Noon at a bookstore

If there is one place on this planet where I would willingly give up my sanity, it would be inside a bookstall. It need not be a fancy place that tries to justify the price of the book you are inclined to buy from there by calling itself a bookstore, for we know that books ain't come cheap nowadays. 

The word 'bookstall', for some reason, instantly sounds a bit more synonymous with affordability, in comparison with the word 'bookstore'. Specially if the bookstall deals with second hand books. Talking about second hand books, there are very few things that beat the concept of a book being passed from person to person. A few thing that do beat this concept are chocolate, coffee, and adrenaline!

I had just watched this movie 'Chef', written, directed, produced and played by Jon Favreau, who's only earlier role I recognized, was 'Happy', Tony Stark's body guard in Iron Man. Firstly, why would Tony Stark need a 'Body-Guard'? What was the suit for? Eh? Specially after his 'I am Iron Man' stunt?

Just for the record,  'Chef' is a really good movie!

After the movie, my sister had a few things to purchase(as usual), so he left me to  my own devices, namely my watch and my cell-phone. And lo and behold! The first thing I saw outside the theater was... A bookstore!! The fancy kind!

What more could I ask? 2 hours, a huge room full of books and myself! And more importantly, as long as the shop owner didn't force me into buying a book from the store, in case the shop's POLICY didn't allow free reading, I was free to read stuff for FREE!!! You already get a sense of freedom, don't you?

Let me tell you the most gratifying sight in a bookstall! The most gratifying sight in a bookstall is the sight of a book kept there on a shelf that you have already read. The sense of gratification is tenfold if you managed to get hold of the book at a nominal price, specially if the book costs a fortune straight off the shelf!!

After filling my 'gratification' quota of the day, I moved around a bit into their 'movies' section. I rarely go into a bookstore with the intention of emptying my pockets into there, until I am feeling unreasonably generous to donate money. I usually go there to catch hold of movie and book titles that I think would be interesting. I make a not of them, loiter about here and there, and quietly leave the place, and then search for the cheapest possible place where I can get hold of the titles I had made a not of earlier in the bookstore. Nifty, eh? And I very blatantly accept my cheapness. I think it' a virtue!

So my today''s visit to the bookstall was no different. Got hold of a lot of interesting titles of books and movies that I hadn't heard of earlier, or had forgotten about them.

There was a book about Hitler getting out of his grave sometime in 2011, only to find that the world had come far from where he had left it in what? 1945? I mean, Duh! But the concept sounded brilliant! I hope I can get my hands on that book sometime soon! After seeing the price tag on the book although, I have postponed that soon to some time in future.

After window shopping through the bookstore, and going really mental about choosing a book for my 2 hour wait, I was really upset. I was hoping that I would run into a nerdy looking girl whom I could start a bookish conversation with. Alas! No luck. I could have even settled for a not-so-nerdy-looking lady in my vicinity. But again, alas! So I went back to re-sifting through all the shelves the bookstore had on display, this time, my search being a lot more diligent than the last time. But there is a disadvantage in being so sincere in your quest for reading material. You just end up wanting to read everything there is on display! Now this, we know, is not possible unless you happen to be Will Hunting from the movie Goodwill hunting, where you can finish off a book by just flipping through it's pages once, and toss it aside with an air of accomplishment. I swear on my life, that if I were granted one superpower ever!! IFF EVVER!! I would choose super-reading speed as my superpower. Okay, I guess I sound super nerdy when I say that. But then that's true...

Besides, inside a bookstore, where the walls are quite literally MADE of books, psychedelia pretty much hits you right in the head. The colors look so tempting! For some reason, orange looks very pleasing  on books. Specially when they are accompanied by an oval with a penguin inside the oval, if you know what I mean. Enough about me tripping on books!

Thankfully, I did run into a book that I thought would be worth my time. It was something about this guy, some Dan *Something*. The book was about this chap doing a study about intelligence, wherein he was planning on increasing his intelligence by traditionally suggested methods such as mind  training, exercise, diet change, listening to Mozart, so on and so forth. It was also about how many, if not most of these methods, commonly believed to spike intelligence, were most often mere speculations with no serious backing from research. 

While I was in the process of reading the book, my sister called. Shit!!! How come she's done with her shopping? This has never happened before! What was this? Her attempt at the world records for her shortest shopping session? With only an hour and a half, she must have easily beaten her previous time by a day, FLAT!!

Sadly, I didn't have the cash, nor the heart to purchase this book on intelligence by this 'Dan' chap. A good read though. And so, with a heavy heart, and thankfully not a lighter wallet, I left the bookstore.

I was rather pleased with myself for not giving into the obligatory purchases that I make out of guilt at a bookshop for making myself too comfortable inside one.

And that's how, I trotted out of that beautiful space! 

The Terminator guys weren't joking!

