Who am I? continuation...

These thoughts are in continuation to my previous post "Who am I" in
http://chandra-superman.blogspot.com/2009/04/who-am-i.html

This may be the boundary between today's Science and olden days beliefs, myths and philosophies (if at all the below mentioned thoughts are true (I don't know!), may they become truth's accepted by Science someday in future?)

Let's say, the "I" in me is my soul ("Atma")... and, my current body is just an avatar... this body can be in the form of human or horse or elephant or mosquito or cockroach or fish or frog or bacteria etc.

When the body is not useful anymore (we call this death), will the Atma immediately find another body to get in? which body? does it select the body of human or horse or mosquito or bacteria or something else? will it select its body on this earth or some other planet of some other star or some other galaxy or other universe (another place in multiverse?)? will the Atma select itself or God will select?

By any chance, is this selection based on the deeds done by the bodies of this Atma's previous lifes? Is there some amount carry-over to next lifes? how many number of future lifes? is there some quantification like so much of good-deeds and so much of bad-deeds etc?

First of all, why should there be discrimination among these bodies? By definition, Atma not supposed to make any discrimination towards various life forms... for God, all are equal (is it so?)

Is there some time-gap between lifes? What is Atma doing in this time gap? Is this we call "Ghost" stage? Then, why are we afraid of ghosts?

Is the death of a body and the creation of next body for Atma pre-planned by its Atma or God? When, some accident (not planned by Atma or God!!) happen, the next body is not yet ready, and the Atma has to wait for some time (or the original end time)? Is this the ghost stage?

In my childhood stories, I read a lot about "Para-Kaya-Pravesam" - meaning, the Soul can enter another Body. Some learned people, leave their still good and alive body, and enter some dead-body for some time, and comeback to their original body. So, they can enter another body without the need to leave current body... without becoming ghosts.

I have one curious question? what happens all those souls in countless number of bodies on the earth, when some mass sudden-death (like asteroid stike, or some nuclear blast etc) happens? By definition, Atma can't be destroyed by fire or any other destructive form. So, only bodies are destroyed, and all those billions and billions of souls become ghosts? May be that, God will immediately create a huge bacteria colony temporarily for all these souls to occupy? Or, do they really need some body?

- that which is born, shall die - - that which dies, shall be born -
--- this is the endless cycle for souls ---
--- poor souls!!! they are caught in God's Game!!! ---

One more question (never ending questions!!) - How many Gods playing this Game? Is there only one God or many?

Ravan and Multicore and Cloud

We had some discussion over food today... thoughtful and funny...

Ravan and Multicore:
In Ramayana, Ravan had 10 heads... was there one head which is master-head and the remaining 9 slave-heads? or all heads are equal?
Does this has any similarity to multicore platforms?

Ravan and Cloud:
In movies and TV-serials, we see Ravan with 1 head normally. when the situation demands, his remaining heads show up. When Rama cut some of those heads, they comeback again.
Does this has any similarity to Cloud-computing? Heads come up on-demand... when they are down, new heads are born... sounds familiar? [one difference is he has 10 heads - that is max. no in-between capacity!]

Ravan and Reconfigurable-Processor (RP):
- Any thoughts?

Is India really Knowledge Economy?

Continuation topic of argument about "incentive to go for higher education"...

Lets see the importance of Research... Research to create new products, industries...

India, recently boasting about being "Knowledge Economy".
What type of economies are there?
* Product economy - manufacture products, and sell.
* Service economy - serve others - like 90% of Indian software industry does - develop software for other companies products...
* Knowledge economy - Create product plans, designs... outsource building them to others (like software to India, factory to China) ??

If above is true, then:
- China, Japan, Korea are Product economy (manufacturing products)
- China, Korea are Service economy (Manufacturing as service)
- India is Service economy only (developing software for others)
- US, Japan, and Korea are Knowledge economy - they develop product plans, architect them - and outsource realization to others, do some within their country.
- US is Product economy (high value products only!)

And, regarding India - without having technology creation by research, we will be doing only technology-service... this is called service economy... this is not knowledge economy...
A country boasting "knowledge economy" - meaning sell your knowledge as service for others to create products, and you buy those products at a higher price/value than your service? I don't think this is good in long term!

To create products/value, lot of research, not service, is needed...
Atleast China announced plans and taking steps towards moving from "Made in China" to "Made By China"...

What is the Incentive to go for Higher Education?

What is the incentive for continuing to higher studies (M.Tech, Ph.D.) after B.Tech.?

