ESSAY COURSE
LECTURE 9 - PART-B & C
Theme: Science and Technology
SNO Components
1.1 4th Industrial Revolution – as a theme
1.2 Anecdotes
1.3 Examples
1.4 Quotes
1.5 Movie
1.6 Data and Reports
1.7 Books
1.8 Poems
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1.1) 4th Industrial Revolution – as a Theme
TO BE DISCUSSED IN THE CLASS
******
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1.2) ANECDOTES
1. Ajal Kumar Sonkar • Dr. Ajai Kumar Sonkar is known for his discovery of black
pearls, which has gained him international recognition.His
work in developing pearl making techniques using state-of-
the-art tissue culture has gained worldwide recognition.
• It was an episode of a Doordarshan afternoon TV show that
piqued his interest in pearl culture. Dr. Sonkar wanted to
make pearls from oysters in freshwater, the way the Japanese
did. While he realized soon that this would prove to be a
strenuous task, he didn’t give up.
• In 1993, he successfully developed a method to develop
black pearls in freshwater and received an invitation to attend
the first International Conference on Pearl Culture. Former
president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam described Dr. Sonkar’s
discovery of black pearls as a great achievement for the
country.
2. SumanSahai • She is the founder of Gene campaign in India. She is the
voice of millions of Indian farmers. She is the brains and the
brawn behind the patent campaign for AzadirachtaIndica
(Neem) and Turmeric. She believes that nature’s technology
can meet the needs of the humanity. She made Indian
government to notice the actual problems faced by Indian
farmers.
• Born on 30th Nov, 1858 in Bengal Presidency. He studied at
3. Sir Jagdish Chandra St. Xavier's school, University of Calcutta and then at
Bose London University. He worked on millimeter and microwave
transmission and propagation. He created the shortest radio
waves of 5 mm while working mainly on Hertzian waves and
designed a radio communication system in 1895. He did
pioneer work in design of radio receiver made of galena
crystal detector inside horn antenna and galvanometer to
detect radio waves.
• Bose was the first scientist to prove that plants have the
ability to feel pain, affection and other various stimuli.
4. • He is an aquaculture scientist who is playing a key role in
Dr. Subbanna powering India’s Blue revolution. Prof Ayyappan was the
Ayyappan first non-crop scientist to head the Indian council of
Agricultural research. He has published research papers on
fisheries, limnology and aquatic microbiology.
5. PARAM • India faced a technology-denial regime in the 80s. It was then
that the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-
DAC) was set up with the clear mandate to develop an
indigenous supercomputer to meet high-speed computational
needs.PARAM-India’s first ever
indigenous supercomputer became a major milestone in
modern India’s technological journey.
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6. RifathSharook • An 18-year-old from Karur in Tamil Nadu, scripted history
by designing the world's smallest satellite. The tiny 3D-
printed satellite is called Kalamsat, after former President
Abdul Kalam, and was flown by NASA into space in one of
its missions.
7. Space Tourism • Rocket launches amid a growing space tourism race among
commercial players like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Blue
• Origin can negatively impact the climate and the ozone layer,
a new study has found.The researchers state that routine
launches by the rapidly growing space tourism industry “may
undermine progress made by the Montreal Protocol in
reversing ozone depletion.
8. Gigamesh • A Startup named Astrome will connect 15 villages in
different parts of the country through a next-generation
networking solution called Giga Mesh. It is the world’s first
multi-beam E-band Radio that is able to communicate from
one tower to multiple towers simultaneously while delivering
multi GBPS throughput to each of these towers.
9. Waste treatment • Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has planned
through N-Treat in-situ treatment of sewage from the drains to prevent sludge
and sewage from water drains flowing into the sea.N-Treat
uses screens, gates, silt traps, curtains of coconut fibres for
filtration, and disinfection using sodium hypochlorite.
10. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai • He established Physical research laboratory- Cradle of space
sciences in India. He contributed in establishment of number
of IIMs including IIM Ahmedabad; also contributed in
setting up of Thumba Equatorial rocket launching station at
Thiruvananthapuram. He was awarded Padma Vibhushan in
1972. He served as President of General Conference of
IAEA, Vienna.
11. Quantum Supremacy • On September 20, 2019, "Google claims to have reached
quantum supremacy with an array of 54 qubits out of which
53 were functional, which were used to perform a series of
operations in 200 seconds that would take a supercomputer
about 10,000 years to complete
12. Dr. Aditya Prasad • Aditya Prasad Dashhas led India’s war against malaria. He
Dash has made significant contributions in the field of malaria and
vector-borne diseases (VBD). His contributes include
developing numerous tools and technologies in tackling
vector-borne diseases. He has been awarded Padma Shri for
his contributions in the year 2022.
