The Smartphone

A wallet-sized, sleek, hand-held device that gives instant text, voice communication as well as all the information at our fingertips. A device so ubiquitous with almost all our daily uses that we can't do without it now-a-days. The smartphone is basically an electronic device that enables the user to use apps for everything viz - making phone calls, sending/receiving text messages, checking social-media updates, making video-calls, checking bank a/cs., doing online shopping, learning/training, gossiping etc. very instantly and elaborately. A long development from the traditional landline phones which could be used for voice calling only, the smartphones have evolved into versatile, multi-tasking devices making communications easy, personal as well as fast. It can work as a watch, a TV, a landline phone, a calculator, a PC, a camera, a video-recorder, a notecopy,

an ATM, a music-player, a video-player all-in-one. Apart from dialling people for private or professional purposes, we can connect live with video-calls, send or receive, text messages as well as exchange pictures, files-text documents, spreadsheets, projects, PDF files, alongwith videos to almost every person anywhere on the earth. The uses are so easy that even children, people with basic literacy, without any special knowledge can communicate with it. Our connectivity has become so fast, instant as well as voluminous that the world has become much faster, closer as well as interconnected soon. Messages, documents, files, pictures or data which hitherto took days or months can now be sent/received instantly at our fingertips.

anywhere. Alongside these, accidents, mishaps have also increased. People texting, busy over phones are more prone to road accidents on streets and lanes. Many also died taking selfies in risky places like mountain-top, running streams, rivers or alongwith animals like crocodiles, snakes etc. Added to that our privacy also seem to be at risk due to them. Smartphones are hacked leading to loss of money, access to private pictures, videos or the traps of scamsters for lucrative financial profits, jobs etc. Smartphones are also costly. Popular phones often cost a fortune to own. In addition physical and in person communication have decreased leading to tense relationship, digital divide, seclusion etc.   

Smartphones are somewhat a mix of the hand-held phones and the computer. Features of the computers like sending/receiving email, use of apps for all kinds of activities like typing documents in MS-Word, Notepad, or Spreadsheets like MS-Excel, photo-editing, graphic designing, using browsers for websites, reading PDF (Portable Document Format) files, video-calling, selfies using cameras etc. have transformed the lame looking feature phone into a very smart device that is used so often. Some describe them as miniature computers. It has a touch-screen 5", 5.5" or 6-7" in dimension with two switches to increase/decrease volume and power buttons usually. A USB port type C now-a-days, is used both for charging as

well as connecting the device through USB with PCs, Digital Cameras etc. alongwith cameras on the front for selfies and back for taking pictures. In the inside it has a motherboard, a chip to process popularly Qualcomm Snapdragon, Apple A15. AMD Ryzen, Samsung Exynos etc. ROM and other smaller chipsets. It has a slot for one or more SIM cards and Memory Card for expanding memory. Most popular smartphones globally are iPhones 15,16,12,14 etc. Samsung S24, A15, A54, Vivo Y56 5G, Oppo A78 etc. The connectivities are provided by telecom companies that enable the phones to connect by satellite communication through mobile towers, broadband lines etc. Popular telecom brands include Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone-Idea, BSNL, etc. offering 4G or 5G connectivities.

Such is the attachment to the smartphones these days that people prefer to connect via them instead of direct communication. Greetings, wishes for festivals, personal achievements, marriages, invitations etc. are done through text or decorative and attractive posts/cards sent through them. Taking selfies and posting them instantly, updating are common now-a-days. Smartphones have made communications very personalized and quick these days. We can communicate no matter where we are - while in a bus/train, shopping malls, offices, bedrooms, streets

With more features like the use of AI in apps, use of phones as remotes for car locks, switches, transparent devices, health-monitoring devices etc. coming, technology will transform them into smarter ones to accomplish more. The basic point would be to use them for the benefit of all instead of harm to one and all. 

Gandhiji and his movement of Ahimsa

Mahatma Gandhi, our Father of the Nation was one of the brightest luminaries of Non-Violence, Truth & Peaceful Resistance and Humanism not only in India but in the rest of the world. Born in 2^nd October, 1869 to Karamchand and Putli bai Gandhi in Porbandar, Gujarat, he was named as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in his childhood. A frank, fearless and honest young lad he did his schooling in Porbandar and then in nearby Rajkot. He was sent to study Law in England and joined as Barrister in 1891. There too he abstained from alcohol, meat very vigourously.

