As old tasks get automated away, the challenge is for the economy to not only invent new jobs but to equip people with new skills as well.
One can either marvel the rapidly evolving digital technology or bemoan its dreadful aftermath. The pace with which work of science fiction is becoming a business reality, rapid spread of automation has revolutionized disease diagnosis and transformed online retailing, among many other technological strides. However, the flip side is that payroll processing software, factory automation, computer-controlled machines, automated inventory control and word processing has triggered technological unemployment, pulling millions of people out from the comfort of their jobs. And the digital revolution is just about bracing up for the second machine age.
Accomplished experts in information systems and economics, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew MacAfee unfold the reshaping of our lives and economies in the wake of rapidly evolving digital technologies. Spread and efficiency notwithstanding, the authors contend that automation has made humans redundant in many spheres of life. Productivity and profits may have soared but wages are falling and unemployment is rising. As old tasks get automated away, the challenge is for the economy to not only invent new jobs but to equip people with new skills as well.
Given that the full impact of digital technologies has yet to be felt, the time to act is NOW. Dazzling personal technologies, advanced diagnostic infrastructure and smart communication devices only showcase the limited bounty of digitization. Artificial Intelligence, argue the authors, is now ready to unleash the second machine age. It is a blessing, however, that computers have yet to catch up with humans on ideation, large-frame pattern recognition, and complex communication. Till that happens, and it is unlikely to happen anytime soon, cooks, gardeners, repairmen, carpenters, dentist and maids should live in peace as they are unlikely to be replaced by machines.
Digitization is creating both possibilities and potential, but ultimately, the future will depend on what choices are made and how prosperity gets shared across the society. Drawing on latest research and up-to-date trends, Brynjolfsson and MacAfee wonder if mankind will reap unprecedented bounty or embrace greater disaster that technology, by default, harbors. The line is thin and the challenge enormous.
The Second Machine Age is an optimistic take on the future that awaits us. Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence will cut down costs, improve outcomes and make lives better, but only when the organizational transformation would be ready to absorb the full benefits. Left to businesses alone, entrepreneurs and managers will substitute capital for labor for maximizing profits. Unless there are policies to favor inclusion of the workforce in the second machine age, companies like the Foxconn, a Taiwanese multinational electronic company, will continue to purchase robots to work in the company’s factories.
It is not an either/or scenario but one wherein new collaborations would need to be designed to harness the best of both - brute processing power of the machine and ingenuity of human ideation. Futurists have rightly said that you’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots. It is now getting clear that if humans fail to race with technology; our species will be able to destroy itself. It is one race in which we cannot have fewer winners and more losers. If that were to happen, Arthur Clarke’s prophetic words will come true: ‘The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play’.
A terrific book about an exciting future, that is no less scary!
The Second Machine Age
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Viva Books/W W Norton
Extent: 306, Price: Rs 995
Yoga, as it is beamed through television channels today, is not what was written by Patanjali in the first centuries of the Common Era.
Yoga, as it is beamed through television channels today, is not what was written by Patanjali in the first centuries of the Common Era. Consisting of fewer than two hundred verses, the Yoga Sutra has virtually nothing to say on the postures and the stretching and breathing exercises that the contemporary yoga gurus have reduced the philosophical text into. In reality, Yoga Sutra is a classical work of moral philosophy, guiding men to become morally perfect in the world.
One of the six Indian philosophical systems, Yoga Sutra is an investigation into the relationship between spirit and matter; an account of workings of the mind and ways of knowing what is true; a study of cause and effect in the workings of the universe; and a guide to salvation. The compact definition of yoga, as Patanjali had postulated, is composed of four words: yoga=citta-vritti-nirodha. A simple translation should read something like: yoga is the stoppage of the turning of thought. Since the workings of the mind are both the source and the potential solution to the problem of suffering, yoga liberates the subject from the distorting effects of the mind-stuff for attaining salvation. Drawing inferences from a dozen classical commentaries on this book, David Gordon White, a professor of Comparative Religions at the University of California reconstructs the rise, fall and rise of this perennial classic in the biography of The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali.
White brings to light the astonishing fact that Patanjali’s classic work was not only forgotten in India for hundreds of years but its first discovery in the West was viewed with disdain too. It is believed that the onslaught of Islam in the northern part of the sub-continent, somewhere around the sixteenth century, had led to forging a new religio-philosophical paradigm between the theism of the Puranas and Vedanta philosophy that excluded all non-Vedic traditions including Yoga. Yoga Sutra’s glorious days had lasted from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, during which its popularity had stretched from Central Asia to Indonesia. Its subsequent resurrection by the British Orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrooke in 1823 saw its popularity surge in Europe and America, and predominantly in English. Could this be the reason that the yoga of India’s past bears little resemblance to the yoga practiced today?
In following the strange and circuitous journey of this timeless classic, from its ancient origins to its modern resurgence, White offers critical views on the manner in which Vedanta-inspired intellectuals of Bengal had mainstreamed Yoga Sutra. Notable amongst them was Swami Vivekananda who not only seized upon Yoga as an ideal platform from which to assert the antiquity and superiority of Indian science over the West, but used its popular demand in the United States to finance the humanitarian work he had planned for India. Vivekananda’s appropriation of Patanjali’s work set the die for much of what has followed down to the present day. However, none can take away credit from Vivekananda whose work had fashioned yoga as a cultural symbol, in harmony with the religious and intellectual aspirations of educated Indians.