13. Cyber technology • It is a fine winter morning in 2025. As commuters travel to
work, the metro rail crashes to a grinding halt. Concurrently,
planes in the airspace lose communication with the ground
control. Banks report breach of confidential data from their
servers. Government websites are hacked with threatening
messages splashed all across the screens. The energy and
nuclear power plants control systems are infected with
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strange viruses. In 30 minutes, the country’s critical
infrastructure collapses and within an hour, it becomes clear
that the country has become a victim of a coordinated
cyberattack— cyberwar. This scary scenario, confined
earlier to sci-fi movies is now a potential reality.
14. Dr. Indira Hinduja • She is the first Indian women who delivered a test tube baby
in 1986. She also pioneered the Gamete Intra Fallopian
Transfer (GIFT) method helping in the birth of India's first
GIFT baby in the year 1988. For menopausal and premature
ovarian failure patients she developed an oocyte donation
technique. On 24 January 1991, she gave the country's first
baby out of this technique.
15. Robots taking over • For decades, robots have worked alongside humans. In the
humans auto industry, for example, they’ve long been the most
precise and reliable welders and painters. Sitting in place and
doing the same job, over and over, has historically been
automation’s sweet spot.
• But, with the explosion in artificial intelligence, robots are
coming to understand more complex, nuanced tasks. In
agriculture, robots are not only plowing fields, but can now
recognize weeds and zap them with lasers. In hospitals,
robots are doing everything from fetching supplies for nurses
to helping surgeons direct their instruments more precisely.
• A World Economic Forum report predicted that robotics and
automation would displace 85 million jobs globally in the
coming five years. Yet, it also predicted that the technologies
would create 97 million new jobs—generally ones requiring
more skills and education.
16. Nanotechnology • Sandip Patil is a successful entrepreneur who is heading one
of India’s top nanotech firms – E-Spin Nanotech. His firm
specialises in commercial manufacturing of his cutting-edge
nanotech innovations. Sandip’s Super ES Machine is a true
trailblazer in nanotech research in India. With a global boom
in regenerative medicine, artificial organ generation,
biodegradable bandages etc, there is a thriving demand for
extracellular matrix from nano fibers. The Super ES machine
generates bulk nanofibre in a short time from a set of
polymers.
*****
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1.3) EXAMPLES
S&T Examples
• Bois Locker Room(was an Instagram scandal, allegedly involving a
chat room of teenage boys)
• Recent incident where pictures of college students were posted on
Social Media porn sites after being lifted from photo and video sharing platform
Instagram
• Armstrong pame through social media collected fund to construct
roads in Manipur
• Railways deploys ‘Ninjas’ Drones for surveillance
• Maharashtra has become the first State in the country to get the
Drones goahead to use drones for aerial surveillance and inspection of extra
high voltage (EHV) power transmission lines
• Survey of India to deploy 300 drones for mapping country
• Mannequins with cameras to scan bengaluru traffic
• Over the top platforms like NetFlix and Amazon prime competing
Cinema
• Chandrayaan -2 Vikram Failure and Chandrayaan-3 Announcement
• Train 18 Project
• Satellites to detect drug cultivation in Odisha.
• Daksha is one of India’s current military robots.
• WHO ‘Access, Watch and Reserve’ strategy to deal with AMR.
Miscellaneous
• CSIR Achievements- Solar tree, Indigenous lithium battery,
rejuvenated Digboi refinery.
• STI Development banks- Fund for investing in direct long term
investments in select strategic areas.
• E-Gram Panchayat- Improve quality of governance.
• Meghraj GI Cloud- Optimum utilization of infrastructure and speed
up development and deployment of eGov applications through
National cloud initiative.
*****
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1.4) QUOTES
1. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided Martin Luther
missiles and misguided men. King, Jr.
2. The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but
Sydney Harris
that man will begin to think like computers.
3. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein
4. What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth
but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on David R. Brower
without public consent.
5. “The Real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men,
Sydney Harris
but that man will begin to think like computers”
6. “If invention is a pebble tossed in the pond, then innovation is the
-
rippling effect the pebble causes”
7. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it. A. P. J. Abdul
Kalam
8. Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity,
Louis Pasteur
and is the torch which illuminates the world.
9. Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master. Christian Lous
Lange
10. People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we
recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude Garett Hardin
toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.
11. One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can
Elbert Hubbard
do the work of one extraordinary man.
12. Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity,
Louis Pasteur
and is the torch which illuminates the world.
13. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday
Albert Einstein
thinking.
14. "It is dangerously destabilizing to have half the world on the cutting edge
Bill Clinton
of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival"
15. “The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.” Edward Teller
16. “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you Neil de Grasse
believe in it.” Tyson
17. I want to save time and labour, not for a fraction of mankind, but for
Mahatma Gandhi
all.
18. “I fear the day when technology will suppress human interaction and
Albert Einstein
the world will have a generation of idiots”
19. “Science is the key to our future, and if you don’t believe in science,
Bill Nye
then you’re holding everybody back.”
