HUMANS VS MACHINES

I was just scrolling through news articles in my smartphone and a question arose in my mind about who is smarter, humans or machines?

According to me, there is no comparison between humans and machines, both are equally important, but still if you want a specific answer, I will say humans do have an upper hand as compared to machines.
I will not prove my point by giving explanations I will ask a question instead, who created machines?

Charles Babbage invented the computer and you know what, he is a human, so of course when it comes to competition, humans will always have an upper hand.

I saw some videos where students were asked who would they prefer the most a “GOOGLE” or a “TEACHER” many answered teachers. Why? Even google can give us all the answers so why a teacher, the reason is teacher is a human and humans have feelings, emotions and can explain things easily and teachers have a lot of experience in the teaching field and have taught millions of students and they understand a student’s psychology.

There are a lot of debates going on nowadays that machines will take over human jobs in future, and if we think yes human jobs are at risk, then let us now think of another perspective, human jobs are at risk, I agree, but we are the ones giving jobs to machines; we are creating machines for basic things which we can do, we are being dependent more on machines rather than doing it ourself and because of this dependance we are being lazy and if we run away from work someone has to do it, and now we are the ones complaining about how machines will take over our jobs and debating about the same.

Earlier there were pagers, where only texts can be sent. Later we got cellular phones which we could also use to call and soon thereafter when internet was introduced the phones became advanced and was then used to hear music, for calls, texts, etc. Sooner we got smartphones where we can do almost everything, in short, we literally have the whole world in our hands. On one hand phones became smarter and on the other hand we became dependent and now we rarely use our smartphones to call someone.

So, what’s the solution, should we keep complaining and debating or just stop making machines thinking that they will take up our jobs, so better stop. Digitalization is our future, which is true and is necessary but digitalization should be done with a motive of progress to the human side and now is the time to determine how we complement each other and each work with our own strengths to a journey of a brighter side. It should not be that machine should take over us nor should we be too dependent on them. The ball was and is still is in our court, we are the ones who can control our future because the PRESENT is in our hands.

By Mohit Amarnani

WHEN THE LUCK BACKFIRES

One of the best and worst thing ever to happen is good luck…

Yes a good luck.

When you are at your struggling days and find yourself not competible enough to survive in the world for living. At that point, some of you will risk your life in an ethical way and some of us will try the best of our luck in the best possible way.

Let’s put ourselves in that point, risking life for an experiment which will have a good luxurious life as an outcome, what will we do?

Many of us have received a text regarding lotteries or stuff like that. Even if we know that it might turn out to be fake, but in that fraction of a second we may think, “What if, it turns out to be true!!” and some of us might even open the link of that text message and try our luck.

Supposedly you won a lottery for real and consider yourself as the most happiest person in the entire world, right now. At that stage of happiness your mind will not be working same as before, because your surrounding people will change and those ideas which were there in your mind, wont be the same. And there are higher chances of getting worse ideas.

If we think of inventions, what is the prime motive of invention?

All successful inventions are because of necessity and rebellious motive to bring about a change. But will that person’s mind work after completing an invention. No… he will lose the necessity and freedom of mind in his recognition, if the right decision is not taken.

Similarly with a lottery, most people who consider themselves lucky turn to blame their luck when they can’t hold on to their wealth. If you lose your necessity after getting recognition your lottery will find a way to flow away.

We usually hear motivational stories and the pattern of those stories are mostly just achieving a goal with hardwork and struggle. These are partly motivational, this can be done by everyone but real struggle starts after achieving our goals, our aim.

To hold on to the earned aim, should be the real aim.

SHORTCUT

We have all heard the word shortcut and we have used it many a times in our life. Which is good, we should use shortcuts and it does work sometimes but using shortcuts while achieving something in career?

Shortcuts are advisable in roads while travelling, if we want to reach the place early so shortcut can be taken, we have been late for a meeting then also shortcuts can be taken.

But when we use shortcuts while achieving something in our career can give a short-term gain rather than a long-term gain, so why risk and play with our career.

Today’s youth try to merely copy things rather than using their own creativity, copying everything and copying here means shortcut to achieving things fast.

