Kids dressing habits in India have witnessed a paradigm shift. What used to be regular, basic outfi ts a few years ago have now transformed into full fashion lines, often of premium luxury. IMAGES Business of Fashion takes a look at the market dynamics of one of the fastest growing sectors of fashion retail kidswear.

Growth Drivers

From a basic need-based industry dominated by unorganised retail, kidswear in India has traversed a long trajectory to become an evolving fashion and style category. This paradigm shift, in the recent past has been triggered chiefly by the increase in income and changing lifestyle of modern parents; the result being a perpetual desire to keep kids in sync with latest trends. When it comes to kidswear, India is bestowed with a long list of unique, innate advantages. Along with a promising economic outlook, the nation has the distinct advantage of a growing kids population which, coupled with an increasing discretionary spending on kids has been successful in making India the global hotspot for kidswear fashion. Today, the market for childrens fashion is fast becoming one of the most profitable segments in the entire fashion retail industry in India. The opportunities in the Indian kidswear industry has also attracted a long list of international retail bigwigs, all who have rushed in to grab their share of the market pie.

Changes in the composition and structure of Indian families have also been instrumental in boosting the growth of this industry. The rise of the nuclear family in urban India with a double income has resulted in increased disposable income and hence enhanced purchasing power, with parents willing to shell out money to buy clothes for their children. This has given immense opportunity to retailers at all levels and geographical regions to expand their market and what has largely been an unorganised retail sector is slowly organising and modernising itself at a rapid pace.

In India, about 78 percent of the kidswear market is still unorganised and this is where the scope lies for the segment in coming years. Kidswears share will grow rapidly as the segment increasingly gets organised. Innumerable factors like the average age of the India population, global exposure, spending power and increasing number of working women will influence the Indian kidswear market to a large extent in coming years, says Kavita Mallick, Head of Business, MiniKlub.

Modern parents and children are much more aware and conscious of what they are wearing and how they look when they step out of the house. Along with the growth in Indias purchasing power, there has been a steady rise in the number of image conscious parents who want to dress their children as per their definitions of fashion.

The kidswear market in India has witnessed seismic changes in the last few years both product and consumer wise. The growth of the kidswear category is primarily due to an increase in the income and changing lifestyle of modern parents parents want their kids to stay on trend. This has given retailers an opportunity to expand their market across various geographies and demographics. Changes in the composition and structure of Indian families have also been instrumental in boosting the growth of this industry. The rise of the nuclear family in urban India has resulted in increased purchasing power, with parents now willing to spend more, reveals Manish Kapoor, Chief Executive Officer, Pepe Jeans India.

Frequent socialising and the influence of Social Media facilitated by the penetration of the Internet in the country too has been instrumental in bolstering the aspirations of progressive parents, which in turn has helped the entire segment with impetus.

Additionally, with changing lifestyles, there is also a need-based demand stemming from more frequent socialising amongst new age parents. Movies/music and easy to access social media platform are also influencing their tastes. As families travel often and have increased fashion awareness, the tastes of parents and kids are evolving, adds Manish Kapoor.

Kids are Decision Makers

Parents brand awareness and inclination towards high quality apparel has even trickled down to the kids as well, who have now emerged as a new independent buyer group altogether. The modern generation of kids is no more like their erstwhile peers; they are righteously more demanding and exhibits an increasing say in purchase decisions.

Children today are increasingly becoming aware of their needs, prevailing trends and have their own say when it comes to buying decisions. They are perhaps more demanding and are not interested in merely functional outfits or hand me downs from older siblings. Kids as young as three years are not only curious about fashion choices but also like to have a say on what they would like to wear. This evolution of kids as consumers have changed the way brands perceived and operated in this space and has given way for newer trends the Mini Me trend and character-based apparel being the foremost, says Manish Kapoor.

Echoing similar sentiments Kavita Mallick states that kids cross the age group of 5-6 years are actively influencing the purchase decision all across the globe. Alok Dubey, CEO, Lifestyle Brands Division, Arvind Lifestyle Brands Limited the Indian partners of The Childrens Place, the largest pure-play childrens specialty apparel retailer in North America credits this awareness to the rampant penetration of mass media.

Todays kids are smart and are highly aware about the latest trends. They are outspoken in their wants and needs and fashion is no exception. The advent of TV and mobiles has exposed them to the latest styles and owing to greater purchasing power, parents have no qualms in complying with these needs, he explains.

This evolution of kids as consumers have changed the way brands perceived and operated in this space and has given way for newer trends.

A Pricing Sensitive Segment

India has always been a price sensitive market and this disposition has never been more apparent than when consuming kidswear. Kids outgrow their clothes considerably fast and hence, parents have always preferred to stick to the southern end of the price spectrum.

Indian market is a price sensitive one. Our pricing strategy definitely takes this into consideration. We consider The Childrens Place as a masstige brand and ensure that theres something available for everyone at our stores. The starting price of our products is Rs 399 and we intend to keep the pricing inclusive to all, confirm Alok Dubey.

Yes absolutely, India is a price sensitive market and especially in kidswear, we have noticed that price sensitivity among parents changes as per kids age. Nevertheless, we have to ensure affordable product pricing for our consumers. We off er multi-pack for infants to add value to purchase and off er sets and single to make it affordable for babies and kids range, says, Kavita Mallick.

Predatory pricing and deep discounting has, without a doubt, heralded a thorough transformation in Indias consumer landscape in the recent years. The feeding frenzy that deals, sales coupons, app discounts, et al., has become today stands as a testimony to the monumental influence of discounting as a strategy in India. And for new and emerging players in the game, the proverbial race to off er the lowest price possible has now become a tradition.

Parents are definitely discount conscious. The recent e-commercetrend of deep discounting has made the customer attuned to promotions and off ers. That being said, given the rise of image conscious middle-class parents, weve seen great response and increased sales during non-promotion period too, i.e., season launch or new collection launch as well, affirms Alok Dubey.

Entry of International Brands

This promising nature of the kidswear segment has attracted many international brands into India. And considering the fact that an inherent part of an Indians genetic makeup is his affinity towards anything foreign, we can only wonder what it is for domestic businesses at the butt end of this uncanny phenomenon.

International brands are able to off er better quality, globally trending styles and aspirational products to customers at great prices. These factors have contributed to greater affinity towards international brands. In order to grow, domestic brands will have to focus on quality, designs and pricing to compete against international players, states Alok Dubey.

On the other hand, most domestic brands have the advantage of understanding the countrys climatic conditions and an appreciation of regional choices. Home grown brands always leverage on the understanding that they have of the diverse taste of the Indian consumer. This is always is an advantage and can potentially be a big differentiator in winning the market, says Kavita Mallick.

A fair section of experts also believe that the entry of these brands has been instrumental in high expansion of the overall market and bolstering efficiencies of the domestic players. And, of course, the biggest beneficiary has been the Indian consumer, who, over the long term, will get better quality products at lower prices in a better shopping environment.

Absolutely! These international brands have pushed homegrown brands to up their game to compete with them thereby helping the market flourish as a whole, adds Kavita Mallick.

Conclusion

In this digital age, small clothes have proven to be big business. Owing to the growth potential of the kidswear segment, many international brands have entered India in last few years.With emergence of e-commerce, markets that were unknown or unreachable have opened up, thus boosting growth of kidswear in India. As kids are graduating into consumers earlier than before, brands now increasingly want to shimmy up to them, engendering hitherto unseen growth opportunities for all players across the sector right from brand owners, suppliers, to distributors and retailers. Brands that are steadfast on getting it right will have to do so with the right product assortment, distribution channels, better visual merchandising, and focused advertising and promotional strategies.

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The coming of age of kidswear retail in India - India Retailing

The prolific Lord Fellowes returns with this six-part adaptation of his own novel (for ITV), a niftily-wrought yarn (originally issued in online instalments) about the old aristocracy and the rise of new money in the early 19th Century. Some are inevitably calling it the new Downton, but it really isnt.

Fellowes, the assiduous social historian, has planted his story firmly in factual soil. It opens at a pivotal moment in the Napoleonic Wars, when the Duchess of Richmond held her celebrated ball at her temporary home in Brussels on 15 June, 1815. This was days before the battle of Waterloo, which finally kiboshed the great expectations of the Little Corporal and in due course ushered in a new age of peace and prosperity.

