Digging for Meaning

Just read this - ‘I want to help humans genetically modify themselves’ So a guy is obsessed with a certain technology, feels he can be a pioneer to a brave new world and justifies it to himself in bad faith by thinking - " This technology that I’m trying to do is for all of us. Whether you’re a big corporation or somebody in their basement, you have access to this stuff – everybody does. People respond very positively to that." This, I believe is a dangerous belief - that tech can 'level the playing field' in a sense. It never does. Internet was supposed to be the great leveler. And for a while with Yahoo anonymous chat and early days of mushrooming internet cafes, it really did feel that way. But soon enough, the powerful people have turned it into a tool that is more advantageous to their interest at the expense of common people's. Governments use it for surveillance and propaganda. Companies use it to brainwash people into buying things they don't ne...

Ai Weiwei doing what needs doing, even if it is futile Can China exist as a democracy? Is it even possible? If it can't sustain as a democracy, what makes the single party factory-of-the-world system so special to ensure evolution rather than revolutions? Perhaps the ' dictator's handbook' can answer that question better. Today I was listening to the podcast "Intelligence squared", as I do with every evening walk from my office to home. The motion was that democracy perhaps is not suited for China. I thought that debate is preposterous - say that to an Uighur peasant or a miner dying of lung cancer or an indentured labourer at any of the big electronic companies. He/she will tell you the answer. What I was most interested by was the recurring rhetoric about the economic miracle of China, that this kind of economic growth is unprecedented. That it single-handedly brought 70% of world's out-of-poverty transformations. So on the one hand of the deba...

This entry is in response to a quora question - What will life to be like 50 years from now?   Future gazing is tricky because, we can affect it to an extent. And 'we' don't act unilaterally, and 'we' don't comprehend the 'extent' of our acts and our limitations. Having said that, here are some trends, in no particular order, which might continue for the next 50 years. 1. Climate change : Humanity has dug its own grave with 2 of earth's 9 ecological boundaries in the red zone. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. There is no doubt that our efforts of survival against climate change will shape our life in future. Again, since there is no unified ‘we’, we humans compete against each other. So there will be winner and there would be losers. Rich have an upper hand – escape from shrinking shores, access to machines to compensate for toxic weather (Air purifiers and ACs for example), money to buy scarce resou...

The only truly successful meme of 21st century is that of 'Money'. Successful because no other idea has been accepted with such unanimity as the idea of money. A paper with little value becomes fantastically valuable with a photo of Mahatma Gandhi. (or a fish or watch tower if you are from Norway .) And this transformation happens because humanity has collectively agreed to bestow imaginary value upon real substance.  No other idea comes close to the level of acceptance that the idea of Money enjoys. More and more people identify themselves as atheists (so there goes religion). Not everyone believes in equality (the idea of caste refuses to die, The idea of class remains a reality. People are forever trying to find imaginary cues to set themselves favourably apart from the masses). The rise of ISIS and resurgence of Nazi sympathies tells us that idea of democracy and human rights are not as strong as we think they are. Money is the one ring to rule them all.  Idea...

(Bringing down the focus from the earlier thought process.) (Addressed to advertising guys) Bee Orchid - XKCD I. Agent to parasites Orchids fool bees into carrying their pollen by making the bee think that it is getting laid. Advertising works in a somewhat similar fashion. The difference is; instead of genes, it is in the business of propagating memes*. Advertisers needs agencies because, intrinsically, most commercial memes are not interesting enough. Deep down in our hearts and colons, we don't care about soaps and cars. we care about love and health and sex and our sense of self and so on. (just read Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. hence the hangover of 'and so on'.) So the parasitic commercial memes piggy back on emotional/ funny memes we really care about. Agencies in that sense are the piggie-safari-wallahs. Agencies help the fat advertiser climb onto the pig of ideas. (pig of ideas.. that doesn't make any sense. anyways.)   II. ...

