The ‘Future Shock’ is imminent

In a 1965 article in ‘Horizon’ (and latter in 1970 best seller under the same name) writer Alwin Toffeler coined the term ‘Future Shock’ to describe the shattering stress induced in individuals because of the too much change in too short a time. 

He examined the change in the last 50,000 years of Man’s existence by dividing it into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each. There have been such 800 such life times. Out of these 800, fully 600 were spent in caves. The overwhelming majority of all material goods we use in our daily life today have been developed within the past five life times.

The present lifetime marks a sharp break with all our past experiences. During this last lifetime our relationships to resource have reversed. In this lifetime agriculture, the original basis of civilization has lost its dominance in nation after nation. The majority of the farm labour has been lost and in that place a blue collar factory worker emerged. Within the a few decades, the blue collar workers were outnumbered by those in the so called white collar jobs such as trade, administration, communication, research, education and other service categories. Mankind threw off the yoke of manual and factory labour and poised to a concept of service economy. All the boundaries have burst, the social web have tightly woven that the consequence of any event radiate instantaneously around the world.

To quote U-Thant, the late UN secretary general, “It is no longer resource that limits decision; it is the decision that makes the resources”.

Are we on the brink of Industrial Revolution 3.0? 

Gartner's 2013 survey suggests that the world of business awake each day into a world of technology uncertainty and change. The change being brought about by disruptive shifts, is coming at an accelerated pace and at a global level of impact. ‘Digital Industrial Revolution, Digital Business, Smart Machines and the Internet of Things — that are set to have an impact well beyond just an IT function’.

Digitized employee has moved from the factory floor to the back office of businesses and they are different from a traditional robot. There appears to be no reason why we cannot go forward from the present primitive and trivial robots to build humanoid machines capable of extremely varied behavior. At that point we shall face the novel sensation of trying to determine whether the smiling face behind a reservation counter or elsewhere is a pretty girl or a carefully wired robot.

Any process that is repetitive and does not require judgment is a good candidate for robots. Data entry, account review and maintenance, creation of user IDs and passwords, general ledger account maintenance and issuing of purchase orders are examples of tasks suited for execution by robots. These tasks are major components of the modern office.

“By 2020, the labor reduction effect of digitization will cause social unrest and a quest for new economic models in several mature economies.”  This is the dire warning from IT analyst Gartner. 

Other predictions are: 

By 2020, a majority of knowledge worker career paths will be disrupted by smart machines in both positive and negative ways.

By 2017, 10 percent of computers will be learning rather than processing.

By 2024, at least 10 percent of activities potentially injurious to human life will require mandatory use of a non-overideable "smart system.

By 2020, enterprises and governments will fail to protect 75 percent of sensitive data, and declassify and grant broad/public access to it.

By 2016, 3D printing of tissues and organs (bioprinting) will cause a global debate about regulating the technology or banning it for both human and nonhuman use.

By 2018, 3D printing will result in the loss of at least $100 billion per year in intellectual property globally.

So watch out, the ‘Future Shock’ is at your backyard.

India Elections 2014 and beyond

In the analysis of the recent election scenario, one can see that no secularism being advocated against Modi, but only Hinduphobia. On the other hand there was no fight between “Hinduphobia” and an “India for everyone” as some analysts put it. 

The fact is that majority of Indian voters find a strong Personality in Modi, capable of leading India, not because of he is a Hindu ultra-nationalist but a strong personality. Indian Psyche, may be because of its ‘orientalist’ leaning, always looking for strong leaders than ideas.  This was true in the past elections with ‘landslide’ victories. The 1980 congress victory of more than 350 seats was mainly on Living Indira Gandhi where the 1984 victory of 415 seats was on Dead Indira Gandhi. 

This election was not really about ‘choosing between secularism and religious extremism as it was made out to be’

The issue of Hindu fundamentalism is different than it is in Christianity or Islam. It is true that even centuries before militant traditions existed within the Hindu fold, but these did not or cannot aspire to found Indian society on a set of Hindu doctrines or principles; mainly because of no single text, teachings, or body of law was considered central to the so called Hindu traditions.

In fact, when Christian or Muslim travelers, merchants and missionaries denounced the indigenous traditions as ‘false religion’ and preached conversion to ‘true religion’, it was an incomprehensive problem to the Indians.   The answer to the charges of falsity and idolatry was only that their ancestral traditions were very old and could not therefore be false. However, the content of this ‘principle’ has varied over time. Today, we can say that it exists as quest for a common set of principles around which all Hindus should unite and its advocates argue that Muslim and Christian minorities should also accept these.

Coming to Modi, it is a un- doubtful fact that he knows that the aspirations that have swept him to power must be satisfied, may be in part, because they could never be satisfied in full. And for the congress, a comeback has become almost impossible because for that they need to invent a towering personality equaling Shri. Narendra Modi.

The Chronicle of a slave rebellion and the Chronicler

 "We destroyed the images most thoroughly and ground them into rubble - so that no trace of it remains. So, did we destroy Spartacus and his army. So will we in time - and necessarily destroy the very memory of what he did and how he did it."

That was the declaration of the Roman commander, Marcus Licinius Crassus after defeating Spartacus and his army. It was almost fully realized through systematic silence; the story of Spartacus was little known.  It is hardly mentioned in the history books. However, his name has frequently been invoked by revolutionaries such as Adam Weishaupt in the late 18th century and Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and the other members of the German Spartacus League of 1916–19. We are greatly indebted to Howard Fast for resurrecting the history of Spartacus and interpreting the significance of his heroic slave war for liberation.  

