Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Some people in entertainment just don’t get it. Take the Walt Disney marketing team for the movie, Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens . Rather than releasing the trailer on TV or online, they decided to create artificial scarcity by deciding to air it only in 30 theaters worldwide (read that as the US and Canada). What was Disney thinking? That nobody who saw the trailer would record it on their phone and post it on the Net? Did they not understand the consequence of that as one Reddit explained: “It’s like Disney WANTS the first thing people to see about ‘The Force Awakens’ to be a grainy, shaky footage someone at the back of the screen took with their iPhone.” Responding to the online fury of the Star Wars faithful, Disney backtracked and said the trailer would also be made available on the iTunes Trailer site. Wait. So they decided to leave Android users out? Are these people brain dead? Star Wars has a global audience; and globally there are far, far more Android de...

In my last blog, I talked about the smiling curve in the context of the publishing industry; of how the publishers are losing all value and how apps like Facebook are increasingly becoming the referral for most articles on the Net! But even as publishers increasingly move to Facebook to promote their content on our News Feeds, we, the users of Facebook, have protested. Facebook has taken notice of this : “People told us they wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content.” In response, Facebook has promised changes soon: “Beginning in January 2015, people will see less of this type of content in their News Feeds.” This puts the publishers in a conundrum: they have increasingly become reliant on Facebook to draw crowds to their sites (remember that Trending News sidebar on Facebook?), and now Facebook might have decided that it has overdone things and decided to step back a bit. Where would that leave the publishers? N...

Ben Thompson wrote a couple of very interesting articles on the future of the publishing industry. The theme of both articles was the following “smiling curve” that he drew :  The Internet has made content delivery free; which is why the publishing industry is getting wiped out. David Carr describes the clout of mobile apps like Facebook in particular on this topic: incident: “For traditional publishers, the home page may soon become akin to the print edition — nice to have, but not the primary attraction. In the last few months, more than half the visitors to The New York Times have come via mobile — the figure increases with each passing month — and that percentage is higher for many other publishers.” You might wonder why it matters how the publishers are getting traffic as long they are getting traffic. Thompson explains why the source matters : “When people follow a link on Facebook (or Google or Twitter or even in an email), the page view that resul...

The Internet has overturned the existing order of many industries: journalism, encyclopedias, bookstores…and also music. But why have the existing powers in each of those industries been unable to adapt to the brave, new world of the Internet? Ron Miller hits the nail on the head when he writes: “The Internet is the best distribution channel ever created and it’s up to musicians and record companies to figure out how to exploit it. And here’s a hint: It’s not the old way of selling records.” Miller may have written about the music industry but his theme applies for the others as well: distribution is easier than at any other time in history but the powers that be haven’t adjusted to find a new way to make money. The music industry got saved (in part) due to the iPod and more importantly, Steve Jobs. Not a man known for his people skills, Jobs berated the music bigwigs of the time: “You guys have your heads up your asses.” The music industry of the day was fighting (and l...

Rob Horning pointed out how Twitter has changed the way he reads and analyzes articles on the Net, or rather how he doesn’t do those things anymore: “Now, when I hit upon an article that starts me thinking, I excerpt a sentence of it on Twitter and start firing off aphoristic tweets….At worst, tweeting pre-empts my doing any further thinking, since I am satisfied with merely charting the response.” Next look at Jennifer Guevin’s complaint about how “snap judgments at warp speed are ruining the Internet” . She cites the following example: “A dude at a tech conference tweets a picture of a woman's feet in stilettos, and judges her to be brainless based on the fact that she is wearing said footwear. Predictably, outrage ensues.” Neither side of the “rage war” that followed on Twitter, Guevin says, stops to factor in that nobody can really convey their point, let alone subtleties, in 140 characters. Is it not possible, asks Guevin, that the guy who tweeted was an: “equal...