I heard, in South Korea, personal income tax is less for Masters... and significantly less for candidates with Ph.D. No wonder, Samsung (South Korean Electronics Giant), over 10 years -- increased Doctors (Ph.D.) by 5.5X (@ 300/year!), while regular employees increased by only 2X.
Below is the data from news item (How to grow an electronics giant - from http://www.eetasia.com/ - posted 17/Nov/2008)

M.Tech. takes 2-years, Ph.D. takes ~4-years...
After M.Tech. or Ph.D., candidates get lesser designation (less by ~1-2 years) compared to their classmates, in a given industry (Except for Research positions... very less in openings India... very high in demand... very difficult to fill... a paradox...)
Going for M.Tech. - understood - it is only 2-years... not a big issue (earning a livelihood for family (=parents)) for many....
Going for Ph.D. - the trouble factor - it is 4-years... a big issue for many... time to settle down and get married... without earning - it is very difficult in India... (may be exception for rich families... or for candidates very enthusiastic in higher education).

So, where is the incentive for Indian students for higher education?

Without having technology creation by research, we will be doing only technology-service... this is called service economy... this is not knowledge economy...
A country boasting "knowledge economy" - meaning sell your knowledge as service, for others to create products, and sell products to you?

Technological Singularity - When will it happen?

Good article about Technological Singularity on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
(Picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity)


A Book on Singularity (picture from http://singularity.com/images/3DsinJacketFLAT.jpg)



Now, my opinion:
Singularity - will it be a split-second milestone? or is it frequent and continuous progress of events towards it? You see the so called "frequent progressive events" happening around us each month/year...

My view is that, it will be slow enough to be assimilated by our society... and while it happens you don't know it is happening... once it happens you don't know it already happened...
The problem is who is "you" here? They will be your children/grand-children/great-grand-children... they expect the things to be minimum that way as they happen in their times... like today you expect somany things and feel happy about them that they are available to you, while your parents/grand-parents wonder about them, while the same things are a minimum requirement for life for children today...

Automated Patenting? It must be IBM!

There is information - product news, business news, patents, papers, articles...
There are tools - for databasing, searching, reporting and visualizing that information... (e.g. ThomsonInnovation, and many others)...

Everybody knows IBM is the defacto leader in creating patents... well, it didn't come for free... they spent efforts, time, money, and ofcourse brains.
Now, they are outsourcing atleast some of this patent creation business to machines... at least partially...

IBM patenting "Automated Patenting" (almost)... a tool/method to search for empty regions in patent landscape of a given portfolio… and later fill the gaps with new patents!!

IBM's US Patent 20080235220, published 25/Sep/2008
METHODOLOGIES AND ANALYTICS TOOLS FOR IDENTIFYING WHITE SPACE OPPORTUNITIES IN A GIVEN INDUSTRY
Abstract: A method for analyzing predefined subject matter in a patent database being for use with a set of target patents, each target patent related to the predefined subject matter, the method comprising: creating a feature space based on frequently occurring terms found in the set of target patents; creating a partition taxonomy based on a clustered configuration of the feature space; editing the partition taxonomy using domain expertise to produce an edited partition taxonomy; creating a classification taxonomy based on structured features present in the edited partition taxonomy; creating a contingency table by comparing the edited partition taxonomy and the classification taxonomy to provide entries in the contingency table; and identifying all significant relationships in the contingency table to help determine the presence of any white space.

The Evolution Experiment

I am not sure if this falls into "Intelligent Design"... but just my thoughts...

[Flashback] Long ago, a [fictitious] person who is very intellectual, who understands about evolution and genetics, who is very influential... started an experiment... that would need few thousand years to see results... the experiment is based in India... see the result of strictly cross pollination among humans... its very simple... everybody is part of that... yet nobody knows it... the means to achieve it is the "gothra" system... which forbids marriage between people of the same gothra...
meant to produce humans in clusters... with clear differences between clusters... and sub-clusters...

So, now what is happened suddenly? someone found it... with fast, cheap and mass-volume methods of personalized genetic mapping... coupled with very fast analysis and relationship-finding/clustering of gene-info of all people... and, to see the results of that great experiment... the results in progress... and to see if the experiment yealding good results or otherwise... which clusters/sub-clusters are good/superier... which clusters/sub-clusters are bad/inferior... and to decide to continue/alter/stop the experiment... and there are some big questions... continuation is like status-quo, no problem... how to alter? does it call for reduction/elimination, or break the cluster, of inferior clusters/sub-clusters...
What if two superior clusters want to prove their supremacy? (this is what Hitler tried? did he feel competition?)...
Other way, if this to be stopped wholly (man, does it make sense?), how to stop? now, this is de-facto primitive building block of the most societies...