Sunset from the roof

"Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine."
---------------William Blake, Augries of Innocence.

If one could have moments like this, how can life ever be in vain?

  

Om Namashivaya

Panachikkadu

Sep 26, 2006 - 4 Photos

It is the time of the year for beginning education, otherwise called Vidyarambham (Vidya - Education, Learning and Aarambham - beginning). It is the time to pay respects to Saraswati, the Goddess of letters and learning. Its the right time to be at Panachikkadu. Panachikkadu has an interesting mythology. Worship is conducted outdoors and not within closed doors. The pictures you see are of the sanctum sanctorum and it is within a large temple wall (not shown here). Inside the inner walls (shown here) is a pond completely covered over with a green plant. The pond, legend has it, never runs dry and the plant never withers. At the bottom of the pond somewhere is the ORIGINAL Panachikkadu Saraswati, lost forever.

A nice pleasant temple to visit, even when its crowded as it was when we went there. The Pandits were very helpful and not all aggressive as is often the case in North India.

New Age, New Media, New Lessons

Its 12:16 am and for some reason I am sitting up with only the glow from my laptop throwing a subdued white light around the room. Its in sleepless moments like these, that I just cant put my mind to sleep unless I write something. Out of sheer desperation I thought I would write a McCormack and write about what I learnt @ XLRI (being a teacher myself, I think I will leave out what they teach and don't teach @ XL).
I joined XLRI in 1997 and one of the highlights of that era is what is now called the dot-com bubble. I was part of the excitement when the Internet came to IIT Bombay. During the period I was there at IIT, I saw monitors change from green to white to colour, and the floppy go from its orginal 360kb to 1.2MB and finally to the modern 1.44 MB mini floppy disk. Internet went from Gopherspace, veronica, NCSA MOSAIC, there was a time when I used to dial up STD from my home town to Cochin to browse the web using a text-based interface. Gosh this sounds like the song "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel

By 1998, The Iridium Project launched with the ad campaign "Geography is History". Within a year the company that had suggested the idea of one phone number for each person around the world....was bankrupt, but the slogan lived on.

A new breed of consultants grew up. I remember one such chappie talking at XLRI. He told us how he had a client who didn't WANT to have his own e-commerce site. He paused and looked at us to share his utter disbelief. He said "Today you sell to a few customers. Don't you want to sell to the whole world?" Some how the sentence had the odour of snake oil even in those days.

The ripples of the dot com world affected normal business, when a CEO of a large FMCG company told us that everyone in his company was also working on a DOTCOM of his own. The entrepreneurial bug had bitten the country. Thanks to the ripple most of us learnt about Angel Investors, Venture Capital and about how to make your own business plan. A valuable set of entrepreneurial skills indeed.

But the most important impact was in how this age changed the way we think about business. Here are some business models that could be useful in other avenues too.

Companies can be evaluated on future earnings only, sometimes without even taking a hard look at present profitability. This has become almost de facto in hi-tech business these days. Technology cycles are shorter than business cycles, and hence companies are always investing more than they get back. However they have to continue to invest just to stay in the business.

The Shareware Model: Given the steadily increasing ratio of Selling Price: Cost of Raw Materials, can we consider the use and pay model? Can we give away our products free and ask satisfied customers to voluntarily pay? Can we depend on their goodwill instead of putting in a way to police compliance in this manner? Can we allow customers to legitimately use our product free in SOME circumstances, while they pay for others?

The Freeware Model: On Aug 25, 1991, a young student, Linus Benedict Torvalds sent out a mail to the minix usenet news, stating that he is working on a free operating system, and would like to get feedback from others. This changed the way we do work forever. Thousands of people who never met face to face downloaded the software that Linus was building, made it better or added more features and then uploaded it again, all for free. Skeptics said that this would not be sustainable, or that it would never be a significant threat to a commercial operating system (no comment needed here). Others said that free software would never put food on the table. Today many programmers make a living by customizing or providing support for free software for clients. HP used the same model in selling inkjet printers. First it realized that selling printers is not where the money is, its in the catridges. So if you bought a computer, you would get a inkjet computer free. Once you buy the inkjet, you realize that changing the ink catridge costs a bomb. However, small entrepreneurs offered to re-fill used ink catridges, once again putting HP's back to the wall. HP countered with a package that said as long as you buy original catridges, HP will give you free maintenance for your computer. Now the print catridge is the equivalent of a scratch card for a mobile service, the card itself valueless and discarded once the service comes in.

Even individual programmers gave away world class products like Pegasus the email client or Wax the video editor, so that they could highlight their programming skills and capabilities. Could we produce and give away useful and fully developed products free in order to promote our capabilities?

Promote your product by giving it away free: The owners of content always sought new ways to protect their commercial interests. When music was available only on Vinyl, they felt safe against the unwieldy Audio Tape, but the advent of the compact cassette shook up the market. The next step was to make CDs. I remember the days when people told me that anyone can make an audio cassette in their backyard, but to make CD s they will need a multi-million dollar plant. Before the internet people could only sell pirated content locally. The Internet gives them a much wider reach.

Sites like Mp3.com and others got into trouble for at first putting up free mp3 music for download and later for allowing people to upload their own music to their site. Napster, the most popular Peer to Peer network was hauled to court for copyright violations. Kaaza tried to unsuccessfully hold out by hiding its owners by an intricately woven web. But a quiet revolution took place on the sidelines. New music artists found a way to reach the audience other than through the record labels. Even established musicians said they would release their own music on the Internet first.This challenged the Raison D'etre of the record labels and finally the record labels have turned a more sympathetic gaze towards the p2p file sharing networks. These networks share a growing amount of legitimate content, free software, music by new artists and even one of content created by amateurs.



