Thoughts from the heights of an abyss

Your brand is the sum of its interactions.
- By David Armano, taken from post by Marianne Richmond.

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The brightest idea in the world loses its sheen when viewed with apathy.

Nothing kills enthusiasm faster than indifference.

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The ‘I am a PC’ campaign from Microsoft. It is cool to be a wisecrack but the real world has work to be done.

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Tim O’Reilly, wants a dose of realism in the tech industry. Especially weaning off the brightest developers from building apps that throw sheep!

Neat thought/quote, but I see a slight problem. The market needs to determine what should be built and what should not. Of course O’Reilly can share his opinion but given his standing in the industry, it might gain some traction.

What makes capitalism tick is the chance for the trivial and the profound to co-exist.

Do any quality control up-front and you end up at an Apple’s AppStore like scenario, with someone arbitrating what can be built.

Do note that I don’t disregard regulations in general. We need AppStore to protect its users from malware. We need the government to step in bring down monopolies. We need compliance rules to govern the financial industry.

But to determine what sorts of apps/services should be built based on the opinions of anybody would be a little premature and be counter-productive to the overall richness of the industry.

Let the market be the arbiter in valuing an idea. Anything else would tilt the industry towards an idea bottleneck.

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Life is a framework of possibilities, with a bias towards making the impossible possible.

Life as instinct is unconcerned with/unaware of possibilities. It knows no doubt, no pause in the will to strike.

Like a little computer program to add 10 numbers, it does the addition flawlessly a million times over but cannot deviate from the aim to add 10 numbers. There is a mind for sure but it is an algorithm with a single purpose.

In man life as instinct morphs into life as mind. All the complexity, the variety, richness and ambiguity of mental man is only a glimpse into the mind of the Creator.

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All pain is only the most palpable sign of the will to evolve. That which is not striving and stretching has stagnated.

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Am sure you know the feeling.

To emerge from the hurricane of unfavorable winds and chance upon calmer times.

To view oneself anew, as if rude winds have ripped apart the scaffolding of ones character.

It is a disconcerting experience. To be confronted with the core of one’s self. What does one do with it? Use memory to re-build the traits? Let habit and instinct rule, as they usually do. What values should inform the new behavior the world draws out from you?

To begin anew upon a newly decimated being is the rare gift of a Grace that sees beyond the wincing of the time-born self. The irony of it, the Iron Hand of Mercy!

Amidst the contours of the self, all is known yet tinged with the trepidation of a first encounter.

All said, it is good to be back to the home within.

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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.

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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.

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