the $15, the final pay-off of the players are $13 and $7 respectively.

Similarly, I’d like to propose another game aptly titled the “Gift Exchange Game”. Like the previous one, here two players move sequentially. 1 has to propose a wage w in a given interval. 2 can accept or refuse. If he refuses, both players get a zero pay-off. If he accepts, he has to choose a costly effort e. Then, the game is over and the 1st player gets a pay-off Re-w, while the second gets w-c(e), where c is the cost of the effort. The transfer or investment in the earlier game is replaced by the commitment of the 1st player to pay a wage w., irrespective of the effort of the 2nd player. The return payment is replaced by the effort e and its cost c(e) to the 2nd player. The opportunity for both the players is represented by the productive factor R. Like the Money Exchange Game, a rational selfish 1st player should anticipate a minimum effort of the 2nd player and should promise a minimum wage. With minimum wage, effort and cost of zero effort all equal to zero. Both players get zero equilibrium pay-off.

The games present a very good platform for the management students to employ their grey matter to achieve optimality in all instances. The developers of these games, whosoever they are, have tried to strike a balance betwen subjective elaboration and objective reality to the maximum extent. They must be commended for having inched us closer to chaotic sublimation.

Race against time

Today it was an engaging ordeal for me on the personal front. Apart from the daily recipe of infantile salvation from an otherwise turbulent schedule, the institute had more to offer, a typically managerial ploy. Only two classes and adding to the exhileration was a cancelled financial management quiz. I believe, the system of management education leans excessively towards an offshoot of time management, that is time deployment. It's left to the candidates to decide how they plan to distribute the precious microseconds and nanoseconds, even if it means the installation of an atomic clock in the premises of their cerebral faculties.

Since Time happens to be the crux of my Blogger musings today, I deem it relevant to devise an infallible mechanism wherein we can control the sanctity of the so-called Boundless entity which leaves no stones unturned to ravage the possiblities of any substantial permanence. If time could be controlled as desired by any paranoid individual much to the deliberate surprise of his/her less fortunate peers, what would happen? It would definitely place the power of attorney in the hands of the former as a result of which various shades of despotic behaviour would start engulfing his mindset. Well, then how can one control time in the first place? Would he require to formulate a recipe by dint of which he can moderate his speed with respect to that of light? Einstein must be amused at the advent of such a technique for he could never be able to believe that human beings would equate scientific paradigms with psychological insanity.

But, such a concept, if ever to evolve would tremendously alter the very foundation of business. Stock markets would never exist, since the future value of expected cash flows would never be realized. The sundry equations corresponding to statistical techniques such as regression, forecasting would be rendered void. Money would lose its flavour, as people would travel back and forth to marginalize any fiscal trade-offs. Life would complete a full circle without any apprehension for decay and continue being looped around.

Well, fantastic as it may sound, such a concept might still be adorning the chapters of any Carl Sagan classic or Stephen Hawking journal though. In reality, the logic that would most certainly apply to the business arena is the control of time as a factor of the various daily activities. Some would incidentally refer it to as time management, but I would differ so far as the word management is concerned. When we say management, we tend to bring in an activity that is controllable. Once we are able to control something even if partially, we could proceed to manage it. But, an all-pervading entity called time could neither be controlled nor managed given the kind of era we exist in. Hence, the closest possible task we can undertake so as to appreciate the power of time is distribution. Time is measured in terms of the number and duration of activities we have at any instance. If we are able to allot best possible proportions to each of the tasks at hand, we could consider ourselves privileged to have had a wonderful time. That is the recursive beauty of time.

