Tag: future

A Living Hell

Breathing is shallow…

Palms are sweaty..

Forehead is is cold and clammy …

Heart is beating fast…

Mind is racing….

Visions of ‘a Living Hell’ fill my awareness  –

  • Being Fired
  • Social Shame
  • Unemployment
  • Destitution
  • Family Shame
  • Living on handouts

Reading the News – every horrible thing I read … I can see happening to me –

  • An article of an emaciated man discovered dying in his house with the corpse of his wife – they did not have enough to eat…

 

  • A picture of a father carrying his baby daughter’s lifeless body from outside a hospital … where she had died on its steps … As he did not have enough money to cover her treatment.

 

Seeing destitutes, begging at the side of the road – torn, tattered clothes, small children sitting in the gutter, lying in the filth while their mothers beg from car to car, with an unconscious baby tied to their breast.

This can happen to me…

Imagination – the blessing that became a curse

“Ron has a wonderful imagination, he is extremely creative, passionate and energetic, with a bit more effort he can become much better.”  – This was what my teachers said for most of my years in school.

I read a Lot! I searched for answers to relieve my anxiety, anywhere that promised to provide them. 

My favorite was the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, he gave a glimpse into the future… What to expect… Where we would go… What we could become…

Little did I realize that what he said about AI and Robotics, would start happening so quickly… And that too without the safety net of his 3 Laws of Robotics…

I would get lost in the characters, in the worlds created by my imagination… Through my imagination, I would live, breathe and feel everything the character would go through. Every high, every low, every desire, every fear… I would feel viscerally.

I would personalize everything that happened in the book, I would imagine, what if I had a robot bard? Or a robot partner? 

I felt I was going through all the exciting adventures, trials and tribulations, safe in the knowledge, that it was just a work of fiction… And the hero would come out tops in the end.

But Tina was not a work of fiction… And the trials were real… And I did not know if I would come out tops

My imaginations rode wild across my bleeding heart … 

Fear of Redundancy

The threat of losing my job felt Very, Very Very Real.

The conversation with Tina, was being magnified by my mind with what I was reading in the news everyday … how many $$$$$ millions are invested in a new tech ‘Unicorns’ … sending stock markets soaring …

How Artificial Intelligence and robotics is replacing thousands of costly human beings resources, with machines that work 24/7 and don’t take vacations or the weekends off.

1200, 2000, 1500 people lost their jobs to automation… Read the headlines…

A McKinsey study compared the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century with AI’s disruption of society – saying the AI Revolution is happening 10 times faster and at 300 times the scale –  That’s 3000 times the impact! This rapid progress in the AI revolution raises the questions: Will we be able to adapt at this speed? Will the human race survive?

and will I be able to put food on the table…?

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Warn About Artificial Intelligence http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-musk-and-bill-gates-warn-about-artificial-intelligence/

No, No, No, No! This just won’t do!

“I’m sorry Ron, this JUST won’t do! You have to push yourself.

Honestly, These KRAs are just not acceptable” …. Tina’s voice screeched on the phone.

She kept talking…. but i wasn’t listening…

Oh God! I’m going to lose my Job! I’m going to be unemployed, destitute, on the road, begging for scraps… My mind raced, throwing up visions of a dark future … worse than death.

I prayed  – God! Take me now! End this misery! I am pushing so HARD – and it’s still not enough. I’m tired! Let me Sleep – permanently.

My vision blurred… I felt dizzy… everything went blank.

I barely managed to say … “Sure Tina, I’ll try again…” … before she hung up.