Geek Gazette : Autumn' 20

Geek Speak

Navigating through complete chaos and utter disarray, and utilising alien methods of collaborations to revamp how we operate, we bring you the newest edition of our magazine. Pivoting from our regular in person discussions and gaining newer perspectives while being coerced into solitude, we present before you the most extraordinary ideas that will definitely lead you down countless rabbit holes.

We transcend ourselves to ponder on ideas that make us wonder if we exist in a simulation, while also ruminating about the idea of “self� to see how new desires only grow and bloom on false expectations and foibles. At the same time we contemplate our evolution in an increasingly AI-dominated world that is readying itself to be uploaded. Analysing critically the reality of a post-truth society, we discuss the increased importance of conceptual art and the advancements in music and films.

We had a ball reading and writing about these ideas, and we hope you enjoy it too. We’d love to hear what you liked the most!

Team Geek Gazette

Contents

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Fresh Foibles Read to know how consumption and utility of items lead to the socialconsumerist phenomenon called the “Diderot effect” - a vicious cycle of buying new possessions that you feel will give you a sense of satisfaction and unity in your identity.

Are You Still Watching?

Would you prefer being stuck neck deep in unwatched episodes of a new season or are you comfortable with testing the limits of your patience and sanity waiting for the next episode till the weekend?

But Deliver Us from Evil A journey through the Middle Ages, exploring the extent of the devil in our music. Penetrating deep into your soul with music as his vehicle, read on to find out how the devil maintains his sway over us.

Peace Sells, But Who’s Buying?

Sure, trust science but how much? Can a mathematical function be authorised to decide whom to kill? Read on to find out what might decide your fate in an increasingly dystopian world.

Coup de Canevas Do you see art as an aesthetic recreation or as an overwhelming idea existing only in our minds? Read on to find out how the ideas of politics and abstraction have influenced its explication.

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Where the Truth Lies With information flooding our senses each waking second of our life, can it be taken simply at face value? Fnd out how the internet requires smarter and not just engaged consumers to level the playing field.

Matrix in Wonderland Is this real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see.

Through a Cinematic Lens Invisible yet ubiquitous, read on to join us on a voyage as we explore the art of visual storytelling.

The Dilemma of Digital Ascension Was Earth always intended to be our home? Will we always remain slaves of our carbon-based cages? If you too are tired of giving in to the whims and fancies of mortal life forms, you have a reason to get optimistic.

Of Children, Islands, and Human Nature How dark and easily swayed is the human nature? A story of a group of boys stranded on an island provides an insight, and concomitant questions. Read this psycho-analysis on The Lord of the Flies inside.

#StayGeeky

Fresh Foibles

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ate bought “The Treachery of Images” painted by Magritte and put it up on his wall, beaming with admiration.

Seconds later, his eyes glance at the rug below the painting, the bookshelf right next to it, the flower vase to its left, and feels disappointed at the sheer sense of blasé he felt at every single possession of his - except

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“The Treachery of Images”. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” he says to himself while looking at the painting, “It’s the best thing I have ever had.”

The name of this social-consumerist phenomenon, of looking down at your old possessions and aggrandizing newer ones, is the Diderot Effect. This effect is based on Geek Gazette

two propositions - one, all products you buy are coherent with your identity, and two, the introduction of a new product that is desired but deviant from the already existing products can lock a person on a treadmill of consumerism with a desire to buy more, incessantly.

“Should we blame ourselves for this vicious desire to acquire more? The answer is a partial yes, since we are pampered within the capitalistic narrative under a constructed illusion of a self, which masks from us the truth that reality is just as multi-faceted and made-up as ourselves.”

Its name comes from the French philosopher, Denis Diderot, who in an essay called “Regrets on Parting With My Old Dressing Gown” explains how he bought a scarlet red dressing gown that outshone every other possession of his. This coerced him to go on a rampage and replace everything he owned with something new, eventually putting himself in severe debt. He admitted, “I was the absolute master of my old robe. I have become the slave of my new one.”

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The things we own reflect our identity: the books we read, the kind of clothes we wear, the music albums we buy, the paintings that reassert our taste in art, etc. This fact, combined with the barrage of extravagant and dreamy advertisements shoved down our throats, only strengthen the Diderot effect. This fact is also substantiated in how stores like Homecenter showcase furnished bedrooms, kitchens, dining halls, living rooms, etc. in their fairytale-like display of all the kinds of people we can be. We try to find unity in our possessions, and by extension, try to convince ourselves that our “identities’’ are uniform. Looking back (with a little help from confirmation bias), this seems to be what John Mayer’s song, Why Georgia, was alluding to - “I rent a room and I, fill the spaces with wooden places to make it feel like home; but all I feel’s alone. It might be a quarter life crisis, or just a stirring in my soul.”

Richard Easterlin argued that people “project” or anticipate current aspirations as if they remain unchanged throughout their entire lives, even as income grows. But aspirations, as we know, grow along with income. Hence, there is a systematic difference between the satisfaction we project and experience. In conclusion, our choices are based on false expectations.

Jeremy Bentham described utility as the core of the “Greatest Happiness Principle.” Utility goes beyond the definition of just “being useful”, and into a manifestation of happiness - an instance of which we see in how Marie Kondo taught the internet how to get rid of items that don’t “spark joy”. Most of the time, the Diderot effect isn’t about a continuously Autumn ‘20

consumed commodity whose “utility” can be made up for by having one of its kind. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that we are speaking of a continuously consumed commodity sold in uniform amounts.

Naturally, we ask ourselves: what sparks joy? The Diderot effect tells us that it’s our newest possession that does. And how long would it be before we find greater utility in a newer substitute for our old asset, which we eventually get rid of? In the end, even Marie Kondo can’t save anyone from the Diderot spiral and it’s concomitant repercussions.

The main proposition behind Marie Kondo’s method is the same as that of the Diderot effect.

such a recurring desire to outclass others or find unity in your identity seen in the Diderot effect as well.

Hence, the Diderot Effect demonstrates a desire to fit in with or outclass those around us while ignoring any restraints. We’re not capable of improving a single niche of what we own - we frantically grab at every piece we can change.

Until the day we overcome this materialistic craving and pay heed to Tyler Durden’s warning about “the things we own” eventually “owning us”, the Homecenter room showcase is as good as it gets.

Now might be a good time to ask whatever the heck happened to the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. According to the law, the marginal utility attained by the consumption of a good declines as we consume more of it. But the Diderot effect tells us how newer possessions hold greater value in contrast to older ones. Before we jump to label the Diderot effect as sham, it’s worth mentioning that the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility applies to products which are consumed in continuity and homogeneity (which realistically speaking, doesn’t always exist).

The Diderot effect is more closely linked to objects that act as status symbols that one wants to associate oneself with - Chanel No. 5 Limited Edition Grand Extrait is more likely to be the item under consideration, as opposed to a bar of chocolate. Additionally, the law also doesn’t apply to nicotine-based goods since the consumer (who is continually buying the product) is addicted to the item and desires it. There are some shades of

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Geek Gazette

Are You Still Watching?

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emember the good old days when you used to wait for 5 pm every evening to watch Pokemon and 5:30 pm for Beyblade? Ahhh, weren’t those the days. Or more recently, waking up at 6 am on Monday mornings to catch the latest episode of Game of Thrones or Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Silicon Valley or any other trending show. But what was it that made you take such efforts to ensure you watched this next episode? Could it be due to the suspense of what’s to come ahead? The fear of spoiling yourself if you

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wait too long? Or could it be the discussions you’ve had with your friends about what has happened already and where the story could be heading towards?

