5G is Here

I downloaded a full-length feature film in one-and-a-half seconds, just the way the Captains of Telecom Industry had been promising. And it came in all of its 8K glory with Dolby Atmos sound and subscripts in fifty languages. Subscripts in fifty languages! That was a bonus - something the Tech Masters forgot to mention.

So I pushed my luck further - tried to download a few more 8K full-length movies. My cellphone storage soon overflowed, its motherboard melted and drained out of the dynamic island that had a thoughtfully placed hole just for this purpose. Oops, that was the 200MP camera. I then decided to upgrade my kit. Got a new 5G xPhone Pro Max Doubleplus with a full TeraByte of storage and pushed my luck even further - downloaded 60 full length 8K movies in 90 seconds (1.5 seconds each, remember?) with VR interactive interface, where you can tell Ranbir Kapoor to let go of the trident and go wear diapers. The phone storage overflowed again. The phone didn’t melt, but was hot enough to fry an egg on. So hot that I dropped it and its VICTA glass screen shattered into nano-diamonds that I sent to carborundum guys to make grinding wheels with.

Yet my exploration of the ultrafast, superhigh-bandwidth, imperceptibly low-latency technology was only scratching the surface. So I decided to upgrade my man pad further. I got four thousand hard disc drives of 6TB each from Nehru Place. I got a massive discount with which I will buy a new tortoise shell comb sometime later. Then I got some ten thousand kilometers of special low-loss cables to connect all these HDDs to a central switch. GISCO helped me steal the special switch from their only installation at the All-Visible-Universe Weather Forecasting Superstation. Poor fellas, they are back to measuring PM2.5 in Okhla again.

I then got down to downloading all the movies available on Earth and on Trisolaris, and downloaded fifty seven thousand six hundred full length 8K movies in eighty six thousand four hundred seconds of the day. All the birds nearby fell down from the sky upon the spinning of four thousand magnetic discs that disoriented their navigation. Next time I will buy only SSDs, I promise.

Now, I have about one lakh fifteen thousand two hundred hours of movies at my disposal - just about thirteen years of continuous viewing, no meal and toilet breaks. Popcorn is on me. Please come over.

                                                 —ooo—

2+2 Always Equals 4

In my school WhatsApp group, just like yours, there are old friends of all hues, moods, and temperaments. During one of the idle discussions a friend got peeved at another one’s logical arguments and said, “You engineers know nothing. Two plus two is not always equal to four!” The friend, who had taken offence, is a PhD in liberal arts and can’t be taken lightly. But the other guy too is an IITian and couldn’t be dismissed either.

Now, liberal arts scholars, whether from social science, political science or international relations tend to look down upon engineers. No doubt liberal arts is an important educational and intellectual input to the society. It provides a solid ground for studying social behaviour, diagnosis of discords, resolving international turmoils, and tells us how to eliminate suffering that we see all around. Engineers (and Scientists, and mathematicians, and Doctors) provide the tools to achieve what the liberal arts prescribe. They provide the machines, means of production, enhanced agriculture, cure the sick and bring about a general improvement in quality of life. Engineers and Scientists, unfortunately, also create means and weapons of destruction, which the liberal arts scholars attempt to keep sheathed.

But, my objection to the two-plus-two argument, which is often flaunted by the social scientist to quieten the argumentative engineer, is a fundamental one. Why use the language of the engineer, viz. mathematics to beat him? The engineer, or the scientist doesn’t get that argument at all. For him two plus two always equals four. The debate then goes into a spin and ends up with the engineer frustrated and the social scientist flustered.

Let’s get it right once again - two plus two always equals four. So, by negating the kindergarten arithmetic no argument can be won. If a social scientist does lean on algebra to buttress his complex social debate, let him come up with his own equations with social variables, such as:

rich + rich = super rich

(rich + poor)/2 = middle class

intelligent+stupid = mediocre

fascism + suffrage = benign dictatorship

We engineers will understand them perfectly.