Conversation over coffee

[Disclaimer: I do not own rights to the pictures and images below. They are taken from links directed to by Google search when I searched 'cup of coffee'.]

Declaration: I am still unable to play with electrons and so I am enjoying plenty of free time which is unfortunately going to come to an end next or next to next week, although yesterday I was squeezed into a sudden tight deadline by a person fond of 'last-minute' notice. Hilariously, I'm more 'last-minute' guy than he is :D

Venue: Starbucks Coffee, N. High St. & 14^th Ave., Columbus, OH

Time: Early evening, June 30, 2012

SK: So does this kind of power failure extending to a few days happen in your country? I mean, what would be the worst case delay in fixing a power failure?

PSP: No, no…I would say maximum 30 mins…the power will be restored by then. It’s getting terrible here. A couple of days without power is very disappointing…we can’t do anything at home – can’t charge laptop/cellphones or watch TV or even run the AC in these hot days…

SK: Ya, makes sense…imagine if such a massive storm wrecks havoc in some places on India.. that’s it.. it will take forever to fix.

DN: hehehehe…and what if a massive earthquake destroys a city?

SK: That’s it! There won’t be electricity for months…

PSP: Months? Oh..

SK: So is your country very earthquake prone like Japan?

PSP: No, not like Japan of course.

DN: I read somewhere that California suffers at least two very mild earthquakes every day.

SK: Ya, ya.. seems San Francisco lies on some fault line…a massive earthquake might rock the Bay Area anytime..

PSP: Not only San Francisco, but the whole of California may have a super earthquake….

SK: Ya…so what about your place? I heard there is a massive earthquake due at your place already? It can happen anytime right?

DN: Ya man.. it’s been occurring almost every 50 years for the last 200 years…the last one was in 1950s…so it should have happened by now…it can actually happen anytime.

SK: Is your home town kind of safe?

DN: Naah, everyone’s gonna die I guess…the 1950s one was really massive… it changed the course of Brahmaputra after all.

SK: Ya, all these places like Japan, California are so earthquake prone.

PSP: But the kind is different..as in, in California the continental plate is moving towards the ocean, while in Himalayan region, two tectonic plates are merging into each other that gave rise to the Himalayas… in Japan, it’s again different.

DN: So these plates kind of float on water right? I mean, they keep on moving..

PSP: Water? No I don’t think so.. the plates are like few tens of miles thick, right? They are not on any water man…

SK: How can it be water man? The oceans also are contained in those plates..

DN: But these plates keep moving.. so they need to be on some dynamic body which can move.. so what is it that moves? Why do plates move in the earth’s crust? Ya, it’s not water I’d say, but some kind of dynamic platform.

SK: I don’t know why exactly they move, but when two plates collide, there’d be earthquake, and if one plate contains an ocean, then we’ve Tsunami. It moves the ocean bed.

DN: Man, we should just be able to control these natural calamities..they kill millions!

PSP: hehehehe…if we can control such natural calamities, then we shall probably have developed technology to fly to nearby stars as well…

DN: No, no…traveling to nearby stars needs a kind of technology that enables speed close to speed of light. I’m talking of controlling and manipulating natural vagaries like earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes..

SK: hehehehe…that’s too much…that’s kind of….I don’t know…I think that’s like arrogance.

DN: No dude, it is not.. that’s advanced engineering, that’s advanced technology. We are just bullshiting with our modern day so-called ‘advanced’ technology. Real high-level engineering and technology will enable us to engineer the plate tectonics and our earth-crust, will enable us to manipulate and control earthquakes and tsunamis according to our wish. With advanced technology, we can deflect incoming hurricanes and cyclones to say, some other uninhabited areas…

SK: hehehehe.. you’re now speaking like a philosopher…carry on …

PSP: aha

DN: Ok, imagine this. We can manipulate weather, we can create artificial local atmosphere.. OK? So, if there is a hurricane or cyclone, then if we have sufficiently advanced technology, we can create local atmospheres around it to counterbalance the pressure gradient, and just disperse the damn hurricane! We just make the hurricane non-existent by creating an opposite atmospheric pressure gradient! That’s called ‘advanced’ technology.

PSP:  I don’t see such kind of engineering or technology happening in our life time…

DN: Yeah, but we gotta control natural calamities for sustaining human civilization..even to preserve technology by preserving mankind, we need to tame the natural calamities. But all these days we living in a utopia.. a hallucinatory environment forcing ourselves to think we are advancing in technology, but we are NOT. We are goddamn stagnant in our advancement.

SK: So you mean to say we need some fundamental breakthrough? …

PSP: Yeah, that’s what we need. All these Facebook, Twitter, Internet, etc etc. are making people believe we are progressing, and we are ‘connecting’ better, but we are not progressing in real terms of technology. We are in an illusion.

DN: Precisely my point. Facebook and internet addiction is simply making millions of people dumb. A few smart people make massive amounts of money by enabling millions of dumb people to waste their time and their creativity. How sad! I mean, really, what was the last ‘real’ technology that we humans developed? Something that changed the landscape of mankind? All these progresses in software and facebook and stuffs like that are all illusionary, I am biased I think, but that’s my opinion.

SK: Ya, these are ‘entertainment’ industry.. that is consumer electronics and consumer entertainment… Xbox, juke box, playstations, social networking, etc etc… they are NOT real technological progresses that change mankind’s progress.

PSP: These are for entertaining people as you said, by a few smart people, to  make millions of people become dumb and waste their time and creativity, as you said. All these are very illusions.

DN: Ok, so what is real technology? Real engineering? Automobiles and steam engines – that’s called real engineering. Nikola Tesla designing the AC generator and motor to supply commercial electricity to household – that’s real engineering. The transistor – that changed the landscape forever, the LASER – those are ‘real’ technology, that really, really changed the face of mankind forever. We really need ‘real’ advancements to control earthquakes and tsunamis, man…we need to engineer weather and climate.

PSP: Hummm….it’s far.

SK: So technology is stagnating, huh?

DN: yeah.. I mean, I think what we’re doing now in our PhD research is probably not ‘real’ technology too,.. our efforts in our PhD research to engineer the speed of electrons in transistors to make electronic devices work faster, is probably a pseudo-technology, but at least until we get our PhDs, we should convince ourselves it’s a ‘real’ and ‘useful’ technology.. heheheheh

SK: No, it is real man … we are not doing useless shits.

PSP:  Shall we leave? It might rain after sometime.