Thursday, January 20, 2005

Blame the Machine

What do I mean by that, well.. isnt it true that whenever when ever we are into something really important, very technology that enabled us in the first place to do what we are doing and probably is really important at that moment in time, gives up on us. Like, say for example, I am working on an application deadline and suddenly it turns out that the charger of my laptop just gave up on me.
I realise that when, suddenly the laptop starts bliking, prompting me to switch onto AC power asap..

What!!!!wasnt I on AC power all the time.. how did this happen and then I scamper here and there trying to save the work onto some portable media and hope that I have back up machine to continue my work in office...
As it turns out, the day is just bad...Network in the office is down and the way the server is configured, down network implies one cannot even log onto ones own machine....

What does one do in such ocassions.. Can one really be prepared for the unexpected...Have we reached a point in life, that dependence on technology for mere survival has become so important that if things go wrong, one is just stranded midway, gasping Why ME????

Being in sciences, and research, most of ordinary days, are spend reading journal papers...
Gone are the days, when there used to be archieve of journals in the library and one had to climb on those, wooden stairs, to reach the Journal archieve on the top most rack.. The glamour of actually researching to get the research article is lost. With the recent scholar.google.com and the pubmed website, all one has to know what key word in the field one is looking for and with correct mention of the period of publications and any more of minimal information, without even knowing the actual source of material, one can lay hands on any god damn article one pleases. In some sense one can also retrieve classics from yester years, and I say in some sense, simply because, the actual work is probably hanging on some museum wall, surrounded by impenetrable enclave, like 1959 paper by Hodgkin Huxley on ion channels on cell membrane, or Black Scholes paper on Option pricing model or Lorenz work on reduced version of Napier Stroke model, which was first published in some obscure Weather journal, and is now, the most prominent, feature of any fancy work related to chaos or say 1905 series of papers by Einstein on
Brownian motion and photoelectric effect and Special relativity...

Each of papers mentioned above spawned an industry of work in itself.. All I had to do to get these classics was, Google it!!!

Some how, the charm of hard work and the satisfaction of being able to lay hand on something priceless is lost, may be many people will argue against it and to be true, convinience is what man strives for and now that I have it, I want the old days back...

Neways, I was prompted to write here today was as I began, life sometime just sucks!!!
In such times, the only saving grace is a nice book in hand and soft pillow under head.




1 comment:

Parth said...

You end up paying a price for most things that you 'gain'. Technology is no different. At the end of the days, the simplest things are the best :-)