Thursday, February 10, 2011

Habits in resource utilization

India and the USA have long been friendly nations, with a pro-democratic stance and large economies fueling each other's progress. The USA offers a decent amount of aid while India offers a decent amount of highly skilled manpower in return. The USA likes to address this partnership as one between the longest (USA) and the largest (India) democracies in the world. The people of USA are treated with great respect and admiration for their optimism and productivity while the people of India are greatly admired for their intelligence yet humility. We are indeed two very closely knit nations in terms of world progress and prosperity. Yet, one thing stands in the way of all of this - Utility.

Everything in the US seems so well organized and everything in India is always hackish. The cabling of cities in India is a supreme example of such a hackish construction. This arises not due to a mindset but out of sheer necessity. An Indian city is generally first built, inhabited and eventually planned for, in that order. Thus, any new change is never an addition or a replacement but an 'extension' of whatever exists. In the USA however, things are first planned, and then built. Thus, it is easy to just include a new resource or utility in any existing framework or architecture. Things thus, seem efficient in both the USA and in India given their ways of execution of solutions to problems, in practice however, they aren't in either nations.

A wonderful case in point is the utility of electricity in the USA. One only needs to drive down some main road of a city or suburb and one would notice that the stores run their electrical and electronic appliances within the store for 24 hours everyday of the year. In India, entire cities would remain pitch dark at night, except for street-lighting. In the USA, there is no lighting on roads within residential areas, and the houses themselves are rarely well lit. In India, a house may or may not have clean running water, but it would certainly have the brightest of tube-lights around. As a matter of fact, stores in the US aren't open as long as their Indian counterparts every day. Exceptions to this are those rare retail giants who manage to run some of their stores 24*7 and there are rarely Indian stores who would remain 24*7. One could argue that the rubric to use in comparing the utility of electricity across both nations must be the amount of power consumed per individual. We Indians exercise restraint in utilizing electricity because India considers every resource (not just electricity) to be scarce and therefore expensive, given her population density. USA, on the other hand has always been able to afford to relax on such restraints. Such existing Indian restraints are ably augmented with frequent, consistent and incessant breakdowns in power supply across all parts of India.

Within a given duration of time, it is thus evident that if one were to consider the weighted average of power consumed per individual (weighted on the basis of his or her economic standing, which merely translates into a crude measure of affordability to spend money towards electricity), as a measure of efficiency of power consumption, India would trump the USA. We can extend such a thought beyond power to every other utility or resource being consumed by a nation - water, fuel, money (in which case it is expenditure), and so on. The trash cans in the USA are examples about how much wastage that as a population the USA accumulates as compared to India. The waste disposal system may be very well executed in the USA as opposed to India, but the sheer amount of wastage generated per individual is equivalent to that in India, and given the respective populations of the two nations, this is a sorry case. In India for instance, although waste is rarely segregated based on its type, there is no wastage of waste :-). To extend that in terms of the US habits, it means to say that one doesn't use disposable paper cups or paper plates to have a snack or drink, rather they use utensils which can be re-used over and over again.

Such habits are disastrous in terms of the amount of other resources which are indirectly wasted on a large scale. Using paper towels for almost anything, wood for houses etc could have been in cases when a population was not sure of its existence on a long-term standing, in other words - it was a nomadic population. When there are stones which are abundant in supply as opposed to depleting forests, why not use stones to construct houses, and metal to use for many other utilities ?

The gradual addiction of a population to sub-optimal practices in resource utilization can only spell doom. The constant habituation of a population to disregard certain so-called best practices for hackish yet smart usage practices would always remain efficient, thrifty and optimal from a global perspective of resource utilization. Let the largest and the longest democracies of the world together exemplify the most sensible practices of resource utilization for the rest of our planet to adopt. The whole world can then strive to achieve feasible yet sustainable progress for all mankind to follow and work upon.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

A hackish approach to Indian public hygiene.

As someone with limited yet worthy experience with software development, I appreciate hackish approaches with especially legacy software. Not much one can do otherwise either. But the significant change that even the tiniest of hacks can bring about in some legacy software is wonderful. They can either bring an entire multi-million dollar system down in seconds, or successfully troubleshoot them to run in seconds. Let's break to Indian public hygiene. Quite a break, I admit - but the environment is the same. A legacy system full of issues and wide ranging consequences, but still let to run because its end users take its hapless existence for granted, while its administrators - the government's health ministry work never mind, or at least mind with little significance. Why don't we try a hackish approach to this too?

Most would disagree with me, for they believe that such a really broken down system needs to remade from scratch for it to function properly. I too shared their views, until I entered the field of software development. Public hygiene isn't a piece of code which can be erased and rewritten. Firstly, its current version can't be erased and secondly, it isn't a thing to be made. Its a bunch of principles together that constitute a healthy and safe environment for all around. In India, given her diversity and long standing history of ignorance, it is difficult to revamp such a system on a large scale. It needs to be done on a micro level, and in a subconscious way.

