Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2011

Gaps in the fabric of lifetime

The world takes a respite from another weary day and is immersed in deep slumber. Darkness is pierced by the tendrils of light that would become twilight very soon. She wakes up to the sound of the rattling pails of water, a monotone that is all too familiar, dusts her self off her blanket, cleanses and decorates the entrance to her home with kolam and deeply inhales the pre-dawn air. He dries off his body and cleanses his mind with his recital of the morning hymns ringing in his heart and soul. The threesome, however, sleep as if they never have a care. It is the beginning of yet another day. He thinks, "Where is the hand that shall wake me up, wrap me in warmth and bring me some food and lead me to my day?" Just as this innocent thought breaks through to reveal the inner child in him, the fogs of responsibility close in - a tunnel around the light of day forms and leads to one single exit - other end of the day. She wonders "What will Today bring for me,

A deep bow to Japan and it's people

Japan has been all over the news lately, and the tragedy of what has been dealt by mother nature, to that country and it's peoples, is beyond words, beyond emotion and beyond imagination. At this moment, there is very little one can do except to observe and contribute when asked for. Reports are sketchy and subjective, but one thing is clear: the level of focus, concentration and calmness in dealing with a disaster of this magnitude deserves our highest and deepest respect, notwithstanding what else has gone wrong and will be remedied in the future. Witness the facts: a calamity that was 7 times more than the worst case imagined 40 years back struck this nation, and a tsunami washed out every line of defense it had built around it's nuclear infrastructure. And the result is there for all to see: a simple stance of moving on to the next step, a willingness to do whatever it takes, within the bounds of cultural and practical experience of dealing with similar issues in the past.

Liberating liberation - an infrastructure for progress

An excellent article was forwarded to me by a friend of formidable intellect, Surajit Basu - Liberation by Software . The article talks about Free software and how it has democratized communication and freed people up from the clutches of established power hierarchies. This view itself has become democratized, and it goes back to 1994 or earlier. 1994 changed everything with the launch of Netscape/Mosaic. It enabled software and information to take off from the early unpaved runways of smtp/nntp/ftp. A few gems of software, notably Linux and Perl, would emerge in the backdrop of the original internetwork to speedup this flight of freedom around the world. Many great minds had worked on the previous layers and laid the foundation for this take off. As is usual in the free software/open source world, the harbingers of change were not the established corporations, but passionate individuals within them or outside them - hobbyists and scientific researchers - who had "an it

The Division Bell of communication infrastructure

Communication is the life blood of human existence. Cooperation is the mechanism through which humans achieve synergy. However, this requires a delicate balance between individual success and common purpose. Humans are adept at communicating within small groups. This does not work without self moderation in any medium where anonymity, physical, emotional and professional distance play havoc in discussions. Harmless words in private may turn into public name calling or insinuations or caricaturing. Multiply this with lack of visual, tonal and "presence" feedback among participants and we have the phenomenon that we see today - a breakdown of common purpose and communication. You can see this in many online communication media. You can find it in high profile articles or blogs if you go down far enough in the comments section. Instead of reading the article, you are treated to a pavilion view of "nature red in tooth and claw". It used to be Anonymous Coward t