Thoughts on Quiet Time

?The recent ruckus about Artificial Intelligence (AI) had Facebook shutting down their robots when it started communicating with their own language that the programming experts on Facebook could not understand. This happening with Facebook is not isolated. The AlphaGo incident where the best-known player of the game was beaten by a robot sent alarm to human beings concerned. Lee Se-dol, an 18-time world champion in the game Go, where combinations of moves are said to be as many as the stars in the universe, was defeated by AlphaGo Zero --- a software.

I have not heard of the concept of alone time until I reached mid-20’s. Being single that time, it was practically difficult for me to understand that we need to spend a sometime in isolation. I was mostly scared of being alone, so I did not really find time to practice it.

Only two decades ago, we still see our oldies knitting and crocheting. Many times back then, I would see a grandmother of some playmates who would sew and knit while we run around and play. These days, I rarely see that and I see many adults, counting myself in, so hooked with the screens.

Have you heard of The Secret? I first saw the movie way back in 2007, when my college teacher showed it to our class. Around 2005, there seemed to be a boom of personal development products, from books to DVD down to various platforms on the Internet.