Skip to main content

Posts

Demographic Transition to Stability

It took humankind 200,000 years to reach a billion in population, but only 200 to reach 7 Billion.. This trend suggests some very apocalyptic images for our future. However, the UN forecasts that the 12 billionth human will never be born at all.  Why and how may this be true? Population explosion is defined as a sudden increase in population of a region due to various catalysts. The first one was the advent of farming which allowed for settlements. And the last two centuries have had some of the most intense developments like the industrial revolution and the rapid growth of advanced sciences. Almost every country in the world goes through a demographic transition which includes 4 phases. In the 1800s, most European nations too had severe poverty, famines, poor health and low life expectancies. A woman had around 6-7 kids but even then only 2 would make it to adulthood. The second phase sees the growth of living conditions in the region…. as we see with the industrial revolution, b...

Evolution

       Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Suborder: Haplorhini Infraorder: Simiiformes Family: Hominidae Subfamily: Hominidae Tribe: Hominin Genus: Homo This, is what a human living today is classified into. You are human. But you are also a 'Hominin', and so was this dashing fellow- Humans have been evolving for about 6 million years now. That's 0.000016th of how long you will be here on earth if you're lucky. We often tend to overlook our roots and where we come from, to give you a perspective, this is how your first great-grandpa probably looked - This....is how your 300 millionth Great-grandma looked!   Hope I could pique your interest! Humans as we know, began evolving separately from Chimpanzees as far as 7 million years ago.  About 20 million years ago, the first shy steps to our evolution began. Proconsuls roamed about peacefully in the trees with no threat of predators and abundant fruits to eat, all this made l...

The 7 Billion Cyborgs of Earth

'A fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations with mechanical elements.' This is what the term- 'Cyborg' means.  But,  does it  ?   " Hey! V-Sauce, Michael here-" no lets not do that.  Pop culture has defined a cyborg's appearance like this: But the way I see it, this is a more realistic cyborg. (DC don't sue me) You're probably thinking why this harmless depressed lady can be called a cyborg. It's all about perspective. We are born in a world where things don't change drastically, so we grow accustomed to our surroundings. Take a look at this scenario. A human communicates with a machine by releasing static from her phalanges (fingers) into the screen which the machine processes and via a global network, fetches the required data and interprets it in the form of light emitted by pixels in a coordinated succession that then enters the human's light receptors and causes a rush ...

Limit to optimisation

Whenever I look at some of the old technology, I can't help but think, "That was normal for the time!" Spending several minutes setting up a film roll, or the effort spent on trying to dial in a phone number was never looked at as tedious or time-consuming during that age.  Unless given something to contrast with, any process/thing seems normal for us humans. A similar thought occurred to me when reading a book. Anyone who has seen a book doesn't think much while flipping through it, or writing in it. But for a person in the far future, a book will be looked at the same way we look at stone tablets. Ancient and delicate. This shift to digital media is already underway and I can't help but think, is there a limit? A limit to the extent of optimisation and comforts. Recent previous generations did not know how to carve on stone walls, or thatch a hut. Ours, does not know how to dial a number in a vintage telephone. The future generation shall never know how to flip ...