by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books, Markets, Technology
By Gokul Bhagabati,
Title: Digital Vs Human: How We’ll Live, Love and Think in the Future; Author: Richard Watson; Publisher: Amaryllis; Pages: 272; Price: Rs 499
At a time when the rise of digital technology appears almost unstoppable, and machines with Artificial Intelligence (AI) are commanding unprecedented respect from us, are we losing out on the very things that make us humans in the first place? Should we even worry about human extinction?
These are some of the questions futurist Richard Watson poses in his book “Digital Vs Human…” and wants us to ponder about.
To be fair, Watson finds it “highly unlikely” that machines with consciousness and ability to self-replicate will emerge in the near future, but nevertheless, the author, best known for his 2007 book “Future Files”, wants us to be prepared for such a possibility.
“We must be vigilant against the threat of human extinction,” Watson has underlined in his latest book that seeks to introduce the readers to the world they will be inhabiting — in all possibility — by 2050.
And he does not stop at warning us about the threat. To prevent the Sun from waking up a world without humans and to deal with the unseen threat of automation, he argues that agreement is necessary on where, when and why autonomous digital systems are used — for, he thinks that the unchecked rise of automation in every sphere of life is not in our interest.
Digitalisation, Watson writes, tricks us into thinking that physical form and human presence do not matter. To drive home the point, he gives the example of a South Korean couple — Kim Yoo-chul and Choi Mi-sun — who had become so obsessed with raising a digital daughter, named Anima, that they had allowed their actual baby daughter to starve to death.
While display of such extreme emotional connect with digital personas is still a rarity, it is hardly a secret that our affection for digital devices has already taken a huge toll on our health — especially mental health — and relationships. Watson has cited numerous studies in the book to back up his argument.
In fact, in their race to catch up with Facebook, Twitter and other social media updates, and share their own “status”, the whole human race, Watson observes, is becoming somewhat autistic, preferring to live largely alone, interacting only reluctantly and awkwardly with others.
And the days are not far off when robots might replace the ever diminishing number of friends we have today, warns the author, who works with a team of experts at London’s Imperial College whose job is to look ahead to what the next decades could offer as a result of breakthrough discoveries today.
Watson, therefore, thinks the time is now ripe for a moral code, alongside the computer code, that could bind our relationships with technology.
Besides highlighting the societal cost of technology, the book also draws attention to the state of the economy that people would have to deal with in the coming decades. The rising gap between the highest and lowest earning members of society and dismal rate of job growth could be some of the other repercussions that threaten to overshadow the assurance of convenience and efficiency that the digital age promises.
The book also discusses the impact technology could have on areas such as media and communication, healthcare and medicine, transportation, and education, among others.
Watson blames humans for the problems that machines might bring in. He, however, gives the readers hope that despite the growing addiction to digital technology, people may still find a way to resist the temptation of allowing machines to relieve us of the need for thinking and interacting with other human beings. Because deep inside our heart, it is human company that we would continue to value the most.
Watson offers a critique of how people the world over are adapting to digital technology and also discusses what we should want technology to do for us in the future, while offering his own thoughts on what the future might hold for us. Watson does this without falling prey to temptations of stating his predictions with an unquestionable degree of certitude.
The book is easy to read as it avoids use of technical jargon. But it lacks the punch to engage the readers deeply as Watson builds up his arguments mostly by citing some studies here and other expert quotations there, instead of offering the readers a feisty narrative backed by strong logic.
(Gokul Bhagabati can be contacted at gokul.b@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books, Muslim World
By Mayabhushan Nagvenkar,
Book: Born to be Hanged – Political Biography of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; Author: Syeda Hameed; Publisher: Rupa; Pages: 264
The premise itself sounds interesting. A book by an Indian human rights activist about a Pakistani politician who once famously vowed to wage a 1,000-year war against India.
But the subcontinent and its political upheavals in the modern era have often thrown up contradictions as delicious as Syeda Hameed’s political biography of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, “Born to be Hanged”.
