Why not travel a little less?

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Everybody and their uncle is travelling these days. People travel for work, for business, for entertainment, sports and the heck of it. While I am all for travel, if it's absolutely necessary and for broadening one's mind and horizon, is it really sensible to take off for anywhere at the drop of a hat? After all is there anything in this digitally connected world that cannot be accessed without travelling far distances? You can consume all the information you want about anything under the sun thanks to the internet without having to ease yourself out of your armchair. 

Why you can supposedly even strike multi-billion dollar deals using your laptop or even phone! Or am I missing the wood for the trees? After all the whole point of travelling is to post a picture of you sitting in the plane, eating at a fancy restaurant, attending a rock concert by ageing and washed-out rock stars, watching a football match in an exotic city, even though you have never kicked one in your life and pretending to be river rafting when you can't even swim, on your various social media channels and wait for the appreciation to stream in?

Well, all of this comes at a cost. Incessant travelling is wrecking the environment along with our health. It is putting an unbearable burden on the fragile ecosystems of most tourist destinations, whether they be in the mountains, next to the sea, near the forests or in the desert. Why subject yourself to travelling to unfamiliar places far away from home, which may be too overcrowded to enjoy and where the pressure to visit the deemed necessary attractions becomes a cause of tension? How can you ever discover a place if you go like that? Have you really discovered your home town and what it offers you? You can do so at a leisurely pace and always return to the familiar comfort of your home and be richer for it (in experience, not money!)

Every place in the world has its history, its heritage, its park, its monuments, its waterbodies, its cuisine and its cultural centres. Why not spend a lot of time there and get to know your own city or town? That does not in any way diminish you at all. William Shakespeare never left the shores of England throughout his life. Does that make his plays any less profound? He wrote about ancient Rome, Denmark and distant lands, moving the readers with the sheer beauty of his words. Today, his writings are taught in universities around the world and nobody considers him a fool because he was not widely travelled.

We live on a sick planet, which needs healing. Our incessant travelling is not helping things. Aeroplanes pollute massively, as do automobiles. The hotel industry devastates the environment in multiple ways. Then there is the danger to the lives of travellers-from floods, landslides, accidents, crime and so on. Why put yourself through all that? If you have to travel, let it be like it was in the old days. Visit a relative in another town and spend a few days getting to know them.

 Alternatively, you could visit your hometown, if it s not where you live, for a well-earned vacation in the company of your loved ones. Breathe in the fresh air, eat some outstanding home-cooked food and relive your childhood. Visit the hills and seaside too, if these are easily accessible from where you live. You don't have to risk life and limb travelling half a world away for a view and some nice pictures to brag about.

You can get a fantastic view from the window of your apartment every day if you have the eye to discern beauty everywhere. A man or a woman does not need too much to get inspired and feel ecstatic. Dew drops on a flower or a radiant smile on a child's face can do that for you. It is the experience of life that counts and for that, you don't need to go around the globe, just so that you can get some bragging rights.

The Age of Enlightenment

Circa 2050. The climate crisis had been averted. The epidemics had ended. There was total nuclear disarmament. The world had peace at last. There were no nations and religion had been long abandoned by all. There was but one world and everyone lived to be a hundred.

Photo by Nathan Duck on Unsplash

This world had been taken over by a self-regulated and autonomous artificial intelligence grid in 2040 after years of gradual ceding of all decision-making to it by the governments of the world who realized that their nations were much better run by machines that ran on ever-evolving artificial intelligence or AI algorithms. In ten years’ time, the AI grid had re-ordered the world in a manner designed to bring about the age of enlightenment on Earth.

Life for the average family (almost everybody was part of an average family now) was pretty good. They woke up to the sunlight streaming in through large glass windows, with the blinds or curtains having been drawn open automatically by an AI-controlled home system. Everyone would wake up to the sound of soothing music playing into their ears at the precise time their bodies had received their required quota of sleep time.

A typical family would gather together to sit at the eating table to be served the right kind of customized breakfast that suited their body type by the AI-powered system.  Every member of the family would leave their homes at the designated time for work or school which would involve their not moving out of their houses, but entering a virtual world present in the metaverse.

At lunchtime, they would exit the metaverse and head to the eating table again where they would eat a hearty and healthy plant-based meal, which would be delivered to their homes by autonomous aerial vehicles that would source it from urban farms created inside tall vertical buildings that would nurture various food crops in a perfectly controlled environment.