Take it for students copying to get more marks in exam but those students forget one thing that knowledge is more important than scoring marks what things we learn matters not our grades. It is not defined anywhere that a student scoring a first rank is a successful person and an average student is useless.

If a student or any person fails anywhere, in an any field, only they know the value of success. And failure is an opportunity to improve ourselves and work towards the future with full confidence

Each and every person should think twice or thrice before copying anything and ask themselves if they can, why can’t I?

And a person should always try learning or do something new and forget about failing. If we try, we will fail, trying is important not failing and why to think about failing think positively, we will gain success merely copying or using shortcuts to gain something will be dreadful for our future.

A recent example of our Indian cricket team who went for the Australian tour and achieved the unimaginable from 46 all out to winning the test series in Gabba. They failed they learnt and they succeeded they did not use any shortcuts to win the test series it was because of their dedication and sheer hard work or I will say smart work.

By this above example we learn one thing that to win or to lose is not in our hands but we should keep trying and give our best not by using shortcuts or by copying.

By Mohit Amarnani

Is Cryptocurrency A New Digital Revolution?

Ever since the human civilization has existed the accounts of trade can be traced. Trailing back to millions of years the evidence of barter system, a prevalent commerce, proves this too. Today the currency we have access to has revolutionized from practices of various exchange methods. The stamp system, invention of coins ranging from gold to copper and furthermore the seals have all contributed in our history. An addition to our succeeding history will be by the latest controversial tool for transaction- Cryptocurrency. Like all the advances which has come under the fire due to their least spread knowledge and use, cryptocurrency is also paving it’s way through to make a mark in the future of the financial markets. Today cryptocurrency has become a global phenomenon, known to most of the people but not understood by many.

What is cryptocurrency?

• Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that is meant to be a medium of exchange which uses cryptographical functions to conduct financial transactions. The word “cryptocurrency” is derived from the encryption techniques which are used to secure the network. It is essentially a piece of software that does “printing” part itself. There is no central authority like government which regulates it and its supply is completely decided by how it is programmed.

What are Blockchains?

Blockchain is the platform where all the list of records of all the transactions that take place in secured, chronological and immutable ways. It is actually a chain of blocks which contains information. Each block record of all transactions, and once completed, blockchains are a permanent database. Each time a block gets completed a new block is generated. The first blockchain based cryptocurrency was “Bitcoin” which still remains the most popular and most valuable cryptocurrency.

Features of cryptocurrency

1. Low transaction cost – If you are making payment through normal banking systems, there are numerous fees involved. But in cryptocurrency no middle men are involved as a result, you are saving the extra cost.
2. Secured transactions – Cryptocurrency is public and an open-source system in nature, but your transactions are tied only to your cryptocurrency address, detailed information is available to onlookers via “Blockchain”.
3. Decentralized – the majority of cryptocurrency is regulated by developers using it, and individuals who have notable amounts of coins. It keeps currency monopoly free and no organization or government can control cryptocurrency.
4. Absolute anonymity – In cryptocurrency, it protects the individual identity by user’s virtual identity so that the personal information is not shared.
5. Currency exchange – Cryptocurrency can be bought using many currencies like US dollars, European euros, Indian rupees, etc. With the help of different crypto wallet and exchange, one currency can be easily converted into others by trading in cryptocurrencies.
6. High ROI (Return on investment) – Cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin have provided huge returns to its investors. In January 2011, the price of bitcoin was $0.30 and current price is approximately $58,000 USD.

Criticisms of Cryptocurrency

1. High volatility – Currently many cryptocurrencies are volatile as they change frequently by huge margins. Everyone loves upside volatility, but when the price of cryptocurrency falls, it becomes a drawback for many investors.
2. Useful for illegal activities – In cryptocurrency, it protects the individual identities it becomes difficult for government to track the activities of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is being used for terrorist funding, money laundering, and other illegal activities.
3. Possibility of hacking – It is being said that many of the exchanges where cryptocurrency is traded are not secured as it stores wallet data of users to operate their user’s ID. There are chances for hackers to steal the data.
4. No recovery policy – In cryptocurrency, if you forget your account details, there is no way to retrieve it. The data can be lost and it cannot get back to your account due to blockchain technology which uses a very tight security. Stefan Thomas forgot the password to an approximate $220 million worth Bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency provides opportunities of how the business transactions will improve in the future. It is worth keeping an eye on cryptocurrency, but at the same way the criticism towards it is also valid. One should understand and research cryptocurrency before investing on it.