Netflix has taken over a significant space in the online streaming business and the opinion that their model of releasing all the episodes of a TV Show at once kills the fun and can possibly ruin the experience of the watcher is increasingly common. This practice of releasing an entire season together is Autumn ‘20

designed to push consumers to consume large volumes of content that might be subpar in quality, stuff that you would not normally watch if it were to be released weekly. A simple and common example of this could be the second season of Sacred Games, mostly because it was very predictable unlike S1. On the other hand, this also has the potential of ruining the experience of watching a really good show. Impolite people who have a ton of free time and who do not care about others can and do watch whole seasons as soon as they come out and put out spoilers that ruin the whole experience for everyone else. Even if you do manage to stay clear of all the spoilers floating around, you are still deprived of the pleasure of discussing the story and characters with your friends who are most likely not on the same episode as you are. Most recently, this happened to a few people I know with the release of the fourth part of Money Heist. And once you are done binge-watching, you’ve wasted away 10 hours of your life and I’m sure everyone will relate to the sense of the emptiness and aimlessness that grips you at the end of a binge-watching session. This is the worst aspect of the practice that Netflix pioneered.

While this practice is good for Netflix and other big names in the business, it is almost never good for the end-user.

possibilities and so on. Overall this results in a more satisfying experience. And you can be a better judge of whether the show is worth watching or not 2 or 3 episodes in if you watch them with breaks in between as compared to watching them in a row. The producers and cast of the show must be confident about the quality to be able to commit to such a model. Even Netflix has a few such shows, for example, Patriot Act, Love is Blind, Rick and Morty and more, these are still reality/ recorded shows, not Dramas or Romcoms.

Apple TV+, the new kid on the block, has committed to a weekly release schedule for most of its shows, leading to a better than expected reception of their content.

While the weekly model can be suggested as being better for the end consumer, research carried out by Netflix suggests that bingeing is more satisfying to consumers, that makes sense as their only metric is total watch time.

The weekly model though will definitely be a more positive and time-saving experience for most.

On the other hand, releasing/broadcasting an episode a week is mentally engaging for the user and is much less time-intensive as well. This period of satisfaction also lasts longer, usually 8 to 10 weeks and in the end, you don’t feel as bad for having to wait a year or longer for the next season. You’re given time to think about what could happen, the

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Geek Gazette

But Deliver Us from Evil

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usic is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” Where on the one hand, the goal of the language is to woo women and savour the spirit; on the other, the purpose of music is to artistically personify and express the passively unembodied. Music, acting as a ubiquitous tool, manages to provide a scapegoat for all our pent-up desires, ideas, emotions, and

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feelings. When a person decides to learn music, they have to embark on one boorish course that often leads to scary sentientfingers and self-conscious vocal cords. The irritation and blocks one faces can get pretty annoying and, at times, may knock them off. I can only imagine Nietzsche speaking in Drew Ackerman’s voice, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

Autumn ‘20

It was unlike any other night at the plantation in rural Mississippi; cold, dry, and monotonously dull with nothing new to entertain and delight the soul. A young man, going by the name of Robert Johnson happened to have been frustrated by his not-so-well guitar playing skills. He was a black guy wanting to get into the music industry, considerable, just like any other struggling artists of that time. But something far unusual and dreadful was to happen. Mr Johnson carried his guitar with him and went on a lonely walk to clear his head. Sometimes, all we need is a walk down a lane. But, he encountered a big black guy waiting for some Mr Johnson across the crossroad, near a graveyard at the Dockery Plantation about mid-night, something to scare the living wits out of a guy. The big guy offered to tune Robert’s guitar and played him some songs. What happened next is quite controversial, but mainstream legends suggest that Robert, who had left, wasn’t half as good a musician than the Robert who had returned. He had traded/sold off his soul in exchange for enormous fame and fortune in the music industry. In his short life that lasted 27 years (an age that scares musicians, sometimes even kills), he made significant contributions to blues music(delta blues).

A proof of Devil’s end of the deal being Mr Johnson finding a place in the infamous Geek

“Ah, music”, he said, wiping his eyes.

“A magic beyond all we do here” - Dumbledore 12

Gazette, and we need not worry about the latter’s promise.

When one hears of the Devil’s music, they imagine hard metal rock chiming and growling in and out their gruff cacophonous bleats with seemingly no resemblance to the perception of time, space, sense, and sensibility. For centuries, Church and religious organisations have condemned, and sometimes, even banned the singular utterance of words/ tunes. The reason for all this eonic charade being: Music in its purest form carries the potential to tempt the free creative self, lying deep down within all of us, and this freedom threatens the diabolic rules and sanctions of the authoritarians. For the several millennials, every time a new kind of enthralling pop-music emerged, conservationists and not-so-liberals branded it to be in league with Satan. This nihil cycle of futile and free publicity for more contemporary music existed in perpetuity until recently; our global society coalesced into a more tolerant over-populated Hamlet.

Some restrictions, out of ethical and moral concerns, seem necessary. In the 1920s, technology spiked high, and the ease of living increased. The influence of religion and morales was at an all-time low after enduring six centuries of revolutions and movements. Jazz was perforating and seeping into all strata of society. Jazz was played in aristocratic parties, drinking dens, and brothels. Saxophones (a musical instrument used for Jazz) were banned in 1903 by Pope as they aroused lewd dancing and wantonly desires. So let’s go back into time, as far as we can maintain accountability and stay relevant to our subject.

Geek Gazette

Music has been an integral part of nature for thousands of years. Be it the sweet melodious chirping of birds coupled with the rustling of leaves and the cicadas humming all together in the forest, the crazy swirling wind in ears as one reaches high on mountains, or the sound of the sea and the conch-shells. Humans evolved and got more intelligent forming society and norms. The idea of resistance and anarchic tendencies have pre-existed and so have the countering force. Some sounds and words were declared pious, while others were declared as ominous and dissonating. These battles between the forces of subjective-preferences and thinlydivided categories have been going on and on. Not many are pleased with the F and B note, clashing together to give corny, spineitching foreboding. The anointed King of Judas, David, is believed to have composed F G Am F “The 4th, the 5th, the minor fall, the major lift”, a song that pleased the Lord of Israel himself. Quite blasphemous of GG to name/show Him; the last thing GG wants is streaming of her editors being publicly decapitated in front of James Thomason.

Before the Catholic deterioration in the Classical and Baroque era, the Church was rumoured to have desisted the use of “DIABOLUS IN MUSICA‘’. Straight into the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, God was the mono-star of all music. Songs in the scale of C were highly appreciated and made the listener feel closer to the holy-ghost. Contrary to popular belief, the “Diabolus in Musica”

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or “The Tritones” were used by the Church itself to emphasise the “Diabolus” or Devil in the music. The Tritones are now referred to as diminished five or an augmented four because of a cyclic anticipated stress-relief cycle. The sheer unsettlingly and eerie tune finds restlessness while spewing stress and relief with each progression without any happy reconciliation. Our Holy Ghost C major scale has a C to G frequency ratio of 3:2, wherein an augmented four, the frequency ratio is 45:32. The grave mess in our heads caused when we encounter the tritone is perhaps why it was seldom used and is rumoured to have been annulled.

Frank Liszt, Camille Saint-Saens, Berlioz, and considerably many have used this nocturnal scaling. A solemn impression this author remembers is of the unemphatic theme from “The Shining” which single-handedly plucks one’s heart out. Poltergeist, Black Sabbath, Hendrix, Exorcist, Simpsons etc. use the tritones to subconsciously emphasise the point of belonging to outer-worldly evil strata. All the newer contemporary Satan worship songs are a rebellious expression demanding freedom and symbolise protest.

These metal-heads perhaps miss the genuine sublime creativity of the devil and his music.

If the Dark Lord was to be asked, screaming in underground rock concerts portray a person more stupid and silly than evil. May the Good Lord help the ones listening to the ludicrous blithering jarring cacophony which has nothing to do with neither the Devil nor his music.

Autumn ‘20

The Dark Lord seems to be quite helpful when it comes to musical blocks. The year was 1713; Tartini, an Italian Baroque composer, had quite a career in music. A new student, who was the devil in disguise, had come to trade one glorious piece of performance for Tartini’s soul.

“One night, in the year 1713, I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished; my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy? I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted; my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the “Devil’s Trill”, but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.”

