Category Archives: Thoughts

Constipation of Thoughts

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With the church bells chiming around me for the past 8 minutes, I have not been able to focus on a single thought. Piling on a happy-to-recur headache the bells have ruined any peace whatsoever.

Ever wondered, if you didn’t wake up the next day? Will it be easier for you? Will it be easier for the people around you?

Sometimes life is swirling vortex of sticky situations, and all you wonder is if your not being around would have made life easier for people around you. Sadly, these are those days when you don’t have better thoughts and neither do you have any comfort. I often plunge into such situations, at work or home…strangely i blame human interaction as the culprit. The lesser I interact the fewer are the sticky situations, but then isn’t this the first stage of turning into a sociopath?

Ah well, why do you care, you are another unfortunate visitor to this blog, which is plunging in popularity and meatiness of content…quick click the back button to never return.

 

Yours Sweetly

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Over the last few days quite a few people have commented that I am a sweet person, its often made in a pitiful way. Obviously, I do not take it as a compliment, because a few of those comments were from the workplace. It extrapolates to being not taken seriously, or being too gullible.

I don’t know what is required of me to disprove the impression…

 

Power to People

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Am no political observer, neither am I qualified to comment on politics. However, the recent spate of revolutions in the Middle East starting from Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and now Libya calls for my attention. It is history being written, something which might torture future students of Political Science and history with another chapter in the books!

In roughly every 100 years over the last 2-3 centuries the world has witnessed a new political uprising  and a new philosophy.

The July Revolution and  the French Revolution were targeted at the monarchy and feudal structures in France, they ushered the transformation of a heavily aristocratic and religiously influenced governance structure to a democracy(partial). It was a movement of the working class, and the unemployed people…

A century later the proletariat rose up in Russia in the October Revolution and uprooted the Czar’s rule. The philosophy of socialism and communism was an attempt to distribute the weather equitably to the people, a different political movement, led by Lenin and the likes.

100 years after the 10 days which shook the world, new movements have born in Middle East. The theme is similar, people want development, and self-governance more than ever. But the difference is the absence of central leadership, there is no single face in these uprisings, people lead them. Another difference is, it is no more only the labour/working class but a mixture of people from all walks of life, who want better governance. Its a movement of all classes, its faceless, peaceful and co-ordinated through volunteering!

Yes, each revolution in these centuries is themed on development, and opportunities but the causes and the methods are different. It is unfair to call these revolution as the Social Media uprisings, for it is a medium to an end, not the starting point.

Gandhi couldn’t be more relevant today, peaceful uprisings are indeed making a difference!

Facebook : They will never forget you ’til somebody new comes along

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They will never forget you ’til somebody new comes along – Eagles from the New kid in Town

I am writing this post at the time when Egypt is undergoing a Facebook Revolution, a movement of hundreds of thousands of protesters who have come together after using social media like Twitter, Blogs and Facebook for organize and demand of a regime change in their country. Needless to stay, at this point, Internet is under a clampdown to stop the freedom of expression!

This post is not about the revolution, it is an insight into this Juggernaut of Facebook, a country with over 500 million users. It one of the stickiest websites on the internet, the centerpiece of an Oscar nominated film and probably one of your favorite websites.

Facebook is not the first social network, neither it will be the last, but it has been the most impact-full. It took over from the erstwhile leader MySpace  in 2009 and has exceeded all estimates of its impact. Millions of users share vital information about their preferences on their profile pages, which further helps facebook categorize and provide extremely well segmented advertising opportunities to businesses. Its better than Google, because while google earns its dough by targeted advertisements based on search criteria, Facebook moves ahead by stitching user profiles and their own personal network in the process.

Looking back, there was a time when ICQ was the killer chat program, and Yahoo! was the killer email website. The internet evolved, most of these internet applications committed a few mistakes which coupled with better/newer services brought on the table to give users an opportunity to move.

Orkut might have been trolled by Orkutiyas looking for a hookup and had its own share of donut server errors, MySpace became a playground of over customization of profiles and a haven of pedophiles. At the same time facebook innovated with its interface, and applications like FarmVille. This was their window of opportunity, and the irony of most collaborative internet services is the same as their well publicized strength…they are social.

Users stick to a social network/tool only till the people who matter the most to them are active on the same network. The exodus begins the moment when the important people in your network start moving to a different website(these maybe just 10 out of your 400 friends!). So what would make the users move to a different website from Facebook?Well, I don’t know…and I wish I knew that(would have loved to invent it). But I do know are the threats/risks which Facebook faces today, which could accelerate the exodus whenever it happens:

  • Privacy concerns – A normal user may still not be conscious of the risks which they are exposed to because of Facebook’s questionable privacy policy. However, user awareness on this issue could just turn the tide against Facebook!
  • Rogue apps - Email spammers killed off good web mail services with weak spam filters. Similarly, rogue and unregulated apps on facebook are taking away the sheen of safety and utility of the network. As more and more such unregulated applications continue to flood our walls by posting our first facebook messages or profile views, it poses a bigger challenge to ensure that the user experience is not ruined.

Am not a doomsayer, but every product or service has a life-cycle specially when it is not a need but a want. The only way to beat this curve is by staying ahead of it.

Unit of Time

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A new year, a new month or a day…our days are divided into units of time. Many of us are often cynical about the celebrations for a new year, afterall it would be just another day on Jan 1 of a year as it was on 31st December. Nothing out of the ordinary would happen to our lives in the change of date. This argument is logically correct specially given the fact that different calendar systems provide us different points of reference for a new year.

But, inspite of all this, millions revel in hope and zeal that the next year shall be better. It is a psychological necessity for most of us to have a point of reference, to start over, to try again and harder. A small altercation with the boss, a reference to your sad past, a fight with family…all can be ignored in the hope of tomorrow. Afterall tomorrow is a new day! I wish one could gain the same psychological support in believing in the next hour, okay, the such and such event annoyed me to no end at 2.23 pm today, but hey…3 o’ clock is a new hour. I’ll just stand up, brush off the dust and move on!

One must not forget that while time is a great measure to slot our memories into decades, years, months and seasons…it is not a discrete measure but is ever changing and analog. Our words, feelings, work and ambitions are only relevant to us in our life time, in the big scheme of things, you simply do not matter. Like those giant dinosaurs, or elaborate civilizations we all have an expiry date, no single human can have an indelible impact on the large scale of time.

PS – A Light year is a measure of distance and not time, many still confuse themselves with its definition