Incredibly Networked

Today I was sitting down wondering what to do from tomorrow. Well for some reason the co-incidence was that it is a kind of a new year for us. A festival called Gudi Padwa. I said why not think about a work reform seriously. The first thing I decided was to cut down my computer usage when I am not needed around it. My applications and workload always takes of itself with automated queues and stuff. I have been using the computer mouse more than the keyboard for editing pictures more than music almost 12 hours in a day. Its started to give signs of wear and tear including an extra skin padding that has appeared on the wrist where the hand touches the desk. It aches very badly quite often, especially when I sleep. I don't realize any pain, cold, sweat, etc. when I work. The first step I decided for cutting down computer use was to go the traditional information highway of reading books. I cannot sit and gossip more than once a week and for more than a few minutes. My brain needs munching and thinking which will not just make sense but will help me and to help others in future. Being obsessed with my own work I couldn't digest the idea too well. I am reading a book atleast for an hour everyday since a year, and a lot more information on the internet but then I have to stay away from the computer and still read... err a book. 

Well ok. I thought lets start with reading about a bit of sound engineering and mixing. A huge part of my spirit and mind would accept this knowing that this will be helpful in very near future. Ofcourse I have done a lot of reading with online help documents, pdfs and forums but lets start with a book I thought to myself. Now since I have bought some official recording and mixing softwares I got free guides with them in PDF format. Printing 600 pages of stuff wouldn't be a good idea. I always remember forever whatever I read so those 600 pages would be waste for the environment as well as considering non-reuse. Finding the PDF burnt on some DVD amongst thousands of DVDs didn't seemed a bad idea. So lets download it again I decided. After a long long time the word DOWNLOAD took me way down into thinking of how incredibly we are connected now, especially at such gigantic speeds. Processing power did increase but it didn't show as much because new softwares and operating systems gobbled up all that processing. So even today, with easier access of operating systems the digital world still feels slow as MS-DOS time processing to me. Yes a lot of codes are crunched and processed in the background but still who cares about them as a consumer?!?! As a consumer I am concerned about what happens in front of me when I give a command via mouse, voice or a keyboard. 

Downloading a 100MB book doesn't seem horrifying today. Infact my everyday uploads of images to stock agencies must be something around 1GB. Download depends upon what I find. But normally I would download around 3-4 GB of stuff if I had the time to find it. My computer is working 23.5 hours a day. It sleeps only for half an hour to cool down, that’s when I wake up. Just 10 years back in 2001, Michael Jackson's Invincible album was about to release. GHOST wasn't still available in India officially. The only way to get it was to download it from somewhere or ask someone in the US to mail it to me. The mailing idea failed so I resorted to finding out sources on the web. The only quality and reliable download I could find was using IRC protocol over a chat host. We used to have a 56.6 kbps line in an internet café which was 20kbps more than normal home connections. So considering that speed we needed around 72 or more hours to sit disconnected to download that stuff. Me and my friend did manage to do so with a lot of night time taken care of by my friend. With a failure due to disconnections 

in between, we finally managed to download it one day by keeping the download on for around 4 days. Fortunately the hosts (like seeders we call for torrents today) were co-operative and we got our result.

I am sure than none of us are taking the high-speed connectivity or the increasing storage capacity for granted. I have some different question in my mind. Its not making me anxious nor very excited. Considering the way this connectivity speed, its ways and storage medium increasing and changing are we becoming slaves to the machines even before they are capable of becoming our masters? Its undeniable that we ourselves are powering machines with the intelligence and processing power that will help them overcome their limitations and mainly the dependency on humans. One huge snag in the connectivity like an EMP will struck like a bolt to almost everyone of us who use the internet even for 15 minutes in a day. The tendency to GOOGLE things or WIKI them to find quick answers is shutting down our natural memory capacity because we know that what we search for can be searched for again in a matter of seconds, while remembering it will take a lot of efforts. I am not going to go against this evolution that is inevitable but I can be sure that humans that are capable of storing and processing data without machines will triumph regardless of the failure or success of machines. The digital connectivity does help us reach out to more people than we can handle, but it is also taking out the time and quality we can give to fewer relations. So emotions and relations will be suffering as well. 

How to prepare for this future? I don't think there is any other way than backing up all that data, all those online friends, all the knowledge we acquired in our own brains than relying on systems that don’t belong to us. If even 40% of the online companies providing free services go paid, we will stop using them and feel handicapped for quite much time. Its time to go and take that deep breath outside and still feel connected to the digital and real world!