Now, the business scenario calls for a perfect balance between the tasks at hand and the proportion of time slots attached to each. In order to distribute the proportions perfectly among the tasks, we need to cleanse the redundancy in the first place. By redundancy, I mean the proportion of time utilized unproductively. For example, if in the early hours of the morning, while hurrying for a crucial meeting, I try to squeeze out whatever is left in an empty toothpaste tube only to end with nothing. In trying to do so, I have wasted a significant amount of time allotted to the process of brushing teeth. This wastage could cause me inconvenience in the time ahead if I miss the meeting thereafter. Had I replaced the empty tube with a new one the previous day, I would not have had to face this situation at all. Here, stands a situation, which clearly shows that any aberration in the continuity of time tends to spark off a chain of highly unorganized events furthering the risk of annihilation.

Distribution precedes management as far as time is concerned.

The Butterfly Effect

A few days back, I had crashed upon a movie of the same title. An average Hollywood fare starring Ashton Kutcher, who is more famous for his illustrious dating partner, Demi Moore, the movie chronicled the life of a troubled teenager who tries to correct some of the follies committed in his childhood by employing a supernatural technique. He seemingly goes through his memoir to undertake a telekinetic journey to specific periods of his past in order to re-enact the situations. In trying to do so, he finds the flow of his life drastically rearranged as he lands up in different events other than those he was ever subject to in the normal course.

Quite fascinated by the concept, but strictly not by the corrosive storyline and the ludicrous screenplay, I tried to concentrate more on the realities behind the apparently mesmerizing “Butterfly Effect”. This theory finds its roots in the convoluted ravines of the Chaos Theory. The guardians of the erstwhile concept define the butterfly effect as the propensity of a system to be sensitive to initial conditions. With the passage of time, they become highly erratic and undergo sharp changes oblivious to any definitive prediction existing elsewhere. The saying goes that a butterfly flapping its wings in some corner of the world gives rise to a tornado in another place. Highly interesting!!

Well, having said that, I must confess that the bespectacled seers concentrating on theorems and formulae in the academically adorned interiors of an exalted university are equally perplexed at the seeming diffidence of the aforementioned concept. Moreover, the nonchalant weatherman finds the answers pretty intimidating too. If a natural system alters its way abruptly to deploy different phenomena as opposed to the anticipated ones, the effect will be mind-blowing. Supercomputers are used to forecast weather and come up with various models to simulate understandable behaviour. Several models run collaterally and the ones demonstrating homogeneous results are primarily accepted. It’s an altogether different story regarding the “battle of Teraflops” wherein IBM-Blue Gene, NEC-Earth Simulator and NASA are busy outsmarting each other to showcase their supercomputing prowess. I really doubt whether the butterfly effect is a dominating inspiration to them.

Jokes aside, the concept is not confined to the precincts of meteorology, but addresses issues in other fields as well. One of the most interesting observations made comes from the field of fluid mechanics. If a tap is opened slowly, the single drops of water create just a small splash only to give rise to a laminar appearance as the flow increases. It’s interesting to note that transition of a state to another is sudden, unpredictable and confusing. As it may appear so, randomness governs the behaviour of the system to culminate in utter chaos. Take for instance a simple case involving the population of rabbits and foxes. The evergreen predator-prey system is a legitimate sample obeying the laws of the butterfly effect. If the foxes are small in number, the rabbit population thrives. But there’s an unassuming catch to it. As the rabbit population increases, the foxes have plenty of food, so they can hunt, survive and reproduce to put their own population on the incline. Now, as there are a larger number of foxes, the rabbit population is bound to decrease. An extremely captivating phenomenon, this catch-22 sibling tends to conform to a steady state or equilibrium, wherein one of the species may have to face the guillotine.

Business processes too can be modelled along similar lines. The perennially taxing resource allocation strategies in any corporate body seem to desperately search for a state of equilibrium. An increase in demand would most certainly ask for more resources, which may be fewer in number. But, as more resources are scouted for and properly allocated to appease the demand equation, the demand would be fulfilled, momentarily though, as a surplus of resources could give rise to newer demand.

