What we believe.......

What we believe is at times exclusive of what we understand. We tend to believe what we were taught and what is accepted by majority of the society to be correct. Why do we so strongly believe in things we do not understand? Considerable number of Sri lankans strongly believe in astrology. They work according to astrologically set auspicious times. What is the base for these beliefs. According to my understanding there is no base at all. The planetary system is generally understood as rocks (or masses) (except gas giants of course)rotating around sun. Some try to find a scientific background when people question about the reason to believe. One such attempt is to explain the effect as an gravitational pull. People on earth are affected by the gravitational pull of these planets.

So, M of Saturn is 5.6851x 10²⁶, r is about 1.3 x 10¹² and we get the effect as GMm/r² to be 2.243.76x 10^-22 N(man is 100kg). The distance between two people(100kg) to get the same gravitational force is 0.5 m(Hope my mathematics is right*). So lot of humans are affecting you than Saturn. And not only people, dogs, cats, cars and every non living object. Same situation is with Stars as well, because the r is in squired. It is a higher value just like the M.
Another point is that that the rays from the planets and stars are affecting us. So, light bulbs and touches are different. Might my mobile phone change my future; it emits microwave alright. And the planets are just reflecting the sun's rays they do not generate any themselves. In other words the rays we get from the planets is a segment of the rays we get from the sun. Any way most of these stars could be dead now, as it takes time for light to travel, may be thousands or even millions of years. So a star which died about a thousand years ago is affecting us. But light and gravity works in speed of light.

May be they are having a special kind of gravitational force or rays other than the spectrum we know. These things are unproven just like i could say we originated from aliens. And i don't see lot of people schedule their activities on alien invasions or worship aliens.
Some people believe that there are other laws at work when designing homes buildings, other than the laws of physics(වාස්තුවිද්‍යාව,nothing to do with civil engineering). They set suitable locations, angles etc. based on unproven logic. One person i heard say that it is not good to have the staircase base at the center of the land(it's a personal experience). The problem in that logic is: there is no center of the land; the earth is a sphere. And there is no land such that is mine. The ownership of land and physical objects including ourselves has no meaning. Its just in our mind. So center of land is in our mind and bad luck is in our mind as well. Is it necessary for us to prove every thing to know it is right? No it is not the idea. There are some things that have a higher probability of being correct such as world being round. Accepting that assumption will give a sensible explanation to so many other things( such as sunrise). And there are some things that does not fit in to this category.
It is better to think that there are things that we do not understand but totally depending and scheduling life according to an unproven logic is something different. There is a chance for it to be correct, a chance equal for us to be of alien origin and so many other unproven beliefs. Any way it is comforting to believe that there is a higher power and we can save, improve our life by working accordingly. That comfort is what we seek by all beliefs.


*Assumptions: The distance can not be taken between Saturn and Earth because both are moving. The lowest value i took. The radius of Saturn not added. Even those added we are in the error range, from human to a train may be.

Human Computer Interaction

Currently the main interface between us and the computer is the display or the computer monitor. It could be LCD or CRT but still you see what you see on a two dimensional plain which tries to fake the three dimensional world. Why do we have to use the monitor? Computers use electronic pulses to communicate and so do we.

We input our data through a key board or a mouse, just like we get out output through the monitor. We send our commands to perform the action as electronic pulses through the neurons and our hands turn it into mechanical power, then it is again converted into electronic pulses for the computer to understand. When it comes to communicating the machine and humans are more or less the same. Our processing technologies may differ as we use neural networks while the computer uses the von neumann architecture(the computers which we use in day to day activities).
That is why we are capable of doing different things better. We are much more capable of handling approximate data and thinking things out, while the computer requires accurate exact data to process with. But they are really fast in processing, remembering and controlling data.
Humans as well as computers contain huge amount of power which could be released once the communication barrier between the two entities is removed.
Imagine a world where people do not use mobile phones, just because they do not need it any more. They are mobile phones them selves. Humans them selves are networked. People communicate directly using the human network connections.
You do not have to study anything any more as you can access the online data store at your home just by thinking about it. You can save any thing special you saw on the way from home to work. Going further you do not need to go to work.
Virtual reality comes a reality. As we are machines our selves it is possible for us to be physically any where and virtually be in the correct place at the correct time. You will be able to do so many things which you wished to do in the real world, like copy and paste. You may transfer data any where any time you wish. The computers in the sense of today's usage will be less and less common.
Less and less physical interaction would be needed, and we may not need our physical forms any more.And we will stop wasting time waiting for some one to arrive at a meeting. It would be no longer human computer interaction but humans and computers will be the same: we will turn out to be a hybrid organism, capable of doing what ever we need to do.
But, will we be humans any more.............................................? That we do not have an answer, because we do not now what a human is.