Science fiction : What is smart?

Science fiction : What is smart?

"It is certainly not me!"

Argued a young lad, who looked like someone from downtown, with an accent and outward appearance that attested for it so conspicuously. He scuffled and then punched me. Even though I was easily older than him by 10 years.

He kept insisting again and again, "it is not me, you should believe me when I say this."

"No, how can I! I saw you doing it and when you realised I had seen you, you left the book there and you ran away. You surely cannot fool me. But I am surprised, and still wondering why did you try to steal it from the shop? Why?"

Was my quick reaction!

The young lad, who now realised that I had indeed seen him when he was trying to steal the book from the shop, thought it might be a better idea to confess his crime and bear the mild consequences or else keep arguing and then face the dire consequences. It was a tough choice to make for a lad, hardly 15 years old. So he decided to confess and face the legal procedure, or whatever might follow.

"Even worse, if that is how it is meant to be, so be it then!" , I guess thought the boy.

And in his downtown accent he assured me that he would speak the truth and make an honest confession before me. And this is his confession,

"You see, I have been working on improvising smart phone technology, because the one people are using nowadays is so boring and common. Everyone uses it. It is a great tool that offers many conveniences, but the smartphones are too boring for me. They all look the same, they do the same thing, their applications are almost the same, they follow the same protocol of communication networks. There is nothing new. It is like old Nokia phone that experienced evolution, at the hands of the great and late Mr. Steve Jobs, but after his premature death, the smart phone technology has remained stagnant and every phone manufacturing company only focuses on improving the RAM, Processor and App based interactions of the phone. Once done they launch it as a new version of the old series.

There is nothing new you see. I am sure, if great and late Mr. Steve Jobs were here, he would hold his forehead in his hands and shout, "what the hell! Everything is the same and smartphones have not gotten any smarter since I left. Just by means of improving its processor and RAM and making it work on 5G networks does not mean it has progressed. Oh no, you could not get so stuck!"

So I am surreptitiously working on a smartphone that will be revolutionary and will be a next leap in smartphone technology. Using 5G networks on the current breed of smartphones, even if you added 20 GB RAM and you improved the processor by more than 100 times, would be almost like fitting a tuk tuk with a rocket engine. That is insulting and shameful! For both the tuk tuk and for the rocket.

And in order to understand a few circuits and processors of smartphones, I needed the book that you caught me stealing. It had the information that I needed, but, unfortunately its price was too steep for me to be able to pay. And I am poor with the art of swindling, so I opted for stealing instead, though my idea was to gather the information I needed and then place it back discreetly after I had read it in detail, or if I had the money by then, confess it to the shopkeeper and pay him the money. Now does this sound incendiary to you sir?"

I looked at him and without answering his question, I asked him a question instead.

"So how will your smartphone be different from the existing ones?"

And the lad looking at my face with the innocence of 1000 angels replied, "Sir, it will be a lot different. The leading smartphone companies today are very busy either copying one another or in order to generate new sales they just add new smart features and change the outer design, and they launch the smartphone as the latest series of the popular smartphone.