This abjectly fancy though vestige piece of celestial sonata would grow up to be typecasted as the Devil’s Sonata. Sylwia Pajeswka has put a list of songs that draw inspiration from the Devil’s Trill. Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Snoop Dog, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan are some other famous artists hinted to have made a deal for their talents.

Another story is of a mother who sold her son’s soul even before he was born

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for exceptional musical talents. He was a violinist-cum-guitarist born in 1782 and was perhaps the Bruce Wayne of the eighteenth century’s music. Paganini had very long fingers and hence was believed to be able to play the violin across 3 octaves. At a young age, he was able to pull the attention of all enthusiastic audiences interested in newrockier music. Rumour has it, someone from the audience once said that the Prince of Lies guides Paganini’s hands during concerts.

Paganini never paid heed, and decided to play along with rumours, caging the hearts of the audience and souls of women in his violin.

History is filled with anecdotes of Devil and His Music. A rational mind is sure to waive this crazy Nazi-like propaganda meant to profess Earth has two sons. (Earth has two suns, two daughters, and one non-binary hexadecimal alphanumeric child. A Middle Eastern religious book envisages Earth to be a feminine deity and was created along with sweet music, pairing them for eternity. “If Earth was Gaia, a feminine deity, Americas would be the most attractive part” - Music-loving Aliens). But it is what we choose to believe in. All the narrative with the Devil might be the best PR stunts the celebs of yore could pull off, but we will never know. The common point of agreement is the melodic tunes, products, either sprung up from the Devil or twisty brains of insanely genius musicians, have happened to disrupt pop-culture for good. The future of the Devil’s music which once seemed very metallic and gothic, now has smoothly transitioned into something industrial and android. Let’s hope the songwriters of the 21st century adopt better means to carry on their symbol of desistance.

Geek Gazette

Peace Sells, But Who’s Buying?

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e humans make a great deal of effort to put ourselves on a pedestal and differentiate ourselves from animals on the basis of civility. We talk about being able to use our brains to solve the toughest of problems. We talk about being enlightened with all the knowledge that we have. We talk about being reasonable and deplore barbarism. Ironically, humans have always loved killing humans and have actively engaged in inventing new ways for it. Our history is filled with wars. Wars which have left scars on families, communities and even the environment. While we can endlessly rant about how cruel and unnecessary wars are; history shows that wartime leads to an unprecedented level of progress in technology.

Most of this technology is originally aimed at defending the nation but after the war withers out, this advancement finds its way into much more peaceful applications.

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Autumn ‘20

Spears and clubs were probably the first recorded weapons that our species used.

With the advent of the Bronze age, metal swords and arrows witnessed more takers as humans moved from smashing to slicing. But the first revolution in warfare was brought in by gunpowder. Barring bows and arrows, most of the weapons had to be deployed in close range combat only. Gunpowder got rid of this issue and delivered a much bigger pow from a much farther distance. Guns, cannons, and rockets gave their users a massive upper hand against hordes of ill-equipped hand combatants. Soon, war and guns became synonymous for the next four centuries at least. The development of atomic bombs and other nuclear warheads ushered in a chilling new revolution in the mid-1940s. These weapons amassed power that was and still is completely incomprehensible. During the Second World War, many other nations began jumping on the bandwagon and desperately started funding research to develop nuclear weapons. The world didn’t have to wait for too long to see their capabilities as the US used two of its nukes to attack Japan in 1945 (a nod to Chekhov). The horrific scale of destruction terrified every rational person on Earth, meanwhile, the same appalling visuals titillated the ambitions of many power-drunk world leaders. Theories like Mutually Assured Destruction (having an extremely appropriate acronym as well) encouraged other nations to build their own stockpiles. A deceptive game of covert testing and retaliatory international sanctions took over the world. Although it looks like we are standing on the edge and looking into the abyss, there hasn’t been a single nuke fired since the tragedy in Japan.

This, however, does not serve as a guarantee.

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Geek Gazette

We are living in an age of remarkable technological advancement and unbelievable things are proving their existence before our eyes. AI has been the highlight of the previous decade and has the potential to be a huge factor in how the remaining century turns out.

Undoubtedly, the most ghastly application of AI is in the military. Not restricted to augmented weapons where humans still control the trigger but complete AI control is something that would revolutionize warfare. And as dystopian as it sounds, a rogue killer robot scouring the city lanes for its target, sadly, does not seem too farfetched now. Currently, we have unmanned drones and vehicles that move on their own but the decision to engage and kill a target still rests with a human operator. Alarmingly, once AI takes over, it will be at the helm of hugely destructive power. The US, China and Russia are all actively pursuing AI-powered autonomous drones and given their history, it is very likely that we would be plunging ourselves into an all-new cold war in this century. With Project Maven, Google entered into a secret contract with the US Department of Defense to create a computer vision based algorithm that would eventually be used to enhance the accuracy of a drone strike. Many Google employees protested, saying that they shouldn’t be in the business of war which forced Google to drop the contract (for the public record at least). However, companies like Amazon and Microsoft are still working on this project. The US is also testing many small UAVs which act like swarms of bots and “robot-dogs” (which are similar to Boston Dynamics’ SPOT robot) that can be deployed in complex urban scenarios. China has also been developing stealth drones which would

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be autonomously deployed. Russian assault rifle maker Kalashinikov had developed a fully automated combat module powered by a neural network that enables it to identify targets and make decisions. Israel has already deployed fully automated, self-driving military vehicles to patrol its borders. And all these are just the things that these governments have agreed publicly and we can only guess about all that is going on behind closed doors.

There are contradicting opinions on the development and the eventual deployment of AI in warfare. Using drones would end the loss of human lives and the battle scenes would look just like a robo-war event, only this time with realistic backgrounds and great SFX. Coupling autonomous UAVs with image recognition would enable them to weed out the locations of tanks and other artillery and then carry out airstrikes against them to quickly neutralise the threats. Moreover, response time is usually what decides the outcome of a battle, if not the war. Humans can reduce it only to a certain extent. But for computers, only technological limitations dictate it. With more computational power, countries can keep tipping the scales in their favour. Pair this with the virtually infinite risk appetite that these drones have and you get an extremely terrifying kill-squad.

However, this risk appetite is also one of its biggest drawbacks. When a situation requiring a moral decision arises, these autonomous drones would perform horrifically. Then, there are the biases that inadvertently creep in while training. Recent studies have shown that a self driving car is more likely to drive into a black person than a white person. No Autumn ‘20

one knowingly codes this into the algorithm; it happens solely because of the level of variation in the training dataset. Not having enough variation in the data samples might lead to the algorithm falsely categorising new data as non-humans. Moreover, having checks for these shortfalls is very difficult as it involves simulating problems that might occur and that too very rarely. Imagine a racial factor slithering into the algorithm that decides whether an individual must be eliminated.

The consequences would be devastating, leading to unprecedented levels of instability across the globe. Another argument is that the threshold for starting a war would drop drastically. With an undeniable rise in hostilities around the world and with no soldier at risk, imagine how easily the tyrants would engage in a show of power.

Economics also plays an important role in this discussion. Deploying and maintaining a battalion of drones is significantly cheaper than a conventional battalion as there are no recurring costs like salaries or insurances that must be paid even during non-war periods.

Training a conventional army is hugely resource-intensive. Soldiers need a place to stay, food to fulfil their colossal calorie requirement and individual training to handle weapons and fight. Then, there is a growing call to provide mental health services to war veterans who suffer from PTSD. And rightly so, governments don’t (or atleast shouldn’t) have any reluctance in providing them with all these services. On the other hand, investing time and money in training a good model allows the government to simply upload it to multiple drones. But here’s the catch, lower costs would lead to more expendable

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soldiers and more wars, eventually leading to higher costs, simply due to the higher quantity demanded. Here’s where the markets come in. Increased demand for electric vehicle batteries helped in optimising the manufacturing process and encouraged innovative methods of production which pushed their prices down significantly. Similar behaviour can be expected here as well.