This one comes in a coarse-covered hardbound book immersed in red and black, colours suggestive of the import of the title. What stands out, however, in the book’s design element is the elegant black and white portrait of the Berkeley-returned politician, whose meteoric rise, mercurial career and monumental end is a defining period in the history of Pakistan.
Hameed’s well-researched book is a product of 20 years of painstaking labour, coupled with access to the Bhutto family’s personal library and interviews with Pakistan People’s Party co-founder Mubashir Hassan.
Accessing letters from the library, Hameed brings to the fore previously unknown facets of Bhutto’s personality, many elements of which bloomed at a tender age. The letter from the late Prime Minister to the Father of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, for example, betrays the makings of an ideology deeply rooted in religion and the inevitability that there could never be a truce between Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent.
“Musalmans should realise that Hindus can never and will never unite with us, they are the deadliest enemies of your Quran and prophet,” Bhutto, only 14 then, wrote to the Quaid-e-Azam in 1943 from his home in the city of Larkana in Pakistan’s Sindh province.
The book is spread over four major parts, each of which delves into details about the key phases in Bhutto’s life as a person and as a personality. However, the author also goes to lengths to underline how socialism crept into the psyche of the young Bhutto: A principle he vehemently believed in, but one which he conveniently abandoned once the going got tough for him as a politician.
Hameed says the introduction to Marx for Bhutto came in the form of a gift on his 21st birthday, along with a biography of Napoleon, also considered a hero by the young Sindhi. Over the years, a mixture of University of Berkeley and Oxford and Pakistan and its division-ridden society got him working on a passion which married socialism with Islam.
The book then goes on to narrate the second key phase in his life, when he was sworn in as Minister for Commerce in the government at the age of 30 and as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister at 35 in a dispensation headed by Mohammad Ayub Khan, his benefactor, whom he later denounced as a dictator and hence had to face incarceration.
Here, Hameed, sometimes through gentle nudges, suggests how Bhutto the socialist gradually took a backseat and Bhutto the politician who brooked no stopping gradually started pushing the realpolitik pedal.
“Declaring Friday as holiday, closing down ‘dens of vice’ like bars and cabarets, stopping short of ordering chopping of hands and feet for theft (it would happen later) was how Islamisation played out on the ground. All this he did against his grain, against his better judgement,” the author writes.
Hameed, through her conversations with Mubashir Hassan, and other published references, takes the reader through the phase which saw Bhutto’s career peak in the 1970s, when he became in 1973 the country’s 10th Prime Minister before General Zia ul Haq’s coup, which led to his incarceration and his eventual sentencing to death, following a sham trial. Hameed argues that the trajectory and the journey of his life, leading to his hanging, was destined, just as Oedipus was wedded to his fate.
Through a less quoted work of journalist-politician Rafiuddin Ahmed, Hameed tries to recreate the last moments of Bhutto’s life before he was hanged at the central prison in Rawalpindi, putting an end to the life of the doyen of Pakistani politics but inadvertently giving birth to the dynasty that followed.
(Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan.n@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: The Irregular – A Different Class of Spy; Author: H.B. Lyle; Publisher: Hodder& Stoughton/Hachette India; Pages: 288; Price: Rs 399
The First World War is still five years away, but London is already an arena for proxy conflict between its potential European allies or adversaries — and their revolutionaries. And with the Great Detective of Baker Street having retired, and James Bond yet to come on the scene, who can Britain depend upon?
That is a question concerning an army officer in the War Office tasked with combating subversive activities. But Captain Vernon Kell has more problems than the lack of funds and support from an oblivious government, and a superior fixated on the idea that Germans are the prime threat and demanding he supply proof.
In the class-conscious British society of the Edwardian era, his biggest problem is that the staffers he has stand out in places where they have to be deployed — like a munitions factory from where plans are being stolen — are easily identified by the ruthless enemy and liquidated. Consulting Sherlock Holmes, living in retirement in the country, he is given a unique suggestion.
And in this engrossing story, H.B. Lyle finally does justice to a prominent and promising character from Holmes’ world who had not yet got a place in the sun. The once chief of the force that served as the detective’s nearly invisible but highly effective eyes and ears on the London streets — Wiggins of the Baker Street Irregulars.
