9 Billion Minds? What's that?

The name of the blog is based on the classic A. C. Clarke story "Nine Billion names of God". The story starts with a description of a group of monks in Himalayas, who are trying to write out all the names of their god - 9 billion of them. It ends up discussing the meaning of life and the purpose of existance. I highly recommend it.

Clarke's story tries to talk about the purpose of existance and suggests that the answer of why we are may not seem obvious, or rational. In the hindsight it may seem so but the current understanding and perception might be misleading. In this blog I want to explore the purpose of what we broadly call "progress". 9 billion minds is a short answer to the question "why progress? and progress towards what?"

By a curious coincidence, the world population too will settle at somewhere close to 9 billion in the late 21st century. As we become more technologically advance we will be able to support more and more people to live without any physical or animal pains. Our struggles will be mental alone.

If you watch the news, read the papers, you will find people strongly believing that there is no progress at all - in fact things are getting worse. They believe that the society is going down the drain. Fortunately, they are wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. Their views are not based on data, but more on perceptions, insticts and just plain old nostalgia that grips middle aged people like a mental virus.

In these pages, I want to address different aspect of this theme. Some articles may be debunking the existing misnomers about progress, some would be about global trends, some may deal with individuals, some will deal with how media lives by portraying bleak and sensational picture of the world.