The seeds of the ensuing drama are sown in the feverish preparations for the climactic battle, as the Duke of Wellington (a convincingly imperious Nicholas Rowe) is forced to cut short his supper to meet the threat of Napoleons forces, advancing at unexpected speed towards Brussels. He briskly summons his officers, as well as James Trenchard (Philip Glenister), his esteemed victualler (or quartermaster), and sets off to prepare for battle. Wellington, much impressed with Trenchards skill in keeping his army fed and watered, refers to Trenchard as the magician, and predicts a bright future for him in the post-war world though he adds a warning that Trenchard should not let himself be distracted by the frivolous geegaws of society life (pictured below, Nicholas Rowe, Tamsin Greig and Philip Glenister).

Fellowes loves a bit of class friction, so much more nuanced than actual warfare, and the motor of his story here is the corrosive effect of social overreach. Trenchard and his wife Anne (Tamsin Greig, bang on the money) represent the rise of the middle classes (shes a schoolmasters daughter). While James has a thick skin and a robust, can-do attitude that enables him to barge through social barriers (Glenister describes his character as a cross between Donald Trump and Del Boy), Anne is acutely conscious of where the social tripwires lie. She is particularly concerned for the welfare of her daughter Sophia (Emily Reid), who has tumbled into an infatuation with handsome young cavalry officer, Lord Bellasis (Jeremy Neumark Jones). Sophia thinks its a mutual love-match. Anne thinks her daughter is being taken for a ride.

Fast-forward 26 years, and James has formed a spectacularly successful partnership with the master builder Thomas Cubitt, with whom he has helped to create such defining icons of Londons evolution as Gordon Square, Tavistock Square and the titular Belgrave Square (this spangled city for the rich, as Harriet Walters Lady Brockenhurst would have it). Its a new age of affluence and galloping social expansion, but our characters (for all their apparent success) are living in the shadow of misjudgements and a particularly cynical con-trick carried out all those years ago.

Fellowess sense of the way great sorrows follow us around like a suffocating shroud is keenly drawn, and the encounters between Anne Trenchard, Lady Brockenhurst and the elderly Duchess of Bedford (Naomi Frederick), looking back at a past in which their experiences overlapped far more than theyd realised, were powerfully affecting. And that was only episode one...

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Belgravia, ITV review - when the toffs and the nouveaux riches collided - The Arts Desk

Commenting on the latest CPI Basket of Goods and Services Annual Review from the ONS,Linda Ellett, UK head of consumer markets at KPMG, said: The changes in the ONS basket of goods and services offers up a fascinating look at how the consumer landscape is evolving. Whilst not explicitly reflective of increased spend in any particular product or service, the metric seeks to capture consumer price inflation more accurately.

The inclusion of gluten free cereal echoes the growing prominence of health conscious consumers, as well as efforts to increase product diversification. Im sure weve all walked around the supermarket to see that specialist healthier alternatives have been given a more prominent position in recent years. Testament to the growth potential being chased by many consumer businesses and the efforts to diversify product ranges, KPMGsown analysisrevealed that that the health and wellness segment continues to outperform the wider food and drink sector, in terms of both margin and corporate deals activity.

The balance between convenience and more eco-conscious consumption also get a look in this year. On one hand, we saw the addition of reusable bottles and mugs, reflective of consumers looking to cut down on single-use plastic. But stressing the fact that convenience is still highly prised in certain categories, we saw cocktails in a can make it to the checkout. The pressure on consumer-businesses to offer up convenience whilst doing so in an environmentally-friendly manner will be a key playing field in the coming years. Winning businesses will be those that can find a great solution, not an uncomfortable compromise.

In terms of technological changes, its unsurprising that items continue to shift quickly such is the lifespan of tech these days. More effort has been made to capture computer games more accurately, given how volatile their pricing is. Whats more, it varies considerably across gaming platforms too, so the ONS has now defined games by platform. Not only does this illustrate how pricing around tech can be hard to pin down over time, but its also reflective of a wider shift within consumer markets the move towards the platform or ecosystem mentality.

In terms of removals, it is unsurprising to see MP4 players replaced with a more widely-defined portable music player. Todays consumers hardly distinguish between their smart phone and a separate music player. Similarly, it was unsurprising to see shifts in what meat cuts made it into shopping baskets. Imported legs of lamb were removed to reflect low expenditure, whilst beef roasting joints were replaced with beef topside joints due to issues in distinguishing between meat cuts. This is also reflective of the fact that consumers are open to a wider variety of meat cuts, no doubt prompted by celebrity chefs. Meanwhile, the preference for locally sourced will undoubtedly have muted demand for imported items wherever possible.

The evolution of consumer shopping habits is critical for all consumer-focussed businesses. While these changes might be more reflective of the efforts to capture inflation more accurately, they send a clear message illustrating that consumer demand and taste are what ultimately determines growth.

Of course all of this pre-dates Covid-19, and the consumer desire to simply feed and look after the family in times of uncertainty is playing out strongly.No doubt, if the current buying trends continue, this will create a seismic shift in the next ONS Basket of Goods.

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Health, convenience and the environment shape the latest CPI basket of goods and services - Retail Times

By Robert Bernstein

SEC - A Viral Lecture: Understanding the World of Viruses and Outbreaks - Dr. Carolina Arias, Assistant Professor, UCSB Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology 3-11-20.

Dr Carolina Arias specializes in virus-host interactions in her UCSB research lab. We were fortunate that she was able to speak to us at the Science and Engineering Council about the current situation with the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Here are my photos from her talk.

Arias explained that we are exposed to viruses every day. They are constantly traveling the world. She expressed frustration that diseases like measles are on the rise due to misinformation by "anti-vaxxers".

She noted that Ebola is still happening. And she reminded us of the harm done by the Zika virus during its peak 2015-2017.

"Don't Panic!" That was her message that she took from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and wanted to convey to us.

Panic can be more damaging than the disease and it can make people do crazy things. We are seeing this now with the bizarre hoarding behavior in stores of items like toilet paper.

Arias offered this quote from two times Nobel Laureate Marie Curie: "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

Unfortunately, at this time we don't understand much. The situation is rapidly evolving. This virus was first discovered in December 2019.

So, what is a virus? Arias noted that she has two young children and they are constantly carrying them! A virus is a bit of genetic material encased by proteins.

She offered an image of an influenza virus.

Viruses are not living organisms. The Oxford English Dictionary says, "Life is the condition that distinguishes us from inorganic matter. The capacity for growth, reproduction and continual change preceding death."

Viruses need a host. Viruses are "obligate intracellular parasites". The virus hijacks the host cell to turn it into a virus factory. They are "pirates" of the cell and often kill the cell when they are done with it.

Viruses infect all kinds of organisms. Farm plants and animals, included. China last year had a pig virus that killed most of the pigs in China.

Have you ever seen a blue "roly poly" bug (or pillbug)? The blue is caused by an iridovirus that forms crystals on the surface.

Viruses can infect tobacco, yeasts, amoebas and bacteria. We are full of viruses that infect the bacteria in us. They outnumber the bacteria by ten to one.

Not all viruses cause disease.

Some viral diseases are common. For example, the common cold and herpes. Arias studies a specific herpes virus that infects the eye. The average adult gets 2-3 cases of the common cold each year. More for children.

We don't die of colds or herpes simplex.

Other viruses are rare. For example, rabies or West Nile Virus.

Sometimes, disease numbers rise in a certain area. This is called an "outbreak".

Last year there was a measles outbreak in Los Angeles County. One person exposed 500 people in a couple of classrooms. 100 of those could not show they had been vaccinated. It was controlled after it was identified.

Outbreaks can expand. An infected person may not be identified and may not seek medical attention.

An epidemic is defined as "an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time." A pandemic is an epidemic that has affected an entire country or the entire world.

As of March 11 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 is officially a pandemic. The day before it was officially calling it just an "outbreak"! Arias said that the delay in calling it a pandemic was more political than scientific.

What are coronaviruses? Coronaviruses are a large family that includes mild viruses like some common colds all the way to serious viruses like MERS.

20-30% of common colds are due to coronaviruses.

Despite some rumors, COVID-19 was not engineered in a lab! But some coronaviruses will mutate naturally.

The 2002 SARS outbreak was the first realization that coronaviruses could be serious. SARS had a 10% death rate. There were 8,000 cases of SARS. After containment there were no other cases except some sporadic ones.

The 2012-13 MERS outbreak was 30% fatal. There were 2,000 cases. Because it was so damaging to patients, most were in the hospital. They were able to infect some health care workers in the hospitals but they had little access to infecting others outside the hospitals.