But our young hero is reluctant to get back into government service after his experiences as a soldier. All that changes when his friend, a London police constable, is shot dead by a Russian anarchist after a robbery, and his own attempts to find who is responsible, among the closed, suspicious world of Russian emigres in the city, are both unsuccessful and potentially lethal.
Saved from certain death by a mysterious Russian woman, Wiggins is convinced by Holmes to help Kell and simultaneously achieve his own objective while keeping his employer in the dark about it. At the same time, seen hanging around Socialist meetings, he is also co-opted by a duo of Russian revolutionaries to help them in their own nefarious activities on behalf of their shadowy chief.
Meanwhile, Kell is not having an easy job of it, convincing his superiors that he is on the right track, but perseveres with the help of Winston Churchill, then at the start of his political career. But his time is limited until Wiggins can get something for him.
And can Wiggins, who has imbibed the Great Detective’s art of acute observation, survive in a shadowy world where few people are what they seem, killing is the simplest option, and the majestic forces of law and order may not always behind you? Can he fulfill both his tasks without losing his life in the dark streets of the city? And will he come to terms with what he finds?
Lyle, who was involved in feature films before turning to writing, skillfully spins both fact and fiction to create a tense, pulsating story that uses the frame of a murder mystery to exhibit international intrigue, history and social issues.
It is not only about proxy wars and “false flag” operations, but also about a society on the brink of great political and social change. Socialism and Marxist parties — including those with not qualms about violence — are spreading, while women are demanding the vote as a prelude to equality.
The latter is most ably represented by Kell’s wife, a suffragist, and turning out to be better at clandestine work than her husband — forcing him to rethink most of his prevailing assumptions.
Swinging between London’s high class dwellings and squalid slums, featuring Holmes and Watson, as well as real figures like Bolshevik Yakov Peters, and others, Lyle has laid the foundations of a new, engrossing series that takes up a period not very frequently focused in the thriller genre.
So while Sherlock Holmes aficionados will find it quite interesting, so will a lot of others.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Ananya Das,
Book: The Tandoor Murder; Author: Maxwell Pereira; Publisher: Context; Pages: 280; Price: Rs 599
A human body chopped into pieces and thrown into a tandoor. A bonfire as the makeshift funeral pyre of a woman. A fire in a restaurant kitchen that metamorphosed into a murder investigation.
This seems straight out of a fictional thriller, but is a real-life incident. Crime stories surface every now and then, unsettlling people — but they are very soon relegated to the background. However, some have not only instilled fear in our minds but have also been etched in the annals of the cruellest and most spine-chilling crimes of India.
“The Tandoor Murder” by Maxwell Pereira recounts the incidents and the happenings around Naina Sahni murder case of 1995 — right from the night of the killing till the verdict in the case was finally delivered, almost two decades later.
Congress worker Naina Sahni was murdered late on July 2, 1995. Her husband and Congress leader Sushil Sharma shot her, chopped up her body and tried to dispose it off in the tandoor of a restaurant.
A constable, Abdul Nazir Kunju, saw fire leaping from the Bagiya Barbeque restaurant in Ashok Yatri Niwas on Ashoka Road in central Delhi and discovered her body in the burning tandoor.
What transpired next on the night of the murder? How did the accused, Sushil Sharma, manage to stave off conviction for close to a decade? What were the twists and turns in the case? How did the investigation manage to stay the course? How did the tandoor murder case affect the then ruling Congress party?
Pereira gives an insider’s account of the events based on his personal notes and investigation reports. His book is a nail-biting read — as intriguing as novels by Stephen King and Agatha Christie — mainly because of the hair-raising series of events that are unveiled for the readers.
A page-turner of a book, Pereira has carefully delineated nuggets of information as he lets us witness how the policing and political systems work in our country. His depiction of the incidents transports the reader to that time.
Pereira emphasises that in the political arena, the murder was extensively exploited by the opposition. The main accused in the case was a prominent figure of the ruling Congress party and it drew ire. The opposition expressed its outrage over the offence and cautioned against attempts to “draw a pardah over the crime”.