Practically speaking, the most likely outcome of this scenario would be a global AI arms race. Even if one country, private/public organisation or terrorist outfit acquires enough knowledge to develop and deploy AI weapons, every country would nullify all existing frameworks and agreements in order to safeguard their national interests.

And with one country dropping out, all frameworks would come crashing down.

Even game theory would push countries to pursue AI weapons and risk mutually assured destruction instead of surviving at the mercy of others. Interesting avenues of war tactics would start becoming the norm. For instance, a team of computer experts could forcefully gain remote control of an enemy’s drone (redefining trojan horses). An extremely farfetched question would be whether these intelligent and all-powerful drones would still accept humans as their masters or whether they would find it optimal to keep the human race alive at all. Either ways, our world is only going to get more uncertain, maybe sporting a more dystopian flavour. But as it has always been, the Overton window would keep shifting.

Geek Gazette

Coup de Canevas

A

rt has unravelled through centurieslong disorder and mutiny, its enduring aim of reproducing the physical world in perspective, color, and form rapidly being abandoned. The modern times have seen a rejection of abstract expressionism that sought art to be gestural and expressive,

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invoking the unconscious mind through movement and color. Apart from pleasing aesthetically, art has come out to serve a much wider medley of clamour. What do you value in the summation of an artwork?

Do you want it to push you, either subtly or forcefully, in a new direction? Do you only Autumn ‘20

value it if it adheres to a given tradition or novelty? Or do you want art to unsettle or challenge you? Or to comfort or reaffirm?

Or you just like the flexibility of art to do all these.

Politics has always been intertwined with art. It’s hard to tell whether it is the unseen proponent behind art or something that corrupts art, given that the art itself has no form, only existing in the minds of the artist and the audience. Sometimes, we create figures purely for attention with bright colors and eye-catching patterns merely for aesthetics, with no concealed message.

Other times, art makes a statement, explores the depths of emotions that we can’t put into words, stands against injustice, and celebrates the intricacies of humanity. It has always been a tool to fill the void where words simply fail.

The history of art underscores questions of politics and commitment. Art cannot but be political, always embracing its political context. The power of artistic expression has held up all the great turning points of history.

Throughout the political discourse, it has devised itself greater than fear, questioning the dominant politics and fighting for the inherent artistic freedom above its romantic vision. We don’t go to museums to stand and look at pretty pictures, but instead to understand and decode the ideas behind them. We want to know what the artist was thinking when they painted it. We want to know the social transformations and the crises of the time that led to the painting or the thought. We want to experience the world through the artist’s eyes.

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A politically-charged artwork, in its innate nature, should provoke reasoning, start conversations, get people talking, instigate change, or call for protest. Apart from resistance and revolution, political art might also be monumental: expressing power through its scale and permanence, reflecting the supremacy of the state. One example is the statue of the communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin at the southern pole of inaccessibility, placed by a group of Soviet scientists atop their research building in 1958. After 40 years, when many of the world’s Lenin busts had ended up destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a team made it back to the pole and found that though the research station had been buried by decades of snowfall and shifting ice, the bust somehow survived it all, looking toward Moscow—surviving nearly a human lifetime in a place where humans simply can’t exist for long. The fact that art lives in places humans cannot live speaks of our power and fragility.

There have been many events where art was the crucial reflection of the political context.

Studying the art pieces teaches us about life and circumstances from a point far away in space or time.

Norman Rockwell’s The Problem We All Live With addresses the racism and the universality of people being affected by harmful politics. It portrays a six-yearold African-American girl being escorted to school by four marshals amid threats of violence against her during the 1960’s New Orleans School Desegregation Crisis.

The wall behind her marks the racial slur “nigger” and the letters “KKK” representing Geek Gazette

the American white supremacist hate group.

The painting is viewed through the eyes of the white protesters. The contentious piece, later on, was installed in the White House on President Barack Obama’s orders.

In another example of a brazen conception, JR’s Face2Face project from 2007 shows portraits of Palestinians and Israelis rendered in huge formats, in unavoidable places, showing faces from both sides and how they looked the same, spoke the same language; but separated by political conflicts. The artist was unsettled by how some neighbours that seemed like twin brothers raised in different families couldn’t get along and believed if put face to face, they’d realize it.

“From music, people accept pure emotion. But from art, they demand explanation.”

- Agnes Martin

In its ethereal backdrop, art is a method of discourse for political negotiation over critical approximation, or often just an avenue to transcend political order. Art is political if it complicates, not simplifies, and extends the

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thread of recognition and understanding beyond what previously was seen and known.

Or if it reinterprets what was previously seen and known, creating alternative understandings. Artistic imaginations of political art often include a utopian element, transmitting hope and notions of prosperity.

French artist Henry Matisse dreamed of an art that is devoid of troubling or distressing subjects, and has a rather soothing influence on the mind. It’s a dilemma to the art world where it fits on the spectrum between pleasure and politics. One might argue that art should be a resentment at the state to rouse it into becoming its better self. On the other hand, others might argue that it should instead focus on an expression of beauty. It’s the comfort that Matisse sought, rather than the politics behind it, that intrigues a lot of us.

We may use it to find solace in an unstable and sometimes threatening world.

The marvel of an art piece often lies in how the tone of a painting can encompass subtleties such as the harsh life of peasantry or the dreariness of a rural setting. In the same way, art can express the cold emptiness of feeling alone, the warm ecstasy of being in love, and anything in between. It is an outlet of emotion where words sometimes fail. The burden of art being about “something else” has been stripped out by the Minimalists who presented art as an object unto itself rather than as an imitation of reality. Once art begins to live just as much in the mind as it does in the eye, even the all-white paintings offer the viewers a canvas to project their own interpretations, emotions, beliefs, and stories onto. If looking at them makes you angry or excited or soothed, those are all Autumn ‘20

valid responses. Liberated from representing something, they rather look at the spectator, asking them: what do you represent?

“I paint with my back to the world,” Agnes Martin often said, accentuating that she did not paint anything of or from the world but the inspiration or the emotion itself.

Her paintings, often an assemblage of horizontal bands of faint color pastels, were meant to extricate oneself from the burden of representation, to reprieve the spectators from the habit of searching for recognisable forms in the abstract field. They were made to be responded to, and not to be read, providing enigmatic triggers for a spontaneous upsurge of pure emotions. The paintings, in their quiet paints, fostered a deeply unquiet visual space.

Within her rigorous grids was not material existence in its tangible forms, but rather the abstract glories of being. Agnes presented herself with this challenge to paint the abstract ideas that could only be impersonated in the form of metaphors.

But metaphors are merely a falsehood, an imitation for what cannot be conceived. The deeply abstract feelings that are so resistant to direct expression or form, they need a portrait of rendition, or otherwise, they’re impossible to reckon with.

The art world loves being questioned and criticised. Italian artist, Maurizio Cattelan’s work Comedian entranced the art world and became the most talked-about artwork of 2019, where he has purposefully selected some of the most easily accessible objects and has transformed them into something of

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value, setting reality into high relief, with its strategic placement in the context of a lavish art fair.

Comedian joins the Cattelan’s tradition of exposing the things we love and hate and exploiting our meekness. It is a ridicule of our desire for art to be eccentric and something we could not create ourselves. It laughs at an art buyer’s susceptibility to the hype, recognition, and the perception of scarcity.

It’s often the documentation that complements the rationale behind a conceptual art. The inexpressive structures and the superlative exuberance of life, sometimes gravely unartful, replaced the persistent sway of prudent composition when embraced by conceptual artists. The art did not present a trickery at play or call for a perplexing interpretation. All they entail, more than interpretation, is a shift in perspective.

Conceptual art asks us to indulge in the art informed by our other senses, the context of the art, and the invisible perceptual operations happening in our minds to process it. It has given us new words to describe what we encounter and new levels of interaction.

It is a slippery art, avoiding to live in one spot, resisting ownership, and being turned into luxury goods. This makes these ephemeral works strangely more permanent, untangling them of the essence of physicality, to begin with.