An idea is. and we are its vehicles. (see the ted talk below) We are the replicants at the employ of ideas. An idea does its best to spread no matter what we want to do with it.  Tomorrow it will find a better replicant than us in machines. And right now, it is rewarding people who are doing the most to accelerate that shift. Hence the big payouts for apps,  .coms,  automations and all sorts of work that serves automation. Future of service economy Indian pundits have hedged their economic bets against agriculture and with service economy. Against creation and with impending obsolescence. Indian service economy is not cutting edge, it is largely a job shop for work that is too mind numbing for actual willing humans to do. So the industry hires smart young people to waste their time (not learning skills beyond the immediate task) on cleaning data/ writing reports/ analysing markets/ making numbers/ writing algorithms and so on. All these tasks are in the service on m...

" Goldenes-Zeitalter-1530-2 " by Lucas Cranach the Elder - Unknown. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. All our acts, our thoughts, our conversations are steps towards the ideal world we want to live in. Isn't it? Consciously or sub consciously. Actively or passively. Violently or placidly. Everything is in service of our dream worlds. someone litters the roads because in his ideal world, everything is available at arm's length and the world revolves around him/her. Another person who sees this and shouts obscenities to the litterer, views his ideal world as clean and one where individuals are aware of their duties, not just their rights and entitlements. another, person who sees these two individuals mid-banter, rolls his eyes and windows and speeds away, wants his world to be free of arguments, he wants his world to be wholly agreeable and sanguine. Kundera's Ostriches   A group of ostriches are trying to tell you something. moving the...

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/26/far-right-europe-election_n_5391873.html?1401104084 The Hindutva party in here and nazi anti-immigrants in Europe. Right wing parties everywhere. no one wants 'the others' on their soil. but that doesn't stop them from looting from 'the others' (colonisation & coupes & sponsored revolutions) and sending drones to kill 'the others'. where will the others go, if you contribute to their misery and downward spiral?  If the last century was about opening the world with fast rails, concordes & the internet. This century would be about making sense of this uncontrollable openness and ensuing vulnerability that individuals & groups perceive. If the last century was about the individual removed from his immediate world, this century would be about a new social consciousness of & want of belonging. The openness of last century does not really benefit the individuals and small groups as much as it does to ...

Saw this promotional video for Bosch's automated driving system. There are similar efforts being attempted by other corporates too, notably Google. But here again, I feel corporates are trying to answer the wrong question .  'In the future' - we shouldn't need to travel unless we desire to travel (that is to say, travel only for leisure and not because you must to earn your bread). Our scientific endeavors need to be geared to completely remove commutes from our lives. In which case, driving would become an activity largely undertaken for leisure. But the fact remains, the way our economy is geared, people must leave there homes and travel greater and greater distances to bigger and bigger cities to earn. In China alone, 120 million youngsters leave their homes to find jobs in a year. Why is globalization only aiding economy and not human will? (Jobs migrating to cheaper and cheaper venues, forcing people to migrate towards jobs. As against, people moving to ...

Facebook pays $19B for whatsapp. instagram goes for a billion... What kind of desperation is this? how can these acquisitions be justified? Even if you dig in numbers, there is no method to the madness - typically they would compare customer acquisition cost (which are astronomical for a category with such a low entry barrier and high attrition rates of users. And just try to realize the promised full potential of monetization - and see if the userbase doesn't evaporate.). Compare those numbers for geocities, aol, myspace, whatsapp.. (and for a sanity check, other industries). All money down the drain. Why is all the money being made in 'exits'? That is not a sustainable way for an industry to thrive. Then some talk about potential in a monopoly & ecosystems tying down people. But that's the sure sign of a dying desperate game. When the game changes from that of creating awesomeness, to cornering access - that is a sure sign of impending irrelevance. People swi...

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...

[upon re reading this, i realised that the thoughts i put here are half baked and not conclusive enough to make a strong argument.. nevertheless.... ] Every time i hear the national anthem, i have goosebumps. the patriotic feeling that strong. I don't quite understand this, cause I feel the notion of nation to be quite artificial. Physical borders really don't make much sense where physical resources alone no longer are the only things of consequence. Distances have been dissolved in this electronic age. I might be friends to people anywhere in the world, and we might bond over music and hatred than over national patriotism. (hmm.. so is nationalism just another vehicle for channeling hatred (accelerated competitiveness).. cuz being humans, we need to hate something..don't we?) We are global citizens, all our actions affect each other. As such, besides sports and some strategic geographical areas, there is no other avenue where notion of nation makes sense. Elsewhere somewh...