COVID-19 is a bigger challenge because people can walk around infected for awhile without knowing they have it. Thereby infecting other members of the public.

This virus started out being called the "Wuhan Virus" because of where it was first observed. It was then called "Novel Coronavirus 2019". It is now called COVID-19, but the full official name is SARS-CoV-2. It is related to SARS. But it did not evolve naturally from SARS.

Coronaviruses can be spread by animals. COVID-19 started in an animal market in Wuhan, China. It began in bat populations. They don't die from it. They can in turn infect other animals that humans come in contact with more often.

In the case of SARS, the more common animal that was the intermediary was the civet cat in China. This animal was often eaten for food. The sale of civet cats was banned, but it continued in the black market.

MERS resides in dromedary camels. Human adult males are most likely to get MERS because of their interactions with these camels.

The current COVID-19 origin is still a mystery. We know it came specifically from the Wildlife Market in Wuhan. But the specific animal is not known. There was a rumor that pangolins were involved. That is now known to be incorrect.

COVID-19 is known to be carried by bats. That version is 96% similar to the human version. But the intermediary reservoir animal is not known.

The outbreak started close to New Year's Eve on December 31, 2019. It was observed to be a form of pneumonia with no known cause. The genome was sequenced and it was known in days to be a new coronavirus.

Looking back, we know that the first appearance of the first symptoms occurred in a patient in early December 2019.

Arias presented this timeline showing how fast this has happened: December 31 That mystery pneumonia January 7 Isolated with genome January 11 41 were known to be infected January 20 First US case January 30 WHO declared a Global Emergenc

Arias showed graphs of cases in China and outside China. Cases in China plateaued due to massive action there. But in the rest of the world it is still on the rise.

February 26 was the first US case of unknown origin, in California. This is worrisome because it means that people may carry it with little or no symptoms.

February 29 was the first US death.

March 6 Trump signed an $8 billion emergency spending bill. This should have happened earlier according to Arias.

The availability of tests affects reported cases. Testing will be based on symptoms, not on demand. Numbers are clearly not accurate now since so little testing has been done in the US.

COVID-19 is an RNA virus. This is error prone every time it replicates. Viruses don't care if lots of mistakes are made because so many are made. This makes it easy to trace by observing mutations. The rate of these mutations allows determination of how long it has been in a given population.

It is possible to look at the outer package of the COVID-19 virus to identify it.

California is one of the most affected states so far. Mostly in the north of the state so far. Washington State and New York State are also very much affected. It will keep spreading. As of the time of her talk, there were 1,000 US cases. 31 deaths. And 15 people who recovered.

The symptoms are fever, cough and shortness of breath. That is not very descriptive. Common influenzas have the same symptoms.

2-14 days after being infected the symptoms appear.

It can be caught by being within 3-6 feet of someone with an active fever for more than two minutes. It is spread by droplets from coughing from deep in the lungs.

Just touching someone is not immediately a problem. It has to enter your body through eyes, nose or mouth. This is why it is important to wash hands frequently. Hand sanitizer is an alternative if hand washing is not possible. We unconsciously touch our faces and that is the problem. It helps to make a conscious effort not to touch our faces, but hand washing is more effective in practice.

Droplets will settle on surfaces and can spread from there. Think of it like a bad version of influenza. Surfaces can be sanitized with Clorox or Lysol.

The main complication of COVID-19 is pneumonia.

Why is it so severe? Most viruses thrive in the upper respiratory tract. This is true for the common cold and most versions of influenza.

But COVID-19 only thrives deep inside the lungs, in the alveoli. That is what it targets. This is by definition a form of viral pneumonia. Antibiotics do nothing to help.

So far COVID-19 seems to have a 2% mortality rate. In comparison SARS was 9.6% and MERS was 34%.

Pre-existing conditions make a big difference in the mortality rate for COVID-19. It is just 0.9% with none. Being old is itself a risk factor in addition to specific conditions.

There are no vaccines for this virus, nor for most viruses. Nor are there any antiviral agents for this one. In the case of influenza, it is possible to take the antiviral Tamiflu within 48 hours and it will shorten the case by about one day. There are also antiviral agents for HIV, herpes and hepatitis C.

There is an attempt now to repurpose antivirals for this disease. One that is being studied is Remdesivir. But it won't be soon enough to stop the spread for now. It has to be studied to determine if it works. If it does anything bad. And if it can be used prophylactically or if it can only be used as a treatment.

A vaccine will take a year or more to develop.

There are "super responder" patients who get the disease quickly but also clear it quickly from their bodies. It is good to study such people to get a clue about treatment. This helped with Ebola.

With regard to face masks, she advises against using them if you are healthy. You will end up putting your hands to your face more often if you are wearing a mask. That actually increases your risk of infection. Masks can be helpful if they are worn by those who are already infected to keep them from infecting others.

"Social Distancing" is effective. Avoid being close to other people. Avoid hand shaking and other unnecessary contact.

If you have a fever you should contact your health care provider. 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit is the threshold of concern. If you have a fever, please stay home.

She trusts what Anthony Fauci is saying at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The CDC also offers advice on how to survive while staying home during a quarantine.

Children will be OK if they get this disease. But it is important to make sure they don't pass it along to older people who are at risk. The Swiss government opted to keep schools open so the kids are not going to stay with their grandparents!

There are many unknowns right now. We don't know how long it can be transmitted after a person has had it. It takes days to get test results even if one can get tested. It is not even known if getting the disease gives permanent immunity. And we don't know what are the long term effects on the lungs or the rest of the body from getting this disease.

Someone asked Dr Arias if she had a favorite science fiction movie that was related to epidemics. She said that in fact the movie "Outbreak" got her into the field!

In summary, she said: Wash your hands Protect others by staying home if you are sick Wear a mask to protect others Avoid groups and unnecessary touching of others And Don't Panic!

I will add that this presentation was provided by the Science and Engineering Council of Santa Barbara. They host monthly talks on local technical innovation as well as providing scholarships and other services to encourage young people to go into science and engineering careers.

Here is more information about the Science and Engineering Council:https://www.scieng.org/

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Understanding the World of Viruses and Outbreaks - Santa Barbara Edhat

FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE OF INDIA (CJI) MN VENKATACHALIAH needs no introduction. He served as the 25th CJI from February 12, 1993 to October 24, 1994. His tenure was marked by efforts to reduce pendency. An avid champion of human values and rights, he served as the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission. In 2000, he headed the national commission to review the working of the Constitution where he gave many valuable suggestions. Justice Venkatachaliah was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2004. Currently, he is the patron and guiding light of India Legal. He imparted his wisdom on many topicsthe judiciary, religion, Ayodhya, upbringing of childrento RAJSHRI RAI, MD, India Legal and Editor-in-Chief, APN NEWS. Excerpts from the interview:

People call you Non-age Narayan, a person who doesnt age. Once you told us that the secret of your youth is green tea and omega fatty acids. How do you keep yourself young and vibrant?

Once Sir Winston Churchill was asked what was the secret of his durability. He said enduring qualities of alcohol and tobacco. (laughs) I dont take alcohol, but this is perhaps pure Gods blessing that has given me longish life. Thats all I can say.

When you retired, you refused to take up any position offered to you by the government. Instead you said that you will study Indian spiritualism and religion. Tell us about that decision of yours.

I said I will study the Upanishads. I didnt want to take paid assignments or arbitration because I thought that the chief justice of India has some restrictions about his post-retirement options. I was sounded by the then prime minister whether I will accept the vice-presidentship of the country. One of his minister came here. I told him that the moment I signed this offer, I would bring the edifice of the Supreme Court several notches down. Therefore, I pleaded my inability to respond to that offer. Other judges can do arbitration. They are good people. But the CJI should keep away from it. This is my personal conviction.

As a patron of India Legal, how do you see its role in the field of legal journalism and what is your take on the current state of legal journalism in India?

Legal journalism has come of age. In England once photograph of three judges was published upside down and captioned three-old fools. That sort of journalism was always there in the West. The Indian press was very deferential to the judicial system. Punch, the comic journal of UK, never touched the judges except one or two occasion. In this country judiciary was treated as a sacred cow. Now judiciary is more open to scrutiny. That is good.

Do you think that India Legal is maintaining the standards of legal journalism?

Sometimes I think that India Legal is practising that virtue in excess. (laughs) Thats good. As long as it is bonafide. As every institution, the judiciary must also be open to external assessment. The judiciary must be open to assessment of its social relevance and utility.

