Let us start looking up

I was sitting under the pristinely clear night in a small farm house near Korategere. The small group of people who had gathered, aged anywhere between 7 to 70, were enthusiastically looking up the sky with awe. With almost no light in the viscinity (except for the small light inside the farm house), it was an ideal setting to witness a rare celestial event: Total Lunar Eclipse. I was lucky that a friend who was part of Bangalore Astronomical Society (BAS), asked me join him for a lunar eclipse gazing trip on December 10.

It has been a long time, except for the one-night star gazing trip to Vangani during my IITB tenure, I had been hardly in touch with my childhood passion and couldn't say No. Korategere is about 100 kms from Bangalore, on the way to the fort town of Madhugiri. The farm house was in a small village off Korategere, Doddamallyanapalya, and was located far away from the city lights.

Sitting on the rocky surface covered with tall grass, I saw the moonlight been slowly gobbled by an unknown shadow. A lot of cameras, some fitted with telescopes were busy clicking the celestial marvel. I decided to put to rest the camera and binocular I had been using and sat down on the grass to immerse myself in the world around. I felt the same way as our ancients, who too would have looked up to these celestial events with similar awe. The setting I was in would have been no different than in those days, and they surely wouldn't have dull reasons like watching TV. But their perception of the events were far different from ours.

The Vikings thought that the dreaded wolf was eating away the moon. The Pomo Indians of California feared the bear was swallowing the round milky ball. The Chinese thought that the dragon was swallowing it. And our own ancestors called that the Ashura Rahu was gobbling up Chandra. While the stories may be different, the thin fine line that connects them is easily visible: it always is attributed to their dreaded enemies. Wolves were the Scandinavian vikings' fiercest enemies. Even today, California has enough of problems with the human-blackbear altercations. China always feared dragons (real or imaginary) and in Indian mythology the enemy of the mythological heroes are almost always portrayed as an Asura.

A chuckle came out of me when some of these thoughts went through my head, for some kids who were in our group, knew the precise scientific reasons behind the eclipse. While that knowledge is acquired rather than experienced, our ancestors didn't have much choice but to wait, watch and guess. Just sitting in the dark and looking at the strange happening, I can't think of anything better than the ancients did. Today with all the repository of knowledge available, we have even gone to the extent of ridiculing our ancestors like: "They thought the world was flat".

It is no doubt that the sky has impacted human's intellectual evolution profoundly over a period of time. Whether it is subjugation in the form of superstitions or the observations and propositions which broke the superstitions; Whether it is the belief of how they control our daily lives, or how we today explore to see if life exist over there; Whether it is where the Gods roam and keep a watch on us, or it is where the satellites roam and spy us.

It is no wonder why most of science enthusiastic kids' in our times, had their future ambition of becoming an astronaut (or cosmonaut). The friend from BAS, Keerthi, who organized the trip, mentioned during our discussion about how it is very difficult today to impress upon kids about astronomy. He shared his experience on how, during star gazing shows, kids were more interested in the laser beam or the computer software used, rather than the infinity that lies ahead of them. It is not the kids' fault, for today, given the explosion of things around us, scientific curiosity has lots of avenues with shorter 'time to understanding' and astronomy will be tough to project. But given the very important skills of patience and dedication that astronomy teaches, it is important for the next generation to appreciate.

During our trip, a kid suddenly was excited shouting, "Look, that star is moving so fast, how is it possible?". "It is not a star, but a man-made satellite orbiting earth and the light you see is that reflected from its solar panels", remarked a thoughtful head. The reasoning apart, the kid had found, during a careful observation that something different from his understanding is happening. The excitement in the kid's words told how much joy a small learning, after prolonged observation can bring.

It tells how much looking up to the sky matters a lot.

The way of search for real knowledge

As I was departing from hometown last weekend, I walked past the busy streets of the area which I had roamed around as a schoolboy. There is a small shop in the junction of two streets, hardly 4 feet by 10 feet, which I used to visit numerous times on my father's bicycle. It was 'Abu Circulating Library', a private lending library, a concept today having such flashy makeup like 'Justbooks clc'. I was not so privileged to lease a lot of books then, but Abu was a very kind man and used to allow me to read books standing there. The people who come there were unique and Abu had the knack of finding second hand books for them, on varying topics from science to fiction to philosophy. It was one of those wonderfully unique places in a small town where people go for their quest of knowledge.

Till the time Soviet Union collapsed, the wonderful soviet science books will find its way through to Tamilnadu. A number of pre-1990 books from Mir, Radhuga, Progress publishers bringing out with wonderful popular science books at nothing of a price. Books for Rs.5/- might seem odd, but given the soviet rouble troubles then, the distributors, New Century Book House (NCBH) surely would have got a good deal. Whenever I visit relatives in any town in Tamilnadu, I make it a point to visit NCBH and pick a 'Mir dwarf' or two. While I don't claim to have read much of these books, there was always effort required when we had to search for the right place to get our knowledge.

Those days were past, so I thought.

For today, everything is available at our finger tips, literally, given the smartphone explosion. Our knowledge base is just a few clicks or a google search away. Every person seems to be walking with a library, with the availability of thousands of books and articles that are spread across the Internet. Any question you ask a person, he is able to tell in just a few seconds and automatic knowledge comes when people read feeds on social networking sites like facebooks or email forwards from friends. But quite recently the trends that are setting in is pushing us back a few years and is asking for the same keenness and quest for knowledge.

The data available in the Internet has grown so much that the Search companies have been required to 'customize' the results before we see them. Our friends circle in social networking has grown so much that Facebook and others will 'customize' what feeds to we get to read. These were aptly described by Eli Pariser in this TED talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOTPz7KnwIA

While this may seem not so relevant, the trend is not. The customized search can throw results which may look completely relevant but at the same time could be grossly wrong. For instance, if we are used to read everything from blogs, then a google search may customize results for us showing a lot of blog results for a topic, say, "alien ship lands in IITB gymkhana". It could all be ramblings of hundreds of us based on our dreams and hallucinations, but this may even convince us. Or take the recent out pour of emotions and science that are thrown on the Mullaiperiyar dam issue, with both Kerala and Tamilnadu sides pitching in to prove their case with varying degrees of emotion twisted scientific facts: all in blogs. Friends share blog article links through facebook and by putting arguments in 'nice' way, a lot of imagination becomes fact.

You may laugh at aliens or may not want to worry about such social issues, but in today's short attention span mentality, people would believe anything if put in a believable way. Take this case: recently a friend of mine cribbed about how the HR group had sent a 'motivation' mail to hundreds and thousands of employees, based on a nicely cooked up story of eagle reincarnation. It was just a regular forward and without making any attempt to verify the contents, it was sent with all sorts of 'confidentiality' impositions to the employees. The way the narration was done, the terms used, all can make people to believe that it is actually science and that the whole eagle story is true. Alas, just a google search will give a hoax slayer link in the first page and can blow you away (if you care to click it). And this we are talking about in one of the brightest set of people living in this country.

I'm not taking a pessimistic look here at the explosion of data available, but only pointing out to the necessary care we should take to be alert. While the situation is not yet as daunting as I'm trying to project, it is invariably going to go as the Internet keeps growing. Like in those olden days, quest for true knowledge will remain to be for those who are really keen and ready to go the extra mile. It may not take a few days or even hours like in those days, but it will definitely take some minutes, which will be too much for the short attention span of few seconds that we are developing.