That’s the inescapable lure of the Butterfly Effect…

Touchwood

Touch thy soul… I had been thinking about it for quite some time now. The way people have started understanding one another since the twilight of the civilization provides an interesting picture regarding the involvement of a mere physical activity, Touch. We shake hands, hug each other, tap mischievously, grasp the palms and what not! We tend to pass certain coded information subconsciously to the other individual when we perform any of this activity and receive the same as well. This type of full-duplex communication process would most certainly work towards establishing a bridge among all the like-minded people. Also, the flow of energy across this bridge could be examined to arrive upon solutions to problems like, inter-personal differences, emotional disillusionment etc. Then, why not digitize this to build up a huge information base? After all, we come across countless people during the course of our daily chore. We pay attention to some of them and reject the rest. In trying to do so, we ignore a whole lot of individuals whose attitudinal territory might overlap with that of ours.

The Information base would store data corresponding to the nature of communication two individuals ever had. Also, a personality match and compatibility test could be undertaken by system to determine whether the aforementioned individuals are capable of forming an amiable relationship. The vibes that could ever surface between both of them should be electronically analyzed to predict the efficacy of their relationship. All of these could take place, thanks to a plain touch. The business fraternity can stake claim to levels of unprecedented response if the idea were to ever materialize. The way business is conducted would undergo an overwhelming change in the positive direction if the participants harness the power to predict the behaviour of their partners at the first instance of acquaintance.

Touchwood…more so, because I believe the innovation is underway somewhere in the distant future devoid of any evil implications.

The Strange Case of e-Frankenstein

The eerie cacophony of the nocturnal life resonates the otherwise deserted boulevard that cuts into the darkness with remarkable aplomb. I meander through the curvy path, visibly shaken by the mysterious night scenes dancing before my eyes. The whiteness of the moon has been put to rest by the atrocious march of the black clouds. Far atop a distant incline, I sight the imposing silhouette of a castle as the hustle of the gigantic sequoia trees signal an impending storm. I manage my way to reach the flamboyant shelter just in time when all hell breaks loose with the fury of nature lashing at the haplessness of the naïve meadow. As the screeching door accords me an unceremonious welcome, I try to look for any proof of life inside. God Forbid! What I see would most certainly put the most courageous soul to a perennial slumber. Cadavers, cadavers everywhere in this dimly lit chamber. A group of hooded individuals with no sign of what exists underneath, are busy separating the limbs from the lifeless bodies, stacking them in the order of strength with the strongest one occupying the first position and the rest thereafter, thus keeping the organs in an assorted manner. Another group is busy collecting the litter and stitching them in a predefined arrangement to give shape to a complete body. As two heavy electrodes are brought together to spark off beams of electricity, the mordant dead-body heaves to the tune of a compelling overture. The eyelids fling open to indicate the rise of the dead. I, too, open my eyes to the soothing aura of a spring sunrise as the birds continue chirping to gesture dawn-break. I had a nasty nightmare…

Well, that was just the trailer!! What we have instead is a full-length movie with the hooded participants having been replaced some smartly dressed, suave people and the castle morphed into a sleek, state of the art laboratory. They are busy trying to find out whether 3 is the outcome of blending 1 & 2 or 0 & 3. I am talking about what some would aptly refer to as Reverse Engineering. Sounds as surreptitious as the psychedelic incarnation of Mary Shelley, the eponymous Frankenstein would have conjectured while assembling the various facets of rotten cadavers. It was not the purpose of commercial benefits that had driven the hyperbolic scientist to arrive upon such a grotesque invention. Rather, it was the urge to experiment, the ambition to innovate something far-fetched at that point of time. But, a few centuries later this very creation was to rear its empirical head in an entirely different avatar.

Reverse Engineering, as the name implies involves breaking apart anything to understand its composition and the formula that lurks underneath. The formula is later worked upon to build what we had started with. Now, if one does not get hold of the elusive formula to fabricate his dream product, he need not worry. The ever-inspiring Frankenstein guides him to catch hold of the dream product instead. Rest is left to the guile of the creator to carefully dissect the anatomy and cast his spell on the crux to bring to life countless siblings. In trying to do so, the creator his cunning enough to proclaim that he has not copied any existing process, but simply created another one. The miserable original inventor is left speechless while trying to attempt a vociferous protest citing non-existent entities called patents, copyrights etc. But alas! Patents apply to the functionality, not a specific implementation of the process.

