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...

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 ...

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...

Something peculiar in today's ET caught my attention. Pg 4. 'It is patently absurd victory' - TK Arun. The reporter has this to say about Samsung - 'The company is likely to gloat a bit - as a result of the lawsuit, this one-time maker of cheap synthetic garments is now squarely in the same bracket as the bluest of haloed Silicon Valley blue-chips.' Hmm.. I smell a Brahminical bias here.. The author suggests that the cheap synthetic garment maker should feel good about the loss because its more than it could have ever hoped for. After all, it came from the low cast profession of  making 'cheap synthetic garments'. The fact that it stretched itself out of its impoverished roots is laudable, feels the Brahmin inside Mr. Arun. His spirit still lives in the 20th century India where there were 'low cast professions' and 'high cast professions'; where they myth of who deserved what was continuously spun by the few in the 'upper circles...

what good is a cell phone? you stare at it for long. hoping for it to ring. hoping for it to light up with that name.  and its bloody unmoving. and then it makes noise when you don't want anything to do with it or anything else at all. if only it could carry a smile with it as well, instead of the dumb smiley. a real smile. the infectious one. if only it could carry touch, the caring 'i am here' touch. a real tight hold on the silent cowering fingers.

"Money can't buy happiness... But somehow its more comfortable to cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle".. This is an SMS forward I got from a friend. Somehow its all very ugly. This importance of 'comfort'. Why is comfort so important to people? It completely escapes me. Comfort should be optional, and life should be primary. It absolutely pains me to see people giving up brilliant opportunities, ignoring sublime beauty around to explore, just to continue floating in their continuum of comfort. I can't stand people who would shy away from adventure, natural beauty for the sake of comfort. what kind of life do you see for yourself, if the objective of it becomes to lead a comfortable life? These people wouldn't even chase better comfort if the chase is uncomfortable. :P reducing life to mere existence when you can do more. what would these folks do in time of depression, of hardship, of scarcities. all of a sudden, your purpose of being stripped away from ...