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TheFinalMiracle 

http://www.facebook.com/thefinalmiracle

False Prophets Cry of Doom

I Have To Find My Peace Cuz No One Seems To Let Me Be  

False Prophets Cry Of Doom What Are The Possibilities  

I Told My Brother There’ll Be Problems, Times And Tears For Fears,  

We Must Live Each Day Like It’s The Last! 

(Michael Jackson - JAM)

I don't know if it’s a good thing writing this blog, for a person like me who prophesizes or predicts things. With 2012 closing in, the doomsday prophecies have started making headlines again. The latest stupidity was about the two dates 09/11/2001 (911 US WTC) and the latest 03/11/2011 (Japan Tsunami) dates adding together to form the exact doomsday date 12/22/2012. in 2000 When it was the millennium time same kind of prophecies supposedly predicted by Nostradamus were haunting people.  I guess till the ball dropped everyone was quite serious about how and what would happen! An Armageddon a tsunami or what? But times just 10 years back were slow in spreading panic over the globe. What changed now is facebook and twitter, not to mention cheap News channels and web-feeds which support such speculations. A human mind generally likes to embrace such predictions which talk about devastating effect. I don't know if our sub-conscious finds exciting adventures on a imaginative realm or is it something else. Such news fascinate the prophets as well as the rest of the world which accepts them. Even people who deny prophecies do keep discussing these publicly. It’s the fascination like we have for betting for things we believe in. Who will win and who will loose. With our limited intelligence and logics we support or oppose these prophecies, but we become a part of it. We also play the bad game by helping spread them around through discussions like I am myself doing right now. 

Being in the network of so many spiritual people worldwide, I have friends in social networks who deal with all these cosmic things that cannot be explained by science. I am proud to be a part of that world, but I am not proud to know those who are time and again reminding people of such doomsdays when everyone already knows about it. There are some really stupid people calling themselves spiritual talking about normal solar flares as pounding firing from sun to start bad radioactive effects on poor earthlings. See the universe with your eyes. We are just like that dot of a star in the sky or even smaller considering its size. Why does anyone have to think that the doom of a planet, sun or a solar system be so calculated by the cosmos? Won't cosmos have better things to do than planning a destruction of a small planet with life, which is again one of many others hosting life? Is the cosmos primitive than our technology which also has the capability to program destruction which is based on situations (failures of systems) and not time-bound always.  

I wouldn't like to judge the MAYANS for the doomsday predictions because I don't believe that we have been really able to understand their calculations! Is there anything I can do if I know for sure that I am going to die tomorrow? Considering that the earth will be destroyed due to some cosmic calculation shouldn't be my problem as much as my own death should be. Is anyone a messiah or a god to really take care of this problem of saving the world from destruction? If you do want to believe in the doomsday theory then do that by preparing to embrace death peacefully and happily more than creating a panic around! The world that we believed is round and 360 degree sphere with 12 equal parts for time and also constellations is shaken as well. What about the new 13th constellation? Are we seeing 360 degree 3D objects just because the shape of our eyes is limited to see till that level? I would rather say that the MAYANs knew much more than this. Even if we assume that their calculations were perfect we cannot assume to understand their science and maths for sure. We cannot claim to be as intelligent as them because we are believing in a system that we know about very less.  

My own prophecy is that we will live very well through the coming years and  2012 is not a big deal. But for those people who get scared of prophecies from prophets like myself I would say, "If you live to see the dawn of 2013 then stop believing in any doomsday prophecies that you come across. Most importantly stop believing in those spiritual leaders and gurus who are creating a panic again and again for their own benefit using such prophecies!" The destruction of our planet is happening in front of our eyes and with our own hands. We don’t need some cosmic system to destroy us. Again don't start thinking about the radiation leak in Japan. I am not talking about it. Though it’s a dangerous thing happening its not as devastating. There are a lot more calamities and natural disasters to come but life has always won. Even if the dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid, life still evolved reaching to a stage which we are in. There is more to learn maybe the machines will take over, the artificial intelligence will take over the natural one.  How does that all matter in this lifetime. The future generations are more intelligent and capable enough to take care of all these problems. Adding a point, I would also say that when we talk about machines being alive we are talking of silicon life unlike carbon based like ours. Recent researches showed non-carbon based lifeforms right on our planet. Maybe there are lifeforms that not all can see, which survive and thrive on other natural resources. 

Lets wake up each day trying to plan what we can do for ourselves and people we care for, regardless of doomsdays or blessings. Finally what we get is what we think and anticipate. If you want to end yourself up so soon... keep calculating the countdown. The rest can join me to live even after any kind of destruction happening around. I am here for a purpose and I won't die till I serve it! :)