20. “Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over
John Tudor
everything, except over technology”
******
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1.5) MOVIES
MOVIE NAME SYNOPSIS
• It offers a chilling take on the future of artificial
intelligence, raising thought-provoking questions about
Ex Machina
the potentially dangerous implications and consequences
of interacting with exceptionally intelligent androids.
• It featured aliens quietly taking over the bodies of humans.
Invasion of the Body • In a small town, a doctor, Kevin McCarthy, begins to
Snatchers realize that an alien form of life is attempting to take over
and replace humans.
• It highlights engineers from various backgrounds -- many
Dream Big: Engineering of whom are women -- and the projects they're designing,
Our World from earthquake-proof structures to footbridges in
developing countries.
• In the movie, artificial intelligence became self-aware and
eventually imprisons humans in the Matrix, which was a
system of virtual reality. The energy people exert within
The Matrix
the Matrix is now used as a power source. When the
humans occasionally manage to escape, there are
vigorously pursued by the system.
• It portrays the bleak future of a world where AI suddenly
turns evil and starts killing everyone. It illustrates the
possibility of AI becoming an existential threat.
• In this film, Skynet, an AI system that sparks a nuclear
holocaust sends back a cyborg assassin (The Terminator)
The Terminator
to prevent the birth of John Connor who will spark a rebel
group that fights against Skynet.
• This movie serves as a reminder to create an AI that is safe
and to think twice about creating an AI that can wipe us
out.
• It depicts a dystopian future where the human race
struggled to survive due to invasion, famines, crop blight,
dust storms, and strange dust patterns.
Inter Stellar • A small group of astronauts inclined towards a solution,
led by Cooper, traveled through a wormhole near Saturn
to find a new habitat for the human race.
• It is an honest depiction of gender-based discrimination
within NASA in the 1960s. The documentary depicts the
Mercury 13 true story of female pilots who, despite undergoing
extensive training for space exploration, are passed over in
favor of male astronauts.
******
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1.6) DATA AND REPORTS
Parameters/Topic Data
• There are 6,000-8,000 classified rare diseases, but less than 5%
have therapies available to treat them.
• About 95% rare diseases have no approved treatment and less
Rare Diseases than 1 in 10 patients receive disease-specific treatment.
• India has close to 50-100 million people affected by rare diseases
or disorders, the policy report said almost 80% of these rare
condition patients are children
• National TB Prevalence Survey (2019-21)
o At 316 per lakh, India’s TB prevalence higher than WHO
estimations.
o Gujarat has the lowest burden of all forms of TB, while
Kerala is the lowest in pulmonary TB.
o TB prevalence is much lower among women — 154 per
100,000 — as compared to men — 472 per 100,000.
o Among above the age of 15 such as older age groups, males,
the malnourished, smokers, alcoholics and diabetic patients
was 31.4 per cent.
o A majority of those who were symptomatic (64 per cent), did
Tuberculosis
not seek healthcare services.
o Annual TB cases in India rose 19 per cent to 1,933,381 in 2021
o India remains the highest contributor to global TB cases,
accounting for 26 per cent of total cases and 34 per cent of
all deaths worldwide.
• Drug Resistant TB: About 8.5% of MDR-TB cases had
extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).
• Treatment: In 2019, of the total reported tuberculosis cases of
24.04 lakh, the treatment success was at 82% and mortality rate
was 4%
o (India TB Report 2021)
• Effected: 21 lakh people are living with HIV in India.
• Decline: Estimated annual New HIV infections declining by 37%
HIV
between 2010 and 2019
(HIV Estimates report 2019)
• India received 'Polio-free certification' from World Health
Polio Organization on the 27 March 2014, with the last polio case being
reported in Howrah in West Bengal on 13 January 2011
• The World Health Organization estimates that India has 15 million
cases of malaria with 19,500–20,000 deaths annually.
Malaria • India showed a reduction in reported malaria cases of 49% and
deaths of 50.5% (WHO)
• In 2019, the Government of India increased funding by more than
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25% for the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme
and increased support as a donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria.
● 1 in 4 Indians has a risk of dying from an NCD before they reach
the age of 70.
(National Health Portal of India)
Non Communicable
● Non communicable diseases (NCDs) contribute to around 5.87
Diseases
million (60%) of all deaths in India. ( NIH Data)
● Between the years 1990 and 2016, disease burden in India due to
NCDs increased from 48% to 75%
● Budget: ISRO Budget: 3.48% increase in expenditure allocation
2020-21
● Revenue: ISRO generated revenue worth Rs 324.19 crore in the
Space Technology
fiscal year 2018-2019 which is a near 40% jump from its earnings
of Rs 232.56 crore in 2017-2018.