 Many countries feel it should be banned because of the National security, but my take on this is that instead of banning cryptocurrency new regulations should be implied on it.

By – Rohit Punjabi

Jingoism

There is a lot of difference between jingoism and nationalism. To be specific jingoism is an extreme level of nationalism.

Nationalism is a moderate term where you have a nationalistic feeling without hatred towards other nations.

So, nationalism can be ideal.

We all grow up hearing and learning that we should love our country. Does that mean we should hate others?

If your answer is yes,

Then your are jingoistic.

The term ‘jingoism’ apparently originated in England during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, when the British Mediterranean squadron was sent to Gallipoli to restrain Russia and seeds of war were sown there. Supporters of the British government policy towards Russia came to be called jingoes as a result of the phrase “by jingo,” which came because of the refrain.

Jingoism is a stage where you are over patriotic and patriotism is not a thing to measure or to judge how nationalistic you are.

We often divide us by countries, states, languages and culture. The only common thing is that we are all humans, we are all an animal with emotions and our emotions change with the situation. But this common thing was never understood by the masses.

In a situation of war when your country is defeated by another country and the winner country is laughing at the loser’s condition, without knowing the situation of survival of the citizens, but they are enjoying at the defeat and feeling proud of their own country.

This can also be viceversa.

These things break the humanity from base.

Why the ideology of Gandhi and Mandela are still acceptable by many than the extremist ideology?

Because the extremist are the ones who have haters and followers alike, some of their words are acceptable and provocable at the same time to different sections of society.

There is an ironical statement,

‘We all know in the beginning and at the end of any war, peace is the ultimate motto.’

The Cultural Junk

A good looking guy, a pretty girl cross paths. A few twists might include the guy being poor and the girl being filthy rich or vice versa. If it were the girl being rude, the boy decides to man up to teach her a lesson. The lesson on how a girl should behave around him or any guy in general, because a woman must follow the rule book, never be scornful towards men nor earn it. The lesson to be taught is done so in a certain way – by objectifying, by assaulting, by violating or by rape.

This has been a norm not just in the movies but also among the regular human lives. The normalcy in such incidents are scary. The moment we hear about a woman defying the odds to speak up or own her actions, the next possible outcome is to avenge, the gruesome way. The outrage and struggles have been evident for a while now yet the ways of portraying women and treating them haven’t seen a major change.

This is commonly known as the Rape culture. The usage of the word “culture” itself intensifies the measure to which it has been perceived to be normal. Showcasing how a man can exert power over a women by intimidating her, eve teasing or blatantly harassing her all to further screen a two hour long love story. The most vicious part being that this has been accepted as a notion of romance. Not just by men but also by women.

And the problem does not end at the theatres, further the message is propagated to each of us, to our minds. For years some are being victim shamed for all the wrong reasons. This culture stretches afar with people still thinking that the sanctity of a culture or of the beliefs and influence of the culture lives up in the skirts and shirts of women and this violation, to how a man fantasizes a woman to be lean, meek and fragile, makes women vulnerable and in many cases, as the affluent and the most influential people would like to quote it, responsible. The tag women carry around asking for “it” is just by the clothes they wear, their attitude and their ambitions. The rape culture has prevailed and is justified till date owing to the assignment of gender roles and standards. The culture has been welcomed and though voices are being raised, the vision is blurred due to presumption of the people and their preferences.

What no one is talking about is Consensual sex. The fact that the society looks down upon the idea of mutual consent for physical relations or otherwise, is a proof of how deep rooted these myths of forced relationships and abusive mentality has settled.

The revolution of the youth into thinking that the forms of existence have a position to consent and the pedestal of each woman to be treated more as a human than as an object is higher but achievable. And this growing concern over consensual sex is the only possible way to thrash years of unjust practices and malafide picturing of the feminine gender.

