The Beginning
2075, Global warming has crushed three fourths of the global population, Oceans raised, as not just Antarctica, but even the Everest has melted down and what remains is few hundred meters of it. The Forests have perished, submerged in water, and what remains is only sea food, and algae, and very limited agriculture here and there on high lands and mountains, for the remaining people on planet, who are either on boats, or became fishermen, or farmers on the mountains, or the rich!
Businesses have ensured they prevailed, and sustained, for those elite people. Scientists continue to pursue science, to invent methods of burning more fuel to produce more food to humanity, bring more gadgets to the remaining people so that they are better connected between mountains, boats.
The Symposium
Global Symposium of Scientists is happening at the new floating city Esnesnon, in a big auditorium. Everybody is voting for the best scientist of the year. Then came running, a young scholar, to the dais, and shouted, “Stop the election”, breathless, gasping, waited for a minute to catch the breath, while everybody in the auditorium is shocked and trying to guess, what is this young scholar going to say.
The scholar introduced himself, I am sorry to intervene, my name is Yajiv, and my guide is Erutan. I want to propose my guide Erutan, to be the best scientist, and I vouch for her, that you cannot find any better intelligent one than her. People “booed”
The scholar pressed a few buttons on his hand to bring a 3 dimensional display of what Erutan has created. People were taken aback, almost shocked. It is a large sci-fi ship, with AI computer on it, and equipped with Cyborg soldiers. The scholar explained, it runs on sea weed, and cyborgs are fed organic food, the sea fish. The life of the ship is about 150 years, it can sail, self sustainable with no human intervention. The AI makes it learn by itself, and also forgets things that are not useful.She named the ship Vanam, the jungle or the wild. Erutan has created hundred such ships to float on the seas, with little variance in each. However to add a little interest to them, all of them will get a little attracted to shimmering items, again variable.
Looking at the magnificient form and fleet of those AI ships, self sustainable, even the contesting scientists, came down the dais and voted unanimously to Erutan, while Erutan wasn’t present there personally. The award was rephrased, “Most intelligent scientist till date in the history of Mankind”, and conferred to Yajiv.
The Voyage of AI Ships
Yajiv reached Erutan with the award, which Erutan just brushed away, saying, she is not interested in them. She has created a fleet of 100 Intelligent, Self sustainable, Secure ships to sail on the ocean for 150 years, without intervention! Wow! The idea itself is incredible, and thrilling! The Vanam of 100 wild intelligent ships!
The voyage of ships started. Curious Yajiv asked Erutan, “Madam! You have created a amazing and astounding fleet. But I want to know one thing, shall I ask?”.
Erutan turned to Yajiv with nod as a gesture of approval. Yajiv asked, What if they become rogue ships and become dangerous? Erutan said with a smile, “I have the kill switch”.
Yajiv further asked confused, “Then what is the purpose of all this?”, Erutan laughed out loud, and said,
“There is none, all purposes and goals of humans put together, is the current state of the planet“
Yajiv realised the truth behind it. It is demotivating, but true.
The ships sailed for many miles and evolved. They consumed sea weed for their fuel, and caught few fish to feed the cyborg soldiers. There were pirates on the way, which were dealt by the ships well. On a certain evening, as the sun was setting down, from an island nearby, the cameras of the Ships received a shining ray of sun reflecting from the Gold mines on the island. And they are attracted. They came near the island. The island has many Mining businesses and their owners.They saw the splendid nature of ships and their capabilities, and when the Ships asked them Gold, they wanted to get a deal. Gold in exchange of Sea weed and Fish. The deal happened.
Now to the ships went and got lot of seaweed and fish, and got lot of gold. Each ship was getting gold, more and more, and years passed. They scavenged entire territory, to get all seaweed and fish.
Here few things happened over the years. The cyborg soldiers were retrained to be scavengers, or were left idle and lazy, so they forgot their skills. Some ships were attacked by pirates to rob them off, and destroyed the ships. Some miners cheated the ships by not paying in time, and the ships were not programmed to handle cheating, so they went into infinite loop, and lost their way, and either drowned or hit an iceberg on the way and collapsed. Some ships became so heavy with Gold, that they just drowned with dead weight. The scavenged territory became so out of balance for the ecology, that no more fish or bacteria was seen, and became dead waters.
This happened in just couple of decades. Erutan, and Yajiv were helplessly watching. Erutan was with hope to see if any of the ships would continue their journey throughout her life time. She could see of the 100 ships, 4-5 ships, which either did not get the rays of Gold or ignored due to current priority of theirs, could escape this tragedy and continued to sail further.
The Conclusion
This is a fictitious story. However, it clearly projects the state of the planet by 2075.
We may have to bring in lot of analogies here.
1. The Ships are named Vanam, read it reverse, Manav – in Sanskrit means “Man”
2. They are equipped with soldiers to fight pirates, its the immunity to fight diseases and of course the strength to fight enemies any way
3. The supercomputer and the AI within the ship is Mind, that man has
4. The lost ships stuck in infinite loop, due to cheating are the ones who lost their mental balance due to situations in life.
4. Erutan is the Universe’s most accomplished, and revered and unbeatable scientist, read it reverse- “Nature”
The Takeaways!
1. If you don’t keep your soldiers trained, A lazy soldier is as good as a dead soldier. Every cell of your body is a soldier, it is not only supposed to support, but protect you. Exercise, move your body physically each day. Don’t carry dead weight throughout life
2. Life is to evolve, not to dissolve in the material solution around us. The more material we have, the more maintenance it needs, so our effort and time, go in there. And with just resources(money), we cannot evolve.
3. Anything beyond our needs becomes dead weight in life, it doesn’t enhance our lives, but makes our lives heavy, even if it is Gold.
4. If we lose sense, but we are intelligent, we will become painful and unbearable nonsense. so is the city, Esnesnon
5. Freedom when not established on values and responsibility, is destructive in nature
6. If we stop learning, we capped our evolutionary process. If we stopped experiencing, good or bad, we stagnated life itself. Because life is here to experience, and evolve not to make circles around likes and dislikes.
7. If we are not properly grounded in values, losing mind becomes natural consequence during life’s course
8. Science must add more sense to it when it delivers feed to Businesses. Because Businesses neither have emotion nor sense. They run within the framework of law of the land and are constantly trying to make profits in their operations. They just can’t add emotion and sense to what they do, it is an unnecessary overhead. So, what operations they decide on, is mostly given by some innovator at some point time. These innovators must think long term affects on humanity and ecology, before giving ideas to businesses. That is Responsible Innovation makes Accountable Implementation (RI-AI).
9. Science and Technology must focus on contemporary problems of humans, than create new problems and solve them artificially, and in the process pile up on the existing stack of problems!
This is a fictitious story, published outside of IBM. It is neither intended nor directed towards any kind of people referred here, however to bring awareness on the affects of our actions, towards ourselves, our surroundings, and bring responsibility towards our actions in the Society. Any resemblance is pure coincidental. Comments are welcome