Viswanathan K's Thoughts

My 4 year old likes to hear stories that involve her stuffed toys going to school. It’s fun for her only if they do dumb and/or outrageous things in those stories. Every now and then, I’ll tell her the stuffed toys went to school, studied, listened to their teachers and came back like good boys. That’ll make her very angry: what kind of useless story is that, she’ll ask? I am guessing she’d agree with these lines from Grey’s Anatomy : “Smooth rides make for boring stories. A little calamity? That’s worth talking about.” Noah Berlatsky lists a few not-so-little calamities that make for great stories: “The robots revolt and kill us all. Religious fanatics take over and treat women as chattel. A vicious dictatorship is instituted that kills children for sport. The planet runs out of food, water, fuel, or all of them, and civilization tears itself apart. The aliens invade, the meteor hits, the zombies arise, the rapture raptures.” On the other hand, there is also that hugely pop...

‘Indulgence’ started off as a term to describe “a piece of paper that promised that God would forgo any earthly punishment for the buyer's sins” (from Gerald Posner’s book, God's Bankers ). It is famous for being the trigger for Martin Luther’s protestant movement. But indulgences weren’t always available in return for money. They started off being given instead of cash by the Church to anyone willing to fight the first crusades! Successive popes then realized this was an easy way to make money; and so the ease with which they could be bought increased over the centuries. The initial requirement that a pilgrimage to Rome be made to get an indulgence was soon done away. Then Sextus IV expanded indulgences to apply to souls stuck in Purgatory. Or as Posner wrote: “Any Catholic could pay so that souls trapped in Purgatory could get on a fast track to Heaven.” This “innovation” opened the floodgates and funded the construction of the Sistine Chapel. And pretty soon:...

Nietzsche once said, through his character Zarathustra: “When (man) invented hell . . . lo, hell was his heaven on earth; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world.” If that definition is too Old Testament for you, would you agree with these two definitions? The first one is by the group, Talking Heads : “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” Nick Carr took that definition to its logical conclusion and wondered: “If we further assume that hell is the opposite of heaven, then the distinguishing characteristic of hell is unrelenting eventfulness, the constant, unceasing arrival of the new. Hell is a place where something always happens.” I am guessing the Buddha would have added a very important point to Carr’s definition: “That’s hell only if you choose to react to every such occurrence.” What would you consider this description of one version of the afterlife by David Eagleman in Sum: Fo...

Most people have problems accepting parts of an idea or an ideology. They prefer an all or nothing choice. In some cases, that makes sense, like when one part of the ideology will necessarily cause a particular consequence that you find abhorrent. Thus, Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian streak is what caused a Bangladesh to be created and also an Emergency to be imposed. But Gujarat’s rating on almost all economic progress parameters is not caused by the BJP’s Hindutva ideology; which means you should be able to admire Modi as CM while still hating Godhra. Unfortunately, most people can’t make such distinctions. Fortunately for India, during our independence struggle, both Gandhi and Nehru were men capable of such distinctions (I personally don’t agree with either on all their post-independence decisions; but on many counts, I do agree with them). Thus unlike other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, India could separate the components of Western ideologies and pick and ...

After his rock star like reception at Madison Square Garden last time, it sounds like Narendra Modi is ready to take Silicon Valley by storm when he visits the US later this month: the 19,000 seat community reception venue is already over-booked. The planned townhall-style question-and-answer session at Facebook’s headquarters is the one getting all the limelight; but Modi will also be meeting a lot of other Silicon Valley CEO’s. Like those of Adobe, Apple, Google and Tesla. But why the focus on Silicon Valley? Is it just because Modi is Internet savvy (After all, he was on Time magazine’s list of “30 most influential people in the Internet” )? Or is it because the Valley has so many Indian origin folks? Sure, there may be a bit of those things; but it’s also to do with driving forward his government’s Digital India initiative. The intent of that is to make available government services electronically (and via the Net), thereby reducing delays, paperwork, bureaucracy and cor...

