Take a look around. No, seriously, put your head up
and take a look around you. If the sun is shining or the lights aren’t out yet,
there must be a fair bit to see. You might not be seeing what I am, which is
mounds of books, a couple of old laptops, water bottles and other associated
detritus as befits a modern vagrant, but you’d definitely have a lot to see.
Maybe a nice hand-crafted cushion cover (from fabIndia
obviously) or a favourite photograph of that trip to Goa from well, gosh,
nearly 10 years ago, or maybe there is that ratty t-shirt you know should be
thrown away but you just can’t bring yourself to do. There’s more evidence of
obviously of a human life lived, things you cannot see, such as nail clippings
and itinerant strands of hair, symbols of your mortality and uniqueness,
physical states in a flux with DNA signatures silent and eternal.
To identify as human is an interesting experience (choice
is not the correct word, is it?). To have emotions and to know happiness and
pain, to be bored and excited, to have impulses and longings. To have your eyes
water up stupidly when manipulated by the soaring strings at the close of a
Pixar movie, to giggle at the routine rant of a middle-aged comic who rages at a
PC crowd which titters subversively and guiltily at the non-PC jokes, deadpan
humour and cynical irony understood and enjoyed. The patience to practice and
become better at certain activities (like hitting a ball across a net with a
racquet (that’s all it is, howsoever exhilarating it may be) or like
identifying how colours interact and how light and shade can be faithfully
reproduced or deconstructed to evoke emotions) or how Nature’s patterns follow
rules, some known and some unknown, and yet radiate a beauty that defy
rule-making. To take joy in companionship and to seek out the warmth of
fellowship and family and to cherish certain relationships over all others. To
be proud of loving and be humbled by receiving love, knowing that neither
really matters and yet seeking to be worthy nonetheless. To strive for success
and for dignity in work, to do the best we can, limited as we are by our neural
idiosyncrasies and physical foibles. We aren’t perfect (we only need to take a
look at the papers for that) but we kind of like that imperfection, that little
un-knowability, that makes us human (and also perfection is over-rated and
bland). We still push ourselves though, knowing that we will always fall short
of the mythical ideal makes it easier to strive to be better. Pushing it to the
limits and not knowing what the limits are, makes it all worthwhile ultimately
(an Eagles reference here).
We have always wanted to believe in a greater power. It’s
not as cut and dry as a belief in God or Gods (feel free to choose your own
poison or not drink from the well at all), but there is either some fatalism or
some belief that hard work and/or intelligence and/or luck begets success and
happiness. Is that true anymore? I wonder sometimes. Let’s look at the situation
dispassionately. We live in a world of limited resources. Yes. We consume more and more each year. Yes. The global climate change is well underway and we have entered
Anthropocene. Yes. Automation is inevitable
as capital seeks ever more efficient allocations. Yes. Disaffection will spread as more and more work will be done,
better, by automated machines. Machine learning is at an inflection point where
I believe most decision making can be driven by data and semiotics. And it’s all
kinds of decision making really (go,
poker
and chess all require
very different mental capacities) where automatons parsing data are better than
us and they are getting better all the time. I think most jobs, if not all of
them, which are presently the remit of typical lower and middle management, and
in most sectors, can be done better and in a cheaper manner using software and
logic. Blue collar jobs are disappearing anyway – a country can’t compete on a
cheap labour arbitrage when there are machines for most
things.
I don’t think we, as a country, are at the cutting edge of software technology,
what we do, to my impression is, take on the tedious bits and do them
diligently and then sell them on the cheap. We are looking to innovate and move
up the value chain no doubt, but we then don’t invest in real research and STEM
education. We have millions of engineers, no doubt, but I don’t believe that
they have been trained to innovate and design and be creative. Any creative
spark is indeed stamped out by our education system and our tendency to copy
and imitate (on the cheap, no doubt) rather than create and develop. And I don’t
see much change happening for the better anytime soon. Similarly, the financial
sector plays on a cost arbitrage and by charging for making capital accessible –
as we develop risk matrices and develop better behavioural models for markets and
then leave the decision making to these systems, I don’t see much need for
decision makers (the so-called management) anymore. It’s funny how as we
advance technologically, we take out the need for human interaction and human
input more and more. What is the solution really? Do we go further down the
rabbit hole till we make superintelligent
machines? I feel in a way that the answer lies in something we considered
while looking at our choices. We can’t really look at the situation
dispassionately - that premise simply won't provide us with an acceptable solution.