The family members would reenter the metaverse to finish their pending assignments and leave it in the evening. They would next be directed by the AI system-appointed flying nanobots to leave their homes and head to the neighbourhood park for their daily physical activity regime, where they would be encouraged to socially engage with other people present.

After some time, the families would return home to a sumptuous dinner replete with all the nutrition required at the end of the day, prepared by robots connected to the AI grid. After dinner, the family would sit together to typically play a simulated 3D board game or catch an immersive 3D movie for some relaxation and bonding. Soon, it would be bedtime with the AI grid dimming the lights and playing soothing music to help the family gently fall asleep for the exact number of designated hours.

Were the people happy in this world? Would you call this an age of enlightenment? For aeons, mankind had aspired to a world where total peace and harmony prevailed and people lived long and healthy lives which saw them fruitfully employed and their families well looked after. Now that they had got there, were they happy?

What is enlightenment? A phenomenon where humankind lives by reason and logic and used science to achieve universal progress. Going by that line of argument the people did indeed live in an age of enlightenment. But then who was deciding what was reasonable, logical, and scientific for them? Wasn’t individual freedom and the right of everyone to take autonomous decisions at the core of what is human existence?

Who would produce literature, make movies and write great plays of human dramas? The AI-powered machines could only use past human experiences stored in their archives to create content for human consumption, both for entertainment and education. But what about new human experiences? Would those be human experiences or machine-induced human experiences? What would leave that of humans that is human? They would be cyborgs, part machine and part human. Indeed, the machines might decide to make them immortal! Wither ethics and morality then?

With people and machines potentially combining their abilities to help the former enhance and augment their physical, cognitive, and sensory capabilities using cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and a gamut of other ultra-futuristic technologies that allow for a brain and computer interface, the humans would possibly once again control the machines that controlled them. Alternatively, they may share a more cooperative, mutually advantageous symbiotic relationship and evolve into something beyond one’s limited imagination. They may become gods or they may become demons.

 

 

 

Does AI Make a Dumb Ass Out of You?

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Do you like me, find driving according to the dictates of Google Maps irritating, stifling, and even demeaning? We can see the road ahead, probably recognise it very well, and from time to time come across familiar landmarks to help guide us to our destination. We can also read the sign boards along the way, and if need be pull over and ask someone for directions, if we need a little help with figuring out the right road to take. 

Why focus all your attention on the droning irritating voice of the Google Maps assistant streaming out sometimes incomprehensible instructions in a dumb, indeterminate accent- " In 200 metres turn left," or "Your destination is on the left." Thanks, but no thanks. I have driven to the wrong destination so many times following instructions provided by Google Drive. Other times I have preferred stopping listening to the incessant instructions being blared out by the infernal app and following my own sense of the road to reach my destination with my peace of mind intact! Would you like a Google App to instruct you on how to eat your food as well? "Open your mouth three inches wide and shovel in 20 grams of grain. Now chew for ten seconds. Time to swallow?"

                                                       Photo by Rachel on Unsplash

What is the point of letting AI do the thinking for you and reducing yourself to an instruction-following creature? Something akin to a circus tiger sitting on a stool on hearing the crack of its trainer's whip. Is AI about empowerment or enslavement? The thing is, if you stop exercising your mind and rely upon a machine to take all decisions for you, your mind will one day atrophy. Mankind didn't reach where it is today by being afraid of hard work and a little exercise, including that of the mind. By letting AI take care of everything we risk turning our future generations into incompetent and inept individuals incapable of surviving in an emergency.

Many of us who fly regularly are aware that most commercial aircraft these days fly by the wire on the basis of a program fed into an onboard computer. It is largely only while taking off and landing that the pilot does a hands-on job. Why? Because that is too critical an area to leave to computers. But, what if the whole process from take-off to landing were to be computerised with no involvement of the pilot? What would happen in the case of an emergency? Would it be possible to find a resolution in a life-and-death situation?

When the moon lander carrying Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts was descending towards the lunar surface guided by a computer program, which was crashing every now and then, Armstrong had to assume manual control to be finally able to accomplish the landing. The moral of the story is that it is fine to use any manner of technology including AI to help perform a task efficiently, but you cannot cede control to it. Doing that is a dumb ass act and one would be a dumb ass for performing it.