Pharmaceutical industries have become the cynosure of all eyes, thanks to the advent of this technologically advanced version of the i. Nobody bothers if one competitor outsmarts another in the cat and mouse game of product invention. The other simply gets hold of the pie and its “reverse-engineered” to understand the workings. Then, with a slight change, the same formula is transformed to the final product that is nothing but an unassuming duplicate of the former, only to be marketed with a lot of fanfare as a path-breaking innovation. Software industry is not far behind for that matter; innumerable namesakes adorn the Internet daily to meet the eye-level of the passive onlooker. The e-Frankensteins as I would like to name them, have become the hub of delinquent activities in the current scenario, as digital divide has been relegated to the ravines of anonymity. Contrary to the visual imagery so succulently penned by Mary Shelley, where the protagonist had envisioned a scientific avenue for his creation, the current trend seems to be bent towards monetary emoluments and power craze. Rampant plagiarism in the name of scientific discovery, virulent power game in the garb of economic welfare and toxic effluent in the form of unusable byproducts have been threatening to wreak havoc on the very basis of human civilization.

What needs to be done at this moment is to charter the judiciary to undertake a transparent of the subject concerned. The very foundation of the process has to be carefully studied to analyze the possible repercussions in the face of multilateral disagreements. The causal analysis report may furnish certain latent aspects of the process wherein academic and industrial intervention has to be solicited. The strange case of this e-Frankenstein is sensitive enough to throw open multiple forums for arguments.

But, when the creator himself dies keeping the information to control his psychotic invention undisclosed, what more can be done?

The Sixth Day Effect

My head is crammed with the litters of intransitive desperation as I cease to put my cerebrum into action. The computer screen vomits zillions of tiny, insensitive, dumb figurines clad in outfits of various colours. They are indifferent to my sense of craving for solace in an otherwise ruthlessly materialistic world. "Time flies when you are having fun" seems to have been a matter of the irrecoverable past as I reminisce about the days I had spent at home during my last trip. Like any other software professional I too have to sustain the ordeal of working away from home & "Home is where the heart is" barely makes my present settlement an adjustable one.

Tension, stress, and the remaining scums of the human emotions residing on the negative side, keep on pestering me as in when I try to stage a YOU-CAN-DO-IT kind of recovery. I squirm for respite only to be alarmed by a pop-up reminder grinning, "You have a Team-Meeting" on the cadaverous monitor of my HP Workstation. Probably, I'd have been better off Working in a station rather than WHACKING the workstation. I turn around to find MUGLEs(With Due respect to JK "Harry Potter" Rowling) i.e. MOST UNWANTED GROUP of LAZY ENTITIES(A whole bunch of colossal HP-UX Workstations) howling inside the Test room as if they would writhe my neck provided I step into it. My life is all agog to call it quits and raring to sneak into another body for it finds this one disgustingly cliched and moronic. I too, become intractably virulent and seriously consider Plastic Surgery/Facelift as an alternative to escaping the pathetic attenuation of human conditions.

Oh Yes !! Is that possible ? A Replacement...Astonishingly similar. That would be an incredible 1722 (Ek Saath Do Do...Bollywood Zindabaad). Gone are the days when double roles, duplicates aka Kumbh mele mein bichhde bhai... used to rule the roost. This is the age of CLONES. Genetic mapping & Replication is undoubtedly in the driver's seat. My replica would strive to build a better world for me. I'd transfer my responsibilities into the Junior's(I was born earlier, he was created later) head and shoulders and so on... While I laze around in the bed & surf channels, he'd create programs, write source code, mail documents & dispatch deliverables JIT. He'd unflinchingly come forward to carry forward the pending assignments. He'd deal with the outer world while I prepare to take a dip in the swimming pool. He'd literally translate all my thoughts to action the moment I concur upon an immediate deployment.