Whether or not authorship to this classic could be attributed to Patanjali is still being debated among cultural-historians and scholars, the dramatic revival of Yoga Sutra after a long hiatus remains somewhat of an enigma nonetheless. With the classic having been translated in as many as 46 languages, its readership is no longer restricted to an intellectual elite. However, the sub-culture of ‘yoga practice’ has made it reach even further. White’s exhaustive research presents authentic treatise on the remarkable journey of this classic till now, without drawing any roadmap on its future. While scholars will continue on grinding the Yoga Sutra, a mass-based sub-culture of yoga practice is providing solace and inspiration to millions.
Based on fascinating historical documentation, Prof David Gordon White provides insights on the profound philosophy of Yoga Sutra, which is as important to comprehend as getting the breathing exercises right. To that end, White helps to bridge the theory-practice divide.
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
by David Gordon White
Princeton University Press, UK
Extent: 172, Price: £16.95
This review was first published in The Hindustan Times on May 16, 2015
To strike a balance between religious obligations and human desires, a majority of Tehranis are forced to lie to ensure survival
Life in a city is about survival, and Tehran is no different. Survival is as much an evolutionary feature as an act of desperation, moreso when a city seems torn between tradition and modern, conflict and resolution, and truth and lies. To strike a balance between religious obligations and human desires, a majority of Tehranis are forced to lie to ensure survival. And they do so for no fear of retribution, an instinctive response to an oppressive regime that believes in interfering in the most intimate affairs of its over twelve million citizens.
Deception has become a way of life for Tehranis of all age groups. While children are trained to deny that daddy has any booze at home, teenage girls hide their promiscuity by passionately vowing their virginity. And if this is not enough, it is a city where gangsters rule the streets and the Mullahs are known to visit prostitutes. Moral policing by the state has led the pathology of subterfuge percolate across every corner of the city. Drawn from across the spectrum of society in the city, eight characters personify the compelling stories of deceit and deception. There are intimate stories within each story, depicting the past which cannot be escaped and a future that is equally inescapable.
The stories are located around the famous Vali Asr Street, which runs through the middle of the city, pumping life through it and spitting it out into the deepest corners of the city. These are real-life stories of ordinary people forced to live extraordinary lives: the assassin Dariush, the porn star Leyla, the gangster Bijan, the blogger Amir, the socialite Farideh, the thug Asghar, the militiaman Morteza, and the housewife Somayeh are connected by a common thread – they are all busy either running for or running from their lives, literally. Ramita Navai got to know these people while living and working as a journalist in Tehran that helped her draw intimate portraits of their survival strategies amidst unimaginable circumstances.
Like each of the eight characters most Tehranis are in constant conflict, on a quest to find their real selves and to free them from the repressive environment. Far from being judgmental, the author remains empathetic towards the protagonists as she finds them irrepressible warm ‘no matter how tight the regime turns the screw’. Even their over-indulgence in drugs and sex is contextual; an irresistible response by a majority who consider themselves always doomed, lied to and betrayed. A panacea for everything from aches to boredom to joblessness, opium has become a classless drug smoked along the length and breadth of Vali Asr and beyond. It gives temporary relief to ten million drug addicts in the county, even though two million are chronic addicts.
Sex, on the other hand, is an act of rebellion in Tehran, a form of protest. Only in sex do many of the younger generation feel truly free, asserts Navai. They have ultimate control over their bodies, if nothing else in their lives, and they have made it the weapon of revolt. It is a backlash against years of sexual repression; of having to continually lie and hide natural desires. This is a shocking portrait of a city where despite the ominous presence of a repressive state, the traditions and values are getting eroded. Political intrigues and religious beliefs have only trumped the glorious heritage of a picture postcard city. There is a hidden city within the facade
of the city.
Ramita Navai’s writing is intense and powerful, engrossing and engaging, navigating through the lives of those who are torn between hope and despair, between twists and resolutions. In drawing an honest, intimate and true portrait of the city, the author finds a strange connect with the characters she has drawn on the pages of City of Lies. Despite the painful assertion that the limitations of life in an Islamic Republic require everyone to hide aspects of their selves, the author finds herself strangely in love with the city. So much so that she kept returning to the city long after foreign media had been banned from the country.
City of Lies is a courageous writing at its best. Written with passion and flair, the author has painstakingly unmasked the city that lies shrouded in lies. People will demonstrate, citizens will be executed, lovers abandoned and police corrupted but Vali Asr will remain a constant, stitching together the bloodlines, the clans, the kindness, the prying and the meddling.
Though complaining is a way of life in Tehran but not many seems to be complaining as yet. Strangely enough, neither are they mourning though Tehranis are known to make excellent mourners. City of Lies leaves the reader groping for an answer to the prevailing psychology of its inhabitants. Will they be ever liberated from the intricate web of lies or have they resigned themselves to their falsehoods?
City of Lies
by Ramita Navai
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
Extent: 301, Price: £18.99
This review was first published in the Deccan Herald, May 3, 2015.
