Where Is Mobility’s Smartphone Moment?

In communication, the leap has been nothing short of revolutionary. We moved from wired landline phones to pocket-sized supercomputers powered by AI devices that can see, hear, learn, translate languages, navigate the planet, and connect billions of people in real time. The underlying technologies semiconductors, networks, software, and data evolved exponentially, each generation making the previous one almost obsolete.

Mobility, on the other hand, never had such a moment.

Cars today may look sleeker, safer, and more connected, but at their core they still rely on internal combustion engines invented more than a century ago. Aircraft, despite massive advances in materials and avionics, still fly using turbine engines based on principles established in the mid-20th century. Roads are wider, vehicles are faster, but the fundamental idea of how we move has barely changed.

There was no “landline-to-smartphone” transition in transportation only gradual refinement.

Even electric vehicles, often presented as a revolution, are evolutionary rather than disruptive. They replace the engine, not the system. Traffic remains traffic. Congestion remains congestion. Travel time remains stubbornly similar. A smarter engine does not solve a system-level problem.

How Big Is the Gap? Some Statistics to Ground the Issue

Digital Tech Growth

The microprocessor and semiconductor innovations that power mobile phones follow Moore’s Law-style exponential growth, meaning computing power roughly doubles every couple of years enabling vastly better performance, connectivity, and capabilities in each phone generation. 

Car Engine Innovation

Traditional internal combustion engines power the vast majority of automobiles even today, and while there have been improvements in efficiency and emissions, the fundamental engine design remains rooted in century-old principles and hasn’t seen a similarly explosive reinvention.

Electric vehicle powertrains, hybrid systems, and alternative fuels are emerging, but they are still less than half the global fleet and infrastructure is lagging. 

Why Digital Leaped While Mobility Crawled

The reason is structural. Digital technology lives in a near-frictionless world bits move without mass, without gravity, without physical infrastructure expansion. Mobility operates in the physical realm, constrained by energy density, safety, regulation, infrastructure, and human behavior. Every breakthrough must coexist with roads, airports, cities, and millions of legacy assets already in use.

As a result, innovation in mobility gets absorbed as incremental efficiency, not radical transformation.

We optimized engines. We optimized aerodynamics. We optimized fuel injection. We optimized navigation. But we never redefined movement itself.

The Real Cost of No Breakthrough

The absence of a true mobility breakthrough has consequences we quietly accept as normal:

Cities spend decades widening roads that fill up within years.

Airports expand terminals, yet feel perpetually overcrowded.

Railways run at capacity, while demand keeps growing.

Professionals spend hours everyday commuting, time permanently lost, not just delayed.

For those whose jobs demand constant travel, the irony is stark: more mobility in theory, less freedom in practice. Time spent moving increasingly outweighs time spent being somewhere.

Traffic and Time Wasted Globally

According to the TomTom Traffic Index 2024, typical yearly traffic delay per commuter in many global cities is staggering: 

City Avg Time Lost in Traffic (per year)

Barranquilla, Colombia ~130 hours

Bengaluru, India ~117 hours

Kolkata, India ~110 hours

Pune, India ~108 hours

London, UK ~113 hours

Lima, Peru ~155 hours

Davao City, Philippines ~136 hours

Trujillo, Peru ~102 hours

Dublin, Ireland ~155 hours

Kyoto, Japan ~95 hours

(Typical travel is for a 10 km distance with congestion taken into account.) 

This means in many major cities commuters spend nearly 100+ hours per year simply stuck in traffic. 

Meanwhile, some larger metro-region studies like the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard find that drivers in cities like New York could lose around 100+ hours per year to congestion, costing billions in lost productivity. 

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What a True Breakthrough Would Look Like

A real mobility breakthrough wouldn’t just mean a cleaner engine or a faster vehicle. It would mean:

Movement that decouples from congestion

Travel time that collapses non-linearly, not incrementally

Systems that scale without demanding proportional infrastructure

Mobility that feels as radically different from today as a smartphone felt compared to a landline

We haven’t reached that point yet.

Humanity mastered information faster than motion. We learned how to move ideas at the speed of light, but we still move bodies at the speed of roads. Until mobility experiences its own paradigm shift, not just technological polish traffic jams, crowded terminals, and wasted hours will remain the silent tax we pay for progress

Social Media: From Connection to Deception

 I still remember the first time I logged into Orkut as a teenager. My heart raced a little when a new “friend request” popped up, or when someone wrote a sweet testimonial on my profile, P.S. I got first conversation with my first love over Orkut. Those were innocent days. We posted badly lit selfies, shared forwarded jokes that ended with “PJs,” tagged friends in silly quizzes, and flirted in the most awkward, harmless ways. Social media felt like an extension of the school corridor; loud, chaotic, and full of laughter.