What next ?? where would he stay ? Fairly simple... He'd stay where I won't, in the office. I'll be vacationing at home, I wouldn't even report here once. Since it becomes his duty to look after the responsibilities he has been assigned to, I would care less if he fiddles around with them. After all, that's the objective, he was created to meet. Well, I'd be able to give quality time to my parents and heart. Life wouldn't be as meaningless as before. It'll be beautiful & I'd be enjoying every bit of it...TILL...WHAT...He ARRIVES to DEMAND...

Oh !! No... I had never imagined a catastrophe more venomous than this. He'd demand access into my personal life. It will be inevitably a case of GENETIC DISCRIMINATION & RE-ENGINEERED JEALOUSY. He'll plead for his share in my family until his desire gets the beast out of him. He'll infuse malevolence pertaining to my presence in my family members. He'll deliberately siphon suspicion into the mental corridors of my kith and kin until they start disbelieving me. My Love will refuse to put faith in me for she'll be failing to distinguish between two copies of the same anatomy. My brother would spare no efforts to unravel the truth, eventually turning his sweet pair of eyes off me. My parents would fall prey to the creepy ambitions of the REPLICANT. I'd be conceived upon as having been given a GENETIC INCARNATION. My world would pull down the shutters on my face. That'd spell VICTORY FOR SCIENCE & DEFEAT FOR HUMANITY.

I wouldn't budge until I have demolished this facade of self-proclaimed advancement. After all, I'm born to my parents & stayed in my Mother's womb for nine months while he's the ephemeral creation of sporadic creativity. I'm the source, the master and he's just a GENETIC PROGRAM, a spoof. I'd show up with all my might & implant a SELF-DESTRUCTIVE GENETIC DESIGN in him. That'd cut short his life span marginally, although it won't kill him. There exists a VIRUS FOR EVERY PROGRAM YOU WRITE/CREATE, but you can't destruct something that's not your creation, the right to which is only HIS (UP THERE) proprietary.

In the meantime, I perform a magnificent touchdown to my current status, when my colleague informs me of something wonderful, "Kamal, tomorrow's the SIXTH DAY (Saturday)"...Saturday & Sunday are offdays for me.


N.B. The Sixth Day Law bans Human Cloning & punishes the perpetrator with a long prison term and the clone with immediate eradication.

Violence Unloaded :: Peace Uploaded

I happened to watch "Matrix Reloaded" with a couple of my friends. I had been taken aback by the out-of-the-world trailers replete with eye-popping stunt sequences and mesmresing special effects (They used to be special earlier,as of now even a kindergarten toddler could come up with a 20-page autopsy of the thematic ensemble, vividly describing the sequences with clinical precision). Well, that's a different ball game. I'm more concerned about disintegrating the entire scenario, shuffling around the pieces & presenting another fantasy which I hope appears understandable yet more effective.

Machines, Programs, Reloading, Mainframes, Cognitive Disillusionment, Matrix...
Add to it Prophecies, Oracle (No DataBase here:)), Destiny, Fate...

A person may find it easier to identify with the second list of jargons when translated to his dialect, since I'm doubtful as to how many languages have made entries in the latest revisions of their colloquial lexicon pertaining to the first list notwithstanding the marauding conquest of a monster called IT whom everyone either loathes or drools over. So, the Beverly Hills guys thought of taking advantage of the "Drooling factor" and decidely agreed upon the age-old formula of Good Vs Evil, David Vs Goliath..., borrowing heavily from the Shaolin Brand of Martial Arts (This seems to be the current bent of the West towards the Oriental IF NOT MARITAL THEN MARTIAL). The bottom-line was Mindless Violence & movies of this ilk seemed to glorify the CRASH-BOOM-BANG saga.