 Two years later in 1893, he moved on to South Africa to fight a legal suit for a Gujrati merchant there. He was thrown out of the train in Peitermaritzburg for the colour of his skin despite having a valid first-class ticket for his seat. This was his first encounter with apartheid and racial discrimination. It was just a small instance of what was prevalent then in South Africa towards the black, brown or non-white people. This shook him and made him struggle against the colonial rule there. He participated, organised in activities opposing the laws for the blacks and the Indians there that made them unequal in almost matters of life like employment, land or agriculture, marriages, social and political rights etc. He was successful in not only uniting people for their cause but also helping change some of the laws existing at that time. He set up the Pheonix Farm to shelter homeless and sick people and often took care of them himself. Upon his return to India in 1915, he was appalled at the British colonial slavery, misery, poverty, discrimination and the atrocities on the people.

He decided to join the India’s freedom struggle and not pursue his legal career. He regarded Gopal Krishna Gokhale as his Guru under whose guide he got the path and zeal for the struggle for India’s freedom. Initially he fought for the rights of the labourers and farmers. His first peaceful and non-violent struggle bore fruit in Champaran, Bihar when he made the administration change the rules on profit from Poppy cultivation and the heavy taxations on it. Later he organised many peaceful and non-violent 

protests and agitations like the Civil Disobedience Movement, Non-cooperation movement, the Dandi March against salt tax, Swadeshi movement for the boycott of foreign goods, Khilafat movement, Quit India movement etc. His method was to protest for one’s rights by defeating the mighty British government by the force of the powerful will without resorting to physical force, till the last. That is, he alongwith the freedom fighters continued receiving the lathis, sticks and bullets of the government then without forcibly hitting back. By this he compelled the government to concede to many of their demands. He wanted to break the morale of the oppressive rulers by non-violently receiving their punishments.

Satyagraha-as he called it was a struggle for truth. According to him this satyagraha or the pursuit of truth was essential for an individual, a nation or a struggle to powerfully move towards its destined goals and place. Ahimsa or non-violence was the best path accordingly in satyagraha.Ahimsa or non-violence was a means to defeat an enemy from the core rather than physically. It was a weapon readily available as well one that 

could unite the Indian masses fight against the mighty British. He experimented with all his principles – satyagraha, ahimsa and all. Both, he said were sides of the same concept. He managed to get back the rights of the people with these principles very efficiently. His idea of non-violent or passive resistance inspired freedom fighters all over the world from Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, South East Asia’s and African freedom movements and many others.                        

 

ChatGPT – The Wonder Bot

ChatGPT- The AI ChatBot from OpenAI has cast a spell of surprise, wonder as well as hope by its wide scale abilities in problem solving, answering queries or automating tasks for a large number of people world over.

ChatGPT 4, released in November 2022 is the latest version of the ChatGPT after ChatGPT 3.5, 3 etc. The GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer while Chatbots like it were made primarily to reply to customer queries relating to shopping, businesses or alike. Later the functionalities became broader like answering academic queries, predicting sports results, generating journalistic articles, writing computer programs, solving school homeworks, doing painting, writing poems in seconds et al.The ChatGPT uses the Large Language Model (LLMs) to predict something after a given word or sentence. It is trainable – meaning it can be taught to learn new methods of arranging data, either in text, graphical, pictorial or visual media form. The whole software is still in its developing stages with additions in new features, capabilities and accuracy levels.

ChatGPT being a product of Artificial Intelligence is a great tool for increased productivity and automation. It can save time and labour in many fields like research, media, space, electronics etc. It has created a record in creating the fastest user base i.e. 1 billion users per month. It has also been the fastest in getting investments i.e. since its release on November last it has garnered billions. Microsoft has decided to invest $10bn in it, while owner OpenAI has forecast a revenue of $1 bn this year. Microsoft has integrated ChatGPT with its own search engine Bing.  Google has launched its own AI, Bard to compete with it and will also invest around $300mn in AI research and development.

ChatGPT’s critics have also been vocal about its harmful capabilities and misuse. Terming it as blasphemous in re-generating art or in literature to weapons of total destruction and death. ChatGPT can be potentially misused to create slanderous articles on issues damaging reputations of people, spreading misinformation or fakes speedily or copying in examinations, projects etc. On the other hand, ChatGPT also provides irrational, incorrect or nonsensical results.

The future of ChatGPT or AI is potent with possibilities of tremendous progress and use. Businesses are using it to generate strategies for increasing customer bases or increasing profitability. Scientific research can be greatly helped by such generative apps. Governments also use it for data analysis, creating solutions to problems or creating policies for the benefit of all. ChatGPT, given its wide capabilities can rule the AI world for years to come and technologies that may appear.