Then the world rushed in.

Almost overnight, everyone got a smartphone. Grandparents joined Facebook, uncles discovered Twitter, and suddenly the timeline was no longer about weekend plans or crush confessions. It became a war zone. People who smiled at each other during family weddings were tearing one another apart over politics, religion, and caste. Perfectly normal human beings turned into keyboard warriors before breakfast. A joke could start a riot; a rumor could ruin a life.

And then came the money.

Authentic voices got drowned out by “content creators.” Product reviews stopped being honest, they became 60-second advertisements with discount codes. Memes, once the purest form of humor, started carrying brand logos in the corner. Even heartbreak posts felt scripted for engagement. Likes, shares, and followers became the new currency, and truth was the first casualty.

Today when I scroll, I don’t recognize the internet I once loved. It feels like a tired, angry machine that runs on outrage and sponsored posts. Worst of all, children are growing up inside this machine, absorbing half-truths, comparing their bodies to filtered faces, learning that self-worth is measured in views. With AI deepfakes and bot armies joining the chaos, we can no longer tell what’s real and what’s manufactured. The line between reality and illusion has vanished.

That’s why, when I heard Australia is banning social media for kids under 16, something inside me exhaled. Finally, someone is drawing a boundary. A childhood should be filled with scraped knees, secret forts, boring afternoons that force you to invent your own games, not endless scrolling through other people’s curated highlight reels. Let children discover the world with their own eyes before we hand them a screen that teaches them to hate, to pose, to perform.

So here’s my quiet plea to all of us who still remember the old internet:

• Pause before you share. Ask yourself: Am I adding light or just more noise?
• Never outsource your thinking to an influencer with a ring light. Most of them are selling something—sometimes a product, sometimes an ideology, always themselves.
• Protect the kids. Delay the phone, delay the apps, delay the poison for as long as you can.
• And please, step outside. Touch grass, talk to a real human without recording it, watch a sunset that no filter can improve.

Life beyond the screen is still there; messy, slow, unfiltered, and breathtakingly real.

In a world that screams for your attention, the quiet act of thinking for yourself remains the last true rebellion.

Take it back.

The Metabolic Fate of Civilizations: From Slow Dawn to Accelerating Dusk

 

There was a time when the world changed slowly — so slowly that generations passed without noticing.
For thousands of years, the rhythm of life remained the same: sun, soil, seed, harvest.
Fire was a revolution that lasted millennia. The wheel took centuries to spread. Even when iron, writing, and empires appeared, humanity still moved at the pace of the seasons.

But today, change hums at the speed of thought.
An idea born in one corner of the planet reaches billions in seconds.
Machines now learn faster than our minds can adapt.
Every year feels shorter, not because the clocks have changed — but because the density of events within a year has multiplied.

We have entered the age of accelerating returns, the very phenomenon Ray Kurzweil described:

“The rate of change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems tends to increase exponentially.”

From the steam engine to the microchip, from telegrams to quantum computing — every invention becomes the foundation for the next, tightening the feedback loop of progress.
And like a biological metabolism that speeds up, the pulse of civilization beats faster with every passing decade.

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The Long Sleep of History

For almost all of human existence, nothing really changed.
If you were born in 5000 BCE and somehow woke up again in 1500 CE, the world would look familiar — people farming, trading, praying, fighting wars, and living by nature’s mercy.

The Industrial Revolution cracked that slowness.
The Scientific Revolution poured fuel.
Then the Digital Revolution — and now the AI Revolution — shattered the very idea of gradual progress.

It took us 100,000 years to invent the plow,
10,000 years to reach the steam engine,
200 years to reach the microchip,
and barely 20 years to create self-learning AI.

The curve is no longer linear — it’s vertical.
We’ve gone from millennia to decades to days.

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Acceleration and the Cost of Speed

But every acceleration in nature comes at a cost.
In biology, species with high metabolic rates — hummingbirds, shrews — live fast and die young.
In physics, high-energy systems lose stability quickly.
In civilization, the same pattern may apply: the faster we evolve, the shorter our equilibrium lasts.