By Merrin Kuriakose

SILENCE.

Who is a bigger person, the one who raises his voice or a person who remains silent? In short what is bigger or greater, words or silence?

According to me both are important and it depends on our situation, if the situation demands to speak, we should and if not, it’s good to remain silent.

The constitution of India gives us a right to raise our voice, a right to speak, which is true because we should raise our voice against injustice, but should we be raising our voice without knowing the facts of what actually happened?

So, the main question is what should a person do in such situations?

A coin has two sides similarly a story has two perspectives or I will rather say three – truth, lies and your side or your perspective. So why not we remain silent and be patient and listen to both the sides of the story and then come to conclusion instead of listening to one side and taking a stand and raising our voice to make a fool of ourselves.

I will explain with a few examples

There are 3 persons keep it XYZ, all the three are very good friends but X and Z had a major fight due to some reason, so what will Y do? Whose side will he take? Keep yourself in the position of Y and think, both of them are your friends, so as a good friend Y will listen to both X and Z before determining who’s wrong. Y will not listen to X and say no Z is wrong and later after listening to Z and say X is wrong indirectly Y is the one who is making a fool out of himself. Y can remain silent and let X and Z resolve it by themselves.

Another example, a recent instance the Zomato delivery case we all have heard the news through social media and through various platforms. We all know what the case is so, I will not go into the details. As a viewer what should we do, whose side should we take? if you ask me, I will not take a stand for anyone because the investigation is still on, I still don’t know who is speaking the truth. We should not judge the girl or the boy nor troll them in any platforms, its better to remain silent and let the court decide, let police do its investigation, taking sides in an ongoing investigation and trolling them without knowing will be bad for both the parties. So as a genuine good human being its better to remain silent because sometimes raising a voice may be harmful.

So before coming to a conclusion or before judging someone always be patient and listen to both sides do a genuine research and then take a stand. And raising our voice should not cause any harm to others because some cases are sensitive and in such cases, silence speaks louder than words.

And it is rightly said “SILENCE SPEAKS WHEN WORDS CAN’T”

By Mohit Amarnani

Youth

What things revolve around a 24-year-old person?

They’re pretty young and can do whatever they want, but they usually indulge in worthless crap they’re not supposed to do. If we think of a young person, what do we think they are, what are the things they might be doing? Studying, having a party, drinking, smoking, being in a relationship, hooking up, and all the crazy things you can imagine. I don’t say that’s wrong, it’s all a part of life, talking of which we often hear’ ‘if not now, when!”

We’re driven by this quote, we’re taking it too seriously, and we’re living the fuck out of it. Here all I want to say is that everyone should take a moment to think if that’s going to be beneficial to you? There is an abundance of knowledge that we can gain at this present age, and the greatest benefit of it is that at this age, our mind is just evolving, and we don’t have our views, opinions, and perspectives intact on most of that age.

In today’s time, even two years feels like a generation gap and a fact says that the coming generation is going to be smarter, outrageous and advanced in whatever field you pick. Now imagine your sibling, who might just be two years younger to you, is doing tremendous and extraordinary stuff which you didn’t do at that same age as them, how does it feel? Now with that thought, gear yourself up and look for the things you want to know or which you didn’t know that existed but you got to know by reading articles watching youtube and believe me the millennials and gen z are so damn lucky to have platforms like youtube, Instagram, upgrades, and thousands of other apps that let you grow only if you use it wisely.

Imagine if a technology as prosperous as today, existed at the times when we’re fighting for our freedom. Subash Chandra bose took years to created INA, think about it if he had a smartphone in his hand then he would’ve done that only in a few months’ time and we would get it in less than 10 years or something. this wild thought was just to let you think what all we can do with technology; we have fucking millionaires who are just 23-25. Not just emphasizing technology but on reading good content developing you as a good human and a beautiful mind. 

A great myth of our times is that technology is for communication. We have powerful potential and the courage to change orthodox ideas and practices so that we may direct their power towards good ends. The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.

By Ayushi Bader

TRUST – A THREAD OF BOND

We all have once faced a situation where we trusted someone and thought of sharing a great bond with them but much later we realised our mistake in doing so.