The publicity the case garnered couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Congress. The general elections were nine months away and the Congress, predictably, lost.
In Pereira’s words, the “imbroglio in the wake of the Naina Sahni killing helped bring down India’s national government and humbled the country’s dominant political party”.
Sushil Sharma is undergoing a life term in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. The Supreme Court had commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty awarded to him by a trial court in 2003 and upheld by the Delhi High Court in 2007.
The Supreme Court, while reducing the death sentence, had said that “life imprisonment is for the whole of remaining life of Sharma subject to remission granted by the appropriate government under the Code of Criminal Procedure”.
Why was the book so long in coming? Pereira said he had been approached earlier by a publisher but didn’t want to write till the last word was said on the subject — which the Supreme Court did in 2013.
(Ananya Das can be contacted at ananya.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Vikas Datta,
Title: If Our Bodies Could Talk – Operating and Maintaining a Human Body; Author: James Hamblin; Publisher: Anchor Books; Pages: 400; Price: Rs 699
It is a more intricate, delicate, complex machine than any device we have — but we know more about our cars, computers and cell phones than about the human body. We are also open to accepting “helpful” health tips floating across the internet than ourselves learning about its mysteries — say, what itches are, when the immune system is not our friend or why there is intolerance towards certain foods.
How can we figure if we should drink eight glasses of water a day, or if we could — and should — give ourselves dimples; or if we are meant to eat meat, or even why we end up red-eyed in some of our photos.
We may also find it hard to ask doctors — conventional and unfamiliar ones — if a contact lens gets off in the eye, can it travel to the brain, if we (women, that is) are beautiful, or if we can train ourselves to sleep less.
But James Hamblin, who abandoned a medical career to focus on science writing and popularisation, has answers to these and more intriguing questions in this book about our bodies, what the different parts in them do, and what we should do or not do to them.
“A past world in which doctors were the keepers of all medical knowledge — whose job was primarily to dispense directives — is gone. Most of us are rather awash in information now — so much it can be difficult to know what to make of it,” he says.
Hamblin, who begins with the lost contact lens, says “googling bodily concerns isn’t always helpful” for someone might be arguing it should not be trusted. And then now there are “alternative facts” and “alternative medical systems”; and, as he notes, there is “undeniably more scientific misinformation and marketing-based ‘facts’ about our bodies coming at us daily than in the entire lifetimes of generations past”. As we read what comes in our inbox or our chat feeds, we further get trapped in a net of ignorance.
The need, says Hamblin, is for both doctors and patients to separate marketing from science, find the lines between the known and the unknown, and identify the motives of people who seek to define or redefine the concepts of health and normalcy.
And that is what he does in this book — where he talks to both “experts” and sufferers.
Beginning with defining normal health (using the WHO’s definition as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” — but noting it failed), Hamblin goes on to list the factors that affect health before beginning his question-based approach, divided into six broad sections.
“Appearing” deals with matters like tattoos, dimples and why body hair or eyelashes don’t grow like head hair, while “Perceiving” or the parts that feel, takes up itches (and scratching), whether we can boost our immune system and if laughter is medicine.
“Eating”, as apparent, deals with food — what we should or should not or can’t eat — but also with why stomachs rumble, the benefits of multivitamins and reasons (and consequences) of late night binges. “Drinking” deals with all sorts of liquids, including alcohol and its effect on brain cells; and “Relating” is about sex, covering matters as varied as why nipples are sexualised, why men don’t have multiple orgasms and women Viagra, as well as how we should instruct children on the topic.
Finally, “Enduring” deals with the heart (the organ that is), various diseases and their medications and the fate of the body and us.
Extensive, accessible and extremely witty, Hamblin provides fascinating facts like the weight of an average person’s skin, marketing techniques used by a cosmetic major still “successful in selling body-improving products: Convince people that there is a deficit in some concrete way, and then sell the antidote”, and statements about how tattoos are not only about “defiance and individuality, but also resignation”.
Frank in admitting what is not known or proved satisfactorily, he still manages to provide a unique look about our bodies and their amazing (and not-so amazing) attributes.
So put down that smartphone and pick up this book.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
—IANS
