COVID Blues

World has experienced a series of effects of COVID pandemic right from the year 2020. We are into the third year, but the virus is going strong with its metamorphosis through Mutations. We have seen three major waves, many a variants, death and chaos in different parts of the world. Yes, it has been quite a leveler - affecting all human races, visiting all the countries - rich or poor, taking a toll on economy thereby governance, destroying livelihood of many daily wage workers, affecting work as well as education. It has also taught us to live within our means, eat healthy and be compassionate to the world at large. The worst affected are the young adults whose formal education has suffferred beyond limits. They have missed the fun of living and learning together. Small mischiefs and greater celebrations of campus life. Hope they will get their share of fun and frolic once sun shine emerges again. We have almost ran out of greek alphabets to name the variants of COVID. Some are Variants of Concern as designated by appropriate authorities. Present reign of 'Omicron' has been described by many as signal to end of COVID era. Fervently hope that these turn out to be true. Whatever be the outcome, world has learned to live with constraints. Many functions have gone online underlining the need for a robust network backbone - available for all without restrictions. From entertainment to education and work, affordable network connectivity is of paramount importance these days. I am sure world governments have taken notice and is working to ensure the same for its citizens. In fact governance is also delivered through the same network these days. May we pour collective wisdom of mankind into developing as well as deploying faster networks. Care should be taken to ensure availability of the same to the poorest of its citizens through appropriate mechanisms. The security of data should be protected when all the information is available on the network. Present scheme of encryption may no where be sufficient once quantum computers are deployed from their present research epoch. May be like COVID, mankind may have to live with exposure to private data. The targeted marketing calls or advertising one receives is a clear indication of systems knowing ones preference or search history. World will keep on evolving. Its quite good to know that human race will continue to adapt so that we can carry on. Future generations may not have "JOB" as seen in traditional sense. But then ours is quite different from those a century ago. Data, Infrastructure and security systems will be the thrust areas. Research into high end computing and fundamental sciences are going to be in the lime light as far as i can see. All the best to one and all