Author: Satyen K Bordoloi

The days of an app doing only one thing seem to be over as big tech companies – X, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and even Amazon – push for super-apps writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. 20 years from now, this is the fable kids will sleep to. Once upon a time, when apps were first invented, they could do only one thing. Thus, people’s phones were crammed with hundreds of apps. Then came the modern era, and out emerged apps of power, ones that would rule the smaller apps and do multiple tasks inside one application. But, the kids won’t fall asleep,…

A female PhD scholar is battered with patriarchy, insensitivity, juvenile dress codes and what can only be described as a form of slavery, all of which hampers India’s rise as a scientific superpower, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. By every account, Kamala Bhagvat (Sohonie after marriage) was a brilliant woman. She had a BSc degree in chemistry, which in 1933 was a huge deal. She applied to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, for a research fellowship but was turned down by the then-director and Nobel Laureate Prof. C V Raman on the ground that women were not competent to pursue…

The discovery of a microorganism that edits genes in a university pool not only changes our understanding of how DNA works but also throws into spotlight the importance of saving genetic diversity on the planet, writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. In many university campuses worldwide, the local pool has been the source of fun. Useful for late-night skinny dips, it also brings the occasional drunks to their senses after being dunked by fellow drunks. That one of these university pools could alter our very understanding of genes, is something no one fathomed. If the random scooping up of water from a…

A recent demonstration from scientists in China that DNA-based computing could program a single array to implement more than 100 billion distinct circuits puts the spotlight on the exciting field of DNA-based computing writes Satyen K. Bordoloi. Liu Cixin’s seminal novel ‘The Three Body Problem’ shows a way to turn humans into a computer. Three persons are labelled ‘Input 1’, ‘Input 2’, and ‘Output’. Each has a white flag and a black flag corresponding to ‘1’ and ‘0’. Based on the colour of the flag each of the Input person holds up, the Output will hold a different flag. With…

Technology – supposed to be Israel’s saviour – proved to be its Achilles heel writes Satyen K. Bordoloi as he argues that tech should never be a proxy for a political solution. The border with Gaza is supposed to be the most secure on the planet. It is guarded by an army of sensors, cameras, drones, humans, automatic weapons etc., all so advanced a bird couldn’t cross without being noticed. Then there was electronic intelligence with many believing it’s hard to find a phone in Gaza – despite just 2G network – that wasn’t under surveillance. Indeed, Israel’s surveillance technology…

One of the biggest doomsday scenarios peddled by AI scaremongers is massive layoffs writes Satyen K. Bordoloi calling it a one-sided, flawed argument outweighed by opportunities to redefine the entire jobs market. This Bollywood producer with a small office in Indian cinemas ‘khau-galli’ – New Link Road in Andheri West where most big producers have their offices, had just discovered ChatGPT. I had been writing for him for a few months but he was not happy. He showed me a few pages of a story we were working on, proclaimed it masterly and informed me it was generated on ChatGPT.…

Don’t pick unknown calls from these hotspots as you could be bait for cybercriminals says Satyen K. Bordoloi as he uses a new report to survey the lay of India’s cybercrime landscape and divine reasons for the same. The day was boringly usual for Mr Radhakrishnan of Kozhikode till he received a video call from an unknown number. It turned out to be a friend, in trouble now, who requested ₹40,000. He transferred it. Only when he got another call asking for more that he squirmed. He dialled the actual number of the same friend and he seemed well. He…

While debunking alien sightings on Earth in Part 1 of this article, Satyen K. Bordoloi contends that we might have conclusive proof of life on other planets within a decade while outlining the philosophical and cultural underpinning that make us believe in E.T. The hilarious 2011 comedy Paul is a parody of alien films, especially Steven Spielbergs. In one of its funniest scenes a woman who believes in god and hence disbelieves evolution says, “Nothing that you can say or do can shake my belief or faith in the sure and certain knowledge that God made heaven and earth and…

While debunking the alleged alien body displayed in Mexico a few days ago, Satyen K. Bordoloi – in this two-part series – still claims that the existence of aliens is both a scientific inevitability and a social, cultural and psychological necessity for humans. In the 2011 comedy Paul, two British nerds visiting Area 51 – long believed to be the site of a secret government alien research facility – encounter an actual alien. This foul-mouthed, cigarette-smoking, bus-driving alien had been living on Earth for decades (even consulted Spielberg for his films in the 70s). As the three make a run…

Even as the war cry against AI gathers a hurricane, Satyen K. Bordoloi questions the very foundation on which this fearmongering rests – AI’s purported intelligence. Robots, back when there were none in the world, were called automatons. The idea of what a robot would be was simple. It would be an automation machine. That is the foundation upon which almost all of modern technological innovation rests: create systems and machines that automate our work. Artificial Intelligence – so far – is the pinnacle of that idea. However, it seems to have been forgotten by both sides using AI: the…