Thinkers like Joseph Tainter (in The Collapse of Complex Societies) argued that as complexity rises, the energy needed to sustain it increases exponentially — until the system can no longer pay its own energetic cost.

Similarly, Ilya Prigogine’s theory of dissipative structures suggests that systems driven far from equilibrium either collapse or reorganize into a higher order — a form of evolution through instability.

Kurzweil’s vision of the Technological Singularity aligns eerily with this — a point where acceleration becomes infinite, and civilization either transcends or implodes under its own speed.

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The Universe’s Echo

Even the cosmos follows this rhythm.
Massive stars burn faster and die sooner, collapsing into black holes or scattering their essence as nebulae.
Maybe civilizations, too, follow that path — burning through knowledge and matter until they either collapse or transcend into another state of being.

Perhaps that’s not tragedy — it’s nature.
Entropy isn’t the enemy; it’s the teacher reminding us that balance is sacred, that everything bright must also learn to cool down if it wishes to endure.

Perhaps civilizations are like stars —
our brilliance depends on how quickly we convert energy into progress.
But unless we learn to balance that burn, we risk turning our light into an explosion instead of an evolution.

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Wisdom: The Missing Counterweight

Acceleration is not destiny — it is a direction.
What we lack is not intelligence, but equilibrium.
Maybe the next revolution should not be technological, but philosophical — a collective decision to balance progress with wisdom, innovation with reflection.

If progress is metabolism, wisdom must be the breath between its beats.
We may not stop the acceleration, but we can learn to steer it.
Because survival in the age of speed won’t belong to the fastest — it will belong to those who master rhythm.

3I/ATLAS and Our Cosmic Limitations

 

When an object from the distant parts of the universe—3I/ATLAS—entered our solar system, it did more than spark scientific curiosity. It held up a mirror to humanity, showing us just how limited we are in our technological reach.

For all our talk about space exploration and interstellar travel, the truth is sobering, we are still a century away from real breakthroughs. Despite knowing that 3I/ATLAS could be an interstellar visitor, possibly billions of years old, we cannot even send a simple study probe to examine it closely. The object passes by, and all we can do is observe from afar, guessing at its origins.

Imagine, for a moment, that 3I/ATLAS is an alien probe, sent to survey new worlds and report back. What if it’s silently watching, transmitting data about our civilization to distant stars? We would be powerless—sitting ducks before a technology millions of years ahead of us.

And yet, this is not just about aliens or science fiction. It’s about our priorities.
The world today is fragmented: superpowers are consumed by rivalries, while developing nations struggle with the basics of survival. Humanity acts not as a single planetary species, but as fractured tribes—just as pre-colonial India once was, divided into kingdoms that failed to unite when the colonial forces arrived. The parallel is haunting. When a cosmic “colonial power” appears, what would we have to offer—division or unity?

We speak of “planetary defense,” but do we truly act like a planet?
Our telescopes may have improved, but our vision as a civilization remains narrow. We need a renaissance of planetary thinking, where humanity moves beyond national boundaries to embrace its role as a single, learning species in a vast cosmic theater.

Still, amid this frustration, there is wonder. 3I/ATLAS reminds us that we are part of a larger story—that the universe sends us visitors, even if fleeting, to remind us how far we’ve yet to go. I hope that one day, we will be advanced enough to send probes beyond the Oort Cloud, capable of chasing interstellar travelers, and maybe even bridging the gulf between stars.

Until then, we can only look up, humbled and curious, and ask the same timeless question:
What’s really out there?

Diwali: Story of hope

Diwali is not just about lighting lamps or bursting firecrackers—it is about the light within us, returning after we have walked through our own struggles. It is the celebration of returning to our roots, after fulfilling the duties of dharma. When Shri Ram returned to Ayodhya after 14 years of exile, it was not only a prince coming home—it was dharma returning to society, truth shining once again after darkness.

1. Staying Away, Yet Staying Hopeful

For the sake of dharma and for the good of society, sometimes one has to stay away from their own. Shri Ram left behind his palace, his family, and his comforts, yet he never left behind hope. The Ramayan reminds us:

"त्यज्य पितृवचनं सत्यं न रामोऽनृतमब्रवीत्।"

(Ram never spoke an untruth, nor abandoned the words of his father.)

Just like Ram, in our struggles we may feel distanced from loved ones, but hope and righteousness are the ties that always bring us back.

