Digging for Meaning

Why invent Google glasses? Here's Sergey Brin trying to answer that question. Doesn't his argument seem a little unconvincing - a weak reason to deploy the best of the brains on the planet and 3 years worth of efforts.   The primary pivot of his argument is the glass' ability to improve social posture (?). He talks about how when interacting with your cell phone, you look down, away from the rest of the world. How when nervous, one fiddles with cell phone to escape the real world. So how is Glass a solution? It is an even more 'evolved' tool to keep the outside world 'out'! Ok, so Glass frees your hands. for what? for better documentation of our narcissism? These series of innovations (social media, smart phones, glass) are answering the most base yearnings of our narcissistic behavior. When you look down, atleast there's that bit of honesty - 'yes, I am looking away from you. Sorry for my awkward inability to be social.' With Gla

Have you ever 'helped' anyone? any thing - small, big/ inconsequential, saved the world? By help I mean, of being useful for someone other than self and when some effort/ money/ time would be required to be spent. Truthfully speaking, I haven't much. Upon that realisation, I quickly rationalized that perhaps its an 'ability' - An ability to help. Which is to say, that some people are better at it than others. Perhaps, its just me trying to distance myself from the responsibility or perhaps I have hit upon something here. Anyways, here's the thought process. If the tendency to 'help' is an 'ability' that is intrinsic to individuals, what factors would influence it? (I won't get into the 'born with it'/ learned sort of debate. Sure it can be acquired. Yes we can. :) ) I thought of a few. They could be, 1. Empathy 2. Inner lightness/ inertia 3. Habit of rationalizing 4. Following the norm 1. Empathy I think I am am right whe

Recently, an academic researcher asked me a few questions about the challenges and problems faced by agencies while working on Integrated marketing campaigns. Well, my reply was a rather long and unstructured list of complaints. So here's the disclaimer, I am not a pessimist. :) But i am good at comprehensive exploration of shit gone wrong. These lists are useful in making things better. I am sharing my reply here because it might be a good starting point to complete the picture. My reply choses the negatives - someone can add positive anecdotes, someone can add experiences from other geographies. I have largely written from experiences I have heard from fellow planners I know and my own experiences, which is not a good research design. :P So in a way.. here's the hypothesis and I am asking any planner out there to validate, improve upon or point out the bullshit. Title in bold were questions asked by the researcher. Text in italics are my hypothesis' which are large