Here I sit. In my lab. Knowing not what to do. They say that when a research scholar defines for himself the exact niche in which he wants to work, he feels this unprecedented sense of upliftment and belonging. It is made out to be almost like a miniature nirvana. I have known the general area in which I would like to work for some time now (since about 2004). That is almost six years. When I mentioned it in its entirety to my professor, he told me that to work that entire field to perfection would take something life fifty years. Okay, I set myself the task of narrowing down my perspective. And I don't really know where that got me.
Initially, when I took my first few steps down this road, I dreamt of inventing AI, artificial intelligence, the thing that will either enable us humans as a species to reach heights beyond our wildest dreams or lead to our extinction (that depends on which brand of science fiction you read and choose to believe in). I believe in the latter but don't completely dismiss the former. I still do dream of inventing AI. Don't ask me why, but I am not really bothered by the gravity of the latter of the two possible eventualities that I mentioned in the preceding sentence.
Well, anyhow, I started marching down this path with steadfast resolve. My aim was not just to write a gazillion lines of code and somehow hope that it would behave intelligently. I know that is what AI has come to mean in the last couple of years and to say I disagree with that approach would be an extremely polite transcription of my thoughts about that philosophy. My aim was to study and try to understand how the human brain (and of course the brains of other animals) works, not at the cellular level, but at the functional level. When my professor came to know of my intentions, he introduced me to the works of several other pioneers in the field of cognitive neurology. Among them were Dr. V. Ramachandran, Prof. Rodney Brooks, Dr. Oliver Sacks, etc.
I became acutely interested not in the work but in the philosophy behind the work of Prof. Rodney Brooks. He had founded and pioneered a field called Embodied Cognitive Science. I was completely taken up by the entire concept of embodiment. Based on that I built a whole theoretical framework to guide my research work. My professor then told me that if I wanted to do this sincerely in its entirety, it would take about fifty years. Then I set about narrowing it down to one single atomic sub-topic which I could research for my dissertation.
It was while I was engaged in this narrowing down, I stumbled across a concept known as the two stream hypothesis. This gave me a further idea about the construction that goes on in the human brain. That is how when we see parts of an object we see it as the sum of the parts and not the parts individually. i.e. how we construct a version of reality in our heads for ourselves.
This to me was like being Alexander the Great, it was that exhilarating. I kept surging forward from revelation to revelation. I was discovering my own little universe and it was not all that little after all. That is when I drew this diagram which hangs on the wall of my lab, right above my desk, in which the two stream hypothesis sits sweetly inside one of the stages of the framework I created. It bifurcated that stage into two separate categories. One for object classification, and the other for sensorimotor control.
There are several existing structures that fulfil the requirements of an object classification architecture. I created one of my own to add to that assortment. And so far, to me it does not pose any problems. But sensorimotor control, that proves to be a different matter altogether. I am pretty sure that once I have that figured out, the rest will practically be a cakewalk.
So that is what I have chosen as the topic for my dissertation. This is where it gets hairy. Its kinda like I have spent all this time digging a tunnel and surging forward with unrelenting force and I suddenly find myself in a medium I do not identify. Digging furiously straight ahead and now I am in a place that causes me to lose my sense of direction. It is as if you had seen a light at the end of the tunnel and raced toward it with speed that matched your enthusiasm, but instead of finding your destination, at the end of the tunnel, you find a junction and another set of tunnels to choose from.
Loss of direction is a really crippling thing. Once you have a sense of direction, you can work. You can do something or the other and go ahead... progress. But when you don't have a sense of direction, you are left completely helpless, as if all alone in the vast empty expanse that is space. All alone, marooned. That is what you feel.
I have always been cursed with this obsession to find my own direction. Something that I can call my own and in the absence of such a sense of direction all the other inadequacies of life seem to get amplified. Just when you feel that life cannot possibly get any worse and that you have reached the ultimate low point of your entire existence which in itself seems to pale in significance compared to almost anyone you come across. You start to slip and slide along the slippery slopes that form the rim of the edge that leads to the oh so familiar depths of depression.
You are in this area which seems somewhat like a junction of the sewer system of some large place. The gaping mouths of the pipes which surround you spherically are the different paths you can take. But the tragedy of the whole deal is that you do not know which one you can take. Then as you are wildly flitting about, seemingly aimlessly, staring deep into the yawning mouths of each pipe as you contemplate it and try to figure out whether you could possibly succeed in your quest by going down it, you see a faint glimmer in one. But, you thought you saw a light at the end of the tunnel that led you to this place.
At first you seem inclined to believe that it is just your eyes playing tricks on you. Maybe all that wishful thinking has resulted in your seeing light at the far end of the tunnel. You move on to the next tunnel, the next gaping maw, you see nothing. You look back at this one and you again see that barely discernible flicker of a suggestion that this path might lead you to somewhere, somewhere past this impasse. You repeat this several times, contemplating several different paths, each one of them as dark as the abyss that stared back at you. You begin to feel paranoid that this should come prancing into your eyesight just when you are about to descend into the depths of despair, when you are teetering on the edge of self loathing and depression.
Finally, after much deliberation that seems to have taken an eternity in itself, you take a leap (much rather a dive) of faith into that tunnel at the end of which there seemed to be a faint suggestion of light.
And the journey begins all over again.
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