2. Flexibility and Allies in Struggle

Life often throws us into situations we cannot predict. At such times, being rigid only breaks us. Shri Ram did not wait for a perfect army—he accepted the friendship of Sugriva, Hanuman, and the vanar sena. In that flexibility and trust, he found strength.

"सखा सो हनुमानु जसु राम कहि न जाई।"

(Hanuman, the dearest of friends, whose glory even Ram himself cannot fully describe.)

This teaches us that in life, alliances, friendships, and trust are our guiding lamps through the darkest nights.

3. Grit Over Perfection

We often waste time looking for perfection. But Ram shows us otherwise—he fought the might of Ravan’s army not with celestial warriors, but with vanars, bears, and simple weapons. What won the war was not perfection, but resolve, grit, and unshakable dharma.

"धर्मो विजयते नित्यं धर्मे सर्वं प्रतिष्ठितम्।"

(It is always dharma that ultimately wins; everything is established upon dharma.)

In our lives too, it is not the perfect circumstances that bring victory, but the strength to continue, despite imperfections.

 The Spirit of Diwali Today

So as we light our lamps this Diwali, let us not worry too much about so-called norms or appearances. Instead, let us return to our roots, celebrate goodness, spread love and positivity, and never forget our duties—to our family, our society, and our loved ones.

Diwali is not only about the triumph of Ram over Ravan. It is about the triumph of light over darkness within ourselves.

"दीपो हरतु दारिद्र्यम् दीपो दारुण्य नाशयेत्।"

(May this lamp take away poverty, may it destroy hardships.)

Let every diya we light remind us of our inner dharma—our duty to live with hope, to build bonds, and to spread light.

This Diwali, return to your roots. Celebrate with joy. Live with dharma. 

The soundtrack of my window

 

Some songs don’t just play; they arrive. They knock on the window, slip in with the breeze, and sit beside you as if they always knew the way to your room. I don’t remember when music first became a language for the things I couldn’t say, but I know how it keeps returning—sometimes as a whisper, sometimes as a flag in the storm.

It often begins with Hemant Kumar. Na tum hume jaano walks in softly, like a memory that doesn’t want to wake anyone up. There’s a dignity to his voice, a patience. The song doesn’t chase you. It waits, and in that waiting it teaches you how to live with mystery—the parts of ourselves and others that we may never fully name. Some evenings I let it play while darkness settles, and I feel the world become gentle again.

From there, the road bends homeward. Shivaaji nu halardu is not just a song; it is dust and sweat and pride. Hemu Gadhvi’s voice carries a stubborn courage—the kind that makes you stand a little straighter without noticing. It reminds me that strength doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it sings, steady as a marching step, and reminds you where you come from.

Then love arrives, the filmi kind, smiling at its own sincerity. Kishore Kumar in Tumhi to layi ho jeevan mere pyar makes romance feel like sunlight through a window—playful, warm, and a little dramatic in the best way. The heart learns different dialects of tenderness: the promise, the teasing, the quiet gratitude for simply being seen.

There are days when feelings need a slower language, a silkier light. Jagjit Singh opens that door. Hothon se chhu lo tum is a hand offered without asking anything back. It is the pause before a confession, the softness after a long day. Some songs are a chair pulled out for you at the table; this one is the whole house lit up when you return late.

Across the ocean, other voices keep watch. The Beatles say All You Need Is Love and you think, it can’t be that simple—and yet something in you nods. Ben E. King’s Stand by Me stands like a lighthouse; there’s comfort in knowing you don’t have to be brave alone. And then Queen kicks the door in—Bohemian Rhapsody refusing to fit inside any box, reminding me that art can be unruly and still be true. Sometimes life needs structure; sometimes it needs an operatic thunderclap.

Elvis walks in with Can’t Help Falling in Love, and time slows to a sway. There’s a purity to it, a surrender that doesn’t feel weak. To fall and still feel safe—that’s a rare gift. On other nights, rhythm takes over thought. Don Omar’s Mr. Romantic has no interest in philosophy; it is pulse and movement, a grin you can hear. Not every feeling needs a paragraph. Some just need a dance floor.

And then there is the sound of a galaxy turning. John Williams doesn’t compose themes; he builds starships. The Star Wars score is the part of me that never stopped looking up. The brass rises, and suddenly courage feels possible again. The music doesn’t promise victory; it promises a reason to try. I think that’s all we ever need.

