Digging for Meaning

Ctrl-tab Ctrl-tab... Scroll Scroll Scoll.. Alt-tab Alt-tab... Catch yourself slipping away. Deep  breath.  Close the browser. silence the mobile and turn it away. Open an offline-real-paper diary. Stop your thighs from lolling impatiently. Stay still.  Pick up a pen awkwardly. ahh, the fingers are stiff. It will take a  while for them to get used to holding a pen. Quick finger exercise - open the palm, stretch finger outwards, close into a fist, dig the fingers in. Repeat. Ok now.. about to pick up the pen again, but eyes dart towards the screen. Tempted to check email. Shut up. The last consequential email came two months ago. Nothing of consequence is online.   Pick up the pen. Don't fetishize the object now. Get on with it. Put it on paper, write a word and start it already. If I get to a sentence, perhaps I will get into a flow and won't have to look up from the paper at all.  One sentence later. Ahh. That was good. I am feeling g...

Exhibit A Have you seen posts like these on FB lately? What are they about? A person witnesses some 'wrong' act. He/ She promptly takes a picture of the wrong act. He/she hurries to upload it to social media in an effort to shame the person in question. Earlier, a photograph of a car's number plate did the rounds online. apparently, the guy driving the car had spit on the road. and so on... all misdemeanors that should ideally be sorted in 'real world' of flesh and bones through polite conversations. Exhibit A- Here, a grey haired gentleman opened a door to a cafe for two other gentlemen. The other two gentlemen supposedly did not say 'thank you'. Were they too busy? Were they in a serious discussion, the sort where you forget the world altogether? Do we know anything about them at all? No. We don't. All we have is this one photo that the indignant-FB-guy (IFG) took without asking the two people in question. and look at the reaction - It...

When one talk of DN, some of the strongest ramifications of this concept is in the field of education. Indeed, the increasing ineffectiveness of education system n pedagogy were the reasons that the concept of DN came to fore. A few days back, I was thinking of the same while attending a lecture, and thought of an experiment. Essentially, I want to experiment if teaching efficacy increases if we uses multiple media simultaneously during the course of lecture. A normal class here at MICA, employs visual aids (projector, boards, charts, papers), audio aids (speakers, mics) but the use of this media is mostly one sided (though the class participation usually is quite high in conventional sense. Laptops are 'down' during lecture though, faculty just doesn't trust us :P). what i propose is use of social media such as twitter, social networks, wikis etc real time during a lecture to create a more collaborative atmosphere in a lecture. I talked with prof. Chandan Chatterjee about...