OK, I agree, action sequences, inexplicably GRAVITY-DEFYING choreography adorned with the stylishly garbed hero getting the better of a 100 odd dummies OR rescuing his enamorata with drop-dead panache OR EVEN doing a SURGEON's Job by literally performing a Virtual Pin-HOLE excavation of the bullet with no scalpels, no scissors but BARE HANDS (That'd do surgery proud & Surgeons shameful !!!) & Yes without applying Local Anaesthesia (Myopin at least) makes the adrenalin rush faster, at break-neck speed in most ordinary mortals, including myself, especially when the Sound system ejaculates 16000watts of Digitally pulsating background score. If you wonder as to how I'm boasting of the fashionable Medical terms, then I must make it public that I belong to a family of Doctors...(My Father is a Cardio-Anaesthetic Surgeon). As to the martial arts section, I must ponder a bit before revealing that I hold a Black belt in Kung-fu (manchurian).

So all the while I was thinking if this was possible !!! WHAT ?? One fine day we all wake up to find that we are devoid of VIOLENCE. We can't think of causing harm to anyone, we can't scold, we can't assault and that holds true for all the mortals...What do you think would be in store for us ?

Well, I believe that VIOLENCE abets VIOLENCE. Since, all the individuals w'd have Violence erased from their Genetic Sequences, the very concept of enmity, hatred, bitterness would have become ghosts of the past. The human actions would have got redefined or say, refined. Since, Man w'd no longer think of others in a negative manner, the concept of crime would get obliterated. The next time, one raises his arms, it'd be either to lift a baby up, or to bid someone goodbye or may be to PLUCK A PAIR OF JASMINE FOR HIS SWEETHEART. The concept of weapons would vanish into oblivion. Pistols w'd no longer be used to fire bullets, but the triggers would shower petals and perfumes. Tanks would become the firing compatriot of a Tractor wherein SEEDS/FERTILISERS would be spayed upon the far-reaching farmlands. Missiles would turn into Food/Message carriers in the face of an impending natural calamity providing succour to the needy & deprived, they would no longer burst into flames/pellets, but food packets. Nuclear reactors would be converted to safe-breeding reactors facilitating the generation of power rather than nuclear devices what they used to be earlier. Countries would cease to exist within international boundaries for land will be free of incarceration. People will come together, love will grow, poverty will be thrown into shackles since governments w'd redeem tackling the humanitarian issues in the first place and they'd no longer be bound by the need of war or defence related issues. Peace will manifest throughout the geography of this planet. Humankind will complete a full circle...

Doesn't it sound more realistic than a surreptitious non-entity titled MATRIX ?

"PEACE UPLOADED/VIOLENCE UNLOADED is far better than MATRIX RELOADED"

Call of the Grey Matter

The resplendent beams of the rising sun steer their way through the curvaceous anatomy of the sprightly jungle to dazzle the verdant corridor, albeit gradually. The ambience resonates with soft chirps, slowly transcends the mischievous howls, culminating in the majestic roar in what appears to be a fusion of earthly sentiments that pervade the taciturn persona of the green empire. Life moves out of the soporific abode to grace the charming territory in all its capacity with the agility of a young cheetah, the experience of an ageing orangutang, the cunningness of a vivacious fox, the magnificence of a royal Bengal tiger, the dazzle of an ecstatic peacock and what not !! The varieties of life forms that one comes across in the entire spectrum of wildlife symbolize what is actually known as Free Spirit. This epitomizes the natural, untamed instincts of the animal kingdom that have been in existence since time immemorial. The feral incarnations have been known to pass on the lessons of survival to their offspring notwithstanding the ravages of time. In the perennial battle between the predator and prey, the survivor comes out unscathed primarily because it puts into action these enduring tactics. Wilderness is all about being free, untapped and untrained. Once the concept of training takes over, the learning becomes less lateral and leans heavily towards a pre-defined objective. The underlying credo for that matter belies the fact that domesticating any entity hones its skills. In fact, the more one gets taught, the farther it drifts from the core subject matter.

