Race Of The World
RENAISSANCE
If today, we say that we live in a scientific world in the 21″ century, it is because of the Renaissance that happened in Europe between
1300 and 1500. The progress of science and the ensuing industrial revolution in Europe in the next few centuries was to turn the destiny and culture of many civilizations across the globe and the fate of the world itself.
This Renaissance era was not just for painting and art, but more importantly has to be associated with the unshackling of the mind
and the advent of scientific reasoning in Europe.
During Renaissance, a few thinkers however, unshackled themselves from the vice grip of the medieval church and dared to question dogmas.
Scientific experiments and their results, from then on, came to be accepted, instead of pre-medieval and medieval views being thrust
on society, as unquestionable word of God. It was a period of earnest questioning that led to the many significant scientific discoveries of that period.
In the last 500 years, consequent to the Renaissance, we have made significant advances in the field of sciences. Various branches of sciences have evolved, maturing into deep reservoirs of knowledge, Ieading to diverse applications and change in the way of life.
POST RENAISSANCE
The march of technology which started off in the centuries post Renaissance, with the industrialization of Europe, is only going to
also has its own negatives, in that, it is only widening the disconnece
A brief look at how the world, has progressed in the last few centuries will help us understand ourselves, others and technologies better, to prepare ourselves for what is to come next, based on trends.
For India, it will also act as a guide to point to the direction India must head towards, to be aligned and reap benefits in the future, in the race for prosperity, sustainability and security.
The world, post Renaissance in Europe in 1500s, has walked in and out of various eras successively. It is not as though each era stopped after the next era took over. The earlier eras take on the hue and colour of the successive eras. The initiatives of all previous eras get steered towards the goal of successive eras. Innovations and ideas synergize in each era, since each era has after all emerged as a result of the need from the previous one.
TRAVEL ERA – ARECONNAISSANCE ERA
This era, in a way, can be said to have been the trigger for subsequent eras to have followed.
This era, starting in 1200s, was marked by people from Europe embarking on travels to see the world and to learn of what lay beyond their dominion. It was an era where Europe started exploring beyond the Mediterranean seas using ocean based navigation and it continued to newer and newer horizons.
TRADE ERA-A RAID ERA
This was an era that brought focus on Trade between Eastern and Western halves of the world.
Trade between the East and West had been going on for many millennia over both land routes as well as sea routes, originating from the East to the West. Europe, started to focus on sea based trade, once the land route across Asia to Europe was blocked by the Turks. trade hegemony, plunder and colonization of the East by the West. This period starting 1500s, kicked off the trend of hard negotiations,
INDUSTRIALIZATION ERA – AN AUTOMATION ERA
Then came the question – why transport products from other lands to the west? Why not produce them locally itself for quicker access?
With the 1900s, came the era of industrialization. Different innovations and inventions succeeded one after the other in a rapid succession to find ways,
*to replace the sparse manual labour in the western world with mechanized and automated manufacturing,
*to replace the locally unavailable natural raw material with artificially synthesizable chemical raw materials and
*to break the northern barriers of natural daylight and climate cycles, to maximize hours of productivity.
This led to sprouting of large industrial plants and a culture of consumerism and capitalism.
World trade patterns started shifting from
*manmade, natural, essential products to machine made, synthetic, luxury goods and
*instead of products from tropics to Europe and the West, focus on products from other regions to tropics with raw materials from tropics to Europe and the West but
*most importantly, fuel from deserts which had no use for them until then, to the mechanized and transport dependent, industrial regions of the world.
INVESTMENT ERA- A CAPITALIZING ERA
How can industrialization work without capital?
With industrialization, investment also came into focus – though it was with monies gained from exploits. Monies carned by squeezing blood out of lands such as a spurt in banks and investors in Europe and soon the trends spread across the world.
These investors had to be backed by under-writers, guarantors etc.
Soon an entire virtual world based on real money emerged, to take vested control of the industrialized World.
Some regions chose to exert control through profiteering as Capitalisti, and Socialists. The world was polarized between the Capitalists a Communists, who were ever at war.
Money started to rule the world. Money started to play the lead role in power play.
Money, as a separate entity, also started to move across the world in the form of payments, loans, aids, funds, deposits and many other innovative forms.
COMPUTATIONAL ERA- A CRUNCHING ERA
How can simple humans keep track of so much raw materials, finished goods, fuel, monies and hence people too, moving across the world? So many and such large numbers too!
The last 70 years has been the era where numbers have played an be it in money, in data, in analysis, in reports, in elections, in census etc. Creating and evolving machines to crunch numbers and that too quickly, correctly, in large volumes has been the Mantra.
Not only have more numbers been crunched using complex algorithms since then, but the size of the machines have also over time gradually been crunched to miniscule, micro and nano sizes to enable all to have access to this data.
COMMUNICATION ERA – A FAR REACHING ERA
What is the point of crunching numbers and creating data instantly if they cannot be shared immediately and quickly?
The last 30 years have been witness to the speed at which the modes of communication across cities, towns, countries and across the world have changed. Mankind has scaled and ridden the waves of telecommunication to bridge earth, sky and the seas to break barriers of distance and instantaneously communicate with each other to trade, share data, share news and conduct business.
From a discrete set of lands, the world became a web of connections.
INFORMATION ERA-A SOCIALIZING ERA
But why waste all the space in Space?
Especially when we have the technology to reach and use Space, as well as the means of transforming what the eyes see and the ears hear too, into a form, fit for traversing through Space so that it can reach far and near, in the same way that we saw and heard it!
