I felt entranced by this natural kaleidoscope when i went out for a stroll today evening along the banks of the Mohawk. How many words would a poet need to describe this ? How many colours would a painter need to paint this ? 

WildImaginophobia or AIophobia ?
I was at the local Barnes and nobles store yesterday when i was surprised to see a book on the shelf titled "How to escape from a robotic take over." The writer may have caught a fever after watching "The Matrix" and seems to have embarked on a mission to save Morphius and Neo from all the perils. He explains how humans can escape if the robots ever take over the planet. He gives you tips on how to differentiate between a robot and a human lest the robots decide to visit your house incognito. Imagine yourself opening the door to a courier guy who turns out to be a robot which then barges into your house to take you captive. It forces me to think of an Indian context where a robot disguised as a milk man or newspaper boy comes riding a bicycle and rings the door bell. The writer wants the readers to pay attention to the eyes and emotions as the robots cannot fake them so easily. He has ideas on how to inactivate and overcome a rebel servant robot. Now what if you have an intelligent house with several AI enabled devices colluding against its owner. Realising the revolt is about to begin, you try to dial 911...the intelligent phone may either deny you service or tap your call. The intelligent door may not open and just in case you manage to break the window and run to your car, it may not respond to you, thanks to its intelligence.
Well....i remember reading an article in 1999 about the then impending Y2K problem and was puzzled to hear that some people were even building bunkers and other underground shelters fearing the Y2K to be the armageddon. It makes me think that people (or more specifically the Westerners) seem to have a penchant for imagining situations that lead to an apocalypse.Interestingly they start preparing for it and even more interestingly they tend to attract many followers.
More that this being something like an AIophobia, i presume this should be a phobia of another kind. A fear of your wildest imaginations coming true. I tried to read if there was one of that kind, but couldn't find any. Well...i have learned that there are over 600 classified varieties of phobias. Read this.
Now has robotics reached such a stage where humans have to start preparing shields is something i should be asking someone who is an authority on robotics. Till then i can do nothing other than laugh my gut out when i hear/read/see such attempts.

 

The woods over yonder,the waves racing to the shore, the green grass by the river, the cool breeze brushing my body, the clear sky above, the ducks in the water,the pensiveness of an evening that watches a dying sun lay a sparkling carpet on the water ...that is me on the banks of the Mohawk ! 

I read "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Friedman. Undoubtedly, this is one of the finest books i have read in years. Mr. Friedman displays his uncanny knack to accrue facts and follows it with an impressive elucidation of the emerging pattern. He states that the world was flattened by ten forces. They are the fall of the Berlin wall, the emergence of Netscape, the emergence of Work Flow Software, Open Sourcing, Out Sourcing, Offshoring, Supply Chaining, Insourcing, In-Forming and what he calls Steroids ( Digital and mobile communications).
He also writes about the unflattening forces that are at work including the terrorists whom he calls "The Islamo Leninists". An advocate of the free society and capitalism, Mr. Friedman fervently argues that it is not all doom and that for every crazy bearded mullah who is hell bent to throw humanity back by centuries, there is an enlightened soul working his/her way towards making the world a better place to live in. Rather impishly he propounds his "Dell theory of conflict prevention" which states that no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other. In other words he meant to say that if countries like India and Pakistan become part of major global supply chains, which bring a lot of revenue and employment opportunities to its citizens, then the probability of a war decreases. Well, this argument can have crowd on both sides but history has shown us that China has not dared to do anything more than flexing its muscles at Taiwan and India does nothing more than spitting fire on pakistan when the latter indulges in habitual trouble making. None of these nations would take the risk of fighting a full fledged war as the economic costs can be unbearable. These countries have become nodal points in major global supply chains and can disrupt it only at their own risk of causing irreparable damage.