Beheadings are back in the news, thanks to the savagery of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS). Not only do people know about these acts, but they can even see the videos on the Internet. Then again, beheadings are nothing new. They are an ancient practice, most famously during the French Revolution. The Amazonians shrunken heads are well known. That is why anthropologist Frances Larson wonders in her book, “Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found” : “What can we learn about our common humanity from this, the ultimate image of inhumanity?” Larson mentions something that I didn’t realize until, well, she said it: decapitation almost always has had a political angle to it. Let me quote her from her interview : “Decapitation is an inherently visual form of murder, because it produces a trophy that stands as proof of conquest. It creates something that is made to be displayed, and it presupposes an audience to watch. It also requires huge force to decapitate someone. It...

When Jeff Jarvis posted this pic below from a Texas school by Mark Simmons , he didn’t expect that the ensuing debate might well turn this pic into the Rorschach Test to identify if you are a Luddite or a geek ! If you’re wondering how, consider your reaction to the pic before reading on. Now take a look at some reactions to the pic, both from Jarvis’ article as well as the original Simmons’ pic. Jonathan Hébert said: “Real life interactions and physical activities would help more people instead of looking like zombies.” Jarvis himself: “New technologies bring new norms. The future is theirs, not ours.” Daniel Baker suggested: “Set up technology-free zones. When kids are outside they should be socializing and playing, not glued to a screen.” Paul Dickson had this to say: “They can have friends all over the world. Odds are, those might be a lot more interesting than the doofus in the next seat.” Some felt that this was: “Creating a generation of social misfit...

When David Foster Wallace gave the commencement address to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005, he started off with: “Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is...to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff...most pervasive cliché...is about “teaching you how to think.”” He then points out how that cliché is received by most normal students: “You tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think.” So true. That is why Wallace goes on to explain what the saying really means: “The really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get…(is) about the choice of what to think about .” Because that choice translates into something very important: “It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.” Philosophy aside, that choice has practical use...

As Narendra Modi continues as PM, some have started questioning what, if anything, has he done so far. To me, this sounds weird. Did he not increase railway fares (thereby reducing the railway subsidy)? Is he not continuing the trend of letting the market decide fuel prices (thereby reducing the oil subsidy)? A reduced subsidy account means that the government has more money for other things like, I don’t know, infrastructure or hospitals. So to me, the real question is how Modi intends to spend the money gained via the reduced subsidies? And equally importantly, can he ensure those projects get executed at all (and dare I say, executing them on time and at cost)? All this questioning reminds me of this article by Aaron David Miller that talked about how “great” American leaders no longer seem to emerge. After Washington, Lincoln and FDR…nobody. Notice the common theme, says Miller: “We admire the bold, transformational leader who seeks fundamental change, and value less the c...

In The Code Book , Simon Singh explains the gist of the un-decryptable algorithm: certain mathematical functions are one-way, i.e., easy to apply but almost impossible to reverse. Such functions are called Humpty Dumpty functions! A Humpty Dumpty function can be used to encrypt data in a way that is impossible to decrypt. Well, technically, Humpty Dumpty functions would be decryptable when/if quantum computers are a reality but let’s ignore that for now… Maths. Micah Lee puts it nicely: “Our universe is built out of mathematics. Humans have been learning, discovering, and using mathematics for thousands of years because it’s the only thing that can accurately describe what happens around us. The laws of physics are written in mathematics.” Edward Snowden urged people to apply maths to make their online content un-decryptable by Big Brother: “People and companies all over the world (should) come together to implement the technological solutions that can put an end to the...

When I went to China recently (again), I already knew several of the guys there, and so the conversations were a bit more open. Plus, the weather was good (unlike last time), so I walked around a lot and noticed a lot of things. Women in mini-skirts are very common; and remarkably, like in Western societies, nobody stops and stares at them. In fact, they even feel safe enough to get into cabs (alone) at 9 or 10 in the night! A lady Chinese colleague told us, “It is ok to hug (male) foreigners, but not each other”. Even brown foreigners! When asked why they don’t hug each other, I liked my colleague’s response: “We Chinese don’t have affairs”. At the town square in Wuxi (I’m sure you’ve never heard of the place, which is what makes what follows even more surprising), you can find couples of all ages, young and old, doing ball room dancing for fun! If it happens in an unknown place like Wuxi, I am guessing such things can’t be all that uncommon in China. Most people can...