Reading the Tea leaves!

Yessir, I want to be a futurist. In the long list of my 'wannabees' this is the latest addition, just after the 'stand-up comedian' entry. I can see the inquisitive readers eyes scanning for the list, but sorry noble sirs/madams, that's a subject for another entry.

I was reading about this colourful character Ray kurzweil, who calls himself a futurist. If this term isn't self explanatory, I will try to break it up for you, futurist: One who tries to predict the future, see easy isn't it?

So what's the difference between the dude with a dirty beard sitting with a deck of cards and a clipped parrot in cage by the street corner and this Starbucks-sipping, Black-turtle-neck- wearing, Powerbook-donning intellectual? The dirty bearded guy with a parrot would try to predict whether you would be able to that 14 inch colour TV your wife always wanted, while, this powerbook flaunting Californian intellectual spawns such thoughts about whether the machine intelligence would overtakte the human intelligence? If yes, then When? Would that be a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing?, and, such mundane topics.

Well if Ray can do it, Pavan could too. What do I see in future? *Ducks to pick up the crystal Ball, dusts it off with a dirty socks*. I am Sorry to rain on your parade gentlefolk. I dont see anything bright there. All I see is the replay of the movie "Day after Tommorow", with all the climax scenes from all the doomsday's movies thrown in.


That's what I see

I would be really surprised if we as a humanity sees the year 2100 AD. If a Global Hurricane doesn't blow us off, a deadly mutation of AIDS and common cold would get us. Why am I forgetting the giant asteroid lurking in the Asteroid belt? Wait a second wouldn't the earth be so warm to melt the polar caps and wipe out 60% of the population living on the coast? These are just some small stuff what our benevolent Mother Earth and Merciful Father nature would/could do. That's nothing compared what this monkey sitting on the top of food chain can do.

We did it once in 1942, made humans as fuel for furnaces, dropped couple of Nuclear bombs on cities to test whether they can really form mushroom clouds, released germs in the air to test whether then can really kill people . I am pretty sure that we will do that again. We have More number Nuclear weapons to annihilate earth 100 times over. We have also some really wonderful biological weapons to take care of the rest 50 times to kill the cockroaches left. Some really smelly chemical weapons just for a good measure if the above two fail to kill all the 100%.

I am sure the hatred we have for each other will be sufficient to ensure the dark future I have seen in my crsytal ball. We are doomed, my friendly monkeys, we are one the last few people to rape and pillage our mother earth.

Enough of death and doom for the day, I will now go back to be being an optimistic and to be a greeter at my local Wal-Mart.