Your tenure is best remembered for your initiative to enforce judicial accountability. You famously said that no one can watch a watchman. You said that the judiciary has to adopt a culture of accountability. Please elaborate.

My impression is judiciary down the years in India has been treated as a holy cow. but respect shouldnt generate immunity from criticism. This will bring irresponsibility in the system. We should constantly guard against it. If the judicial system fails, the whole democratic system fails. The problem in judiciary is in the lack of speed in the disposal of cases. We concentrated on the problem during my tenure. My team of judges did enormous work. They worked half an hour more daily. The result is for all to see.

From 1991 to 1998 in eight years the backlog of cases fell from four and a half lakhs to 19 thousand. People said that it is the most commendable work of any post-Independence institution. That was the collective work of all the judges. There were great judges in our time. I am not in touch with the system now but I can say that those years were very productive.

Pendency is a major problem facing Indias judicial system. We are badly understaffed in terms of judges. Now, with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other high-end technologies, will the judiciary embrace it to solve pendency?

Pendency is a serious problem plaguing our judicial system. There are 22,764 subordinate courts in the country. Each court lists around 60 case per day. Around one case per day is decided. There are 250 footfalls on the either side of advocates and clients. Multiply 22,764 by 300 footfalls everyday and then multiply that by 290 days of work. Then you will know the enormity in terms of loss of productivity and man hours. If you calculate it at the rate of Rs 300 per head, per day, it may amount to a lakh and fifty thousand crore rupees per year. This is the notional loss in addition to the actual expense involved in it.

Talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI), the scanner can read some four-lakh pages in about three to four minutes. But the language platform must be compatible with the material available in courts. Only then the advantage of AI solutions will accrue. AI has some limits but it can be done.

You were part of the group formed to review the working of the Constitution. What changes are you looking for in the Constitution?

We were part of the group which was formed to assess the Constitution. It was called the National Commission to Review the Working of the Indian Constitution. The Constitution provides the framework and if there is good and responsible governance, then the results of growth and development are visible. Take the example of Kerala where social indices have dramatically improved. For example, social welfare is exemplified in maternal mortality figures which have come down significantly.

You once said that you were the most unpopular chief justice ever. What did you mean by it?

A judge is unpopular in every sense. His views and world pictures somehow influences his decisions. Sometimes prejudices enter into his principles. So greater wisdom is expected of judges than mere technical knowledge and details. He should have an idea that into what kind of society he is administrating, what kind of system. We coin beautiful slogans, use expressions borrowed from foreign experience and try to incorporate them in our system. Indian predicament is totally different. It requires different solutions and one size doesnt fit all. There are regional differences, regional imbalances and what is needed is a kind of pervasive wisdom which can assess the utility of any system appropriate to any situation. That instinctively should develop in a judge. It is very difficult to straitjacket everything everything in one formula.

Somebody asked what does it take to be a Lord Chancellor. The answer was first and foremost he must be a gentleman. It doesnt matter if he knows a little also. So the importance of technical knowledge is being emphasised today. That also is important. Law is increasingly becoming a junior branch of economics. Economics is increasingly becoming a junior branch of technology. When explosion of technology is witnessed then all other systems also have to change to suit the demands of innovation. Thats why every institution requires introspection. Because the world is changing rapidly. It should also suit the mindset of the present generation. According to me, the present generation of Homo Sapiens is not a genetic descendent of caveman. It is a new specie in itself. It has immense potential. We are not able to imagine the magnitude of potential of the human brain. This is my take on how system should change to suit the present generation.

India is essentially a religious country. Does inculcation of scientific temper as envisaged in our Constitution preclude its religious ethos and practices?

You cant eliminate religion through scientific thinking. Science cant replace religion. Both have a unique place and can mutually coexist. Religious values are of paramount importance and we shouldnt abandon them. We should expose our children to religious values and traditions. Development of a scientific temper doesnt in any way rule out embracing religious values.

India is a land where diverse faiths have flourished. But now with modernisation and rapid social change, religious practices are being freely questioned and challenged in courts of law. Womens rights and essential religious practices are at odds. Sabarimala is a case in point. What is your view about it?

Cases involving questions of religion, essential religious practices and constitutional rights are being brought to courts more frequently. Its being seen as the rule of law versus tradition and cultural practices. Courts have been adjudicating such matters for some time now. Arguments in such cases should be televised live and people, especially children, should watch these proceedings. The bottomline is that we should value everything for the common good.

Our political system is under tremendous strain. Deviant political behaviour and electoral malpractices have created havoc in the system. What solution do you prescribe for the ills affecting the political system so that it becomes healthy once again?

BR Ambedkar once said: Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic. Democracy is a new soil and it has to be nurtured carefully. In India, strict electoral reforms are needed in order to overhaul the political system. Laws for the formation of political parties, funding and public scrutiny of the workings of political parties are needed. I worked along with a group to draft a model legislation to this effect. Sources of political funding should be revealed by proper audit. Cash and caste are a dangerous mix, and if used wrongly can ruin democracy. Dynastic politics should be done away with. Holding party presidentship on account of heredity is a crime. We have to bring changes in these areas. By political reform, we can nurture the soil of democracy and make it healthy and whole.

Today, the country is embroiled in controversies and conflicts related to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, sedition laws and the National Population Register. What is your take on these controversies?

Every nation has its laws and is free to enact them. If some apprehension has crept into the minds of a section of people regarding some law, then these fears need to be addressed. This can be best addressed by debate and discussion. You have to use the power of persuasion to show that nothing is intrinsically wrong with the laws. The apprehension that laws will be applied discriminately is probably creating problems.

We today operate in a polarised atmosphere. Conflict is common and often leads to violence. In such a strife-ridden atmosphere, the role of the police is often under the scanner, and when matters relating to communal conflict reach courts, questions get raised on the judgments. How justified is this?

We have to trust our judiciary and accept its decisions on critical issues. If we dont trust the judiciary, we will lose confidence in it and also in democracy. Judges are aware of both sides of the matter. They know what is horrific for the nation. Dont substitute their wisdom with your impositions. Let the system work.

The judiciary must interpret the law and apply the rule of law. It should do so without taking sides or taking personalities into consideration. That is the only way in which it can gain public confidence. We shouldnt depend on the judiciary for everything. It is a mark of a weak society. This will prevent people from settling disputes democratically. For the protection of human and fundamental rights, the judiciary is the best institution and we should trust it.

In times when executive action is found wanting in important areas of public concern and policy matters, the judiciary takes on a proactive role. This is often termed as judicial activism. This has been on the rise, and in many cases, led to a face-off with the executive. What are your views on this?

Judicial activism is a slippery slope. You are acting in an area where legislators or administrators should be doing their duty. You see somewhere and somehow some institutions are not performing their constitutional duties and obligations. Then the courts have to intervene. Someone else has to do the job so that the demand of the Constitution is met. The government has no choice. It has to take the decision of the court in a gracious way and work out democratic equality.

Going back in history, you were criticised for not acting to stop the appointment of a multi-member Election Commission and for allowing the symbolic kar seva in Ayodhya. Given a chance, would you have acted otherwise?

I dont think so. There are limits of judicial intervention. The courts can only instruct and set goals. It is the executive that has to execute the action plan. The court sets the objective, for example, protect the structure, but the executive has to perform, taking into account all the ground realities.

The Ayodhya judgment has now become a case study of sorts. It was not only one of the longest-running legal battles, but the judgment touched upon the sensitive issue of faith versus rule of law. How do you see the verdict in retrospect?

This case didnt turn on pure legal logic, but on the broader issue of national conciliation and consensus. There is a power peculiar to the Supreme Court under Article 142. It empowers the Court to pass such decree or order as may be necessary for doing complete justice between the parties. This power was invoked during the Ayodhya judgment. It was a broader exercise and not limited to mere determining of the legal rights of the land. It wasnt an emotional judgment, but based on wisdom.

You have given so many ideas to bring about reforms in the social, political, judicial and constitutional arena. Now, when optimism has become a political war cry and Prime Minister Modis slogan achhe din has been hailed as a game-changing mantra, when do you think the wait for better days will come?

For the judiciary, there will always be achhe din. This is because they take the responsibility to resolve tensions and help people carry on with their lives. They make the world a better place to live in. Its not their technicality but wisdom which we should respect. We should trust the Supreme Court.