There are so many
questions to answer here – do the profits arising from the machine-like efficiency
of these, well, machines, accrue to the equity holders? The 0.1%ers who already
control the majority of the world’s wealth, do they continue to accrue the
benefits? There are interesting moral and political questions here to answer.
Do we distribute the profits to the deprived and the dis-enfranchised? Who will
all these huge automated factories make their products for – how many iPhones
does Tim Cook need anyway? You need the 99.9% to ultimately drive the
consumption, who need to be able to earn and afford. Fun questions with
extremely important answers. We need to decide on these things before the decision-making
power of the species itself is brought into question. What is certain is that
there will be large scale displacements in the existing workforces, what will
make the Greek tragedies seem like sitcoms – and it will be both blue-collared
and white-collared workers who will be effected. We are woefully behind in
terms of re-educating ourselves and educating our children to be able to
survive and adapt to the changed environment. We haven’t even started figuring
this thing out. I guess there will be requirements to service these robots and
there will be customer service requirements certainly – but that’s a very
limited and limiting option, isn’t it? Maybe even we will end up with the
almost implausible scenario that the machines will eliminate all need for work
as we know it and at the same it shall come to pass that all the benefits
arising from these increased efficiencies are magically distributed in a
left-wing daydream, but then we have to figure what to do with our time and
figure out what gives our lives a sense of self and value, if it’s not work (as
we know and understand it now).
Now, onto things a bit simpler. Have watched a few
movies this past month or so and with the Oscars around the corner, I wanted to
talk about them –
1. La La Land (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3783958)
– I remember watching Damien Chazelle’s previous film and thinking that here is
someone who thinks that music and the pursuit of it is important, even if
somewhat maddening and frustrating sometimes. I guess what he comes up with
this time around is a tribute to the musical, set in a modern world which harks
back to the golden age of the Hollywood studios and shows the showbiz LA with
pastel colours and choreographed dances and unbearably hip jazz nightclubs.
Emma Stone is an amazingly expressive actress and I think she will win the
statue for best actress in this role (I loved Arrival and Amy Adams in it, but
Ms. Stone is terrific in this movie) and I loved the songs (one of which, City of Stars, should
win for best original song). And if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s worth
seeing for the ending montage alone. Its emotional yet gimlet eyed and it doesn’t
shy away from telling you that you have to make difficult choices sometimes.
2. Kubo and the 2 Strings (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4302938)
– I dislike stop motion movies mostly. They usually look ugly to me (think
Chicken Run etc.) and only rarely are they great (Fantastic Mr. Fox – and that’s
basically the craft of Wes Anderson). This one was beautiful. A sweeping story
of magic and journey and dragons and family. It beggars belief that the movie
is actually stop motion – it speaks of the immense work put in by the studio. The shamisen powered cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps
is amazing. I fell utterly in thrall to the movie and would recommend it over
any others that I have watched this year. It should (but it won’t) win the
Oscars for best animated feature (Zootopia is good but not great and I haven’t
watched Moana). Interesting fact, the movie was directed by Travis Knight, the
son of Phil Knight (the co-founder of Nike).
3. Sing Street (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3544112)
– A coming of age story set in Dublin – this movie is about a teenage boy who
starts a band to escape from a dysfunctional family life and to woo an
unattainable girl (mainly for the girl of course). Set to an irresistible
soundtrack of 80s hits (The Cure and Duran Duran feature, amongst others), the
movie also has some original numbers which are quite effective. I guess the
movie resonated with me because it reminded me of discovering new bands and how
I think, we all make up our own playlists that are incredibly precious to us.
John Carney, the director, has previous in this kind of movies, having made Once and Begin Again, and the movie has a joyous feel to it that makes it a
really happy watch.
So, all the movies above
come highly recommended. I also watched Allied (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3640424)
which was beautifully shot and had some interesting moments – and the beginning
is in Casablanca – it missed something, maybe Brad Pitt’s deadpan acting was somewhat difficult to get into.
The songs now…
1.
Fleetwood Mac – Chains. One of my favourite bands.
Rumours is an epochal album – there’s not one bad song in the bunch. My
favourite songs are probably Chains (from Rumours) and Black Magic Woman
(Santana did a great cover, but it really is Peter Green’s song).
2. Bread
– Guitar Man. The soft rock pioneers. The 70s had some great music. This is probably not their most successful album, but this track is a favourite.
Did you know that the word ‘thing’ (used 7 times in
this piece before this) comes from the Old Germanic and Old English word for the
governing assembly of a Germanic society, made up of the free people of the
community presided over by lawspeakers. QI indeed.