Artists have purposefully avoided showing off technical skills to upset the dominant art trends at the time, to undermine the Geek Gazette

commercial system of art by creating work that is unlikely to be trophies for the rich.

marble crumbles and paintings fade, it’s the ideas that can last forever.

They want their work to spread and be in multiple places simultaneously and be created in participation with the viewer. With this work, it’s not about something we could not do. It’s that the artist wants us to. We are invited to. It means that the art can exist in perpetuity, beyond the confines of the artist’s own life. And we can still experience it today, and maybe take it home with us too. When

Looking at how far art has come, it divulges our obsessive nature, the rage in us, to take things as far as they can go, inspiring how irrepressible human creativity can be.

Throughout history, great art has resisted pretence, often made to disturb and to soothe, to question and to express, bringing us closer to many people’s struggles as well as stories and beauty from everywhere.

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Autumn ‘20

Where the Truth Lies

“F

acts don’t care about your feelings”.

A phrase associated with the conservative commentator and left provocateur Ben Shapiro, which he often uses to reaffirm his ideologies and put forward his arguments.

Aristotle had coined the terms ethos, pathos, and logos to explain how rhetoric works. Ethos is the means to convince an audience via the credibility and competence of the persuader; Pathos, is an appeal to the emotions of the audience as a convincing mechanism; Logos refers to persuading using logic, facts and figures. Post- Truth is the concept of people placing more value on the emotional truth (pathos) over the logical ones (logos). It was the 2016 Word of the Year, aptly coined in the British referendum and Trump-Clinton election era; with the rise of Fake News, the circulation of false news articles better known as a defence mechanism used by Donald Trump to deflect criticism.

Post-Truth doesn’t deal with the actual truth value of the information, it’s about the way a person interacts with the information that they receive. One can easily conjure up a plethora of information from the internet to reaffirm their opinions due to conformational bias. But now and then, they can also receive articles which are against their beliefs and

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can almost feel like a personal attack at times. In a post-modernist era where all social hierarchies and constructs are being questioned, scrutinized, and rebuilt, an emotional truth holds just as much value as the actual truth.

Prior to the conception of the internet, most people consumed the same media and received their news and other information from the same sources. This resulted in people having similar beliefs on what the objective truth really is. But after the decentralization of the information sources (due to the internet), there has been more information than ever and inevitably more false information than ever. There is an undeniable shift in people’s understanding of truth, resulting in people subscribing to the opinions of those most similar to theirs. The phenomena is not a direct Geek Gazette

causation of the internet, it has existed since the beginning. The perpetual battle between the logos and pathos has now clearly tipped towards the pathos due to the internet and the decentralisation of information.

So how does one function in this PostTruth society? Does one go through the cumbersome process of cross-referencing every statement they come across or just only believe the things they see and hear with their own eyes and ears? This need for cross referencing everything and the large amount of false information is not posttruth itself but a consequence of it. Though the large corporations are implementing their countermeasures to make sure such information does not play the algorithms and circulate itself among the impressionable masses, it does not cull it completely.

A pragmatic solution for any individual would be to listen (not just passively hear) to the flagrant opinions of others which they may find absurd and try to rationally work through it. If you find something which challenges your opinion and feels rationally correct, change your opinion accordingly. Though it is hard to do so due to the inherent inertia, slowly but surely one can update their belief system to further the quest for objective truth. The phenomena of splinternet and cyber-balkanization (intimidating at first) basically describe the phenomena of the internet dividing into various echo chambers based on political opinions. Even on Indian instagram(very pleb example), one can easily differentiate between the “Left wing intellectuals” and the “right wing religious fundamentalists”. Though they can be

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considered to be two opposite sides of the spectrum, they really are just the two sides of the same coin. Both blindly believe their ideology to be the supreme doctrine and are consequently very defensive about it and absolutely despise anyone with a different thought. Maybe the objective truth we are in search of is not something that exists or something we can comprehend with our chimp brains.

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”

-His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Stopping everyone who seems to spread fake news can be considered a censorship hellscape straight out of 1984 and letting these fake articles influence the gullible masses is just as harmful. Though the major Silicon Valley companies have developed their own ML based solutions to this problem, haven’t we already lost trust in these privacy invaders who harvest all our metadata just to maximise their profit.

A far more ‘fun’ solution would be AI taking over us and deciding what the truth is for us without any human bias.

Autumn ‘20

Matrix in Wonderland

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lato asks you to imagine a group of prisoners, trapped inside a dark cave since childhood. Their hands, feet, and necks chained so that they are unable to move.

All they can see then, and for the rest of their lives, is a dark wall. Behind them at a certain height is a flame, forever burning, and between the flame and the entrance of the cave is a road through which ordinary people pass routinely.

There’s also a screen at the beginning of the cave as a result of which, for their entire lives, the prisoners experience life as you and I would a puppet show. They create names for the things

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they see on the cave wall and try to understand the world in whatever way they can. And as improbable as it sounds, and as foolish as it may seem, they succeed.

They understand quite literally the shadow of the world they live in, and they wholeheartedly believe in it.

This hypothetical is from Plato’s ‘The Republic’, one of the oldest and most important texts of western philosophy, and is named ‘Allegory of the cave’.

Geek Gazette

A Columbia University astronomer David Kipping in a paper named ‘A Bayesian approach to the simulation argument’ statistically explains that there is approximately a 50% chance that we are a part of a simulation. And yet, the idea somehow seems so far-fetched, so sci-fi, something that sounds cool in theory but loses its edge in the real world. Only a fool would think that there is even a remote possibility that we are not real.

Right?

Nick Bostrom, a Swedish philosopher from Oxford, came up with the first widely recognized paper explaining why we might all be in a simulation. He proposes that among the following three scenarios, one of them is bound to come true. First, that all of humanity either goes extinct or we, after a disaster of epic proportions, return to the intellectual dark ages. Second, humans become capable of creating large ancestral simulations but choose not to do so. Third, that humans in the future achieve a state of such technological advancement that they become capable of running large scale ancestral simulations, in which case, he postulates that we are most certainly simulated beings.

The argument is as follows, if we, as a species, reach a point where it is scientifically possible for us to create simulated beings that are indistinguishable from real people, and that this technology possibly becomes rather ubiquitous, then it implies that we would theoretically be able to create millions of worlds with billions of people. Then in a pool of trillions of indistinguishable simulated and unsimulated beings, it is almost impossible

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that we could ever be in the original reality and not the simulated one.

Things get a bit more complex when you consider the fact that we might not be in a perfect simulation, and maybe this could be a faulty code that runs until it finds the error in a certain line or, in our case, a year (2020) and just stops.

It could also be possible, according to Nick, that there exist simulations within a simulation in which case it becomes quite certain that statistically none of us are real and that those that created(simulated) us, our gods, are probably themselves simulated as well.

One huge assumption that Nick Bostrom took was believing that we would be capable of generating the computational capacity and power required to sustain a large scale simulation in the future. And while you may think that such a situation is very unlikely, it is relevant to understand that the postulate Bostrum dictates has no time constraints and can be easily referring to 1000 or 2000 years in the future from now.

The simulation hypothesis also provides a valid solution to Fermi’s Paradox.

But first, what is Fermi’s paradox?

Simply put, it asks the question, “Why are we alone?”

And by alone, I don’t mean “scrolling-throughFacebook-at-3-AM” alone, or “all-my friendsare-away” alone. By alone, I mean to ask why there are no aliens around us.

While the fact that we are talking about aliens Autumn ‘20

might appear to be infantile and ridiculous, it doesn’t make it any less valid (or cool).

Physicist Enrico Fermi was the first person to consider this conundrum seriously.