So, the point here is how to trust someone? How to know if the person trustworthy and is the right one to put our trust upon?

All the questions have one answer; instead of trusting others why don’t we trust ourself first, trust our instincts! We all have heard the word self confidence. Do we really have it? Do we complain about how we lack the major ingredient of trust in ourselves?

Let’s take a few examples why do we have trust issues,

We know someone around us who have trouble with addictions it can be with smoking, drinking or drugs. They wish to quit the habit themselves, but sometimes they can’t do it. They are unable to trust themselves to keep away from the bad habit. They doubt themselves but there they need to have a confidence on themselves and their capacities and their will.

We all have been to schools, colleges, universities and we have encountered many teachers and professors and we treat them as a “GURU”,  at our first meeting they are our elders, we should respect them but trusting them at first sight just because they’re our elders and we consider to be our “GURU”, does that makes sense? Just idolizing them as our “GURU” because they are our elders. Don’t you think we should take time to know them pretty well before we come to a conclusion.

And let me tell you all that our first Gurus are our parents, we can trust them blindly because they are the ones who will never think bad about their own children. But if we think twice before trusting our own parents, should we trust someone whom we have just met for a day? Later on when they don’t live up to our expectations or trust, we say we shouldn’t have trusted them.

Another very interesting example which all will relate to is about girlfriends and boyfriends. Whenever a girl or a boy meet someone of the opposite gender do we directly make them girlfriend or boyfriend? Of course not right, we try to connect with them, try to know them very well and then if we like their personality, we go forward.

So, if we take time while making a girlfriend or a boyfriend, why cant we take time to trust others be it friends or a complete stranger. Give yourself time to trust others know them very well try to match your nature with them, not as if we met someone, we had a handshake and so we are friends. That is foolishness.

Be it anyone, an elder or a younger one, we respect our elders and we care for our younger ones but when it comes to trust we should not trust anyone easily.

And why am I saying that don’t trust anyone easily because trust is a bond which we share with others or I would rather say trust is a thread and once this trust is broken it does hurt, the broken thread of trust can now be joined only by a knot.

So, its ok to be self-cautious and to take time to trust and to make the thread of trust strong so that it could not be broken by anybody be it an internal or an external factor.

It is rightly said, trust is the most expensive thing to buy and many can’t even afford it.

By Mohit Amarnani

CONTROVERSY, A RECIPE FOR ATTENTION SEEKING?

If you are a person working in any field and want to make more money, then what we usually hear is to work harder while the modern approach we are familiar with is smart work. If that is not enough then there is a cunning statement to follow is Controversy is key to make more wealth, here we tell you how to make money out of controversy, It is not such a bad deed. Almost every well recognised personalities of different fields do that and make money out of it. So we will share some tips regarding that,

Here we go,

1)Find your competitor and offend them in every possible way.

2)Forget your ethics and values.

3)Spice things up and try to boast good about yourself.

These are the basic things to start with and follow these three steps time to time.

Everyone while reading the above tips might feel it’s stupid or the person who wrote this is stupid. If you follow such tips, there are more chances of getting a negative impact.

Let us understand it from the ground level,

What is Controversial Marketing? Controversial marketing is also known as shock advertising. This  means nothing but brand or personality intentionally offends or takes its spectators by surprise by violating the norms of social values, personal values, and morale.

Usually controversy had no relation with marketing but it knowingly or unknowingly created a spike in audience due to spicing up the things.

In this current cyber age, tonnes of intermedia stories flood our minds every day. Controversy catch our attention because their subjects provoke and deliberately violate our expectations.

As stated earlier, many  use “Shock Marketing” technique, while imagining that those activities or marketing methods will spark interest in the widest way possible to the readers and word will spread more rapidly than a flu. This enables people to build a greater audience and improve their business or a personal brand.

The question arises, how far can a business do as such?

Every belief and concept has a start, rise ,stability and lastly a declination. It’s because of the changing time and trend and decisive factor of people.

One thing is clear, if people become aware and smart then the upcoming strategy will be smarter.

By :- Siddharth menon