The first issue in public hygiene in India, is waste disposal. There is no use in just collecting garbage together and burning it where there is no or little human presence. It just adds up to even more smoke and air pollution. In short, solids and semi-solids become gaseous, but stuff still remains! One clever way to fix this would be to levy an inhuman penalty on anybody who doesn't adhere to garbage segregation policies. In India, everybody is after the cheapest item - nobody wants to pay if possible. So, we must attack those non-aligners with tough penalties. Singapore is the best example of such litter-based penalty enforcement. Seems, if someone drops a tiny item of garbage, they pay up 500$ immediately. Indian police would love more money through such official outlets. Citizens don't litter, enjoy healthy air and surroundings, and the government saves millions on useless garbage management issues. Let's bring some common sense via such a hack, and we would be amazed at the large scale change it results in. If everyone were to observe this, India would go way behind in her malarial, and other waste-borne diseases woes. This is the first hack, because it concerns everyone in India.

Next up, is the issue of public urination/spitting/excretion. As a civilization, we have lived the longest (The Chinese might contend with this statement) and therefore we must expect ourselves to have identified and developed best practices with respect to most aspects of life - not just spirituality or religion or such non-existent but academic entities. Just as in software development, how large corporations like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are famous for defining best practices for almost everything concerning software and hardware, by virtue of their length of existence in this area. Such an issue of public exhibition of bodily waste is unacceptable, but unstoppable. Our bodies aren't of infinite storage, and we unfortunately don't have swap space either (:-P, for the systems folks). My hack for this would be to teach people how to release their burden in a public space. Not stop them from doing so, which would only lead to severe public outcry :-D. I'm sure that best practices can be easily identified with just simple thoughts for this hack. For instance, teach everyone that if they want to urinate in public - they could do so in places where there is soil or vegetation to absorb the liquid. Urination on concrete or roads or any other element is only going to cause stagnation. The same applies to the other two. Mother earth is not just a strata for support, she also absorbs things. Such things are good for soil fertility too, as explained by Science. I know it would seem ridiculous to think that we could police people who don't follow these best practices, but unfortunately we have come to a state in environmental conditions that unless we crack down on such deviations from convention, we would end up the dirtiest and most unhygienic place and people on earth. Incredible India would be renamed Indifferent India.

In rural areas, people are closer to nature than those in urban areas. They thus prefer to co-exist with nature closer than urban citizens can do. The morning routine is thus realized outdoors, with nature's warmth all around. A simple best practice for this would be: 'Just create a small pit, finish your routine into it and close the pit with mud/soil from nearby. Not only does this ensure the soil gets to absorb the excreta, but it is closed to possible disease carriers. Similarly, compost waste from the kitchen can be buried underground like this. This would make the surrounding soil quite fertile and also help in a greener livelihood.

India has a health budget. The health ministry rarely announces schemes to bring about efficient waste disposal and management systems or patch up the existing one(s). This would create national frustration, but patience for two years as in most other schemes would yield fantastic results. These hacks are simple to both enforce and uphold as well as don't interfere with the existing system. I only hope that those with authority implement such policies as soon as possible, else get to read this piece and be encouraged to do so!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Sudarshan Theory : F = Cs * I(s)

If Einstein had his E = mc^2, I have mine.

F = Cs * I(s)

where F - our future, Cs - Computer Science, I(s) - Integral over all the important sciences we know of today and in future to come.

Computer Science is pure common sense. It isn't rocket science, in fact I would regard it as being among the more easier sciences to comprehend as it is directly in line with our common senses. The way a human mind thinks and computes information is based on which the entire field of Computer Science is designed and continues to evolve as our common senses, especially those of perception and reaction continuously evolve. Although the real application of a task such as Natural Language Processing can be seen in action today, the founding principles of research within this sub-domain of AI can be traced back to the sixties and seventies. Similar cases of other sub-domains and their very early pioneering research findings exist. My father, who although by qualification is a Mechanical Engineer, has always been fascinated by Computer Science and has always been able to better understand why certain things which were considered not fruitful earlier were quite fruitful now. Years ago, long before I could make sense of the difference, he possessed the intuition of how sheer advancements in computational capacities continue to expand the outreach of Computer Science and thus its permeation into other fascinating fields of science.

Such continual rapid progress has propelled research and thus amazing discoveries in areas where earlier there was little or no progress at all. Although exciting research continues in the basic domains of Computer Science, the focus has shifted to the marriages of Computer Science with other computationally intensive scientific research subjects. One fine example of such a marriage is Computational Genomics. Ever since Watson and Clark discovered the helical DNA structure in 1953, Genetics as a field continued to remain nascent until such sheer computational capacities attracted scientists' attention. It wasn't lack of talent or interest or opportunities. It was the lack of computational capacity which kept Geneticists at bay. Since the marriage, we have unraveled exciting secrets in the DNA structure and have been able to 'almost' successfully map the entire human genome, which I think is one of the most important achievements of modern day mankind. This achievement, according to me stands at the very pinnacle of scientific achievements along with Newton's gravity, Einstein's equation and Edison's electricity.

