I was born in Karachi, a city of 14 million souls. Karachi, for some is a gargantuan slum wreaking of poverty, misery and religiousness. To others, it is just the home of the people they love. The reality is, perhaps, everywhere in between. All cities are like people, unique in their own way, and Karachi is no exception.

For me, Karachi was just the place I happened to be born in: it did not have any bearing on my personal identity. Nor should it, I believe.

More so than the place of my birth, more important to me was the time I was born in. A time when the ‘digital revolution’ had just kicked off, and I happened to be exposed to a computer at the age of 10.

The exposure to this machine radically affected how I viewed myself and the world around me. The Internet, then, to me, was a magical shrinkage of time and space, where anyone or anything on Earth was just underneath your fingertips – waiting to be discovered just by sending a message.

Suddenly, anything on the planet, was just a click away. And, it was spectacular!

Within the mundane IRC chat rooms, AOL.com, and cropped up web pages on Geocities was a radical world of escapism that was quite tangential to reality: a mysterious place where somehow our bodies (and its linked identities) didn’t matter – all that mattered was our mind.

The digital experience was an intoxicating one indeed. A new kind of escapism which wasn’t as linear and concrete as reading a novel, and not as vague as listening to music. It was something of its own.

The “linked” nature of the Web perhaps, made it a relational experience – one where you ‘jump’ over resources and bind them together into one cohesive summary as your mind goes along. And then, of course, IRC channels at the time allowed you to talk to people from any part of the world – which was completely mind blowing on its own.

Due to all of these properties, back then, and rightly so, the Internet was hailed as a democratizing force by it’s designers and creators. Fresh off the ideals of the hippies who protested the Vietnam War was a technology which was anti-hierarchy in principle – a sentiment which perhaps still exists today.

At its core, The Internet was an open space. One, which perhaps, anyone could mould – all you needed was an Internet connection. From the rigid realities of the physical world, arose an open digital one which was quite anti-thetical to our default state of being.

Our default states of being, one where ideas and thoughts were limited by the speed of our limbs, sails, wheels and wings. Suddenly, as digital states of beings we could travel at the speed of light – and we were all there for it.

For all of these reasons, and more, the Internet was hailed as a democratic force, and that it would grant more power to the individual: the Internet would make the world more “flat” was the promise.

This sentiment was echoed by any magazine I could find, and any web page I could visit. “Cyberspace” was to “revolutionize” the world, the “Web” would change “everything”.

A key promise of this new “flat” world, would be that it would be devoid of any “informational’ hierarchy”.

This new “flat” world would grant more power to the individual, this new “flat” world would be more open. As such, one would not need to “ask” for any one person guarding a gate- all gates would just be open to everyone.

Hence, information wouldn’t be a ‘privilege’ one ought to buy but a public utility which was one’s right. Information, and its by product of knowledge, would be easily accessibly (equally) for everyone who wished to look – such was the promise.

All of this spoke a lot to me, since in my surrounding basic literacy seemed not a utility but a privilege. Even though the slums were so close to my classroom, that we could see them from our large windows everyday – the distance between us was huge. Anything that would help change that situation, would obviously be a boon.

In a world, where knowledge was power, a technology which aimed to set information free would obviously have potaclysmic effects. There would be no gatekeepers, and there would be no gates: the Internet was open to all.

One area of society where ‘gatekeeping’ was fundamentally obvious was in classrooms and the education sphere. And, a lot of (well intentioned) promises were made on how to reduce these barriers.

It was prophesied that quite soon, universities would ‘die’, schools would be ‘free’, life eventually would be a level playing field for all. On the other end of this promise was the inference that perhaps someday everybody would have the same starting point in life.

Those were the promises being made, the fulfillment of which was eagerly awaited by little old me.

So much would change, and with all these promises – even if a few would be delivered – a lot of people would have more open, freeing and enriched lives: global society was indeed headed towards a revolution.

Pretty soon, we would have a much better world – organized to have fixed some of its apparent flaws which were quite evident in the face of unequal acces to opportunities, education, income and life.

And then, fast forward to today. How many universities have ‘died’? How many schools are free? How many kids are still out of school? How many accrue debt just to get a degree? How many move countries, leave their families just to get a ‘good’ education and a job? How many of us are still stuck in ‘bad neighborhoods’ because what makes the neighborhood ‘bad’ is us? How many of us, have had the same starting point in life since then?

Warren Buffet has always (rather humbly) spoken about winning the Ovarian Lottery and he is right. This memoir, perhaps, is about the flipside of his lottery: the Ovarian Curse.

The purpose of civilization, perhaps, was to help us fight our Ovarian Curses. And when the natural world was falling victims to its inefficiencies, perhaps the digital one offered a glimmer of hope to be an equalizer.

From where I stand, it seems that our entire destiny is perhaps written the moment we are born. Social standing, the color of our skin, our gender, our face, our height, our morality, our access to opportunities, and most importantly whatever step we fall on the capitalistic ladder: all is victim to the house we are born in and where that house is located.

None of it is a choice. None of it ever will be. Diseases aren’t congenital, life is – our entire life is inherited at birth. And that, is the Ovarian Curse.

Our starting point, is not in our control. Then, hence, it is the purpose of all of law, governance, technology, education and infrastructure to help us give us more control over our ending point – and give us the ammo required to fight the curses we were born with. What other cause warrants the outlandishly large amount time we have spent, to build these structures around us?