● Market Share: $350 billion (3% of world share)
● Job Loss: 30 per cent or around 3 million will be lost by 2022, in
India principally driven by the impact of robot process automation
Artificial Intelligence (Bank of America Report)
● AI has the potential to add US$957 billion, or 15 percent of India's
current gross value in 2035. (Accenture Data)
• Subscriptions:India will have 500 million 5G users by 2027,
accounting for 39% of all mobile subscribers [2021 Ericsson
Mobility Report]
• Economic Impact: The Department of Telecommunications
Report says that 5G services would have a cumulative economic
5G impact of more than $1 trillion by 2035.
• Revenue Potential: 5G-enabled digitalisation revenue potential in
India will be above $27 billion by 2026.
• Implementation costs: A report on 5G by Deloitte stated that
rolling out 5G might require an additional investment of $60-70
billion.
• Size: It will reach a size of $18.8 billion by 2025 from $5.5 billion
with a CAGR of 27%
Big Data • Global: Indian Big data will account for 32% of global big data
market
o (Analytics Insights Data)
• Global Investment in Blockchain: $5.6 billion,
• India’s Share: 0.2% of global investment.
Blockchain Technology • India accounted only for about 2 % of all the blockchain start-ups,
globally.
• Economic Impact: Blockchain’s overall contribution to the Indian
economy is projected to surge to $62.2 billion in 2030.
India attracts $638 million in crypto, blockchain investments in 2021
Cryptocurrency
[Tracxn Data]
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• Budget:An increase in allocations for the Ministry of Defence
(MoD) by 9.8 percent to INR 5.25 trillion (USD 70.6 billion).
• Central government earmarked 68 per cent of the capital budget
for 2022-23 for domestic manufacturing industries
• Importer: India accounted for 11% of global arms imports in
2017-21 [SIPRI 2021 report]
• Russia was India’s largest supplier of arms in both 2012-16 and
2017-21[SIPRI 2021 report].
Defence • India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Australia, and China were world's top
5 arms importers in 2017-21 period.
• Decline in Imports: The volume of global arms transfers between
2017 and 2021 was 4.6 per cent less than during the 2012-16 period
[SIPRI report].
• Top Importers: India’s top three arms suppliers were Russia,
France and Israel.
• Defence Exports: the value of India's arms exports has gone up
six-fold since 2014, with the 2021-22 financial year figure at Rs
11,607 crore.
*****
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1.7) BOOKS
Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins- Garry
Kasparov
• The author tells his story of AI more generally, and how he's evolved to embrace it, taking part
in an urgent debate with philosophers worried about human values, programmers creating self-
learning neural networks, and engineers of cutting edge robotics.
• The machines have finally come for the white collared, the college graduates, the decision
makers.
• If you program a machine, you know what it’s capable of. If the machine is programming itself,
who knows what it might do?
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind- Yuval Noah Harari
• Spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical
– and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific
Revolutions.
• Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores
how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us,
and even our personalities.
Life 3.0- Max Tegmark
• Theme: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
• It deals with how can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people
lacking income or purpose.
• Impact of Artifical Intelligence on crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being
human.
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes- Stephen Hawking
• In this book, Hawking writes in non-technical terms about the structure, origin, development
and eventual fate of the Universe, which is the object of study of astronomy and modern
physics.
• He talks about basic concepts like space and time, basic building blocks that make up the
Universe (such as quarks) and the fundamental forces that govern it (such as gravity). He writes
about cosmological phenomena such as the Big Bang and black holes.
• He discusses two major theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics, that modern
scientists use to describe the Universe.
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology- Ray Kurzweil
• In the Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human
intelligence at its best.
• He examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine,
in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater
capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies- Nick Bostrom
• The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive
capabilities that our species owes its dominant position.
• If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence
could become extremely powerful--possibly beyond our control.
• As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on humans than on the species itself, so would the fate
of humankind depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.
*****
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1.8) POEMS
Science Boon or Bane?
The world is now an advanced global village
In which we subsist and have every privilege
Travel and communication made a rapport
Science and technology made a passport
Friends book, Face book, twitter and too
On which people certainly make a big queue
Life is lived as a series of communication
Beneficial things are realized only by a few
A journey is measured in friends, not in miles
No matter where you go, there you are
You never listen when you are eager to speak
Deliver your words not by number, but by weight
It's high time to know the ominous crimes
Newspapers are filled with shocking news
Communities ought to be aware and stare
Since everyone needs to have a welfare
- SetaluriPadmavathi
Science Means to Know
Science means to know
but we don't know everything
we don't know what we don't know
and we know that we don't know
so if we don't know we should say so
unless we are ruled by ego
then as our knowledge base grows
the more we know shows we have grown
we need to know more than we now know
we can observe test evaluate our new knows
travel on the road goes slow.
- Andy Caldwell
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