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LIFE AND LIES #74 | Everything Is Digital

As the euphoria of Friday night started to dissipate, Nitin realised that he must have had one too many. His colleague Gaurav had offered to go out and he had agreed because he had no other plans. And now they were sitting in a BYOB, located a stone's throw away from his office building. New to the city, Nitin was still familiarising himself with the BYOB culture of Gurgaon. Yes, Gurgaon. Gurugram just doesn’t sound right.

“Are you alright,” Gaurav asked when Nitin returned from a washroom break.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Well, you say that but you look otherwise.”

“So I encountered this here today and before in another BYOB,” Nitin tried to change the topic. “There is always a guy, standing next to the paper towel dispenser in the gents’ washroom. Is this a common practice?”

“Maybe. I didn’t notice,” replied Gaurav.

“It’s just that,” continued Nitin. “All he does is take out the paper towel and hand it over to the person who just finished washing his hands. I wonder if this is another service upgrade in premium convenience provided to us or a downgrade in the overall humanity scenario. And somewhere, AI is creating movies and writing stories on its own. AI avatars are participating in beauty pageants. Wasn’t it supposed to happen the other way; AI did the mundane jobs while humans had ample time to hone their creativity and to innovate?”

“Woah, easy there,” said Gaurav. “I’m human, not AI to process so much information in a single go, that too when I’m drunk."

“At least,” Nitin chuckled. “That remains a human thing. AI can’t get drunk like we do.”

“I think humans like to feel special. A guy waiting on you to wash your hands makes you feel special. AI can’t do that yet.”

“Feel special, sure,” Nitin scoffed. “I used to take pride in the fact that I worked in Digital. You can do a lot of good for the environment with the help of digital intervention. Not just monitoring climate change, air and water quality, but also waste reduction. And then one day I realised that Swiggy and Zomato, powered by digital platforms create so much waste in plastic, just because I’m too lazy to cook. Same for Flipkart, Amazon and Myntra, because I’m too lazy to go to the market. Packaging plus the delivery guy wastes so much fuel during returns and exchanges that used to be covered in a single outing by someone. Block your calendar and be done with the shopping. But no, instead we have the incessant scrolling that powers the gig economy. Of course, employment has increased, but we have downgraded the definition of someone being called employed. But sure, I feel special when whatever I order comes to me wrapped in a nice package; like the first time I ordered a book from Flipkart, back in 2011, and it was delivered by a postman. Wait a minute! Where did all the postmen go? Did the government fire them all?”

Gaurav didn’t say anything just smiled, nodded, and signalled the waiter for the bill. Nitin realised that he shouldn’t have gone on a roll like that with Gaurav. For a moment, he had forgotten that he wasn’t sitting with his friends, Neil and Mukesh.

They left after paying the bill but as soon as they exited the building, Nitin felt a burst of hot summer air on his face. Even in the night, there was no respite. Some questions bothered him again, the same ones that found him every day when he stepped out of his air-conditioned office building after working a day in Digital Transformation. What’s the RCA for this 52-degree temperature? Preventive Action and Corrective Action for protection against the heatwave have been communicated to all, but what is the permanent fix? Who’s the SPOC working on this?

“Bye Nitin,” Gaurav said hopping into the cab which had just arrived. “See you on Monday.”

“Bye-bye,” replied Nitin whose cab was still 5 minutes away. While he waited, his train of thought continued. “I better go write a thing or two before AI renders my passion obsolete. Also, soon it will be Monday, and in the office, they will be talking about ‘leveraging AI for Business Transformation’ during one of those meetings and I would have to restrain the writer in me from deviating from the topic and starting to talk about the AI dystopia out loud.”

***

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Location: Gurugram, Haryana, India

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