Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The more things change, the more they remain the same. I was very amused to read this analysis by Rudolf Winestock of how that happened even in the field of computers. But wait a minute…hasn’t computing power moved from mainframes, those “refrigerator-sized modules housing the vacuum tubes” to our homes and then to our beloved hand held devices? If that’s not a Change, what is? Yes, we went from mainframes to minicomputers to PC’s to laptops to smartphones. We were getting it smaller and making the computer more personal. Along with computing power, data moved from a central location to our home and to our devices. All true. Except that the trend reversed. Now smartphones are getting bigger and bigger: doesn’t Samsung call its best-selling Note a phablet (too big to be a phone, but too small to be a tablet)? And starting with the Internet, and then accelerated by the smartphone and the tablet, much of our data now sits on data servers, aka “on the cloud”, not on our ...

“A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you cannot expect an apostle to peer out.” -          Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Steve Jobs. Great innovator? Definitely. Ran a huge company as if it was a small, nimble one? Absolutely. Role model? That’s a tough one. By all accounts, he was a terrible person to work for. And yet he drove/led those very same employees to insane levels of perfection and greatness. That makes Jobs a very complicated figure to learn from: should other bosses and companies learn from him? Did Jobs succeed because of those horrible attributes? Or despite them? To realize how badly managers want to learn from Jobs, consider the following instance that Bob Sutton ran into: “(this) caring, calm, and wickedly smart CEO -- asked Huggy Rao and me if we thought he had to be an asshole like Jobs in order for his company to achieve the next level of success.... he seemed genuinely worried that his inability to ...

So many people complain about the difficulty in making decisions while shopping. Do you buy Brand X that gives 20% extra free? Or Brand Y that has 10% off? Or Brand Z that gives something else free with it? Do you buy that flat screen TV today or wait for the sale at Diwali? Now since the customer is king, shouldn’t companies be simplifying pricing choices? Like maybe offering consistently low prices all the time? Not so fast, as the US store, JC Penney discovered to its cost. Turns out that while people do complain about pricing choices, they are irrational. Also, they enjoy the thrill of the chase. Huh? The word “sale” acts like a siren call for many people: it lures them in to make that purchase. Consistently low prices don’t do the same. Besides, if a competitor lowers their prices just one time of the year, and Poof! Suddenly that low price claim becomes suspect in shoppers’ eyes. Then there are those sites that offer coupons: have lunch at Restaurant A on Wedne...

“Ideas worth spreading”: the catchphrase for TED. That choice of words is also the reason for this Umair Haque article criticizing the “Ideas Industry” , the poster child for which is, of course, TED. (Sometimes it’s fun to read an article like this: how could someone possibly dislike TED, right?). Note that Haque coins the term “TED thinking” to collectively refer to 800-word blog posts, business best-sellers and of course, the famous 18-minute talk itself. So what is Haque’s problem with “TED thinking”? Well, it’s that TED thinking makes you believe it’s a Great Idea only if it can be “simplified, reduced, made into convenient, disposable nuggets of infotainment”. It places “climactic epiphany before experience, education, and elevation.” Haque then uses analogies that blew me away: “In that sense, TED thinking is like a one-night stand with ideas. One night stands can be fun, and may sometimes even lead to something more — but they're not the great, worthy love...

Consensus: a word with positive connotation because it suggests inclusiveness, rather than driving a decision by brute force. And yet, at the workplace, most people are not fans of consensus. Like take that scenario where most bosses genuinely allow the team to decide where and how to celebrate a product milestone: now tell me honestly that you came out of the room still a fan of consensus. That example brings out the first issue with consensus: as Bruce Eckel wrote, it “is the slowest possible decision process, excepting probably war.” To continue with that analogy, trying to arrive at a consensus is like the trench warfare of the first World War, a war of attrition that takes years. Makes you yearn for tanks and fighter jets, right? Ah, that slippery slope to a non-consensus way of deciding things… Moving back to the topic, if we arrived at a consensus over something, the price in time that we paid inevitably creates the next downside: a consensus driven approach crea...

When we think of countries with large reserves of natural resources that are also very valuable, we assume that it makes the country rich. We feel envious: they don’t have to work hard to get rich, they just happened to own the right patch of land. Or is it? And no, I am not talking of the case where a handful of people own, say, the oil field, and mint money while the rest of the population stays poor. Turns out the situation is more complicated. First, if the country doesn’t have the expertise to extract or process that resource, they inevitably rely on foreigners to do the same. Which means a good chunk of the money goes out of the country. Second, extracting resources from oil fields or mines is hardly a well paying job, so most of the jobs created are hardly making people rich. Third, if the resource was found in a poor country, they often strike poor deals with foreigners because they’re looking at prices from their current (poverty-striken) levels. Fourth,...