In the past and in recent times, inter-community strife has led to bloodshed. Politicians indulging in hate-mongering have been let off without punitive action. In this context, the political class needs to be more responsible and responsive.

Political parties have the responsibility to evolve systems that go beyond their interests. They should sit together and evolve systems to improve electoral politics. Though the executive and the civil servant work in tandem, pressure is often brought on the bureaucracy by the political class to serve its interests. Hence, the executive and the civil services should be separate and there should be a buffer between them. Civil servants shouldnt be misused by the political class.

EVMs are seen as tools to correct electoral malpractices. Now a question mark is being raised over them also. Do you think EVMs are a good solution?

There is an expansive message in the paper trail of EVMs. By collaborative evidence, model statistical analysis and big data analysis, we can assess the degree of divergence. It is working quite well and the results are coinciding with exit polls. It is one of the tests. You cant achieve perfection in assessment but EVMs are better than paper ballots. I have seen bunches of paper ballots being manipulated. They are not reliable and are more open to mischief than EVMs. The paper trail analysis is significant. Some margin of error is all right.

Swami Vivekananda said that if you are very logical, you cant be spiritual. What is your view on this?

Vivekananda says so many things beautifully. He talks about evolution and not revolution. He talks about diversity of religious traditions and the need for coexistence. Vivekananda stresses unity of religious values and their integration. He doesnt talk about one religion for all, rather, to each according to his own is his motto. This is relevant for our times.

The new generation is very attached to the internet which has become the primary mode of knowledge transmission and interaction. However, the State has clamped down on the internet in troubled times. In this context, the Supreme Court recently held that access to the internet is a fundamental right.

We are now thinking of its ill-effects and potential for misuse. The internet is one of the greatest inventions mankind has seen, almost next to the railroad. If the question is how to protect children from its ill-effects, the answer lies in the fact that the internet is a protection against itself. There lies a way in which the internet can be manipulated to prevent unwanted information reaching children or vulnerable groups. AI is exciting. It is based on logic and logic is a friend of justice. Humanity has a lot to look forward to. Spirituality and human evolution are taking an upward course.

Can you expand on the underpinnings of the judgment on internet access and its importance?

Times have changed. Access to the internet is equated with the right to information, the right to knowledge. It is an attribute of the human being or human personality. Internet access can be abused, but then everything can be abused.

Social media has the potential for misuse. With current cyber laws, are we ready to regulate the internet?

No, we are not conscious of the magnitude of the problem or the ill-effect it can produce. Take a kitchen knife. It can cut vegetables and it can injure a human being. Science is like that. The nuclear bomb killed millions but when nuclear science was used for medicine or constructive purposes, it enhanced the quality of life. How to minimise bad effects and maximise good effects depends on the genius of the man.

Religion seems to have become a divisive tool and much hatred is being generated in its name. Is the political system to be blamed for this?

Religion per se doesnt divide. No religion says that. Some religious practices are peculiar to a certain social context and when seen without that context, they are construed to be divisive. Nothing should be seen outside context. When we understand this, then the message of religious traditions is properly understood. We should also assess the potential of science and governance. Today, human dignity is coming centre-stage. The great challenge before todays political leadership is how to mobilise positive forces for the good of one and all. Political leadership has the immense task of synthesising the positive forces and taking it forward. That can be done by the right-thinking sections of society. It is possible that some day, science will lead to that. Internet, AI will do that. Perhaps God will be made manifest by the scientist. Scientists will place before us the conception of God.

Today, everyone has a mobile phone and this can cause mischief. Have we not properly harnessed the mobile phone revolution?

A hand-held mobile phone is a symbol of immense social and technological change. We not only communicate through it but also access information and control devices. The responsibility to use it correctly lies with the individual.

Finally, what message would you like to give our readers?

Give kindness and understanding to one and all. Admire people who do good and can change the world. Take care of children. Make them good citizens with beautiful, blossoming minds. Give them positive thoughts. I am the founding chairman of Sarvodaya International Trust. It is a beautiful institution. We encourage that each Hindu boy should have a Muslim friend and vice versa. The families of boys meet every three months and this promotes mutual understanding and communal harmony. It is this spirit which we should promote in society. Be positive. Things will happen. There is so much of beauty and goodness in the world.

You are the patron of India Legal. What would you like to say to us?

India Legal is providing substantial leadership and it will contribute in making a better future. It is examining critically every issue. Critical analysis is the foundation of progress. The India Legal conclaves are beautifully arranged. People who have participated in them are eminent personalities. The thoughts expressed by them are so relevant. There is no negative thinking about the society. Thirty thousand years back, we were cavemen. Now we are civilised. We are constantly evolving as human beings. People who constitute India Legal have great responsibility for bringing an era of peace, contentment and progress. We should aim for a society where everybody is happy and well looked after. We should aim for creating a society where everyone gets the best opportunity to develop ones higher self. India Legal should aid this process.

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The Judiciary Makes the World a Better Place to Live In: Former CJI MN Venkatachaliah - India Legal

But hes not always sure. Admitting that the neurophysical facts shed only a monochrome light on human experience, he extols art as another dimension. We gain access to worlds otherwise uncharted, he says. As Proust emphasized, this is to be celebrated. Only through art, he noted, can we enter the secret universe of another, the only journey in which we truly fly from star to star, a journey that cannot be navigated by direct and conscious methods.

Two main themes run through this story. The first is natural selection, the endless inventive process of evolution that keeps molding organisms into more and more complex arrangements and codependencies. The second is what Greene calls the entropic-two step. This refers to the physical property known as entropy. In thermodynamics it denotes the amount of heat wasted energy inevitably produced by a steam engine, for example as it goes through its cycle of expansion and contraction. Its the reason you cant build a perpetual motion machine. In modern physics its a measure of disorder and information. Entropy is a big concept in information theory and black holes, as well as in biology.

We are all little steam engines, apparently, and everything we accomplish has a cost. That is why your exhaust pipe gets too hot to touch, or why your desk tends to get more cluttered by the end of the day.

In the end, Greene says, entropy will get us all, and everything else in the universe, tearing down what evolution has built. The entropic two-step and the evolutionary forces of selection enrich the pathway from order to disorder with prodigious structure, but whether stars or black holes, planets or people, molecules or atoms, things ultimately fall apart, he writes.

In a virtuosic final section Greene describes how this will work by inviting us to climb an allegorical Empire State Building; on each floor the universe is 10 times older. If the first floor is Year 10, we now are just above the 10th (10 billion years). By the time we get to the 11th floor the sun will be gone and with it probably any life on Earth. As we climb higher we are exposed to expanses of time that make the current age of the universe look like less than the blink of an eye.

Eventually the Milky Way galaxy will fall into a black hole. On about the 38th floor of the future, when the universe is 100 trillion trillion trillion years old, protons, the building blocks of atoms, will dissolve out from under us, leaving space populated by a thin haze of lightweight electrons and a spittle of radiation.

In the far, far, far, far future, even holding a thought will require more energy than will be available in the vastly dissipated universe. It will be an empty and cold place that doesnt remember us. Nabokovs description of a human life as a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness may apply to the phenomenon of life itself, Greene writes.

In the end it is up to us to make of this what we will. We can contemplate eternity, Greene concludes, and even though we can reach for eternity, apparently we cannot touch eternity.

Original post:
Just a Few Billion Years Left to Go - The New York Times

Did you know TNW Conference has a track fully dedicated to bringing the biggest names in tech to showcase inspiring talks from those driving the future of technology this year?Tim Leberecht, who authored this piece, is one of the speakers.Check out the full Impact program here.

If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, dont snuff it out, dont be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than wed want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything what a waste!

These are the words of theclosing monologue of the movieCall Me By Your Name(based on the namesake book by Andre Aciman); the monologue of the father, Mr. Perlman, who assures his son Ellio of the inconceivable magnitude of emotions, insisting that even the most conflicted ones are better than none.

These lines could not be more timely. We have begun to realize that feeling more not only makes for richer lives but is also the best antidote to a world of self-optimization and efficiency, in other worlds, a world of machines.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, Alibaba co-founder and executive chairmanJack Mamade the case for investing in our emotional capacities and even proposed a love quotient. Management thinkers believe that socio-emotional skills are going to be a key asset in tomorrows marketplace, simply because tasks requiring operational excellence and efficiency are likely to be performed much more effectively by AI and robots. Emotions, however, remain a human bastion. Our very weakness is our strength.

