LIFE AND LIES #50 | The American Prometheus

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Many years ago, I was working on a poem. It went on like this:

Had Icarus known
He was going to burn
Would he still have flown
That close to the Sun

I never came around to finishing that poem. And now, I am suddenly reminded of it by none other than an aging RDJ whose words travel across the open space to reach me.

"Amateurs chase the sun and get burned. Power stays in the shadows."

Watching the movie once wasn't enough for me. So I went a second time. Thoughts meandered in my head again making me want to reach for a notebook and a pen and note down everything.

I appreciated/related to the movie on three levels.

First, the rendezvous with an old friend: Science. Protons, Electrons, and Neutrons. Fission and fusion. The universe and the atom. I had barely glimpsed the world of quantum physics through my high school textbooks and random internet searches. Einstein, Neils Bohr, Heisenberg, and many other of the era’s most dazzling scientific minds appeared on the screen one after the other, whose names and contributions to science I had only read in books long long ago. The wondered-eyed kid from a past life stared once again at the sky of infinite possibilities.

Well, all that's in the past. I am a corporate employee now. That brings me to the present, the second level.

For most of the film, Oppenheimer was more of a Project Manager than a man of science. The challenges he faced during the Manhattan Project - I say this with the risk of sounding high and mighty - I could draw parallels with them from my own professional life.

To begin with, when it comes to any project, it is very important to have the correct set of people present in the room and for every person to have his own defined share of contribution. It's not wise to assume yourself to be the smartest person in the room. Field of experience and knowledge varies from person to person. Learn where you can. Impart wisdom where others can't. Agreement/Disagreement should occur only on the merit of the idea that is being proposed not with the person who proposed it. The combined efforts should lead to a well-planned roadmap with milestones that are pivotal to a well-calculated deadline. Even if things look good in theory, UAT (User Acceptance Testing) is very crucial. A project is never an immediate success/failure. It takes days before you can conclude. Your work doesn't get over once the project goes live. It begins then. And there will always be people questioning your planning and decision-making, and how all of it could have been handled better. In such perilous times, always remember: that they have what you didn't: The benefit of hindsight. And you had what they don't: A Deadline.

Last but not least, the focus of the film wasn't the story. It was how it was told. The Internal Turmoil of Oppenheimer - science, politics, romance, family and friends. The myriad of Characters interacting with each other, engaged in a tussle of ideologies and intellectual prowess. This was a Literary fiction that could not fit into any genre. The kind of thing I aspire to write one day.

As Oppenheimer delivers the last line of the film, 'I believe we did' with guilt and utter hopelessness and imagines a dystopian future drowned in a nuclear war, some questions come to my mind.

Ages and ages whence, would digitization/automation be put in the same category as atomic or space exploration?

What would be the digitization/automation equivalent of the moon landing or the Manhattan Project?

Who will be the next Oppenheimer taunted by history then?

As for Icarus,

I can understand his plight
However short
The thrill of the flight
Is matched by none.




Location: Kolkata, West Bengal, India

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