“Any explanation is better than none.” -          Nietzsche We love to cite reasons for everything that happens. If the reason is correct, all the better; but that’s not a must. Obviously, nobody says that to themselves, but if you check out many of the “reasons” floating around, you’d see what I mean. It turns out that we don’t just stop at attributing causes to real life events. People even try and find root causes for battles from movies , like the Battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back ! So what were the reasons Darth Vader and Co couldn’t crush and kill the rebels in that battle? “Don’t place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against an insurgency.” Well ok, those reasons would apply even today in the real world; so maybe this analysis wasn’t a total waste of time after all! A comment on Slashdot to the above analysis said: “…peo...

“Math doesn't lie, but our brains are huge scam artists.” -          Scott Adams Ever since Newton, maths has become the language of science, especially physics. That trend only accelerated in the last century to a point that when asked whether physics would ever again have a theorist like Faraday who could do wonders without sophisticated maths, Richard Feynman replied: “I'd say the odds are strongly against it. For one thing, you need the math just to understand what's been done so far. Beyond that, the behavior of subnuclear systems is so strange compared to the ones the brain evolved to deal with that the analysis has to be very abstract.” And yet even physicists (at least the pre- Feynman era ones who were at the cutting edge of 20 th century physics) couldn’t believe in their own maths: 1)       Physicists of the day, for example, had to wait for Hubble and his data before they believed what the mat...

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.” -          Susan Sontag I never understood the sense in interpreting literary figures. I mean, these are works of fiction. The characters may be all that the author tells about them, maybe more. But how can anyone know that for sure? Least of all in cases of characters from a different era. Besides, are humans really rational? Or are they contradictory? I personally agree with John Gray who said: “If belief in human rationality were a scientific theory it would long since have been falsified and abandoned.” And if we aren’t rational, who is to say why a person (literary or otherwise) did what he did? Rational reasons, for spite, to see if he could do it or just to mess with everyone else? JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame believes that too. Which is why when she was asked if Albus Dumbledore was gay , replied: “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” Note she doesn’...

“Give people the facts and they’ll do the right thing.” -          Bono I remember this Scientific American article stating why traders at investment banks take the crazy risks they take: -          Fact #1: Bonuses depend on profits made : The more risks you take, the more profits you might make which would then translate into a bigger bonus. Ergo, take big risks. -          Fact #2: Bonuses can be insanely high : Bonuses can run into millions. Even one good year can have you set for life; so who cares about the long term? -          Fact #3: Sticking your neck out can be suicidal : If every trader at every other bank takes insane risks and makes money while the going is good, then you would get fired for playing it safe because hey, you bring in less money. How could everybody be wrong? How big an ego do you hav...

Ever wondered what’s the right way to contact that friend or relative or colleague of yours? Do you message them? Or do you call them? What if he is driving? Is she at home or outdoors? Is it too late to call your colleague about that urgent issue that just came up? Guess what? Apple just might have the answer for you. How, you wonder. Apple’s recent patent might give us some hints. There’s GPS on your phone using which the software could identify where you are: at office, at home, some place else. So you could set rules like “If at massage, no phone calls at all” or “If at pub, no calls from office colleagues”. The receiver could also set rules based on that ancient feature of the phone: the good old clock. I mean rules like “If beyond 10 PM, no calls from office colleagues”. Well, those are some explicit rules set by the potential receiver. If that were all there was to it, it wouldn’t be such a big thing. But wait, there’s a whole lot of decisions the phone could ...

This Blondie strip would apply to almost every guy: after all, it articulates a guy’s idea of a day off perfectly: I am sure no wife or mother would disagree with the above. You’d think a guy like Claude Shannon who invented information theory would be different (today that theory is behind the entire PC/laptop/cellphone/tablet revolution). Surely a guy that good would not be like Dagwood Bumstead, right? Wrong. Shannon also invented what he called the “ultimate machine”. Sounds very grand. Coming from the founder of information theory, you’d expect it to do something just short of being a perpetual motion machine. Well, prepare to be disappointed. And surprised. And amused. Here is Arthur C. Clarke’s description of Shannon’s “ultimate machine”: “It is merely a small wooden casket, the size and shape of a cigar box, with a single switch on one face. When you throw the switch, there is an angry, purposeful buzzing. The lid slowly rises, and from beneath emerges a hand...