Shakespeare in a River Of Tweets
The weekend was dull. Amongst the teeming conversations in the blogosphere nothing made me pause. It was the same thing over and over. Yahoo this, Google that, Microsoft sucks and so on. Sometimes reality resembles a junkyard. Debris in various stages of preparation.
Me needed a little poetry. And all I had in hand was the blackberry. I checked twitter on GTalk and it was shorter versions of the same debris.
Thats when I realised, on GTalk there is no option to watch the public feed. Not always of course, but just to take a peek now and then.
I wanted something with sap. Something that made the barrenness inside a little moist. On a whim I tracked the word eternal. It was my digital ear to the ground listening to a single word.
All was silent the whole of yesterday. And today it arrived, without context, a lofty arrangement of words..
“Would be eternal in our triumph: go”
I obviously wondered who would have crafted this! It did have the rhythm of a master poet, but not being familiar with the particular work I was not too sure. And then I saw who had sent the tweet. Billionmonkeys was the user. A whois revealed the following
“…typing out the complete works of shakespeare”
I started following the user. And what delight. I don’t read every tweet. Don’t have the time to read enough to get the drift of the plot. I take a handful from the river of tweets that passes by and drink every refreshing gulp. I did stop to think why this user would do it. But then thought why the hell bother. One does not question the motive of a blooming flower.
One understands the depth of a Master poet. Every sentence is crafted! Every sentence even without the scaffolding of a plot stands as a monument!
All I could remember was the phrase “accelerated serendipity” that I had come across in this blog post. The phrase itself is supposed to be by Tara Hunt.
Life is not structured. The greatest impact is left behind by that which was not anticipated. The web 2.0 type apps in aggregating the many seem to bring together the un-anticipated. In doing so make the process of “happy discovery” easier.
Oh, I need to thank Billionmonkeys and twitter for making this happen.
India’s National Anthem Rings Out From Kenya and USA’s From France!
The thing that hooked me in was the Indian National anthem being sung by Kenyans.
Or the French singing the anthem of the Americans.
Pangea, is the name of the project that aims to use film to promote unity. A powerful concept that rides upon the ubiquity of the internet and the visual media.
I should say my national anthem gives me goose pimples, even when sung by a different race/culture/people.
Beneath all the variations of skin, language, cultures and every other distinctness that makes us look upon another as different, there is an unity that binds us all. A variety of means exist to see this unity. Music, painting, poetry, the world of ideas and now increasingly, for the last 60-70 years, the world of films.
Watch it. In 3-4 minutes a considerable amount of prejudice can be washed away.
A Callous Society
Today I happened to go to CMH Road in Bangalore on my way to work. I observed something was not quite right. It was this way since the explosion of commerial establishments on the previously quite road.
But I could not quite pin it down for more than a few moments. Then it struck me, the trees were all gone. I counted at least 15 of them and I covered only 30% of the road.
To be honest this was not Fangorn forest. This was a small set of trees on either side of the road covering almost 60-70% of the road. The stretch that covered Ulsoor was mostly bare.
I believe this is to ensure the metro rail can pass through this road. I am sure the rail project will alleviate, or at least attempt to alleviate, the strain on the road traffic. But there could have been a holistic attempt at re-homing the trees. Perhpas the cost of doing this could have included within the project estimation. Or corporate sponsors could have been roped in. Bottom line there are simply too many options available nowadays to ensure we protect what is left of Bangalore’s foilage.
A race that once proclaimed “Sarvam Khalvidam Brahmam”, ‘All that exists is the Brahman/Supreme Consciousness/Divine’, now barely pauses before ripping apart the roots of its own future prosperity.
A callous society does not realise hindsight will not be enough to save it from ruin. The Ents shall have their revenge.
del.icio.us Tags: callous, society, india, bangalore, brahman, fangorn, trees, nature
21st Century Style Snake-Oil?
As humans a few ubiquitous limitations constrain us all, regardless of our affiliations. Whether we subscribe to the hypothesis on space and time or the axioms of math or the subjective escape into the rarer realms or the conjuring tricks of sound and light or as a traficker of ideas, Death ends us all.
The problem of Death must have been one of the earliest pre-occupations of thinking man. It can easily be imagined how the very first reasoning animal-man would have confronted a reality that snatches away what he has adored until a little while back.
Here is article from Wired that covers another attempt to do away with Death. It covers Ray Kurzweil’s pursuit of ’singularity’, a state in the evolution of humanity as defined by von Neumann.