The simulation hypothesis offers another alternative to the problem:

It is difficult to accurately count the number of stars in the universe, but most astrophysicists agree that there are between 1022 and 1024 total stars in the observable universe, which means that for every grain of sand on every beach on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there. Among them, experts suggest that around 5% to 20% are “sun-like” (similar in size, temperature, and luminosity) and that 22% to 50% might have an earth-like planet around them. Let’s imagine that after billions of years in existence, 1% of Earth-like planets develop life (if that’s true, every grain of sand would represent one planet with life on it).

And imagine that on 1% of those planets, life advances to an intelligent level like it did here on Earth. That would mean there were 10 quadrillion or 10 million billion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe, which brings us back to our original question, “Why are we alone?”

“Because the aliens are the ones running our simulations.”

Sun is a relatively young star, so it’s unlikely that we are the first civilisation to try to reach out, and yet there hasn’t been any proof of other intelligent civilisations trying to contact us. The most widely accepted answer to this paradox is that such contact at a large distance simply isn’t possible and that we are at the forefront of technological innovation and would soon reach a wall we won’t be able to scale. This assumption, however, is constantly being proved wrong because technology has advanced at an incredible rate since the 1990s and doesn’t show any signs of stopping.

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“Why are we alone?”

The discourse regarding this fanciful theory of us being monitored and controlled by other beings like us was, for a long time, monopolised by philosophers and psychedelic college students. However, recently, the discussion has resurfaced with tech moguls and scientists at the forefront.

Elon Musk, Niel deGrasse Tyson, and many such entities have expressed their approval for the simulation argument. Rizwan Virk, a computer scientist from MIT, a video game designer, and author of the book ‘The Simulation Hypothesis’, has laid down 10 stages required to successfully simulate humans. He reckons that we have already crossed the halfway point and that, in a few decades it could be a reality (or real in this simulation).

His reasoning as to why we are most likely in a simulation created by advanced species rests on the mystery called quantum indeterminacy, which is the idea that a particle is in one of multiple states, and you don’t know which unless you observe the particle.

Schrodinger’s cat is an excellent example of this quantum indeterminacy.

Virk adds that this concept has very distinct parallels in the video game industry.

Geek Gazette

In the 1980s, nobody would have believed that games like World of Warcraft or GTA 5 would ever exist, they would say that it would require all of the computing power in the world and then some to render such pixels in real-time. However due to several optimization techniques with the core principle of “only render that which is observed” such video games have been created. He finds stark similarities between the way video games are created and how we have evolved to perceive reality and feels compelled to admit that there is a possibility that we could be inside a highly realistic VR game (ROY). According to him, we could either be PC (Player characters) or NPC (Nonplayer characters), and we would likely never know.

(Just in case, we advise you to look into the sky and say ‘SCREW YOU’ to the certified noob playing your life) There is an academic school of thought that claims that human consciousness cannot possibly be replicated and while there is no concrete counter-argument against our narcissistic complexity, Alan Turing’s Imitation Game (or Turing Test) aimed at assessing whether a panel of judges could correctly distinguish between the answers given by AI and a human to the same questions.

Even then, the simulation hypothesis is, in fact, just a theory. There is no definitive proof that we are, were, or ever would be in a simulation and so believing in it would be as irrational as believing in Karma, or Heaven, or Hell, or God. Coming back to the ‘Allegory of the Cave’, one of the prisoners, after many years of imprisonment, succeeded in freeing himself and promptly tried to escape the horrendous cave.

The light from the fire, as he looked right at it for the first time, burned his eyes and he was blinded for a moment. Once his body adjusted to the light he ventured forward and stood on the road where for the first time, he gazed at the 3-dimensional reality both scared and fascinated at what was in front of him. After overcoming the intimidating wave of denial, he found beauty in his new reality and wanted to share this news with his fellow captives that had been there with him for years.

When he told them about this new reality where things weren’t just images on a wall, the captives laughed, thinking that their fellow prisoner had finally gone crazy.

There was no way what he said could be true.

Right?

In 2014, for the first time, a program called Eugene Goostman, which simulates a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, passed the Turing test at an event organised by the University of Reading and questioned the non-replicability of human consciousness.

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The prisoners didn’t believe him.

Do you?

Autumn ‘20

Through a Cinematic Lens

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henever we read a piece of literature, we often create a mental picture of it within our imagination which makes the experience of reading it all the more enjoyable. Giving a face to a character and imagining them as living, breathing beings as opposed to just names on a piece of paper, helps us empathise and sympathise with them more. Restricted to only words, writers (sometimes) take the time to flesh out the intricate details of how a place or a character looks to help us form

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that image, corresponding to what they had conjured up in their minds. Filmmakers have a similar job on their hands as they read a screenplay and conceptualize the myriad of ways in which it can be portrayed on screen.

There are many stages involved in the making of a film, but the job of deciding what the movie is going to look like and the general feel of it rests in the hands of the director.

They are the ones who imagine the essence of a movie in their head as groundwork for Geek Gazette

what is to be created. This is followed by preproduction, where the Production Designer scouts locations with the director and concocts the sets, which are then designed by the art department under the Production Designer’s guidance. The Director of Photography (DP) or the Cinematographer has the task of realizing the vision through the camera and deciding the minor details that govern the final product’s look.

Just like in every piece of art, aesthetics play a pivotal role in cinema as well. However, stylistic choices in films are not necessarily aesthetically driven. More often than not, they are used to achieve an effect that the narrative of the film demands. The use of shaky handheld cameras can come off as extremely annoying and pretentious in some places. But, if used tastefully, they can help the filmmakers project the characters’ experience more naturally to the viewers.

Great directors have particular tropes and nuances to their style of filming and a lot of thought is given to every single frame of the film. Only a detailed analysis of the movie reveals thve work and brilliance that went into creating it. There is a reason why whenever we watch a movie directed by Tarantino, Wes Anderson, PTA, Kubrick, or other critically acclaimed Directors, we can almost instantly recognize that it is their film.

Their stylistic choices range from being very conspicuous like the theatrical sets in Wes Anderson movies to very subtle ones like the long duration of shots and the unusually symmetric sets in Stanley Kubrick movies like The Shining or 2001.

Aside from these idiosyncratic choices made by some of these directors, there

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are some principles quintessential to good visual storytelling that were developed and mastered over decades. Directors, by adopting the principles of their predecessors and blending them with their own ideas have continued to enthral the audiences.

“Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal”

It is almost impossible to compile all the visionaries in the history of filmmaking in a single article, but some manage to stand out in terms of their influence and relevance.

Lauded by many, including Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, as one of the greatest filmmakers since the invention of the motion picture camera, the works of Swedish artist Ingmar Bergman simply cannot be overlooked. Most of us have likely stumbled upon the personification of death portrayed in his movie—The Seventh Seal—on the internet and considered it to be very whacky and comedic. But, Bergman had a reputation of being the most serious of auteurs. Even so, his movies had a plenteous sprinkle of scenes portraying playfulness and obvious satire which often failed to register with the audience, rendering his movies very dark and gloomy. Bergman’s oeuvre is also known for his use of autobiographical elements. As he wrote the screenplays for most of his films, he used memories as a backdrop for writing fiction creating a brilliant mix of realism and unfettered imagination.

Autumn ‘20

Perhaps no article that mentions art house films is complete without the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. He managed to create something so memorable in his canon of mere seven films that many still consider them to be the epitome of cinema.

His distinctive approach of using long, single-camera shots—alien to most modernday blockbusters—and the integration of natural landscapes to achieve dream-like imagery continues to influence generations of directors and moviemakers (most notably, Lars Von Trier). The way in which the camera seamlessly pans the vastness of beautiful forests and lakes in Tarkovsky’s Mirror only to re-emerge in a different timeline is aweinspiring and perfect for the spiritual and supernatural nature of the film.

Here, it is important to note that these advances weren’t limited only to the Western society. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, released in 1954, showcased brilliantly shot war sequences and clever editing techniques which went on to pave the way for modernday epics like the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

One could even go as far as to say that most films and television giants (including Game of Thrones) have borrowed imagery from this Japanese epic when it comes to battle sequences. Seven Samurai is also known for its exceptionally charismatic characters that left a strong impression on the viewers.