The cacophony of the bustling metropolis compels the plebian mortals to abandon their nocturnal delights. Buried inside the thick foliage which otherwise is a rare sight in the cities, lies a sprawling campus overlooking the splendid works of architecture collectively referred to as a B-school wherein ‘B’ expands to Business. Here resides the most remarkable organism that has ever descended on our planet to manifest time-tested theories in the most incomprehensible manner. The elements of the aforementioned organism have inherited the right to colloquially identify themselves as B-school Grads from their predecessors. They dress smart, speak neat, behave sophisticated, dream lofty, walk tall and display all possible traits that can trick the naive onlooker into assuming whether he had actually landed on the wrong planet. This most singular species believes in swearing by the likes of Kotler, De Bono, Robbins, Anderson et al to authenticate its oratorical and analytical prowess. Endless hours of grueling sessions are devoted to contradicting what is universally true and abiding by the illusions of the flawed. Its here in these esoteric campuses, the species undergoes the radical transformation from a state of unadulterated mindset to that of an inordinate inflection. In this process, it loses the pristine charm of raw knowledge to the lucre of conditioned applicability. The so called B-school Grad would unflinchingly don the garb of a would-be manager to decisively overrule any existing concept as being highly erroneous just to showcase his superfluous understanding of the market. Having done so, the next moment he would flaunt a piece of paper mysteriously titled “…graduated from the best B-school” grinning to the flash of the irresistible endowments in whatever form they appear, dollars, pounds, euros, rupees all alike. But, he ceases to function in consonance with his innate abilities, the assets he is gifted with.

Wilderness represents a perfect allegory to the very meaning of being boundless, yet undeniably original. The creatures of this uncultivated world learn to carry on by interacting with their ambience. They harness the senses to communicate with the unexplored in order to sniff possibilities of a calamity. The free spirit makes it possible for them to employ all possible combinations to extract a suitable avenue for existence. Contrast this with the approach ordained by their more illustrious counterparts in pursuit of a piece of paper aptly christened MBA Degree wherein the level of thought employed is behemoth but the outcome is inexplicably disorganized. Years of unregulated classroom learning take the sheen off their able brains and render them highly inactive. They become receptive only to a standardized version of skillfulness wherein they employ a pre-defined set of constructs to achieve the objective. A highly self-conscious MBA graduate, when asked to find out the number of granules spread over an unclenched palm, would seemingly hurry to perform a regression analysis to test the homogeneity of the particles, open a highly incoherent software package on his laptop to adjust the standard error, refer the marketing topology to carry out a cluster analysis on the exactness of the range, proceed to study the behaviour of termites to calculate the depth of the mound only to arrive at a mind boggling figure of a quarter and a half million approximated to the 100th place on the decimal side. Our local tea-boy, on the other hand, would not even take a quarter of a second to arrive upon the fact that all we have is only a handful of granules. The naïve youngster might not have visited the primary school, let alone any B-school, but on the face of it possesses enough common sense to utilize at the right instance. It’s his interaction with the surroundings that have taught him the basics of survival which no B-school, howsoever glorious, can ever fancy to impart.

The idea is therefore, to establish a bridge between the environmental learning and skill development in classrooms. The notion of intelligence is controversial enough to throw open innumerable forums for argument. But, the seat of human intelligence, as conceived by the biologists would certainly be augmented by the proficient usage of the grey cells in the brain. A continual exposure to testing situations on the platform of reality stimulates these units of cerebral activity. In fact, steady interaction with the elements of nature nurtures the essence of free spirit in animals. Hence, it’s highly imperative that a sense of simulated training should be incorporated in the mindset of the B-school graduates. This would subsequently narrow the gap between their natural flair and adapted competence. What else, but the sanctity and composure of the jungle life would suffice well to the paradigm of skill development in them? Therein, the individuals would carefully study the customized manners of their less gifted counterparts to analyze the implications of real world decisions. This could be of tremendous benefit to the future of mankind. Possibly, the cradle of humanity would deliver what years of modern coaching have not been able to – The Quest for Perfection.