The notion of what the singularity seems to have been added upon later. From what I understood it seems to be the sudden burst in the advancements in machines, that will exceed the capabilities of humans.
But look at it in another way. Is this any different from the ascetic who isolates himself in the mountain-cave? Contorting his physical and mental self, to catch the rhythm of an existence that allows something of him to pass on beyond gates of physical self, and hence death?
Perhaps singularity wears different masks? Is it the same as Buddha’s Nirvana? Or the Nirvikalpa and Savikalpa Samadhi of the various Yogas? Or more even the supramental state of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga? Or is this all merely a scientific snake-oil? What do you think?
del.icio.us Tags: Singularity, Nirvana, Buddha, Sri Aurobindo, Samadhi, Ray Kurzweil, Philosophy
As an obedient, and patriotic, Indian do I get a discount on this baby?
Just heard that the Jaguar/Land Rover deal has gone through in favour of the Tatas. A balanced non-jingoistic viewpoint available here. Also a comment points out the fact that Tatas are used to licensing, trade-union regimes, hence might have worked out plans to deal with these factors.
But what do I care. I have behaved myself all these years, even quit smoking. Only do alcohol very rarely. Can even consider reducing on the other vices, but can someone answer my question?? 
Programmers with the ‘downtrodden air of refugees’
How many times have you read or heard something and thought, ‘ah, that is what is bugging me!’. Today I had such a moment, while reading an essay of Paul Graham titled "You weren’t meant to have a boss".
It starts with Paul observing a bunch of programmers on some "team-building" exercise and a hunch that something was not quite right about them. Pursuing that unease he arrives at a set of insights on what distinguishes programmers as founders and programmers as serfs! This is a must read.
I have worked in a variety of organizations, from dot-coms to large multi-nationals. The happiest I have been has been in dot-coms and consulting type organizations. And seldom has a large company surprised me in how it functions.
Just to whet your appetite, I bring a morsel from my scavenging, Bon appetite!
Working for a small company doesn’t ensure freedom. The tree structure of large organizations sets an upper bound on freedom, not a lower bound. The head of a small company may still choose to be a tyrant. The point is that a large organization is compelled by its structure to be one.
Is this the far-seeing eye of Shiva?!
Shiva, it is said, has a third eye, one which could penetrate the soul of existence and perceive its singular essence. This was the all-perceiving eye of the Chief Ascetic. One which could see all triple projections of time, the ‘trikala dhrishti’ - the eternal now, the receeding past and the impending future. To gain some measure of insight into the workings of Time would make a mortal even as one of the Gods.
But technology, that great democratizing power, knows no Yoga, nor penance, nor asceticism. It lays no claim on eternity, unlike religion, but is forever the skeptic. Abandoning one half-truth in preference to a fresher half-truth. But it atleast upgrades itself unlike religion!
Science in its most candid moments touches a little of our eternity. When that happens, the method of reaching out ceases to be relevant. It is the touch that counts.
The WorldWideTelescope is one such expression of who we all are. It is a brief glimpse of the eternity to which we shall return, at least as dust. There is something about the TED presentation here. Could be the invention, could be the AWESOMENESS of it, could be the uncorrupted intent of the iventor or the speaker..could be some other alchemy that escapes our understanding.
But I loved it, every second of what I saw.
The interviews on the site seek to guess its utility once released. But I think this is a big mistake. Things of such beauty should not need to justify their existence.
I can perfectly understand Scoble’s reaction on seeing this.
I dont remember seeing a software application that made me confront and remember what I am as a human being.
No untruth was proved false. No hidden connection was revealed. No forgotten secret laid bare. This was an epiphany, of who we all are, masquerading as science and software.
Dramatic contrasts in India, raises more questions at HBR
Marshall Goldsmith at HBR wonders about the contrasts in India. To quote-
"In the cities, I saw a longing for extreme opulence — countless ads with rich people living lavish lives — next to the reality of extreme poverty — countless shanties with poor people living harsh lives."
To be honest, as an Indian, I have become almost numb to the contrasts. What appears as shocking dichotomy is to me a fact of life, these are the environments I grew up in.
Marshall asks a bunch of questions and I take a crack at them below.
What is being gained in the "new" India? What is being lost?
The new India gains self-awareness - Of her strengths, of the fact that she has a voice of her own, that she can dream and deliver on it, that its okay to bully once in a while, that she has to work out her place in the world and her purpose.