This was partly because of stellar acting and eloquent dialogues, and in part, because of the way the shots were taken; like zooming in on the characters faces to emphasise the actor’s expressions. These are only a few innovations that contribute to the film’s relevance almost seventy years after its release.

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Many Hollywood greats and legendary directors, including Akira Kurosawa, have praised the work of the Bengali polymath Satyajit Ray in his magnum opus Pather Panchali. Ray’s films took a different approach to the portrayal of Indian life that made him stand out from his peers. Both Ray and the film’s cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, were relatively new to filmmaking at the time but showed astonishing finesse in the intricacies of the shots and pans; always managing to immerse the audience in the crucial family dynamics of the film’s plot.

The creators of such timeless masterpieces have a great impact on their successors as they defined and carved out the path for the artform to prosper and the directors working in the industry are deeply in debt to these great individuals. But, that is not to say that these modern-day directors have not contributed to the art. With their movies fresh in our memories, there are countless directors that have kept pushing the limits. Be it Christopher Nolan, often drawing comparisons to Stanley Kubrick for his cinematic approach or Quentin Tarantino who declared that he will only ever direct 10 movies, which is likely to leave a gaping hole in the action genre desperate for his nail-biting and aesthetically gory approach to movie violence. The use of handheld shots and shaky-cam in Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian thriller Children of Men pushed the audience into experiencing all the terrors of the gritty world portrayed in the movie. Director Damien Chazelle sought out cinematographer Linus Sandgren to shoot his exceptionally beautiful real-life musical La La Land where camera movements had to be in perfect sync with the music to give the movie Geek Gazette

a dream-like quality.

In recent years there has been a significant growth in the number of small indie films coming out of Hollywood. Some of these films, the 2017 slice of life drama The Florida Project is shot from very low angles as if we see the film and its bittersweet world from children’s perspective. Barry Jenkins and James Laxton chose to use lush, bright colour tones for their breakout indie film Moonlight. The heartwrenching story of the protagonist Chiron when juxtaposed with the surreal beauty of the impoverished Miami neighbourhood with its pastel-coloured houses and tropical greens flawlessly revealed the real tragedy that the filmmakers wanted to convey.

Delving into post-production, technology has helped filmmakers have even more control over the look of a film by allowing them to tweak details like lighting, contrast and other minute elements perfectly to ensure that the audience’s attention is driven to the desired points on the screen. The 2014 film Birdman was made to look as if the entire movie was shot in a single take. This was made possible by the people involved in post-processing who came up with brilliant ways to stitch together pans from different shots so that the DP doesn’t have to worry too much about each cut in the movie. James Cameron was one of the pioneers of utilizing the power of modern filming techniques and CGI to create the visual masterpiece Avatar. Although the movie is lacklustre in many areas relating to its plot and storytelling; it pioneered many techniques in the domains of CGI and motion capture. Movies like Alphonso Cuarons’s Gravity and And Lee’s Life of Pi also come to

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mind when talking about using technology to make visual masterpieces that were both well received by audiences and critics.

A film’s visual style has a way of subconsciously affecting our perception of the story it wishes to portray. Even though most moviegoers don’t invest any active thought into how a shot is cut or ponder over how a particular shot was filmed with such finesse, these small details in films always add up to significant improvements in the overall narrative. Even the most untrained eyes can distinguish between a well-shot film and a poorly shot one. While their opinion might not be very nuanced, possibly even be as simple as the film looked really beautiful; it is a great win for any filmmaker. And it is for this satisfaction and for the cinephiles who sit through entire movies counting the duration of each shot and the significance of each cut that filmmakers go to extreme lengths to achieve perfection in every aspect of what ends up on the silver screen.

Autumn ‘20

The Dilemma of Digital Ascension

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t is largely our mind and consciousness that make us who we are, store our personality, thoughts and memories; and help us navigate through the perpetual chaos we’re submerged in. It is only this ability of ours to think, understand and communicate abstract ideas that sets us apart from the other species as we reign over the Earth. It is perhaps a bit constraining, that something as brilliant as the human intellect is bound by the impermanence of our physical bodies.

Mind uploading (or Whole Brain Emulation) aims to detach ourselves from these physical limitations by enabling us to upload our

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minds, complete with all our thoughts, memories and quirks; to a computer and live forever (or at least for as long as we please).

The hypothetical concept of “Mind uploading” can be broken down into three steps. The first step involves scanning a human brain in enough detail, right down to the structural level believed to hold the key to a person’s memory and thought-process. Next, it is uploaded to an appropriate computational substrate. Finally, this scan (so faithful to the original that it behaves in essentially the same way) is ready to be simulated.

Geek Gazette

First things first- to emulate the most complex object in the entire known universe, we need to know what to scan. This points us to another question over which thinkers have been racking their brains for centuries— “What is the human mind, and how does it relate to our brain?” Some view it as an entity separate from the brain, while others say that it is intrinsically woven together. It is on the latter ideology of physicalism, that mind uploading is based. The human brain, with its 86 billion neurons interconnecting to form close to 100 trillion synapses, is an incredibly complex organ. This network of neurons called a “connectome”, is what many scientists believe holds the information that makes us who we are, and mapping it would potentially allow us to recreate a person’s mind.

Assuming that we are able to decipher the mysterious working of our brains in the future, the second hurdle lies in figuring out a way to scan the brain with pinpoint accuracy. Using MRI (our best non-invasive technology), we can scan a living human brain to resolutions of about half a millimeter. However, scanning the connectome requires resolutions of at least a micron, which cannot be achieved by the MRI techniques without cooking the brain tissues dead! Serial sectioning of the brain into nanometer thick layers and then scanning them via an electron microscope is a better alternative, but the process will definitely leave you dead, if you aren’t already!

Finally, if we do manage to scan the brain down to the requisite detail, the ultimate hurdle lies in computing the scan to run a realistic simulation of the person’s mind.

We’ll have to enliven the static blueprints

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of the brain using probabilistic models that are good enough to simulate the chemical and electrodynamic activity occurring in the brain to finally give an “eternal life” to the uploaded mind. As estimated by Dr Sandberg of the Oxford University, hosting the human connectome on a computer would require close to 1018 flops of computational speed and about 8000 TB of memory for a single human brain. These humongous requirements are a distant dream but still, we are very optimistic that technology will catch up.

“We’ll be uploading our entire minds to computers by 2045 and our bodies will be replaced by machines within 90 years” - Ray Kurzweil, transhumanist and director of engineering, Google

Unless we find something that states otherwise, we can claim with enough confidence that mind uploading is theoretically possible, and perhaps even the next logical step on the ladder of human evolution. Recently, one-third of a fruit-fly’s brain and one-thousandth of a mouse brain were mapped by the Janelia Research Campus and the Allen Institute for Brain Science respectively. These are among the largest connectomes to have been reproduced so far and this once-unimaginable rate of progress Autumn ‘20

suggests that mapping a human connectome would no longer be an idea restricted to the realms of science fiction. Though achieving this feat with the technology at hand is close to impossible, an American startup Nectome has started offering brainpreservation services to enthusiasts until technology catches up. Apart from this, big names like Neuralink, Kernel and Facebook have started working towards building Brain Machine Interfaces that use brain impulses to communicate with intelligent devices. While this isn’t directly related to mind uploading, any research enhancing our understanding of the brain and its connection with computing devices will help make future brain scanning and emulation possible.

All this, and other similar initiatives seem like a good starting point to achieve the objective we have in mind. Of course, debates on what constitutes the human mind, and whether we can replicate it on silicon, continue to question the practicality of the idea. But the idea is still worth pursuing, because at the very least we would end up developing a whole new array of technologies that could equip us in combating brain diseases; maybe even augment our brain capabilities in the process.

Mind uploading, if it happens, will alter the fundamental nature of human society forever by unleashing a whole host of unimaginable possibilities. As we would leave our physical cages behind and transcend into a digital eternity, old human experiences would start losing meaning as newer (possibly more rewarding) ones would start to fill our minds.

