An inch closer to the future

In 1969, mankind affirmed its supremacy over the solar system as the first man step foot on the moon. In 2006, we launched our first probe towards the distant Pluto, no longer a planet, but still significant on scale of the distance between us and that tiny little glob far far away. And just last month, we landed a sophisticated robot on the red planet to further probe Mars' surface , using technology never seen before and risks never being higher. But really, how fast is the humankind progressing on the blue planet we call home? All these missions gave impetus for technological advancement and out-of-the-box thinking during their conception, and yet we still don't see the next big leap into the future happening anytime soon!

That we have come far from the day Alexander Bell called across a headset to his friend Thomas Watson would be an understatement. We have shrunk a computer from a resource-guzzling Goliath to a palm-fitting screen. You can even trace your lineage these days at the click of a button. And yet, some of the problems threatening our advancement remain unperturbed. The so-called megacities of the world are overburdened. The developing world remains at the mercy of the monsoons to feed its people and keep inflation low. The Arctic ice sheet just shrunk to a record minimum, and may keep shrinking for the next two weeks. And we are increasingly alarmed at the prospect of our energy dependence on coal and gasoline. 

Is this to say that science & technology has put global upliftment in hindsight as it marches on towards novel frontiers of innovation? Hardly so, but there are certainly more startups focused on improving your social life than those on improving your actual life. So while I was sitting 10,000 feet in air, thinking about those little rivulets down below you glance at once in a while, I came across an incredible IT tool in the back pages of the mundane airlines magazine. Streetline, a startup that lets you find parking space in a bustling metropolitan city and then navigates you towards it, is one of the most ingenious technological innovations I have seen in a while. We have all been frustrated at the lack of easily available parking at some point during our lives. Well, hook up a smart sensor to the parking spot and transmit that data to paying customers. Sounds easy, right? Similarly, technological innovations in the field of medicine have made it possible for a doctor to calculate risks associated with a patient's present condition 10 years down the lines. All basic ideas carefully crafted into profitable and humane technological tools. Apps like these amaze and puzzle me at the same time? Facebook and Zynga still dominate the front pages of any leading business journal, while few care to mention these fantastic small companies that are making a huge difference in the quality of life of numerous individuals. A difference of perception indeed!

PS: Everybody has heard about TED talks. Here's a personal favorite, and in my opinion, a must-see.

A better way

As I sit here in my living room, watching Watchmen, I cannot help but think about Dr. Manhattan's words-"The world is changing, and this new world is going to be hard to adapt to." The world is indeed at a precipice, where old ideas are being chucked out more rapidly than ever before. Therefore, it is prudent to identify the positives out of this as well as understand how some things are still unchangeable.

The first idea which springs to my mind is the communication revolution. Now much has been said and writers have waxed eloquent about the ever changing face of communication and its implications for the globe. I would like to go more basic than an optical fibre facilitated enhancement. 20 years ago, chances are that if you wrote a letter to a person in the next state, it may or may not get delivered. May or may not! That possibility was greatly supplemented by the fact the there was no tracking mechanism to check on the port-to-port delivery. So if I were to apply for a PhD in the United states 20 years ago, there is the possibility that I might have missed my shot due to a sorting error. Therefore, it is safe to say that manual errors are slowly becoming redundant. The era of the machines is here, or almost.

What are the other ways in which the world is changing? Ironically, the communication revolution and the detriment of barriers was supposed to unite the world into a more harmonious place. Yet we have seen more wars and insurgencies in the last 50 years than any documented time in history. The way I see it, with information being so easily available, it abets a nation to secure its interests in ways that were unheard of earlier. So you have things like cyber attacks on a country's information database, which is slowly replacing the conventional warfare as a more potent weapon. This is stuff of science fiction for now, but with the way technology is seeping into our daily lives, it is not ludicrous to believe that the future might be significantly different for the future generations. Once thing is for sure, education is going to be the currency of development, and investments will be earmarked for the national intellectual wealth.

And then, to the part which has remained static. The right to expression, our ability to speak our mind, has remain untouched, or rather, has been bolstered by the availability of tools both scientific and rational in nature. People today want to study tiny archaea, because they believe the answers to significant questions about life lie in there. And they go about doing it like nobody's business. The fact that basic science has braved the storm of application and commercialization is a fact oft overlooked. We as global citizens are also more empowered today, mostly because every vote is documented and every opinion is recorded. Dissemination of ideas is easier, and their harnessing is slowly becoming more inclusive. There is no single ownership to any idea anymore, a fact well illustrated by the IP wars being fought around the world.

So the changes are there to be seen and exploited. The end user will not care, the proprietor does not exist.

The Who and their generation!