Interactive Media: For years media always BROADCAST it was a one to many communication where content was created by mega corporations and then beamed into the homes of hapless viewers / listeners/ readers. The Internet changed that and one day God said "let there be light" and suddenly there were a thousand twinkling websites with contents authored by individuals. I remember once listening to a student presentation in XLRI about Interactive Media and they told me that interactive media means a website, because you could click on any link you want. I still cant figure out how that is any more interactive than flipping pages of a book/catalogue/brochure. Real interactivity is in how increasingly the common man participates in CREATING content. In 2004, Time magazine ran a cover story "Meet Joe Blog" (June 21, 2004), celebrating the success of the BLOG. Many colleges and schools try to turn back the tide of progress by banning the use of Mobile Phones. But with the ever increasing video capabilities of mobile phones mainstream media is coopting ordinary people to be reporters by sending in video and still pictures of events like the recent coup in Thailand. Google Books allows small time authors to put their books up on the search engine for free, thereby making their work available to a much larger audience than would have been otherwise possible.

The time of interactive medium is just beginning, imagine citizens who can capture on video, police atrocities and then upload them to the web? It is perhaps time for schools and colleges to start courses on how to use the power of their camera phone, instead of banning it?





Somewhere between 1997 and now the world changed. I was caught in it much like the frog in boiling water. Now I am awake to the changes around me. I hope I am not too late!

Life 2.0 - Based on a true story

"Nothing is what it seems" My friend told me, staring at my face intently. "One year ago I was working happily at one of the top IT companies in Bangalore, and I thought the years of Engineering had paid off. Life was good and I was looking forward to a family, buying a house, a family, etc.

"But then something happened. I dont actually remember being offered a red and a blue pill, but looking back at how my life has changed, it might as well have happened. For no apparent reason, my world changed completely. I was OUT OF IT. What was once the only world I know no longer appeared real to me. I felt I was alone and everything else was an illusion. It was a very clever illusion, created by a superior intelligence, but once I had seen it for what it is, there were cracks everywhere...glitches in the programming of the Matrix.

" I am scared. I don't know who to trust any more, my colleagues, even my parents...could they all be part of the illusion? I want to go back to my world, where things are simple and I was happy. I don't want to lock myself in this room 24/7. How can I get it all back?

" Welcome to level 2 of the game" I said, stroking my long white beard, wondering to myself why is it that all wise men had to have long beards/hair and flowing robes, it was soo clichéd. I wonder who designed my Avtar. Perhaps some inexperienced kid sitting in a small cubicle in Bangalore. Anyway my appearance in the game was brief, so they probably had to work with an archetype. It takes time to flesh out a character fully.

"The game? What game?" My friend asked me.

"I dont know that, you will have to look at the box or brochure to find out what game it is. For want of a better name, lets call it THE GAME OF LIFE. My role is to introduce you to Level 2. In your case, it is time for me to make an appearance."

My friend sat back and turned to the window, silent, blankly staring at the passing scenery, lost in his own thought, as our car sped on the way to the Psychiatric Hospital. He seemed a little cramped because of the two strong guards with him on the seat.

"This is bullshit. You are forcibly taking me to a Psychiatric Hospital. Just because you look like Gandalf, it doesn't make you a Grand Wizard!"

I cringed inside and feverently prayed that when they looked at the logs of this session, they would redesign my Avatar, so I didn't look so stupid.

"But on the other hand, he continued "what you are saying does tie in with everything that has happened to me so far. But I dont want level 2, I just want my world back" I said nothing. He paused and then continued in a subdued voice " I am never going to get it back, am I?"

"Why am I being punished now? What did I do wrong on level 2?"

"You did nothing. You quit your job, locked yourself in your room and refused to talk to anyone. You cannot live like that, cut off from everyone. "

"How was I to know that?"

"The game is like snakes and ladders sometimes. If you step on the wrong square a snake will swallow you. Six months ago, I came to your door to warn you, but you wouldn't listen. Now the trap door opened and we are falling through the chute. You have to pay attention to the rules of the game. "

"Where does this chute lead to?"

"It leads to the Psychiatric Hospital. Miss a turn. From there you will learn the first rule of level2. Except for the few people who have made the transition, you cannot let on that you are a level2 player. You have to pretend you are level one when talking to a level one player - which by the way, are by far the majority.

"Level2 gives you a lot of extra powers, but it can be scary too. Once you get the hang of it, you will have fun on this level. The terrain remains the same apparently, but a level2 player sees a lot more challenges, cheats, etc. that a level 1 player does not see.

"Now that we have reached the hospital, its time to bid farewell. Before I go let me tell you this - even in the hospital, you are a level2 player. The sooner you can convince them you are fine, the sooner you get back to the game. Play the game right and you can have fun; money, girls, whatever you want..is far easier to get for a level2 player. Play it wrong and you will end up in another dark, cold corner, huddled up in fear. Have fun @ level2, bye....

Science and Aesthetics

Think of a scientific research facility. Now tell me what image comes to mind. Tell me if any of these are part of it?

• High walls and secrecy - No visitors
• Animal testing
• An asceptic building with whirring computers and lab-coated men and women walking around briskly
• Complicated hi tech equipment

Why does science have to be so anti-thetical to aesthetics and the idea of nature? How about a real ecosystem? I wish our parks could be converted into educative experiences. Living in the garden city of bangalore, I feel sad. Why cant school children spend a couple of hours a week in the local gardens, learning how life needs to be nurtured, learning to reconnect, adopting a plant for themselves?

Here is a write up about a place where science and aesthetics merge, the Institute of Ecosystem Studies