In a 2016survey, the World Economic Forum ranked socio-emotional skills as increasingly critical for future career success. Business schools are adjusting their curricula to include them, and private educational institutions such asThe School of Lifehave made it their mission to teach them.

Read: [Humility, trust, and empathy: The skills needed to work with robots]

And yet, despite our most ambitious efforts to demystify them, emotions remain utterly mysterious and elusive. They are better felt than explained, better portrayed often through works of arts than analyzed. We dont understand them unless we feel them, and feeling them, of course, is the very blind spot that may prevent us from ever objectively understanding them.

There even appears to be some confusion as to what counts as human emotion and what does not, and which of our emotions are distinctive. For a considerable period of time, common wisdom held that there is a base set of six classic emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad. But in 2014, a study by theInstitute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgowclaimed there are only four basic emotions happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted. Ah, wouldnt life be easy and yet oh-so-boring if that were the case!?

However, in 2017, a new study by theProceedings of National Academy of Sciencessuggested that there are as many as 27 different categories of emotions, and that they in fact occur along a gradient and are not sharply distinguishable or mutually exclusive. This new set of emotions ranges from admiration, adoration, awe, and surprising outliers such as aesthetic appreciation, to envy, excitement, horror, and empathetic pain to equally unexpected contenders such as nostalgia, romance, or triumph.

Looking at this comprehensive list, a few emotions stand out. One wonders whether romance is an emotion or a feeling, an interpretation of an emotion, or simply a way to relate to the world. Similarly, the omission of loneliness is glaring, although in this case, too, one could argue that it is a feeling, not an emotion. Per neuroscientistDr. Sarah McKays definition, feelings aremental experiences of body states, which arise as the brain interprets emotions, themselves physical states arising from the bodys responses to external stimuli. Yet the line between the two remains blurry.

Moreover, some emotions may not have been listed because they areculturally unique, e.g.Schadenfreude, the very German joy over another persons mishap or misfortune. Or these Bantu, Taglog, and Dutch terms:mbuki-mvuki the irresistible urge to shuck off your clothes as you dance kilig the fluttering feeling as you talk to someone to whom you are attracted oruitwaaien the refreshing effects of taking a walk in the wind. Others that were included in the list such as triumphappear to be a temporary sign of our times more than a fixed emotion: in our winner-takes-all societies, winning is arguably the one emotion that is putting all the others in second place. The winner feels it all.

How will digital technology, specifically AI and robotics, affect our emotions?

Researchers have long studied our emotional relationship to machines. Numerousstudieshave proven that we quickly form emotional attachments to robots, and it might indeed be worthwhile exploring which social skills we need in order to collaborate with them.

So-called Artificial Emotional Intelligence (AEI), advanced by firms such asAffectiva,Emotient(acquired by Apple), andEmotion Research Lab, now seeks to analyze our emotions by scanning our facial expressions and body language. From studyingMark Zuckerbergs behavior during the congressional hearingsto the use for candidate assessments in job interviews (HireVue), AEI, like any technology, can be used for benevolent and malicious purposes, from boosting our emotional intelligence to manipulating and emotion-engineering us as citizens and consumers, from helping autistic children recognize their emotions (see, for example, theKaspar project) topenalizing us at the workplace for not being happy.

Empathetic robots occur at the timely convergence of two trends: empathy and AI. As we fear the loss of civility and with xenophobia, racism, and nationalism on the rise in many liberal societies, empathy has become a hot topic, and initiatives to muster it range from podcasts with those who are not like us or even bully us (e.g.Conversations with People Who Hate Me) toMITs Deep Empathyinitiative orGoogles Empathy Lab, to using VR and other immersive technologies as the great empathy machines.

At this yearsConsumer Electronics Showin Las Vegas, several robots were exhibited that can apply empathy and emotional intelligence toward their human user, e.g. the social robot Buddy; the table-tennis playing Forpheus that can read its opponents body language to anticipate their moves; or Pepper, which is capable of interpreting a smile, a frown, your tone of voice, as well as the lexical field you use and non-verbal language such as the angle of your head, according to its manufacturer, SoftBank. InJapan, a society with an aging population, empathetic robots like Paro, applied in elderly care, are becoming a mainstream phenomenon.

Analyst firmGartnerrecently predicted that by 2022 smart machines will understand our emotions better than our close friends and relatives, which of course is an outrageous claim, as the ethnographerJonathan Cookhas pointed out: The more certain research firms claim to be in their ability to measure emotion with quantitative precision, the more incompetent they are likely to actually be at accomplishing the task because they have lost touch with what emotion actually is, he writes.

And yet, the question remains: If robots become better at reading and responding to our human emotions, could technological advances in AI and robotics lead to the emergence of new emotions that were not only previously unmeasured, unnamed, and unidentified, but also un-felt?

You could argue that all possible human emotions have always been present and that we just lacked the words to describe them and only over time simply refined our understanding of them. But there are good arguments for accepting the notion of a history of emotions, the belief that emotions, like our bodies and cognitive abilities, have evolved over time as well, in response to everchanging environments and social stimuli.

Piotr Winkielman and Kent Berridge, psychologists at the UC San Diego and the University of Michigan, conducted an experiment in 2014 in which they showed participants sad and happy faces in such fast order that these had no conscious awareness of seeing any faces at all. When participants were asked afterward to drink a new lemon-lime beverage, those who had subliminally been exposed to the happy faces rated the drink better and also drank more of it than the others. The researchers took this as evidence to suggest the existence of unconscious emotions: feelings we have without actually feeling them. Evolutionarily speaking, the ability to have conscious feelings is probably a late achievement, they concluded. In other words, asentimental education, the education of our hearts, may indeed have been an accomplishment of civilization, a blessing and curse of modern man alike.

Aside from our consciousness of emotions, evolution may have caused new emotions to form. Take envy, and specifically status envy, as a more recent phenomenon, as a product of the industrial revolution and growing consumerism in developed countries. Envy necessitates a materialistic culture. Envy, if you will, is the refined, commoditized version of jealousy. It describes the disappointment and humiliated self that doesnt possess or receive what another one does, a self that finds itself excluded from the marketplace and not able to participate in the transaction.

The natural companion to envy in todays experience economy isFOMO the Fear-Of- Missing-Out. This fear is about missing out onexperience: it is a preemptive fear of loss as much as it is an envy for anothers, possibly richer and more rewarding experience. Ultimately, FOMO is a fear of dying dying without having lived.

While FOMO is its perverse version, boredom is the realhorror vacui. At first glance, it seems like an increasingly precious good. In fact, boredom might become extinct because of the proliferation of smart phones and other devices that deprive us of any vacant moment in time. However, due to automation and the loss of traditional employment, many of us will face more unstructured time in the future and will need help to combat the numbness of boredom as it engulfs our lives.

At the TED conference this year, science writerJessa Gambleheld a fascinating workshop on awe, an emotion triggered, by say, entering the St. Peters Basilica or experiencing the vastness of a desert.

Gamble referenced Stanford researcherMelanie Ruddwho studied the effects of awe on consumer behavior and claims that after feeling awe we tend to choose experiential goods like a movie over material goods like clothes. She further concludes that it also makes us more willing to volunteer in our communities. It looks like we need not only citizenship classes but also experiences of awe to build more civil societies.It is important though to note that awe empowers and disempowers at once. It makes us bigger and smaller. Gamble pointed out that the smaller self was both a prerequisite and consequence of awe: awe overpowers the self. That is both inspiring and humbling.

This very sentiment is at work in our relationship to AI and robots: we are in awe of them, which means, we are enamored and terrified at the same time. The uncanny valley a term used to describe the creepiness of an AI that is nearly fully artificial nor fully flesh, that is arrested at the blurry border between robotic and human, just humanoid enough to trigger our perception of human derangement will be our constant state for the foreseeable future.

It is this tension, this kind of contradictory feeling, that might serve as a blueprint for the future of emotions. The range of what we feel may increase, and it will be less and less binary. Even our language will have to catch up and come up with neologisms expressing this ambivalence. As always, the Germans are especially skilled at inventing new verbs, just consider Verschlimmbessern (which, loosely translated, means making something significantly worse by trying to make it incrementally better).

On the one hand, we are witnessing a radicalization of our emotions, as they are fleeing to the extreme edges (most of us will nod their heads in response to a book title like Pankaj Mishras The Age of Anger); on the other hand, our emotions are becoming more mixed, more conflicted, with different kinds of emotions overlaying each other.

