An evening listening to a real futurist.

I let much time pass by without writing here. There is so much that has happened in the last month and a half. The holidays came and went by, Israel pounded Gaza, and we now have a new President. Somewhere in between all those major events, I also watched some interesting movies - Slumdog Millionaire tore my heart, and made me wake up once again of things that needed doing, and others that were there simply to tell me once again, the chasm that existed between my tastes and the mainstream. Any of these, by themselves, could have provided enough prod to want to say something, but the fact that I did not, brings the challenge of inertia right up to the front. Well, something churned again, when I heard a famous futurist on Monday evening.

Dr. Bishop (of the UoH Futures program) invited all his current and former students to attend a series of lectures by Ted Gordon. Ted can claim to be one of the pioneers of the field. Imagine for example being a futurist since 1968, or having invented techniques such as Delphi. He is very involved with the UN Millennium project now. For some reason, not clear to me he happens to be in Houston, and has agreed to share four of his evenings talking to the students.

I dialed into the web conference from home. Even with the blurry and rather small size of hte video stream, you could see clearly the amazing humanity and geniality that wrapped his deep knowledge and experience. The concern for the future of humanity was not a matter of fascination with technique, or reveling in something esoteric, such as sometimes I believe the techno-fabulists tend to do, but rooted in a deep concern for the world. It meant that being a futurist, even if in mind, was the only compelling option there could be. I think that itself is worth watching anytime.

Ted talked about the Millennium project, and how it had grown with participants from all around the world. He talked about their 15 priorities, and what some of the most critical issues were that the world is facing. There is much material out there on the project, so I will not dwell on that here. One of the issues that came up, of female infanticide (not sure if that is the right word here) in India, in the context of gender equality, got me to think of something.

In the conversation then, I brought up social practices such as dowry, which crossed all belief systems and seemed to be more prominent in the poorer segments, some religious preferences for the male child among Hindus etc, and how things had changed since independence. We talked about the institutional frameworks such as laws, women's development and so on.

But, for some reason, I did not think then of the factor that I believe has exacerbated the problem (if aborting female fetuses), to the crisis that it is now. It is an interesting example of how a seemingly benign technology can become malevolent when put in a context where forces can combine in strange and unpredictable ways.

The technology I am talking about is Ultrasound. It became cheap to the extent that little shops offering scanning services, proliferated like the Public telephone booths (PCO/STD/ISD signs which are so ubiquitous in the Indian market) did. They were an idea which had a willing host. So many in India had perhaps become conscious of limiting family size. The laws on abortion are not very stringent, and they did give an element of power to the women over their own destiny.

However, there was a lurking pathology, a latent preference for the male child. A desire which usually had led to people having lots of girl children in anticipation of a male child. I had tow friends in college, one who was the eighth child after seven girls and one who was the 11th. Anyway, this was in fact a good thing in some ways, since it forced the parents to make the girls autonomous and independent through education, as they could not afford conventional marriage and dowry. However, by and large, the dowry problem remained, and there was a strong reason among the poor and undereducated for avoiding girls when possible.

Needless to say, you can imagine how the demand for scanning soared, as did the consequent growth in abortions. There is a lopsided gender balance now, and hopefully the 'price' for marriageable girls will come down enough to restore some balance to this stupidity.

I say this in jest - but as a technologist and a futurist, it makes me even more conscious of the responsibility to think of consequences of our choices. Technology can contribute to progress and development, but it is not only a money-maing venture, but also an idea, and idea which can combine with other ideas, flawed in this case, to create monsters. Monsters that can destroy our humanity if not us completely.