大象传媒

Good morning. A friend just told me how she celebrated Saraswati puja recently, a day of
respect in Hinduism for Saraswati Devi, who inspires our intelligence. Part of the ritual,
involved worship being offered to cars, ipads, computers, washing machines and the like,
which raised my eyebrows. Hindu culture is full of extraordinary rituals and celebrations.

This worship does have substance and is done as gratitude to the Supreme for allowing such practical opulence in our lives, and to recognise that God is in all things, and that all things in heaven and earth represent but a spark of God鈥檚 splendor.

But is celebrating machines all that foreign to us? Some of us will remember Blade Runner, a sequel currently doing the rounds, a rather bleak film concluding that there is no real
difference between humans and machines.

My friend Pyuish explained to me how robots are already making a major impact on
business and professional life. He said that robots will be able to do complex tasks and learn to improve on the job. But cautioned that they can also invent languages to communicate among themselves, which we can鈥檛 understand.

A senior member of the Silicon Valley Set, in anticipation of the rise of robots, has registered a new religion to promote an idea of a God based on artificial intelligence. A geek God who could supposedly run an algorithm to calculate our karma. I wonder if plugging yet another religion into the system is going to help?

Dear Lord, the energy of life, which makes our hearts beat, is not plugged-in anywhere. To
be alive, unplugged, is real. This energy is the source of our poetry, our music, our kindness, and our love. I pray that we can always put the unplugged before the plugged, the reality of love before an algorithm of love. Hare Krishna.