When Watson is Not Sherlock’s Mate – How Future Ready Are You?

When Watson is Not Sherlock’s Mate.– How Future Ready Are You?By Atul Pant, founder of London-based charitable organisation Timeless Lifeskills.If you are of a certain age you may have learnt your English alphabet reciting – A for Apple, B for Boy, C for Cat… If you were to say this out loud to young kids today they will think you mean – Apple, the company and Game Boy, the gaming console. They might still be in sync with you about cats but only because that is a popular theme on YouTube.   Now let’s check how Future Ready you are today. For example, if to you Amazon only connotes the river in South America then on Internet Timescale you are pre-historic, and the future does not augur well!   As you read the following 15 statements pause and check if you said to yourself, “Yes, that’s correct. What’s all the fuss about?” or did you exclaim, “Ah, I know the new meaning!” 

1. Deep Blue is a colour.
2. Watson is Sherlock Holmes mate.
3. Square is a figure with four equal sides and four right-angles.
4. Box is a physical container.
5. Quill is a bird’s feather, used for writing.
6. Raspberry Pi is what you eat.
7. Arm is the upper limb in your body.
8. Deep Learning is what you do when you study hard.
9. Risc is risk misspelled.
10. Oop(s) is an informal way of saying sorry.
11. Java is an Indonesian island famous for coffee.
12. Thimble is a protective cap you put on your finger while sewing.
13. Uber means a supreme example.
14. Oculus means an eye-like design.
15. Tencent is a US coin.

Now total up for how many of the above you knew the ‘new meaning’ and see your future:

• Got only upto 3 ‘new meaning’: Futurus Bleakus
• Got upto 8 ‘new meaning’: Futurus Securus
• Got upto 12 ‘new meaning’: Futurus Brightus
• Got more than 13 ‘new meaning’: Thrivus Maximus

Other way around, if for most of these words you only know the ‘new meaning’ – i.e. Square to you means a mobile payment company and you know Four Square is not a more powerful mobile payment solution but a real-time location sharing service, BUT you haven’t a clue what is meant by ‘square is a figure with four equal sides and four right-angles’ then congratulations, you are an ultra cool digital native with no historical baggage!

1. Deep Blue: the AI computer built by IBM that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in Chess in 1997 (with some controversy).
2. Watson: is the latest AI computer built by IBM. In 2011 it beat former champions of the famous game show, Jeopardy and won a million dollars.
3. Square: is a mobile payment company.
4. Box: is an online content sharing platform, like Dropbox.
5. Quill: is an automated writing system (a writing robot) that can take data, say from a sporting event, look at some facts and convert it into a nicely written story. It is already being used commercially.
6. Raspberry Pi: is a credit card sized computer, highly affordable that can be used for learning computer science and doing electronics projects.
7. ARM: Advanced RISC Machine, or computer processor created by the British company ARM. Your mobile phone may well be using an ARM chip (and not an Intel chip).
8. RISC: Reduced Instruct Set Computing, used in designing the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of computers
9. Deep Learning: is a branch of machine learning. Machine Learning is the way Artificially Intelligent (AI) machines learn.
10. OOP(s): Object Oriented Programming, which is a specific style of computer programming
11. Java: is a general purpose computer programming language
12. Thimble: is a start-up that is offering subscription based robotics (subscribe and they will send you a new robotic kit every month)
13. Uber: the ride hail company that uses an app to connect needy passengers with obliging taxi drivers
14. Oculus: is a virtual reality company that Facebook acquired
15. TenCent: is a Chinese company with Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and Uber rolled into one. It has a billion users and $138 billion market cap.