At the same time, the volatility and complexity of our digital times are popularizing emotional states that are simple and balanced, such as mindfulness or the Japanese concept ofikigaithat is attracting more and more followers in the Western world. The Japanese island of Okinawa, whereikigaihas its origins, is said to be home to the largest population of centenarians in the world, and one of the allures of ikigai is the promise of longevity.Ikigaiis the convergence of four primary elements: What you love (your passion), what the world needs (your mission), what you are good at (your vocation), and what you can get paid for (your profession).

Ikigai is similar to the Western concept of purpose that has emerged as the holy grail of organizational and personal transformation. Whats your purpose? as a brand, company, individual, and even nation is the biggest and yet the smallest question everybody is happy to ask and only rarely really able to answer, despite an army of consultants and agencies devoted to it. It is not an entirely new concept. The American philosopher and civil rights leader Howard W. Thurman put it best: Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Mindfulness, ikigai, or purpose are neither emotions nor feelings they are techniques to help us restore balance as our emotions become more extreme and tools to help us refine how we manage them.

Naturally, emotions, too, are affected by the digitization, the atomization of our lives. In our fast-paced daily interactions, micro-aggressions the subtle humiliation by a cranky waiter can sour our mood as much as moments of micro-attachment the smile of a stranger on the subway can make our day. It appears that were transitioning from one emotional state to another much more quickly (the psychologist Susan David has coined the term emotional agility to pinpoint a new skill we must develop to cope with this phenomenon), that were losing the middle ground, the common thread, as well as the stability and continuity of long-term relationships. Instead, we are satisfying our emotional needs either through the instant kicks of the dopamine economy online, little escapisms (social media, gaming, movies, travel), or big ones: assuming an alternate identity, an avatar, a fluid self.

This virtualization of our selves may ultimately lead to the virtualization of our emotions, too, with us going from experiencing age-old emotions in new virtual environments to experiencing new emotions in digital or at least partly digital interactions, to full-on surrogate emotions, digital placeholders of the real thing: fake intimacy, virtual grief, and so on.

Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who builds humanoid robots and was recently portrayed in this rivetingWired story,is convinced that human emotions are nothing more than responses to external stimuli. David Levy, in his seminal 2007 book,Love and Sex With Robots, subscribes to this point of view: If a robot behaves as though it has feelings, can we reasonably argue that it does not? He argues that human emotions are no less programmed than those of an AI: We have hormones, we have neurons, and we are wired in a way that creates our emotions. Levy projects that roughly by the year 2050 humans will want robots as friends, sexual partners, and even spouses.

This raises some big questions: Will it matter if our human emotions are increasingly manipulated by smart algorithms or even un-real, or does it suffice that wefeelthem? Have emotions ever been pure and can they? Arguably, weve never had much control over them. Emotions are never fully ours rather, despite our insisting on their private nature, theyre part of the public commons and some sort of open-sourced software. And yet, so much of what we feel we are incapable of sharing. We seem to lack the full code for unlocking it, which causes great frustration and a great desire to overcome it. Perhaps, in the future, hacking our brains may involve hacking our emotions, too. Technology may allow us to (re-)mix our emotions together with those of others, as the ultimate form of deep connection.

What makes us human is our proclivity to fall for the other: somebody who is not us, something beyond our control, greater than ourselves. We cant help but be drawn to persons, objects, or experiences that promise us new emotions, new sensations, new highs and lows, new joy and happiness, but also new heartbreak and suffering.

Although we are calling them by our name (Alexa, Buddy, Sophia, Kaspar, Samantha, Erica.), as a mirror of ourselves, the AI bots remain elusive. They are the enigmatic other, the greatest desire of all, the ultimate romance. If they can help us feelmoreand feel new emotions, and if we refine these emotions through more advanced emotional intelligence, with the arts and humanities as our interpreters, then the very machines that are growing adept at analyzing and manipulating how we feel will ensure that we stay a step ahead of them.

This article was originally published by Tim Leberecht, an author, entrepreneur, and the co-founder and co-CEO of The Business Romantic Society, a firm that helps organizations and individuals create transformative visions, stories, and experiences. Leberecht is also the co-founder and curator of the House of Beautiful Business, a global think tank and community with an annual gathering in Lisbon that brings together leaders and changemakers with the mission to humanize business in an age of machines.

Read next: The sustainability of wearables will depend on how we use them

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Human emotions must adapt to thrive in the machine age - TNW

CHARLESTON West Virginia is on the list of prospective sites for Virgin Hyperloop Ones Hyperloop Certification Center, according to a company representative.

While the company is still eying several states as potential homes for the research and development center, a team of West Virginia officials has been working to try to bring the revolutionary transportation technology to the Mountain State.

Kristen Hammer, business development manager for Virgin Hyperloop One, said the company is in the process of whittling down its list.

We are very conscious to make this a very thoughtful process in general, she said. We dont want to be like some other companies that may have made less friends and more enemies in their process, because realistically whoever we dont build the Certification Center with, we still like to talk about building commercial hyperloop routes with. Its a lot of relationship building for us.

The state that is ultimately chosen will be in line for training and employment opportunities, Hammer said.

Theres a lot of good things for the region and the community (we choose), she said.

This kind of becomes a hub of hyperloop technology, wherever we build it. A lot of places like West Virginia understand that is a really exciting thing for the state and the region, she said.

Leadership from Virgin Hyperloop One recently made a second trip to the Mountain State for a series of scheduled meetings with multiple groups of stakeholders.

Company officials met with representatives from West Virginia Universitys Vantage Ventures, representatives from the offices of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and officials from Marshall University.

Company officials also met with state officials, including leadership in the state Development Office, National Guard, Department of Environmental Protection, Tourism Office, Department of Revenue, the Higher Education Policy Commission and the Community and Technical College System.

Gov. Jim Justice said he was excited to welcome Virgin Hyperloop Ones team back to West Virginia.

I directed members of my Cabinet to be on hand to answer any of their questions and to show them our West Virginia hospitality, Justice said. My entire administration is committed to helping Virgin Hyperloop One explore all that the Mountain State has to offer, and we hope and pray that West Virginia will become their next almost heaven home.

Hyperloop is an emerging mode of high-speed mode of transportation that involves moving people and goods in pods through a vacuum tube, using magnetic and electronic propulsion technology to reach travel speeds in excess of 600 miles per hour.

Its kind of the next evolution from high-speed rail, Hammer said.

The technology has zero direct-carbon emissions and is fully autonomous and enclosed, Hammer said.

The concept and technologies involved in hyperloop are still currently in early development and testing phases.

The Hyperloop Certification Center would work to establish regulatory standard to allow Virgin to continue its work perfecting the technology.

The concept that has become hyperloop dates back to the early 20th century.

In 1909, rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard proposed a vacuum train very similar in to the Hyperloop, and in 1972, the RAND Corporation conceived a supersonic underground railway called the Vactrain.

Tesla Inc. and SpaceX founder Elon Musk reintroduced the idea in 2013 with the publication of his Hyperloop Alpha white paper and Virgin Hyperloop One was founded a year later.

According to Jordan Damron, a communications official with Justices office, the governor has been interested in the Virgin Hyperloop One project since November, when company officials first visited the state.

During the November meeting Justice said landing the Hyperloop Certification Center could have enormous potential for the Mountain State.

We have really changed in this state from being the end of a bunch of bad jokes to where were now working to become a leader in innovation, Gov. Justice said. Think about it: you have Virgin Hyperloop One here in West Virginia today because they are interested in us. We could never thank you or appreciate you enough.

Justice was joined at the November meeting by top cabinet leaders from the State Department of Commerce, Department of Revenue, Department of Transportation, Department of Environmental Protection and the West Virginia National Guard to meet with company leaders and get a feel for what it would take to locate the HCC facility in West Virginia.

Weve brought all the kings horses and the kings men to answer any of your questions and let you see just how committed we are to exploring this incredible opportunity, Justice said.

Since then, the governor has remained in contact with Virgin Hyperloop One leadership and even wrote a letter to CEO Jay Walder in December, Damron said.

In his letter, the governor told Hyperloop officials that he has directed all Cabinet secretaries and other state leaders to be completely accessible. He also pledged to personally work with the company to provide access to our local, state and federal leaders, Damron said. West Virginias federal delegation has also been assisting in clearing pathways for the company to have the bandwidth they need to operate as efficiently as possible.