The new India has lost, or is in the process of fast losing, her ability to introspect. Her wisdom is a myth, her spirituality consumed by the canker of materialism. Faith is held up by tradition and an intuitive perception as the thing worthy of possession, attempting to withstand the assault of rushing reality and retreating farther into the recesses and having little to no influence on how this life is lived.
How can today’s Indian professionals achieve the material success of the West without losing the wisdom of the East?
Well, how can you lose what you don’t possess?! To be honest, the vast majority of Indians don’t know their own mythology, their scriptures and their past. What is taken for knowledge is only superficial opinions gathered from the mass medium.
I see this as a phase where all that is dead and not reasoned is washed away in the waters of progress and this is not necessarily a bad thing. And ages of poverty has created a perverted need for riches. India wants to splurge now. Given an option between iPhone and Buddha’s Nirvana, it is very clear what the majority would ask for.
So how does India not lose her wisdom. First she re-acquaints herself with the past, its scriptures and law of life. Not by donning the robe of a monk or chanting mantras at a temple doorstep. But by staying in the battlefield of material life. By innovating, by creating and sharing wealth, by not mimicking the voices of the west, by finding the heart of her own self and purpose.
What is your experience of professionals from the West? What can you learn from them?
The ability to focus. To dedicate ones life to any pursuit that captures their fancy. To value labour above and beyond any notional values attached due to legacy or other superficial reasons. To practise dedication to the lord of wealth with such intensity that the East often gapes in wonder!
Adorable :-)
Star Wars plot explained by a 3 year old…:-)
On Offshoring and Remote Roman Outposts
(Disclaimer: This post is the result of personal observations over more than a dozen years. I would like to think, like Shakespeare, that there is no single company that manifests all these scintillating qualities. All companies must be approximations of this ideal!)
photo credit: Rob Meredith
I have come to a conclusion that Offshored operations and remote Roman outposts share similar characteristics.
This has been brewing in my head for way too many years.
I see offshoring as a tool in the hands of corporations to increase their efficiencies, in how they become profitable and respond to potentially hostile environmental factors. I have first hand witnessed its ability to lift lives from poverty. But this sudden influx of values of another society bring with it a variety of hazards. The impact of transplanting an alien work culture and life-ethic leads to an island of values that does not mingle amongst most societies that are at the receiving end of outsourcing largesse.
Allow me to explain the primary causes or symptoms, listed in no particular order of severity.
- Power Center - This is seldom present at the offshored location. All decisions of any significance are taken at the power center. The most successful of the offshored locations are given symbolic tokens of independence. Items of purely local relevance that it means nothing to the power center. This is the sort of lame self-governance that the Indian National Congress wanted from the British many hundred years ago. Thank God for nationalists!
- Bread and Circus - This fascination with utterly childish celebrations at the work place. Not sure where all this crap started. Could be HR departments figuring out ways to keep the masses engaged. Could be a workforce that has not known fun during college times. Premature celebration indicates a superficial goal. By all means have fun, but do something worthy first. Not success as defined by an arbitrarily cooked up metric. Change the game and then fool around.
- Alien laws - That will not be questioned. With no shared context, meaning is a by product of interpretation. And the one who interprets is the law maker. Reminds me of the Vatican or a Brahmin priest!!
- Bureacracy - It starts off as specialization. To focus on one aspect sufficiently deeply to learn all nuances. In tandem with Processes creates a labyrinth of deferred purpose. A form to fill up, manually in triplicate, to be signed by a platoon of people, who have nothing to do with the proceedings. By the time you know it specialization has morphed into silos of mediocrity.
- Processes - Success begets size, size begets complexity, complexity demands processes. Without processes scale and complexity cannot be tamed. But processes also hide the worst of human kind. The kind that does not want to think. That lives with a theoretical free-will that will never be manifest in real-life. That cannot, and will not, think beyond the rule book.
Of course this is just an initial list to get us warmed up. As a follow up I shall post about perspectives on the power center and the assumptions they make.
All is not lost though. I shall end this mini-series with steps anyone can take to work out a win-win, in the offshoring game.
What would you like to hear more about? Tell me about a tough situation you are facing in your offshoring/onsite relationship and we could work through possible resolution approaches. I would not claim to have seen every situation but have learnt a lot from the little I have come across.
Drop me a note with your feedback. Thanks a ton, if you have read this far!
del.icio.us Tags: offshore, onsite, roman outpost, bureacracy, processes, alien laws, bread & circus, power center
