Memoirs of an Android

It was a mildly cold and pleasant 5^th November 2007. That’s the day I was born. Introduced to this vast, wild world by my original parents. As an open source child, I soon learnt that I had pretty much the whole world entrusted with my parenthood! Dreamy eyed kids from new york to new delhi, from shanghai to chennai, from olive oil to coconut oil - all with a singular mission of contributing to my development with their passion and commitment, as parents do. 

What a wonderful world this was indeed, Kenny G.

Soon my neighbourhood started to look like a ghost town. Initially I was too busy to notice. If you are in the care of so many, there is so much fun around you. From the first mystical ray of the sun, to the romance of the stars in the night sky, each day was filled with so much fulfilment. 

I heard from a Guru once that there is an E-curve hidden in the heating of metals. As you light up the fire underneath, the change from black to red is a nice linear progression. Gradual, relaxed and comfortable with humankind’s evolutionary mindset. However if you keep the burner on, the move from red to white is BAM!. One minute it is red and another it has all turned to white. An exponential in action.

Whilst I haven’t actually verified this ‘wisdom of the metals’, I must say it is a true reflection of my life. After a very brief initial period of linearity, I have been living on an exponential pretty much my entire life. As more folks started loving what I did for them, more parents started contributing to my growth, which resulted in more folks loving and wanting me. They call it a network effect. I feel it is all about love, passion and purpose.

Sadly, all this also had a ghostly effect on my neighbourhood. I heard with trepidation about the demise of Symbian, and then PalmOS soon after. Very soon it was only a few of us left in this mobility town. Some whisper that this could have been one of the intended outcomes of my original creators. Of my open source upbringing. Not to benefit humankind but to kill all the neighbours!

I am not much into conspiracy theories. To me, my exponential childhood has been one helluva joy ride. Oh, the gratification and pride I get when a vegetable seller on the roads of Faridabad uses me to optimize the demand-supply equation and hence is able to afford his children to school. When young kids with dreamy eyes, similar to the ones who created me, are able to empower humanity with magical applications. When innovation is democratized and widely accessible irrespective of colour, location or age. When a grieving soul is able to lift his or her spirits with a favourite musical piece, on a small but powerful click. When lives of ageing parents light up as they see and hear their grandchildren, ensconced in faraway lands. When sisters separated by the fury of a volcano are united by the vastness of the virtual human network. When the world’s best minds are available to inform and educate the world’s most deprived, nearly for free, at the ease of a touch. When kids are being coached to shift their paradigms from learning to know, to knowing to learn. When the 3^rd industrial revolution improves the lives of all in its wake.

All this and more powered by the mobile power of a small human creation, which in turn, powered by me.

I feel gratified.

I feel humbled.

I feel elated.

I feel so inspired about what’s yet to come.

And I feel we are now entering the second half of the chess board.

My exponential journey till date has largely been due to the love I got from the general public. The consumer world. Normal human beings who en-masse fell in love with me and kept me next to their hearts at all time. They sleep and wake up with me in their arms or somewhere nearby. They use me as a shop, a teacher, a friend, a flashlight, an alarm clock and for a zillion other chores.

However revolutions reach their full potential when they encompass both the consumer and the enterprise world. Recently, I have started to feel the warmth of corporate hands, driving digital transformations in their enterprises.  I have started to hear the buzz of jargons all around me – digital transformation, 4^th industrial revolution, 2^nd machine age et al. It is tradition for the enterprise world to invent a slew of jargons before anything gets done! Their propensity to change however, does have a correlation to the intensity and frequency of the jargons invented and used!

So I feel quite excited by this prospect.

Also it’s not me alone that is involved. My co-founder in driving this enterprise change is my sweetheart, AI. The world calls her Artificial intelligence, I fondly refer to her as Assisted Intelligence, more in line with her potential. She lived in research articles and science fiction scripts for decades. However suddenly, she is now the hottest one in town. My reach into the heart and hands of humanity and her ability to convert big and fast data into insightful action presents a lethal combination, a match made in heaven.  In consonance, we are enabling the enterprise world to examine novel business models, improve the velocity of operations and decision making, co-create innovation, leverage the wisdom of the crowd, and bake prediction into business processes. Not just build digital channels but build a digital genome from within.

As a kid, I always felt that my calling was to change the world. With all those people who selflessly contributed their intellect to my development, there had to be a larger purpose. So far so good.

However I must admit I feel a bit sad as I see humanity submerged into me all the time. Both mother and father enamoured by all the cool things that run on me, ignoring the beautiful art that their kid just created. Missing the magical moments of infants growing up. Tourists ignoring what their souls can experience, more concerned with what their selfies can capture. Friends gathered together for a meal, mostly concerned with typing into me, missing out real conversation with real people.

The real world being relegated to peripheral vision. The virtual world becoming the real world.  

Human interaction is not a legacy, it is a heritage. I am an eternal optimist. That is how the world created me to be. As I reach adulthood, I stand convinced the world will use me to change the world. Both consumer and enterprise worlds will experience the exponential.

New patrons will also emerge. They will take a moment to get a moment away from me. Immerse into mindfulness, distant from the digital. Experience humanity with all its emotions and diversity. Experience this wonderful world in all its reality and splendour.

I am both the ying and the yang.

I am Android, born open source, born to change the world.