Spartacus was the leader in the Gladiatorial War (73–71 BC) against the mighty Empire of Rome.

A Thracian, an Indo-European tribe, by birth, Spartacus was sold as a slave. With about 70 fellow gladiators he escaped a gladiatorial training school at Capua in 73 BC and took refuge on Mount Vesuvius. There other runaway slaves joined in his band. They defeated two Roman forces in succession. Ultimately their numbers grew to at least 90,000. Spartacus’s army defeated the two consuls for the year 72 BC and fought his way northward toward the Alps, hoping to be able to disperse his soldiers to their homelands once they were outside Italy. But he was thwarted by the new Roman commander Marcus Licinius Crassus with eight legions of Roman army. Spartacus' army divided, part of it defeated. Spartacus himself ultimately fell fighting in pitched battle. Pompey's (Another military and political leader) army intercepted and killed many slaves, and 6,000 prisoners were crucified by Crassus along the Appian Way, the strategically most important roads of ancient Rome which connected Rom to southeast Italy.

Howard Fast was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was born in New York City as the son of a factory worker, in 1914. He dropped out of high school and published his first novel “Two Villages” at the age of 18. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. In 1943, he joined the American Communist party.

In 1948 all the leaders of the American communist party including the General Secretary were arrested and charged under the ‘Alien Registration Act’. This law made it illegal for anyone in the United States "to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government".

In 1950 Fast was ordered to appear before the ‘House of Un-American Activities Committee’ because he had contributed to the support of a hospital for Popular Front forces during the Spanish Civil War. Before the committee, he refused to give the name of the fellow members of the communist party. The court sentenced him to three months in prison.  After the incident he try to publish his novel ‘Spartacus’. Eight major publishers rejected it saying that they wouldn’t even look at the work of a traitor. Realised that he was blacklisted, he formed his own company, the Blue Heron Press, and published ‘Spartacus’ in 1951.

He left the party in 1956, disillusioned by the Soviet Union's own stunning revelations of Stalin's terror and the spread of anti-Semitism there. He wrote a book about his political experiences, "The Naked God", publishe in 1957. "I was part of a generation that believed in socialism and finally found that belief corroded and destroyed," he declared. 

"That is not renouncing Communism or socialism. It's reaching a certain degree of enlightenment about what the Soviet Union practices. To be dogmatic about a cause you believe in at the age of 20 or 30 is not unusual. But to be dogmatic at age 55 or 60 shows a lack of any learning capacity." he said in an interview in 1981. 

"The only thing that infuriates me," he once commented, "is that I have more unwritten stories in me than I can conceivably write in a lifetime."

Howard Melvin Fast, “the American”; died on March 12, 2003

**** ‘The American’ is the name of his 1946 Novel.

Revolution in the Revolution, Debray and Mediology

“In the new context of struggle to the death, there is no place for spurious solutions, no place for the pursuit of an equilibrium between oligarchic and popular forces through tacit non-aggression pacts. Oligarchical dictatorships pose the alternative of beginning to destroy them en- bloc or of accepting them en- bloc: there is no middle way.”

These are the words of Regis Debray, the French radical theoretician who systematized the military and political doctrine developed and attempted to implement by the romantic revolutionary hero Ernesto Che Guevara, Fidel Castro's legendary lieutenant. His book “Revolution in the Revolution?” has become a primer for guerrilla insurrection.

 “Revolution in the Revolution?” focused its main attack on military line against Mao Tsetung‟s conception of people’s war, particularly Mao’s stress on mobilizing the peasantry and building up base areas from which to wage the war. Of course, there is a more fundamental difference concerning the role of the masses in revolutionary war altogether.

In early 1966 Castro and Guevara brought the French Professor to Cuba for discussions on guerrilla war. They asked him to prepare a polemic which would synthesize the experiences of the Cuban Revolution into a military doctrine and political line suited to Latin American conditions. The end product was –Revolution in the Revolution?

He fought in Bolivia, had been captured with the guerrilla band led by Che Guevara, and was sentenced by a Bolivian military tribunal to 30 years in jail. Due to  the intervention from persons such as President Charles de Gaulle, André Malraux, and Jean-Paul Sartre, he was released after three Years. He spent five years in the early '80s as a special advisor on Latin American relations to French President François Mitterrand. 

Today, his obsession shifted from ‘Ideology’ to a new discipline called ‘Mediology’.   

Through this he is trying to investigate how certain abstract ideas, signs and images transferred through intermediaries and converted to actions. For example, the parables of Jesus of Nazareth has been reworked and by St. Paul into a body of beliefs known as Christianity or the writings of Karl Marx were reworked and transformed into a political program by Lenin. He considered the ideas as part and parcel of its delivery system. The technologies of print, the networks of distribution, and libraries worked together to create a fertile milieu - what is called a "mediosphere" - for its operation. 

This mediosphere is divided in to three historical ages of transmission technologies:

Logosphere; the age of writing, theology, the kingdom, and faith

Graphosphere: the age of print, political ideologies, nations, and laws

Videosphere: audio/video broadcasting, models, individuals, and opinions

These apparently different historical stages are more like successive geological strata than quantum shifts from one medium to the next.

To summarize the principle thesis;

The influence of an ideology cannot be analyzed in ideological terms. The hidden dynamics of these ideas in the history is reflected in their material forms and sequence of transmission. The transport of information in time is to be distinguished from the transport of information in space.  The   nonbiological, artificial transmission of acquired features is another name for human culture. The animal communicates but they do not transmit. 

The aim of this discipline is to destroy the wall that separates technology from culture, technology experienced as anti-culture and culture experienced as anti-technology.