Around the year 2000 CE onwards, from communication for just the barest minimum and business needs of transmitting data, technologies of the world started synergizing on Information sharing. This era has seen a synergized development in communication and interface technologies to share information and socialize with others, entertain ourselves and experience the world from where we are.
The information super highway has brought in change in the way we learn, interact, respond, research and understand each other and much more.
KNOWLEDGE ERA – AN AGGREGATING ERA
Now, what does one do with all the information one gets?
Based on the logical progression of mankind, technology and information over the last hundred years and more, many thinkers and scientists of the world have been postulating that the next logical era .
In Indian thought, knowledge has been represented as the feminine divinity Sarasvati, meaning one who flows with a grace. Saras means graceful, saras is also a water body. Sarasvati is wedded to the divinity Brahma, where Brahma denotes the expanding Space and evolution of matter to fill the Space.
Is it any wonder that knowledge has now come to be electromagnetic waves, flowing gracefully, transmitted across space, from one device to another?
We have started to look up to the sky for knowledge.
We have started tapping the sky for knowledge.
We have started listening to the voice coming from the sky.
The All Knowing Machine
With more and more of such knowledge having traversed through space and machines, we will also see more and more machines endowed with knowledge, more than what each man will know. This era will soon give way to machines becoming the all-knowing and the go to point for everything.
Right from giving you directions to go wherever they advice, they will drive to see or hear, when to sit, stand, sleep, wakeup, how healthy you are,
when and where to seek help, what you possess, to what you owe and where you can be found.
The machines will know more about you and others in your life too.
The machines will also make you an expert who knows to do
everything, right from
cooking – not just meals but also deals,
fixing — not just plumbing but hearts too,
painting – not just walls but also 3D art,
printing – not just paper but also 3D objects,
modelling – not just clay but your wealth too,
building – not just homes but also automobiles and satellites,
tapping – not just water but also communications and body too when ill.
All this, merely by virtue of what machines and services you have access to – not just from proximity but from remote too!
Underlying layers of knowledge will get abstracted and man will become insulated from all lower layers of knowledge.
In short this will be an era where one does not have to know, to know.
Summing Up The Knowledge Era
The smarter ones amongst us, will leverage these machines and their knowledge to profit from it as they steer the world towards a more aggregated and synergized use of technology /products, in a more meaningful and relevant manner.
This era will keep moving more and more towards aggregation –
*aggregation of technologies,
*aggregation of resources,
*aggregation across industries as well as
*aggregation of the advancements spurred by all the eras so far,
to make offerings of services or products in a local, relevant and timely manner.
For, information when aggregated, in a way, becomes knowledge.
It will be hard to hail any individual nation or civilization as a leader of this era. Every nation, every individual on this planet will be an equal player in this world of aggregation.
Power will also shift. From being vested with a few entities, it will be the aggregated power of vociferous individuals, which will influence
the direction of the world. Race Of The World.
It is only the creativity of their mind which will now distinguish them either incapacitate them or empower them. Ironically, machines themselves are capacitated only by the creativity of human mind, but of a few only though.
Saturated with knowledge bases and heavy duty technologies in all spheres, it will be the subtler aspects of sciences, technology, knowledge and living, which will come to be looked up to as special, in the era likely to emerge from this knowledge era. Having offloaded much of routine processes to the all-knowing machines, the human mind is now ready to look at newer horizons.
The new horizon will be the Mind itself, going by how Science is beginning to go beyond the gross and how various fringe disciplines that twin modern Science with subtle, ancient practices are increasing in number. Yoga is one such example which was in the fringes a few ago but has now come into the mainstream all over the world.
The Eluding Knowledge
After having focussed and advanced sufficiently in technology in the last half a century, it will become the turn of Science to take precedence again.
Profound and game changing matters, such as dark matter, dark energy, anti-gravity, anti-matter, multiverses, teleporting, mind, consciousness, emotions, intuition, sound, matter, life energies, death, Time, diversity and so on, continue to still elude the grasp of physical sciences. These have been dominating man’s mind for centuries now.
Many of these matters are in the realm of subtle dimensions – in size, energies, form.
Almost all of these are beyond even man’s imagination, leave alone machines calculation.
It is in search of this knowledge that the world would have found the need to move towards a Mind Era. The Mind Era can be said to have truly set in, when the present glass ceiling in science and technology gets broken with the power of the mind. Race Of The World And it is in this direction, towards the mind, that India can offer to steer the world.
One has seen how it is access to knowledge from India that has shaped the scientific temper of the West. One can show how it is access to Indian manuscripts, knowledge and products from India that has triggered many of the inventions during the World Wars and steer the world. Industrialization era.
Likewise, it can again be the thought of our ancients, available in the compendium of Indian manuscripts and practices, which can throw
more light to ignite the minds.
For the Mind Era, India can position itself to be a civilization that has been offering continuously in this field of Mind Sciences.
If India wants to be re-establish itself as the thought leader of the world, this is the most opportune and ideal window of time. But for
this, India will have to apply its own mind and strategize as to what it can offer to the changing mindset of the world.
Looking at India’s strengths, based on
1. what it made from its soil,
2. what took roots in its soil and
3. what still stay unique on its soil,
India’s advantage lies in how it can
1. Leverage its familiarity with the mind to open up new dimensions of post modern, Futuristic Science,
2. Model its offerings on factors arising from India’s strengths than from other’s constraints and
3. Build its offerings using indigenous paradigms proven successful on Indian soil than be constrained by imported paradigms, not proven anywhere yet.
All it will require is the will and dare.