Tweaking our perception of time would be as simple as changing the playback speed of a

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YouTube video and with the right hardware you could go a million times faster or a billion times slower! Thus allowing us to transcend into a slow, peaceful nirvana, or complete hundreds of years long research projects, as and when we please. People could start becoming infinitely experienced at their profession. That, coupled with the ability to process things significantly quicker and the ability to make multiple copies of your brain could lead to an intellectual explosion that we’ve never seen before. We could delete some of our memories, our past traumas or our deepest fears which have been bugging us since long by simply modifying a few lines of code. Human space travel could make the leap from interplanetary to interstellar expeditions with uploaded astronauts onboard the tiniest of spacecrafts. And with lots and lots of time on hand, we would move closer towards solving some of the greatest mysteries pertaining to life, Earth and even the universe.

“The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on Earth.”

- Norman Cousins

Geek Gazette

It is often said that when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This utopian future would translate into reality only if the upload-society remains well under the control of the “earthlings”. And considering the complications that might be involved, the reality could be far from this. Starting right from the process of mind uploading, each and every step involved would need to be carried out meticulously, for who knows what ruined version of the mind might emerge from the slightest of errors. “Would your uploaded mind be you, or just a copy of you? ” The instant the uploaded mind becomes conscious, it starts accumulating its own experiences and is no longer anchored to its human form, free to know that the upload won’t remain static, it’s unsettling to have no way to control or know what you might become in the unfamiliar world of cyberspace.

The functioning of this new upload society and its intersection with our human society would pose several other perplexing questions“Who would own the uploaded minds- big corporations, the government, or your family, and how could you trust that authority with all your thoughts and memories (read: lines of code)? How would uploads be protected from the digital dangers of re-programming, intense surveillance or even being copied against their will? How would they be punished for criminal activities- would their memories be modified, or would they be permanently deleted? Would they possess marriage and childcare rights? And would they also inherit the jobs of their biological counterparts post being uploaded?”

in income-generating activities. With infinite time, super-high computing speeds and the ability to make temporary copies of themselves to finish off multiple tasks together, they would completely outshine their biological peers in any computable task in general. According to this, the biological world could be seen as a gathering station for knowledge, experience, and resources before the human transcends into the upload world to join the ranks of eternal minds.

Real human life would reduce to a trivial experience, a stepping stone or a transition that allows us to move to our true home.

Marred with unnecessary resource wars on the physical world, the virtual world would allow humanity to focus on the pursuit of bigger goals. However, it is unlikely that the physical world as a whole would lose relevance. Being able to commandeer the events in the world without actually being in it would help us realise our ambition of universal dominance.

The right kind of uploading will allow humanity to cut its physical dependencies to a bare minimum while still being able to manipulate the universe, making us truly independent of the things that enslave us currently. Who knows, maybe we could be anchored to the real world via a death star wandering through galaxies that stores our uploads. We can’t put our finger on anything right now, can you?

It is quite likely that uploads would engage

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Autumn ‘20

Of Children, Islands, and Human Nature

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t is almost always that the revolutionary work of a pioneer is met with criticism and denial, their ways questioned, their means invalid, their work preposterous. We could jot down such situations and find the list neverending. The perseverance and persistence of these individuals may very well be the most essential factor that drives human progress.

The Freudian theory introduced by Sigmund Freud brought about a notable paradigm shift

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in Psychology and its postulates spread like wildfire into the lives of many people through adaptations and derivatives in publication and communication channels. The theory, like every other revolutionary work, was criticized and rejected during its inception in 1923 and rose to prominence in the late ’50s, and early 60’s long after Freud’s demise. The Lord of the Flies, a timeless classic piece of fiction by William Golding published in 1954, Geek Gazette

could be said to have embodied Freud’s theory entirely. Different characters in the book portrayed the distinctions of the mind dubbed by Freud as id, ego, and superego.

Those who haven’t read the book and plan on reading it and are sensitive to spoilers are advised to skip this paragraph as it contains a brief description of the plot. The brilliance of Lord of the Flies emanates from its portrayal of the complex psychoanalytic states as children. It is questionable to use children as they have not indeed developed their consciousness but also perfect as only they can genuinely exhibit one condition to the extreme. The plot, in a nutshell, describes events that occur when a group of kids gets trapped on a deserted island in the middle of a war. The group is diversified in age, with the youngest being about six and the oldest, the supposed protagonist, being twelve.

The social structure that quickly develops among the boys is very identical to that of the hierarchy that existed in a more archaic human civilization with hints of a modern system like democracy (ancient Greece would be a very apt example). The protagonist who initiates the first pivotal event in the novel is appointed as the Chief and who further appoints officers to take charge of various aspects of survival. Anyone who has read any book on Introductory Psychology at this point would pick up two of the three defined states in the appointed officers and the protagonist juggles between them, trying to figure out an optimal balance. The plot progresses in a direction similar to that of any monarchy with divisions arising among the group, two different tribes with different chiefs, and even a small guerilla war among them.

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Somewhere in between, we are introduced to the third state along with a crucial variable.

The whole plotline could be viewed as a series of psychological experiments with different independent variables trying to determine human behavior. The plot often fluctuates between childish actions and some rather grave scenes that may be extreme even for adults. As a reader, I was often lost with what I was reading about, whether the events that unfolded involved kids or were they, criminals and philosophers. The novel, along with its many layers of complexities and simplicities, is an amazing piece of literature. The allegory that is the Lord of the Flies makes one question the true nature of the actions that the mind orchestrates.

The book is a means by which we can comprehend several qualities of both human nature itself and the mindset of humans who are reading the book. Human nature is portrayed as dark and easily swayed. It contains many atrocities, like sociopathy and murder which had propagated from a single boy to most of the bunch in the island and the consequence of this was the murder of three boys among the group on the pretext of an external monster while the true monsters were the children themselves. Second is the supremacist nature of existence on the basis of demographic. Being British, the author considered them to be better among the other people in the world which was a continuation of the division that existed in the countries.

This was a common trend in the fantasy island books that were popular at the time where a group of boys would get trapped on a deserted island and reign supreme among the locals due to their intellect and Autumn ‘20

advanced way of life. But these were mostly light happy fiction targeted as entertainment to the general populace while Lord of the Flies could have said to have embodied the Nazi regime, the evil, non-sensical aspects of human nature.

The several aspects that make a book great are the opinion of the populace, the demographic, and the values of the book itself. The late 50s and early 60s were a tense period with the adult post-war generation questioning the decisions and actions of their previous generation that led to the world war and the current cold war. The times emphasized the negative aspects of the society with brutality at its peak, the prime example being the proceedings of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The readers desired answers and explanations which were never given due to the delicate nature of the causes of those actions. Catering to the targeted demographic is absolutely necessary for the success of a book. It is a common trend that is observed among popular pieces of literature that they follow certain pivotal events that unite many demographics under some banner. That is the reason for their success, to utilize the situation and express a related opinion. The book, Lord of the Flies came in the times of war, written by a former soldier, explained the dark aspects of human nature. These were very much all the things that would make up the magic formula for any piece of art then.

during the war. His opinions are questionable as he was a depressed man with many vices haunted by the ghosts of his past. But, would we behave the same way as the kids did if we had been trapped on an island when we were of that age? The question is difficult to answer with no projectable fact or emphasis. Would we do the same if we were left now? Most certainly not. Backing to the ridiculousness of the Lord of the Flies was presented when six schoolboys in their mid-teens were stranded on a deserted island and rescued after a year and a half. Sounds quite like fiction, doesn’t it? The boys survived on the island, were in good health, even had muscular physiques.

They too formed a system as soon as they found themselves on the island and stuck to it. Their story was quite the opposite of the one that was concocted by William Golding.

However true one might believe the contents of the book to be and however agreeable the author may sound, the entire thing is just a hypothesis brought about by the difficult times the author had been through as a soldier

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