Unplugged!

1950s P Ramlee

The teachers thought he was mental. Living in his own world, humming to the tunes that emanate from his mind, they were sure he would end up as a nobody. Some even toyed with the idea of sending him off for a psychological assessment, and perhaps to a lesser taxing environment, unlike the grammar school that he is placed in. Collectively they thought he belonged to the loony bin. Surprise, surprise, 20 years on, he was composing music, making movies and winning international awards for his acting skills. The boy grew up to be the one and only, the legendary P Ramlee, a national treasure. 

An elderly auntie once told me that she and her husband had decided to leave their first home in Lorong Seratus Tahun in Penang. They were particularly disturbed by the loitering of boys along the roadside, strumming away their guitars and crooning into the deep of the night, crooning in their high pitched squeaky voices. They were not thrilled by their unkempt beehive hair, beatings of drums, either. They thought that the neighbourhood was not conducive to bringing up their children. 

Little did they know that their kids were listening to the same guys who their parents wrote off ten years down the road. By then, three of those roadside boys had become the Alleycats. Their beehive hairdo was then fashionably called ‘Afros’!

Of course, the Alleycats are the most successful of Malaysian bands with international recognition.

The world is a cruel place. People forever want to exert their dominance over the other as much as and whenever they can. They will not rest until and unless their position on top of the perch is secure. They would be wary of any behaviours by the other that is not mainstream. What if the others’ actions put them in the limelight, and their puissance is bowled out?

Alleycats

Every time I held my guitar, people would exit the room. They would say I should not act weird and stick to my daytime job. They assert that wearing too many hats would make me a Jack of all trades but master of None. They asked me what I was trying to achieve and was it my narcissistic tendencies that pushed me to venture into new frontiers considered self-indulgence?

Covid was God-sent. They left the room, citing my contact with the public that puts me a potential transmission source. That arrangement was just dandy. Nobody was there to be bothered by my disjointed and out-of-tune strumming. They did not disturb me, and my practising did not annoy them.

Fast forward. I could say I did not do too badly with my self tutoring. As is seen in the short snippet below, everyone is having a good time.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Life is not so simple, or is it?

© Asleep at the Wheel, New Yorker cover by Frank Viva

We think that we do not have self-driving cars because the technology is not perfect. Furthermore, we heard of Uber experimental driver-less car crashing. Hence, the whole exercise had been put into cold storage.

Jack Ma, in one of his interviews, was quoted as saying that we should wait for a perfect system before introducing it for human consumption. He suggests that we should present it anyway and make changes as we go on, as we encounter obstacles and bumps. I think that is a businessman talking. Capital ventures usually sell an idea, get everybody excited, convince them that it is the best thing since Adam, create an illusion of demand, make loads of money starting the venture, selling the business, going for a kill and split the scene to begin another venture somewhere else.

The idealist would, however, ponder and yonder till the cows come home. Nothing new would see living daylight. Every endeavour would fizzle out as unremarkable as it started.

Another discussion that I heard recently on the use of a driverless car is the moral dilemma. It is dandy that the vehicle can be navigated from point A to point B. Now, along with the way, there can be many unforeseen circumstances. It could be one that had not been programmed with the machine's algorithm. A split second decision may need to be made. The car may need to decide between crashing into a crowd or hitting the pavement. But wait! Hitting the sidewalk or the tree may endanger the passenger. The question arises whether the maker of the car should give importance to its client or to the vagabond slouched by the roadside. How is the software going to know the identity of the potential accident victim if not for facial recognition and access to his bank account and social background? Oh no, does that mean some lives are more worth saving than others? Does owning a self-driving car make you more valuable than the man on the street? And all this in a fraction of a second!

Anyway, human beings are not the best of moral agents especially when it is their lives, or their loved ones are involved. Social class, race, religion and self-interest may cloud their judgement. Are machines going to be any better as they would be programmed by us anyway?