It is now common to get your entire DNA profiled by privatized scientific labs. You can now know your entire genetic lineage, disease risks, genetic inheritance, and what not! This is just to show how just studying computer science isn't going to be enough for the future. As students in Computer Science, it is imperative that we try to appreciate at least one cross-disciplinary domain within science where computer science and its principles are key to future advancements. This is not just because it is to happen, but also because such a good understanding would help us foresee the 'next big thing' in science. It is also our responsibility to equip ourselves well for in future, we are likely to be driving this field towards important discoveries in other sciences. The opening lines of the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' emphasize the importance of 'mathematicians' in the cold war era, when deciphering the adversary's communications was the need of the hour. I consider the current era at least, if not many more to come as the one or those in which 'Computer Scientists' become the most important scientists around. Why have a field called 'Computer' Science when 'Mathematics' was itself perceived to be a science of numbers and thus computation? It is because computation isn't just about numbers. Similarly Computer Science is evolving into a domain not just about computation but a lot more.

The world, going forward is going to have very specialized interests in various research domains. Bill Gates, speaking at Stanford University in April 2010 advised that students and researchers alike stop focusing their interests and energies towards problems which do not impact mankind and their quality of life directly. What a remarkable way to put it! and, thankfully this came from a man whose words are accepted by all around without doubt. Computer Science is already becoming the brain of all sciences. We can't be scientific humans with just brains and nothing else. Let's all now work towards acquiring our other organs as well! The brain will show us the way, all we need to do is persist with other sciences and ensure that at least at the surface level, we are ready to accept what's in store for us from our scientific future.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

World Peace - A problem in Optimization

As an engineer, and by virtue of that, as a pseudo-mathematician, I tend to view events around me from a technical perspective. One of my latest realizations is about how the beauty of optimization as a technique and field of study in mathematics and science is also actually a wonderful philosophy. For those uninitiated and non-technical, optimization is a method of solving problems by optimizing a particular objective function with respect to certain constraints. The logic is actually so simple to grasp, yet its applications are so far-reaching. Optimization as a process here could almost be any process, which shows us the way to achieve our final objective. A good real-life example of it could be cooking.

We begin with a state of a collection of ingredients. Our objective function is a 'delectable' dish. Notice that the 'delectable' part is the actual objective, not the dish itself. Our constraints could include available time to cook, composition of ingredients, etc. As it happens often in problem solving, we follow a well-tread path towards a desirable solution. Similarly, we follow a particular recipe's instructions. At each step however, we stop to estimate how close are we to our objective. In this case, we stop to check the extent of salt or spice, dilution or thickness, etc. If we find that we have either gone over or stopped short of a particular state in our preparation at that given instance, as per the recipe instructions, we try to adjust our dish so that we are still en-route to that 'delectable' dish of ours. The recipe instructions could also be considered as constraints for they help us check our current dish status. Sometimes we might think that we are on the right track at some instances when intermittent checks yield positive results on taste and mixture of the dish. These are local optima, as understood in the field of optimization. They could lead us into believing that we have achieved or are on our way to achieving our objective. One essential pit-fall to watch out are such points of local optima. The global objective of a 'delectable' dish in the end is what counts. We could arrive at this dish both by going through the local optima, or by not even reaching the local optima en-route. That is essentially the beauty of optimization. The means don't matter, the end does.

It is the same story if optimization were to be treated as a philosophy. We are born as individuals, each with unique personalities, thought-processes, capabilities and decision making skills. At each step of our life, we are faced with situations our reaction to which determine our future courses of action(s). The moment we are born, until the moment we expire we are a living optimization problem. Our local optima are the minor successes, little joys, and smiles. Sometimes a local optima gets over and above us that we could think it is indeed 'a' global optima. (The 'a' stands for our desire to have more such intensified periods of success.) Alas, sooner or later we realize that our path is a wrong one due to this misconception. The constraints are the ones we have in real life as well - time, money, opportunities both kind of and lack of, relationships, responsibilities, commitments etc. When someone asks us for our objective or goal in life, they are asking us this very objective that we would want to achieve using a real-time application of optimization strategies. No wonder we regard mathematics as the queen of sciences. It lets us express such complex philosophies and thoughts in the most simplest of ways.

Personally this realization is a profound one for me because although I haven't yet identified my global optima or objective concretely, I do know that the ones I keep stopping at for the time being are all local optima. Consider mankind's optimization problem. The objective at least for now is to achieve world peace and harmony. Divide and conquer approach tells us that this global objective has been broken down in to local objectives from a mankind perspective but global to every nation's perspective. If we were to go deeper in this tree of objectives, the leaves would represent the objectives we all personally pursue as our life's optimization problem. This leads to an important thought. Every single action and reaction from every one of us matters - be us rich or poor, educated or uneducated, fortunate or unfortunate.

Mahatma Gandhi sums this up for us in his famous talisman in 1948:

"I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."