"In-Dependence" Day ?

We are living in very strange times.

Sri Aurobindo , in his 1920 book, "The Renaissance in India " says:?“The method of the West is to exaggerate life and to call down as much - or as little - as may be of the higher powers to stimulate and embellish life. But the method of India is on the contrary to discover the spirit within and the higher hidden intensities of the superior powers and to dominate life in one way or another so as to make it responsive to, and expressive of, the spirit - and in that way increase the power of life. It’s tendency with the intellect , will, ethical, aesthetic and emotional being is to sound indeed their normal mental possibilities , but aid to upraise them towards the greater light and power of their own highest intuitions. The work of the renaissance in India must be to make this spirit, this higher view of life, this sense of deeper potentiality once more a creative, perhaps a dominant power in the world.“

Upon reading his words, I realize that we are all living under political, capitalist, public, social and cultural systems, paradigms and norms created by predecessors no better than society inhabitants in current time. They just created the idea, manifested and generated it into being and reality. If everything is malleable via vision, concentration, effort, and teamwork, then why can’t we continue to move these societal operating paradigms forward? ?

So my hope, is that we treat independence days, not as a celebration of historic out-dated victories, such as the one on Aug 15, 1947, but rather of future victories. On these days, we should all assemble in groups, to whatever interests that may align us, to plan and put our best foot forward, as a collective, in synch with Mother Nature. We should all ponder on what new systems should be put in place because if you were to look at history – the people always chose.

This is especially critical now because ( bait and switch) forces - public and private - could slowly but surely set up a trajectory of irreversible control with dire consequences as it relates to fundamental human rights and freedoms. We just don’t see it but we need to wake up because the current state of affairs of how data is being managed … is disturbing. Today, data, insights, recommendations and perspectives all get tainted with a weird level of opaqueness and subjectivity. What is the agenda? We don’t know and never will, thanks to the private and public institutions collecting these vast amounts of information about us every day. What, however, is well known, and proven, is that this data is often used for targeted advertising, market research, business interests, shaping cultural and professional narratives, and even political campaigns – with but mostly without, our knowledge. In other words, like it or not, we are DEPENDANTS on the various constructs in our lives.

This not only violates our privacy, and fundamental rights and free will, but also leads to violence in the form of, active and passive, discrimination and?manipulation towards goals set forth by a minority of power brokers running financial, cultural and political power centers. Past and/or current efforts ( e.g., GDPR, IT Act, CCPA etc.), rising from questions around whether companies and organizations should collect data are not enough and in fact it could be argued that they are a sneaky smokescreen towards further suppression of our individual rights. This is violent by nature and will only get worse.

How can we mitigate against this?

I believe the way forward is via a deep-technology platform that can collectively piece our atomic perspectives together, one by one, thereby allowing us to flow, at our free will, as a set of giant schools of super diverse fish – in cohesion with Mother Nature - at scale. Let us start by creating an implementable framework where every individual is able to individually own – in every sense of the word – each of the elements of the vast amount of data being generated as a starting point. The amount of personal data that we generate is growing at an unprecedented rate. From social media platforms ( which are rooted to so many apps and platforms that we use ) to work and productivity, online shopping, government services, business transactions, and everything in between. Imagine if all this data had no competitive and combative silos separating them ( as it is today ), and was objective in the purest form.

Next, by aggregating across the plethora of data sources and topics, these data elements can be associated together, (i.e., correlated ),?across a set of multi-dimensional planes including, but not limited to, activity or function, time and geography, personality characteristics, ancestry and ethnicity, economic level, religion and faith, literacy and education, and so forth to name a few. From this objective data correlation and storage plane, a processing and analytics plane can emerge, where the goal would be to transmute the objective raw data into providing rich perspectives around situational awareness, and eventually intelligent recommendations. Unpacking this a bit more, the idea is that every individual deserves to have a layer of personalized actions, insights, observations about their own personal goals and tracking towards it – consciously or even unconsciously. Insights would be made available about topics that we may not even think about or be trained in, however, it may provide us with wisdom leading to new courses of action for betterment of our own beings. ?This ‘action’ or ‘insight’ layer will be manifested via a set of applications providing functional solutions and an unprecedented level of observability.

In other words, the ability for humans to continually make personalized micro-adjustments towards a set of personalized goals or trajectories. (Various studies and theories have proven benefit in being able to take stock of when one is, and then make small adjustments -?transform at the margin- to grow). This would be applicable in all walks of life, personal, professional and social. Ultimately, the result of doing this is our ability as an individual, group, community, institution, country and eventually world, to self-reflect and improve through transforming our behaviors and habits, individual by individual, at scale. This leads to self actuation, from the single person in a village, to a large business or even a government, at scale. This will make it impossible for any single dominant force to control any one individual.

The individual is key here. It all starts and ends with the individual. If individuals choose to come together as a group, community, institution, country, world, that is up to them – and them only. No one but them gets to decide. This principle is key and will be unequivocally implemented across the stack of the platform ( from the data collection to storage to analysis, AI, insight and applications ). This will result in the platform becoming the operating system of whatever level congregation humans choose: be it the world at the most macro level, all the way down to being the operation system of the person, at the most individual atomic level. Key to this will be to institute principles of governance that are untouchable – even by the most powerful authority – and it is run by people for the people. Technology will work for us, and not vice versa. Another non-negotiable, for this to be authentically, truly possible is that this deep-technology platform must run on dis-aggregated, non centralized compute, storage and network infrastructure.

Aurobindo was India’s original freedom fighter, and set forth a few decades of freedom from colonial forces. India became free, and organically grew at what one called the “Hindu rate of growth” ( i.e., ~1% ). Today, with the so-called modernization of our society, we are on course for a perceived sea change of evolution. We are being told that this is India's decade, the G20 meetings are in full force, digitization is taking the country by storm... in fact, I wrote a blazing review of India this time a year ago - which I still stick to - because I am a fan of poverty alleviation, and progression of society. At the same time, my hope is that us, as a people, are able to discern and call a spade a spade and identify smokescreens and take actions to maintain balance between 'central' and 'de-central' ... or should I say, being "IN-dependence" vs. being "INDEPENDENT".

Happy Independence Day, to India!