Dear Traveller

To whom it may concern.

Dear Traveller,

It’s been far too long since I last wrote to you with real sincerity. Thinking back, I can’t even remember the last time I sat down and truly put my thoughts to paper. A lot has happened since then, more than either of us could count, and all of it has led to this moment: you, here, reading these words. I won’t go on endlessly, because that’s not why I’m writing. This is simply to say: Hello.

In the past decade or so, the world has seen change like never before. A change forever marked in history, ushering in hope and offering a glimpse of what the future could be. And during this moment, I was fortunate enough to be one of the witnesses.

I have always been a creature of much contemplation. A life largely spent in solitude has taught me that distraction drags you further and further from your ambitions. My memory, unreliable as it has become, lets what I learn, see, or hear vanish in a flicker.

Those distractions I mentioned? Lately, they’ve been everywhere. The older I get, the more my mind feels cluttered, with things useful and useless alike. And yet, I must remember most of them just to keep pace with this fast-moving world. Sometimes I wish there were another mind, another entity, to hold all these memories for me, freeing me to wrestle with the beast of innovation and explore untapped theories.

I have long been a keen observer of human nature, a nature that shifts its focus the moment it feels it has achieved something, or neared perfection. Take the mobile phone, for example. For decades, humans pursued its perfection: evolving from the clunky, wired telephone to the modern smartphone, a device you can carry anywhere, anytime, without inconvenience.

I believe the same pattern will unfold with the next great evolution: the Machines. Right now, humanity is enamored with its latest toy, Artificial Intelligence. Progress has been uneven, at times disappointing, yet promising enough to keep the obsession alive. They will get there, eventually, but not as soon as they expect. And when they do, whether at the point of perfection or just shy of it, to their focus will shift again, this time toward a new frontier: Robotics.

This would be their new obsession, until they discover another loop to chase, maybe even time travel; and the cycle would continue, endlessly. It’s as if they exist only for these obsessions, shaping their lives into the dystopian worlds they’ve always imagined in their imaginative little heads.

One thing to note: most of what humans do follows the same path. Take, for example, how they design their homes. They mimic the masses: similar shapes, similar structures, similar approaches. The same goes for software development. A new frontier, like artificial intelligence, demands multiple approaches, novel experiments, fresh thinking. But no. Everyone writes the same code, trains on the same existing data, and progress lags behind expectation. Everyone thinks the same.

Yesterday, someone, in particular, made my day: the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. He was extraordinarily talented, yet he never followed the conventional path of higher education that society insists is essential. Instead, he pursued his own path, driven by passion rather than by society’s expectations.

What truly captivated those around him was the way he approached mathematics. He didn’t follow the linear, preordained methods laid out by tradition. Instead, he explored new formulas, finding ways to solve equations that others deemed unsolvable. He refused to be constrained by the way things had always been done, sensing that undiscovered theories were waiting to be revealed.

I dunno. I think I’ve veered off whatever I thought I was writing about in this paper. I think I’ll stop here. In a few days... or years, I’ll write to you again, with more, or with less — I don’t know yet.

Until then, xo.