If I stitched these songs into a map, it wouldn’t be linear. It would look like a constellation—points of light that only make sense when you connect them with your own lines. On some nights, Hemant Kumar’s patience sits beside Queen’s rebellion, and they get along. On others, Jagjit’s softness shares tea with Hemu Gadhvi’s grit. Music has never asked me to choose a single self; it has encouraged me to be many, and to be honest with each one.

I know I’ve missed songs. They will remember me before I remember them. A shop speaker will hum an old tune, a friend will send a link, a passing auto will carry a chorus down the lane, and something inside will turn and say—oh, there you are. That’s how music travels in my life: not as a collection but as a companionship.

Maybe that is why I keep the window a little open. Some nights, the world is loud, opinions are sharp, time feels like a stubborn knot. And then a melody slips in, sits down without ceremony, and untangles the day with a few simple notes. I don’t know if music heals; I only know it helps me remember what’s worth saving.

If one of these found you too—if a line, a riff, a gentle hum has stayed with you—tell me. Share your song. Maybe it will become a star on this map. Maybe, on a late evening somewhere, it will tap my window and I will let it in.

Living the Bhagavad Gita: Lessons Beyond Time

Janmashtami celebrates Krishna’s birth, but more importantly, it reminds us of the eternal wisdom he shared in the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is not just a religious scripture — it is a dialogue that bridges philosophy, psychology, ethics, and even cosmology. Its teachings continue to guide us in personal struggles, relationships, and our understanding of the universe itself.

1. Fight Your Own Battle

Krishna reminds us that while divine guidance is always there, no one can perform our duty for us. We must rise and act ourselves.

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“उद्धरेदात्मनात्मानं नात्मानमवसादयेत् ।

आत्मैव ह्यात्मनो बन्धुरात्मैव रिपुरात्मनः ॥” (6.5)

Uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānam avasādayet,

ātmaiva hyātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ.

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2. Truth Over Attachment

When personal relationships clash with truth, righteousness must prevail. Arjuna’s hesitation was natural, but Krishna reminded him of his higher duty.

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“स्वधर्मे निधनं श्रेयः परधर्मो भयावहः ॥” (3.35)

Swadharme nidhanaṁ śreyaḥ, paradharmo bhayāvahaḥ.

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3. War is the Last Option

Conflict should always be the final choice, after attempts at peace. But if justice is at stake, one must not retreat.

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“युद्धे चाप्यपलायनं दानमीश्वरभावश्च ।” (18.43)

Yuddhe chāpy apalāyanaṁ dānam īśvarabhāvaś ca.

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4. Ego Has No Place

The cosmic form (Vishvarupa) reveals how tiny we are before the vastness of time and creation. Ego dissolves before infinity.

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“कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत् प्रवृद्धो लोकान्समाहर्तुमिह प्रवृत्तः ॥” (11.32)

Kālo ’smi loka-kṣhaya-kṛit pravṛiddho lokān samāhartum iha pravṛttaḥ.

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5. Enjoy Life with Awareness

The Gita teaches balance — perform your duties, but also embrace joy, harmony, and a healthy rhythm in life.

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“युक्ताहारविहारस्य युक्तचेष्टस्य कर्मसु ।

युक्तस्वप्नावबोधस्य योगो भवति दुःखहा ॥” (6.17)

Yuktāhāra-vihārasya yukta-ceṣṭasya karmasu,

yukta-svapnāvabodhasya yogo bhavati duḥkha-hā.

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6. The Gita on Science and Cosmology

The Gita is not just a guide for life, but also reflects deep truths about the universe, resonating with modern cosmology.

Cyclic Universe

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“भूतग्रामः स एवायं भूत्वा भूत्वा प्रलीयते ।

रात्र्यागमेऽवशः पार्थ प्रभवत्यहरागमे ॥” (8.19)

Bhūtagrāmaḥ sa evāyaṁ bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate,

rātryāgame ’vaśaḥ pārtha prabhavaty ahar-āgame.

Time as a Cosmic Force

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“कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत्...” (11.32)

Kālo’smi loka-kṣhaya-kṛit…

Infinite Worlds (Multiverse)

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“सर्वलोकमहेश्वरम् ॥” (5.29)

Sarvaloka-maheśvaram.

Unity of Energy and Matter

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“प्रकृतिं यान्ति भूतानि निग्रहः किं करिष्यति ॥” (3.33)

Prakṛtiṁ yānti bhūtāni nigrahaḥ kiṁ kariṣyati.

This Janmashtami, let’s not only remember Krishna’s birth — let’s live his wisdom, in our choices and in our understanding of the universe.