On this first day of this new year, I am here at my home and I had to suddenly switch on the heater this morning for the first time this winter (my home is barely into the tropics). Just 5 days back, I used to sleep in my balcony under the winter sun with the fan on in the bedroom.This sudden change of weather and so much nostalgia in the newspapers today (because the journalists don't want to work on new year's eve) makes me wonder what the coming year and and the years later that (if we reached there at all (remember, the world might end in 2012 )) would look like.
Over the past year, I have passed most of my time watching these American TV serials (which I often regret) which fed to my interest in psychology ('Lie to Me') , Medicine ('House MD') and technology (all of them).. And I guess, these in-turn inspired me to watch these serials even more. In our hostels, where we don't have free access to these TV shows legally and where we don't have any respect for copyright (yes, I said it!!); we sit in our rooms watching these serials with ear-phones and isolation and concentration.. Without anyone realizing, it becomes more studying than watching them .. And often unconsciously than otherwise, we are learning a hell lot about the society, the technology, the human behavior, the medicine than any person alive.. Seldom, they get transformed into action, desires and opinions.. I took a lab course in psychology after watching(mightbe,Studying) 'Lie to Me' just to know more about Cal Lightman (Paul Ekman)... On visiting the lab, I saw a poster describing the 6 micro-expressions and it felt like going to a famous museum .. That's Smooth !!
So last month, when I came home from Delhi, the warmth made me feel like spring.. And I decided to finish off a long pending sherlock holmes book.. I had not even finished the first chapter when I realized that I have already been familiar with these characters .. Holmes and watson; House and Wilson, Lightman and his pretty partner, all have been constant with the only variable : Context.. A smart guy with little regards for rules accompanied by a less smart guy who is with him for the sake of adventure but protects and resists him when he is in a face-off with rules (a bit contradictory, isn't it?).. I guess this arrangement appeals to the smarter guy in everyone .. We can go about analyzing this as a sort of conspiracy theory for validating similar arrangements in the real world or excusing the mistakes of people responsible for them; but there is another important and common contribution of these serials ..
Sci-Fi has always been a boring researcher's more creative cousin .. The wow!! moment for me was when I was watching an episode of 'The Big Bang Theory - S05E04 @ 10 minutes' when sheldon finds out why the Large Hadron Collider was yet to find out the Higg's boson (god particle) .. Well, the episode was about 2 months old because there have been signs of it's existence (reported by LHC) last month .. So, not only these TV shows put down the 'objectives' for the geeks in the labs, it educates the 'others' about the challenges and current trends in Research .. geeks are cool!!
Another instance is where Dr. House wants to see what a hallucinating person is seeing.. Though this step itself is questioned by diagnosticians (a discipline which does not exist in reality, but House is the HOD at his hospital ) .. The CogSci Lab in the basement of his teaching hospital has an equipment which roughly does this .. Though this might seem like a Sci-Fi movie to be released in 2020 (again,assuming we reach there) , Neural Network theorists have developed Self-Organised Maps which replicates the biological circuitry in vision .. Though Chase expects this technology to be useful on a wider scale only in 50 years, I think the actual time scale is much lesser ..
And then comes MI4, as always, Tom Cruise uses some of most best tools he can .. Taking the security of the networks for granted, he jumps and climbs in Dubai and Mumbai .. But the most impressive part of the movie for me are those lenses, which add relevant information to the incoming scene. It explains the reason for research in making chips on flexible substrates as the lens must change the shape according to shape of the eye .. It must reduce and dissipate the heat generated efficiently to protect the most delicate externally exposed organ of the body .. And then, it can either do processing on chip or have a good communication system and do all the computation off chip .. Now, that is what I am talking about!! (Gossip : Apple has bought a large number of equipments which are useful in making chips on flexible substrates)
Hence, from Neuromorphic chips which mimic nature to purely synthetic products like seeing inside the brain .. they are like post-modern aeroplanes and lasers .. and something to look forward to while watching these TV serials ..Be it from Silicon Valley or Bangalore, the future is just round the corner!!
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