Senior Staff Writer Charles Young can be reached at 304-626-1447 or cyoung@theet.com

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WV on the list for potential Virgin Hyperloop site - WV News

February 19, 2020 Columns By John Sullivan Baker | February 19, 2020

Cornellians crave order. Our campus teems with neurotic overachievers who meticulously plan their days, their semesters and their careers. But Cornell, an inherently disorderly institution, often leaves these order-seekers wanting.

Cornells disorganization might be most evident in its campus landscape; to the chagrin of many, the buildings that form the East Hill skyline are a seemingly incoherent mishmash of architectural styles. But we should value Cornells architectural hodgepodge, as it reflects our identity as a non-pretentious college, (as historian Morris Bishop 13, Ph.D. 26 put it), and embodies the once-radical principles that have guided the university for more than 150 years.

As Andrew Dickson White, Cornells co-founder and first president, dreamt of a uniquely American university worthy of the state and nation, he imagined air castles on queenly site above New Yorks fairest lake. His vision was a self-conscious one; his institution would rival the great universities of Europe, with towers as dignified as those of Magdalen and Merton and quadrangles as beautiful as those of Jesus and St. John. And, of course, it would have a lofty campanile . . . a clock tower looking proudly down the slope, over the traffic of the town, and bearing a deep-toned peal of bells.

But White would be forced to compromise. Alas! he wrote, I could not reproduce my air-castles. The founders lacked the time and money to fulfill Whites dream of a Gothic campus, and, in any case, frugal Ezra Cornell, according to architectural historian Kermit J. Parsons, was not particularly concerned with innovation in building style or arrangement. So Cornells first buildings, Morrill Hall and White Hall, would be, in Whites words, simple, substantial, and dignified, and built from inexpensive, sturdy and locally-quarried Ithaca bluestone. Though these unexciting, get-the-job-done structures just met Whites minimum standards, they were far from ideal campus buildings; Goldwin Smith, whose namesake building would face Stone Row from across the Arts Quad, once opined that nothing can redeem [Morrill, McGraw, and White] but dynamite.

In 1891, with the construction of McGraw Tower, White got his wish for a proud campanile, a vaguely Italian bell tower that would come to define our university. Later, in 1906, nearly 40 years after the 1868 opening of both Morrill Hall and Cornell University, White would celebrate the opening of Goldwin Smith Hall, whose towering columns and dominant presence gave it European-style gravitas. And though Gothic Baker Tower and Founders Hall would be constructed on West Campus near the end of Whites life, his vision was left only partially fulfilled. An ambitious plan to expand the Gothics to cover a wide swath of West Campus never came to fruition.

Though a campus dominated by Oxford-style air castles would be a breathtaking sight, its for the best that White was disappointed. Cornell, needless to say, is not Oxford, and the British institutions beautiful yet ostentatiously elitist architectural aesthetic would be out of step with the egalitarian, populist principles on which Cornell was founded. Some ostentation is a good thing; in moderate doses, it commands respect, especially when balanced with the plain yet confident utilitarianism of buildings like the Libe Slope bluestones, but it shouldnt dominate.

Architecturally uniform universities that cling too tightly to traditional conventions can project a disconcerting sense of institutional insecurity, something Cornell, as Ive previously argued in these pages, needs to kick. A few years ago, I visited a well-regarded public institution in my home state of Ohio, nearly all of whose buildings, whether historical or modern, had been designed in the same Georgian Revival style yes, I did have to look this up. Though I was able to take plenty of nice pictures, the campus made me uncomfortable; the quads were a little too perfect, so close to the collegiate ideal that I wondered if the school was compensating for something. It seemed painfully evident that the midwestern institution self-consciously sought to appropriate the Colonial-Era gravitas (or pretension) of the oldest Eastern universities.

Cornells disorderliness, on the other hand, suggests the campus has evolved naturally and un-self-consciously, even if Whites original vision was a deeply intentional invocation of the aesthetic spirit of Europe. Instead of appropriating another schools architectural tone, Cornell blazed its own path, incorporating traditional styles from the Gothics to Willard Straight to Myron Taylor alongside groundbreaking modern architecture from the Johnson Museum to Gates Hall to the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library.

In doing so, Cornell has paid homage to the traditions of the ancient European universities and their Colonial-Era American heirs, while simultaneously asserting its identity as an institution determined to defy social convention and upend educational norms. Cornells mold-breaking campus landscape suits an institution committed since the 1800s to coeducation, non-sectarianism, racial integration, pedagogical innovation, academic freedom and responsibility and the pursuit of useful if unglamorous practical studies. These commitments sound standard today, but only because the rest of academia has evolved to catch up with Ezras institution; at the time of its founding, Cornell was nothing short of a radical experiment.

And because Cornell is a school thats never played it safe, its produced boldly awful but lovable buildings that define the campus experience. The view from Uris Hall is beautiful because you cant see Uris Hall, Ives is the labyrinthine high school/prison fusion no one ever asked for and the freshmen condemned to the low rises would probably be better off living in tents. And yet these buildings glaring flaws keep us tethered to reality in an ivory tower that can breed arrogance. Its tough to let your Ivy League status go to your head when youre lost for the 6th time on the way to your 10:10 a.m. ILR class or youre sweating bullets in Ithacas oppressive September heat because your allegedly riot-proof dorm doesnt have air conditioning.

Finally, Cornells juxtaposition of the old and new can symbolize our universitys social and moral evolution. Most notably, the symbiotic relationship between sleekly modern Klarman Hall and staidly traditional Goldwin Smith Hall is a manifestation of progressive poetic justice. Prof. Goldwin Smith, the 19th-century academic celebrity whose reputation and wealth helped establish Cornell as an elite institution, was once dubbed the most vicious anti-Semite in the English-speaking world and was a prolific author of racist anti-Jewish tirades. Seth Klarman 79, the billionaire benefactor who funded the construction of his namesake building attached to Goldwin Smith Hall, is one of Americas most successful Jewish businessmen. Though Smith contributed a great deal to Cornell, his noxious racism was an affront to the radically tolerant ideals of nonsectarianism and racial integration on which this university was founded. By contrast, Klarman Hall, whose bright, open spaces reflect the welcoming spirit that should define a progressive university, is a symbol of our universitys values and a repudiation of Smiths vile ideology.

Whether you embrace the Cornellian hodgepodge or seethe at its disorderliness, theres no doubt the words of our alma mater ring true. Reared against the arch of heaven, looks she proudly down.

John Sullivan Baker is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He can be reached at jsullivanbaker@cornellsun.com. Regards to Davy runs every other Tuesday this semester.

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SULLIVAN BAKER | Our Campus is an Architectural Hodgepodge. We Should Treasure It. - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

Going to Australia in January for a family wedding gave us an opportunity to see some of the animals that represent earlier stages of mammal evolution.

Observing the living fossils of early mammals and seeing my nephew make a conscious choice to marry and continue our branch of the human species made me think of the Roman god Janus. He was the god of gates and doors who had two faces looking in opposite directions. He could see both the past and the future.

Australia broke away from the other continents first carrying a variety of animals with it about 175 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. Before that break, geologists believe that all the continents were together in one supercontinent called Pangaea near the equator.

There in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras dinosaurs roamed the earth, and mammals were just emerging.

Many of the curious creatures shown on the news during Australias fires last December are marsupials. They have a pouch where their developing young can nurse in a protected place until they are ready to survive on their own. These little joeys can go out and back as they get grow stronger. The best known Australian marsupials are Kangaroos.

We were able to walk among midsized Kangaroos and Wallabies at the Cleland Wildlife Park run by the Department of Water and Natural Resources near Adelaide, Australia.

They came up to visitors for food, and they would allow us to touch them gently. Although their large hind legs were great for jumping, they were very awkward and ineffective for walking on all fours. When the Roos stood on their back legs and held up their small front arms, I wondered if they were an experimental evolutionary species preparing for us to stand on two legs.

Modern Australia is about the size of the United States, and much of the land is sandy or rocky desert near the center of the continent. The green coastal areas support most of the wildlife. The Eucalypt Forests along the eastern coast line are home to the furry Koala. They are marsupials, and they are not carnivorous like true bears. They live in Eucalypt trees and eat the leaves staying in the trees most of the time.

The Koala are endangered by the spread of Chlamydia, a venereal disease that causes the females to become sterile. The remaining healthy Koalas were on Kangaroo Island, and many of them died in the recent fires. Australian nature preserves are working to find ways to treat the disease to save some of these animals.

Animal lore to be continued next week.

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