I am extremely paranoid about an apocalypse, specially the one involving some kind of artificial intelligence. Blame it on I having watched the entire Terminator series, or the fact that the concept in The Matrix, Minority Report, Transcendence or any of the movies involving machines taking over the world simply for the heck of it just doesn't plainly appeal to my sensibilities.
And it is not like such a time is far from the present we live in where humans will mindlessly give into the power of machines. Look around! How many faces can you count that aren't looking down onto some electronic device? And by saying that, I am being the biggest hypocrite of all! Right now, I am in front of my computer, typing my thoughts away. How do I know if what I am writing is being read by anyone else? Of course I do know that someone is reading what I am scribbling, and of course, there is the Internet, and we are presently living in a global village and blah.. blah.. blah. But who knows? What if there already is some artificial system in place that is maintaining what we believe to be is the Internet? What if the world has already been taken over by the machines, and we are living 'Duracell batteries' for machines to derive their energy from? Just that the machines must be really stupid to use heat from the human body as a source of energy, because they couldn't get hold of anything better.

Each time I hear the news of some machine out-doing some present human ability, I am filled with a sense of ambivalence. On one side, there's this thought of machine subjugating man, forever making man it's slave. On the other hand, a thought comes to mind. The thought being that how awesome it would be to overcome such an adversary that considers itself, and probably is superior to man in every possible way. The second thought somehow manages to far  outweigh the thought that the presence of a superior intellectual force may be in some way beneficial to mankind in any way.

All this rant from above was triggered by this hideously titled article in the Economic times called "15 ways the world will be awesome in 2050". The article is divided into 15 parts, as suggested by the title, each part being another reason for the world becoming more awesome by 2050.
Here are the 15 reasons.
Lower child mortality- Okay, totally agreed. I am not a parent, nor can I imagine the grief if my kid passes away real early, but from whatever little I have seen in the world, a lower child mortality rate sounds like it will definitely make future a better place to be in.

Vaccines and cures- This too sounds good, specially since the writer of the article is pretty sure of a cure for HIV and other major diseases being round the corner.

Live forever- Now here's where the trouble starts. By Live-forever, it is not like we are on the verge of finding the fountain of youth. Someone will apparently figure out a way to 'upload' our conscious and brain function into a machine. Yeah, right! As cool as it sounds, living forever? Seriously? Specially a life of perpetual servitude inside a machine? Still sounds appealing? By the way, if everyone keeps living, where are the new ones going to stay??

Fewer poor- Now this is pretty ridiculous. Anyone who believes that we all can live in a world without pain and poverty can, well, continue to believe so. But just for the record, the person is delusional, to say the least. By that, I in no way say that I am pro-poverty. It is just that poverty is an indelible part of our society's construct. Without poverty, there won't be aspirations. Without aspirations, there won't be efforts. And without efforts, there won't be progress. Unless the 'Fewer poor' entails getting rid of the poor in any way, like the 'Garibi Hatao' plan, which turned out more to be a 'Garib hatao' plan, poverty going down? I wouldn't be so optimistic.

Artificial Intelligence- Oh come on! This was a no brainer! How is it possible that A.I. won't be there by 2050? Google already has it's self driving car! Despite this, Self-driving cars is separately mentioned in the list of things that will make 2050 more awesome! Maybe we are waiting for more people to come with their own bandwagon of self-driving cars.

Clean energy- I do not understand what the writer of the article meant to say by mentioning this point about clean energy. You see, if we do not have any alternative energy before the said 2050, we, in all likelihood won't have any energy source at all!! So clean energy? Pah! Useless point!

Gender equality- There is only one thing I can understand from this. The machines will be so heavily involved in our works that they wouldn't differentiate between man and women. But yes, given that women are increasingly becoming subservient contributors to our work-force, the gender equality point will be a welcome change, specially if it stops one half of humanity from protesting over this issue.

Global literacy- Yes, sounds good.

Fewer wars- Of course, fewer wars!! In all likelihood, there will only be ONE war!! Man v/s Machine!

Internet everywhere- Again a no-brainer! We are all going to be contestants of BIG BROTHER! And big brother will be some higher non-human intelligence that projects itself in front of you wearing a face that looks most convincing/ intimidating to you. And how would global surveillance be possible without internet?

Organ transplants- Medical science will have progressed a lot by this time, so that sure sounds good.

Reproductive technology and Designer babies- Basically anyone at any age can have a custom-made baby of their choice, complete with the eye-color, intelligence, and disease resistance and skin preference. Basically, we'll be giving nature the finger. In one word, Gattaca!!

Universal translators- This device will allow us to go about anywhere and rant in our own mother-tongue and the person in front of us, regardless of where he is from(provided there is a computer programmer in his country), will understand what we are saying. So if a bunch of us from any given country go to China/ Japan, and both parties highly frustrated with the negotiations, and decide to abuse each other/ bitch in our own language, OOPS! There are going to  be a few fall-outs!
That is just in case if the machines haven't taken over. If the machines have taken over, then they won't need the translators. They, in all possibilities will kill us regardless of what we speak. To them, all will be Greek anyway!

I want to end this post with a joke my mom told me a very long time ago. Here's how it goes...
A man was super-lazy. He was so lazy that he didn't want to attend even nature's calls. So he told a friend of his to develop a machine that helped him with all his daily functions. So the friend of our lazy-lad worked diligently and made a machine that took care of all his friend's requirements.
There was only one button that needed to be pressed on the machine that would be sufficient to get the machine to work. Upon knowing this, the lazy chap thought- "Now who's going to push the button??"

What I am trying to say, that is if I am trying to say anything, is that more than anything, we are going to be taken by our relentless search for convenience before anything else takes us. There will soon be a time to choose between 2 things, namely freedom and convenience. Which one will it be?