In this image we see Shakeeb Bhai's shop where he confidently claims he can repair anything, ranging from a ceiling fan to a nebulizer and what made us believe it was the fact we actually saw him doing that. He has been working in this shop for the past 25 years and has agreed to be a part of our workshop to teach us tinkering around and understanding electrical devices.
We have been combing through the narrow lanes of Old City in Ahmedabad and we were lucky to find some of the best "Makers" that have been tinkering , hacking, repairing , making and being very humble about their interesting work in their tiny little shops. In this image we see Shakeeb Bhai's shop where he confidently claims he can repair anything, ranging from a ceiling fan to a nebulizer and what made us believe it was the fact we actually saw him doing that. He has been working in this shop for the past 25 years and has agreed to be a part of our workshop to teach us tinkering around and understanding electrical devices.
0 Comments
We begin our in depth analysis of the problems arising due to increasing digitization. A plethora of effects are charted (mostly negative) and a few insights observed are as follows. Decreasing physical socialization is one of the major perceivable trend. One of the most virulent forms of propagation of ideas and information.
After the leak of NSA documents by whistle blower Edward Snowden it came into light the privacy infringement which were happening under project PRISM. Content moderation is one of the major rising concerns with the increase in number of violent abusive and explicit content getting uploaded online due to ease of exposure. And the turmoil the moderators are going through.
We've been fascinated by the idea of machines becoming self aware since decades. Issac Asimov's books made us ponder what it would be like to live in a world consisting of machines which are aware of their consciousness. Movies like terminator showed a future which is controlled by rouge machines bent on erasing human race. Then the Matrix trilogy showed a world were humans were used as batteries for machines and were kept in a simulated reality so that they are living a lie. The recent most movie Transcendence talked about a machine which had the combined intellect of all the people born till date.
A lot of experts in the field of cybernetics talk about singularity. Singularity is the hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies will cause a runaway effect wherein artificial intelligence will exceed human intellectual capacity and control, thus radically changing civilization in an event called the singularity. Because the capabilities of such an intelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is an occurrence beyond which events may become unpredictable, unfavorable, or even unfathomable. We don't know whether this singularity will ever arrive as human brain and behavior is complex and we are not sure whether things like spontaneity, creativity, love etc can be replicated in a machine.
Fablab is a creative space for the public where people can share their ideas. It provides people with tools and connects people to a network where knowledge can be shared to bring their ideas to life. And all they ask for in return is , pass on that lil expertise you have gained to the person next to you. Thats how the facilitator of Fablab, Henry Skupniewicz describes the place as.
The place is powered by Motwani-Jadeja family foundation. Henry is a graduate of MIT (U.S.A.), where he studied architecture with a focus on design computation. He joined the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation in 2013 to manage several of its programs in India. He is the recipient of the 2013 MIT Palitz Fellowship and is currently on a fellowship from MISTI India (MIT) to support his work at the Foundation. Additionally, Henry is teaching a Winter Session class at CEPT (Ahmedabad) on digital design and fabrication. The lab is equipped with Laser cutter , 3D printers, a Shopbot CNC milling machine, Roland milling machine , vinyl cutters for circuit fabrication, jigsaw and a few other essential tools. One of the major contributors to most of the problems faced in Indian society is the societal temperament. Behavior is one of the factors which is at the crux of most of the problems faced in the society. Be it corruption or littering or violence. Behavior is the harbinger that dictates the outlook.
Design intervention can cause a certain shift in the way a particular person or a community behaves. This can be done in various ways, like - - Implementation of certain ideas - Changes in space - Product design - Raising awareness The journey of system design started with introduction to Wicked Problems. After spending a day on connecting how things affect each other we came up with maps on issues ranging from Terrorism to Economics, Technology to Behaviour Augmentation, Education to Religion. The connection which came up in the end were quite shocking. Everything seems to be connected to everything. We noticed that we live in a very closely knit world where a change in one parameter might lead to huge consequences in some other.
We also noticed that there is an inherent difference in Complex Systems and Complicated Systems. These two words have been used more or less in the same way. But complex systems compose of different sub systems and the connection are dynamic. Complicated systems are also composed of sub systems but are connected by mostly defined and numbered connection. |
Author
Our online diary of events. Archives
June 2016
Categories |