Leaps of Change

A dim slow world, way back in time, 

One with no rules, under natures regime,
Man walked the soil bare and brave,
Of all the wonders of nature an ignorant slave.

As the gentle breeze of wisdom blew,
Man observed and imbibed what to do.
He made a world,
Of crude tools and flint stones,
And weapons made of sticks and bones,
Of primitive discoveries, fire and caves
He made his life out of what nature gave.

Then there blew gales if progress,
Of constant change; a civilized fest!
By perspiration and sometimes chance,
He unraveled nature's mysteries
And the world advanced.

With these leaps of change,
He outran Time,
And leaped so far and high
That he spread his wings way beyond his sky!
Yet now he dreams all the more he can,
And wishes to be a 'better' man
Coz' on the way he realized that
He'd just ignored,
All the wreck he'd caused on nature's shores.

He looks forward now to build
A peaceful world, free of guilt
One that he can bear,
On the pillars of justice and friendly care,
While the tempest of development persists....

Arundhathi Swami

The Commendable Vicissitude

As defined in the Farlex dictionary, ‘Vicissitude’ is the term for regular change or succession from one thing to another.

Each one of us is born on this planet with an intended purpose. This purpose may be obscure but each one of us, from all the small insects to the mighty blue whales, all of us are important! But when we look at our indispensable past, we all would realize that our evolution was from single celled species. Yes that's the frantic fact of our life. This process is slow but continuous. There's no proof required for the plausible nature. So why did we evolved into complex and most dominant species on this planet? Well this change is by default and we can't stop it. Imagine ourselves as some sticky layer with just cells! Yes we were the same millions and millions of years ago.
This vicissitudes can be classified as two, first being the mutation one and the second one is what we called transformation.

Well even a change from one generation to other can also be considered as a vicissitude move of humans. But these changes are sometimes not accepted. We have moved from black and white television sets to curved LEDs, from bits to pita-bytes, from meeting in person to poking etc. etc. These technologies are supposed to curate but instead they act as vicars. This is a different topic altogether, what I want to highlight here is that sometimes changes are good and sometimes they are bad. An example of this can be WWI and WWII, I mean the devastation caused in the second one was but obvious greater than the first one. But at the same time the advancement in the medical field have led to miracles. Well there are numerous such examples. 

There's no single person involved in any of these but we all contribute to this change in one way or the other. So we don't invent anything bad, our intention may be good, but it’s our next generation, our mystified future responsible for its use. Even the fiction series of X-Men depicted the same.

Our choice defines us and not our fate.

So we cannot stop ourselves from being evolved but we can choose our future. May our choices don't be indignation to anyone. Just larking in the present is diabolically harming the future. Try to be pragmatist and stay away from being fiend.

Sanket Agarwal

BEING SUPERHUMAN...

Super is a derivative of the word “superlative” which denotes the extra-ordinary.

What exactly do we, as humans, find extra-ordinary when we have the power to transform every thought into a tangible reality?

We wished to fly, so we made an aeroplane.

We wished to swim across oceans, as undetectable as a fish, we made submarines.

We wished to travel into the celestial world and we propelled Armstrong onto the moon!

So then what is it that has enabled us to achieve what we once thought was impossible? The answer is very simple. We live with it every minute of the day. Technology.

Technology’s what enables us to achieve the superlative and it is what will help us to create an altogether superior lifestyle that mankind has barely even been able to dream of before now.

It is man’s inherent nature to improve. We are always looking for ways to make ourselves better than we were, trying to correct our faults and compensate for our disabilities. It is this primal need for correction and betterment that drives us to expand our horizons and innovate our imagination.

As a rule, we have been obsessed forever with that which we can’t do. And often these desires are the driving force behind our creations.

Consider this: Color blindness is a fairly common condition. It isn't a detrimental disease but is surely inconvenient. Neil Harbisson was however, inconsolably inconvenienced, and he decided to right the wrong that wasn't his. He augmented his inability to see and distinguish colors by using a camera that captured light, identified its frequency and converted its frequency into audio signals thus effectively enabling him to HEAR colors. This process enabled him to distinguish more than three hundred colors and their varying shades-far better than the average human’s range. In his words, “all painters for me are now composers”.

Thus technology is instrumental in embellishing the capabilities of us humans. Even our superheroes are privy to this fact.

Think Iron man and his suit. Despite being a playboy, billionaire and philanthropist he is still just a human. His suit, though fictional, gives him the superhuman edge.

Think batman and his bat-mobile that has millions of boys, men, girls and women swooning over it. It’s a cutting edge piece of fictional technology that’s well on its way to becoming a reality.

The primary section of science and technology today, which deals with conferring superhuman capabilities to us, is something rudimentary known as wearable technology. 

Wearable technology covers a wide gamut of devices ranging from digital watches to robotic limbs. It is a boon for the handicapped as they can replace virtually any limb with the help of robotics. We may have heard of lizards growing back their tails, well we now have something to tell them in return! Craig Hutto suffered a shark attack that led to the amputation of his left leg from above the knee. He now uses a mechanical prosthesis that has replaced his non-existent muscles. This mechanical leg is able to emulate 90% of the functions of his natural limb.

Apart from helping the disabled, wearable technology enhances the already present capabilities of man given them a surreal revamp. An excellent example is the EXOCORTEX.

EXOCORTEX- it’s a part of the mind-functional technologies that includes concepts of BCI and MIND UPLOADING.

BCI is brain computer interfacing which is practically the exchange of information between our mind and a computer albeit with no medium of exchange- direct transmission. Synthesis of data collected from our physical senses can be performed directly within the computer.

MIND UPLOADING is another mind-boggling concept that allows us to upload our conscience (which is the sum total of our mind and memory) into a computer. That way our conscience lives on forever!

EXOCORTEX provides us with the over-all sharpening of mind. It will well and truly enable us to work at computer-speeds with just as accurate results within our mind space. It will effectively eliminate any need of calculators or other computing devices. It basically provides super-intelligence as our super-power!

Somewhere people are already working on these concepts and are converting them into reality. It is not far away when we can say “it’s all in the mind” and mean it quite literally!

As far as the ‘’cool’’ spectrum of superhuman is concerned, we have the HUMAN UNIVERSAL LOAD CARRIER (HULC) that enables an average human being to carry around 200 pounds, quite nonchalantly! Speaking of super-strength, the Japanese have their own- hybrid assistive limb (HAL) that is currently being employed for medical purposes but has basically the same functions of the HULC.

Also one must have noticed, our superheroes have an unnaturally accurate and immaculate immune system. The good news is, now we can get one too. Nano-medicines or medicines on a molecular scale size are being tested to treat diseases like lung cancer. Inhaled through an aerosol, these particles get deposited near the diseased area and are then super heated thus killing the cancerous cells. Speculative use of this branch involves the use of nanobots- self-replicating machines that are utilized to specifically target the diseased area and treat it. Looks like we are on the right path to creating age proof bodies!

Moore’s law suggests that we should avail of these types of technology by 2045. Incredibly within our lifetime we will be able to witness this conversion from human to superhuman.

The trans-humanist movement comprises of one such sect of people who strongly believe that we must allow technology to invade the natural course of life and do away with the moral obligations of such tampering. Who’s to stop us if we want to become super-human after all?

Well, it just depends on us. Human or superhuman, as long as we have our hearts in the right place (the metaphorical ones), we can hope to survive this stage of evolution as well with our planet in tow. Till then, peace out!

Arundhathi Swami