I’m not a very educated person. And, I’m not very smart either. But I assumed that, the purpose of all of this infrastructure: the billions spent in telephone cables, electric circuits, plastic monitors, keyboards and mice was to perhaps help the inefficiencies which plague the natural world. Why else, would we need a digital one? Why, despite all of this infrastructure, is education still a privilege and not a commodity?

My problem perhaps, was that I expected a lot. My problem perhaps, was that I expected anything at all. But how could I not? If medical science can help us fight congenital diseases via medicine, why can’t information science help us fight congenital social diseases via networks?

Perhaps a lot of it comes from our view on technology – and how we see the role it should play in our lives and society. I do not know about yours, but I will share with you mine.

Long before Shannon’s A Mathematical Theory of Communication changed every thing, a concept has forever eluded our race: suffering.

Explorations on the nature of suffering has come across ages, regions and minds. From Plato to Buddha to Nietzsche to Al-Ghazali, all have wondered about the nature of it. All, including us.

We may not have published papers on it, but we have all felt suffering penetrate through our existence. Like a dagger, every time it hits our heart, we fear it will never end. But often, it does. Once it ends, we never wonder why and how it ended. We suppress it deep down, and pretend it never existed.

Much often than not, your suffering ended because of technology. Your toothache disappeared because of asprin, your surgery went well because of anethesia, your house is warm because of radiators, and when you missed your loved ones you were able to video call them through the wonders of TCP/IP.

As such, as my feeble mind is given to understand – the goal of technology is to reduce human suffering. Further, the role of technology is to reduce inefficiencies that cause those suffering and make more things possible within the fixed time that is our finite life. While philosphers lament and wonder about the nature of suffering, technologists and scientists attempt to understand its origins and attempt to cure it.

The purpose of technology, to me, is to minimize suffering in life until life inevitably ends.

But, I digress. I shall concretely outline my expectations in three bullet points – and then you be the judge of of how much progress we’ve made on these fronts:

1) Ideas, people and capital would not be geographically bounded.
2) The financial cost of education would be infinitesimally small – implying a decreasing marginal unit cost per student.
3) Cross-skilling and up-skilling people to new disciplines and subjects would be the default.

As the Internet continues to evolved, at every cusp of it, similar promises have been made and are being made today.

It was the same with ‘social media’, where we would be ‘open and connected’ – but we are now more distant and polarized. It was the same with cryptocurrencies, where the ‘middle men’ would be cut out thereby making economies more neutral – but what it made were black markets and new ways of fraud. And now, we have the same with AI – abundance is promised but what will be delivered? Will it solve problems, or amplify our inefficiencies? Will we let this technology enable us, or disable us? Most importantly, will it reduce suffering or exacerbate it?

With regards to all of this, I stand before you as a witness, participant and a victim. A witness, participant and victim of the gap between expectations and reality. In between a world that was promised, and the world that never came to be.

A world that promised that digitization would reduce tuition costs, and a world where students are struggling to barely keep up. A world that promised online education would reduce barriers and provide global high quality instruction, and a world where millions emigrate every year for a ‘good’ education.

A world which promised digitized intelligent assessments, and a world where an entire black market exists of coursework being sold. A world which promised equal opportunities, and a world where perennially unemployed students in ‘poor’ countries were doing college assessments of eternally debt-riddled students in ‘rich’ countries.

The above is not happening on some fictional planet, it is our Earth. Even though we ignore these happenings, and shudder and keep our eyes closed as if it were happening on a different planet altogether: ignorance is bliss, only when you are not on the recieving end of it.

The industry that accepts payments for doing the coursework of students – called the essay mill industry- sits in between the gap of this expectation and reality. It is a testament of the failures in delivery I shall reminiscence on, it is a reflection of society and what education has become as a symbol. And, perhaps, helps explain why some of the radical transformation that were meant to have happened in the education sector, never happened.

The essay mill industry surfaces itself as a parody and an allegory too. An allegory and parody of our consumeristic, system-oriented, and metric-fuelled lives. It is the anti-thesis of the thesis which is progress. It is the ugly reality within the dreams of prosperity we have weaved for ourselves. And most importantly, it is the greatest evidence of a human need: a market.

This blog, hence, is not about me – it is about the millions of students, the billions of dollars, the hundreds and thousands of writers who flock to create this market whenever their coursework is due – since it is their last resort.

The story of the many tickets that are left behind, stuck on the walls of the lottery drum of life.

We are now, yet again, on the cusp of another new evolution of the Internet in the shape of AI where a ridicilously new level of automation can and will occur.

The core question to ask is, if it will help us take down barriers, or build new ones? Will we automate systems to linearize from history and extrapolate our current mistakes into the future, or automate systems to correct for the Type 2 errors embedded in our history, minds and hence our datasets?

I know it is easy to criticize, and much harder to design, implement and deliver. Hence, I do not offer criticisms but solutions as well. Solutions that I have gathered through the musings of the series of events that has been my own broken life.

Because I am hopeful, that within the darkness of this shadow industry – there is light – the light of talent, hope and opportunity. To me, this industry is a reflection of the larger problems of the world – if we can modify the circumstances that beget this industry perhaps we have a fighting chance against the other Ovarian Curses as well.

In between what will happen from today’s blissful expectations and tomorrow’s bland reality, I strive to give myself hope. The hope that technology will be a liberator, and not an ensalver. And, the hope that, perhaps, civilization is more than just Burger Kings, petrol stations and strip clubs.