As I never tire of saying, the smartphone must be the fastest adopted technology in human history. How fast? As Ben Evans says : “Of 5bn adults on earth today, close to 4bn and growing have a mobile phone today, almost all of whom will convert to smartphones over the next few years.” It’s easy to believe that: after all, everybody has a smartphone these days: from CEO’s to the middle class to illegal immigrants and those in refugee camps . Not bad for a product just launched a few years back, in 2007! There’s something else that this incredible pace of smartphone adoption is doing: it is changing the very nature of the Internet. Evans explains how. Once upon a time, he says: “Our mental model of how and where you used 'mobile' was that it fitted into specific, occasional places and times where you were walking or waiting or needed a single piece of information and didn't have a PC.” Fast forward to present day: “Mobile today does not mean 'when you'r...

Imagine being a resident on the Greek island of Lesbos. 20,000 Syrian refugees land up on your island and now 1 in 5 people on the island is a refugee. You feel so threatened that you even stopping sending your kids to school. Or imagine being in Hungary: immigrants chant Islamic slogans and shout “f*** you” slogans at the police. Or maybe you are worrying about the security threats: two refugees were arrested in an unspecified European country on suspicion of being ISIS members . But hey, let’s focus only on the immigrants and refugees’ perspective; not the impact and dangers they pose to the people whose countries they land up in. At least, that’s the stance of liberals world over. When a stretched Czech police force started writing numbers on the arms of immigrants after detaining them, the Nazi comparisons started. The same comparison was done when Hungary was glad to see the backs of immigrants leaving in trains, this time the comparison was to the Nazi cattle cars. Do...

Nick Carr wrote an article about how every new communication medium forces political candidates to adapt and often changes the very nature of campaigning . In the 20 th century, it first happened with the advent of radio: “Politicians, used to bellowing at fairgrounds and train depots, found themselves talking to families in their homes.” Next came TV: “TV placed a stress on sound bites, good teeth and an easy manner. Image became everything, as the line between politician and celebrity blurred.” And now, he laments, comes social media. With that, “political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens” via the apps of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Further, the very nature of the political candidate is changing, he says: “If traditional print and broadcast media required candidates to be nouns—stable, coherent figures—social media pushes them to be verbs, engines of activity. Authority and respect don’t accumulate on social media; they have to be earn...

I like the Kindle. But I don’t quite love it. The biggest advantage is, of course, the lack of screen glare that’s a problem on the phone or the iPad. Sadly though, the touch leaves a lot to be desired and, as Eugene Wei wrote, “typing on a Kindle hardware device is for masochists”. Wei wrote this great article suggesting how the Kindle could become the social network of book readers ! I sure hope Amazon implements his ideas. Wei describes the problems many of us have with reading in the Age of the Internet: we have a “promiscuous attention span” that aligns with blog and tweet sized content, we “crave more novelty and diversity” than can be offered by any single book at a time, we resent many otherwise good books that get bloated in size just to fill some physical book era page count rules, and our “best ideas come from the interaction between concepts in different fields”. So what are the solutions Wei suggests that the Kindle implement? He’d like a home feed on the Kindle ...

My mom will often talk about the purpose of education being to widen a student’s horizons. Coming from a science background, I never understood what that even meant, let alone whether it was being achieved! After all, the laws of physics applied to the universe; the principles of engineering governed how you built things: those are facts; where’s the horizon widening in that, I wondered? Two recent incidents made me finally understand what she said probably only applied in the non-science streams. The first one was what a colleague of mine who studied economics in the US told about this professor of his. The professor believed that rule of law was a necessary (but not sufficient) criteria for a country to get rich. This being the US, he would then give a provocative example: Israel and Palestine. The former had the rule of law; the latter didn’t. Of course, the debate would then become a political brawl but the original topic would still get argued over indirectly… The se...

In a recent blog , I mentioned that smuggling immigrants into Europe is a $3 billion a year business. But guess who is eating into the smuggler’s business? The ubiquitous smartphone! How? Let this New York Times article explain: “In this modern migration, smartphone maps, global positioning apps, social media and WhatsApp have become essential tools. ” It’s not just location info and maps though. Immigrants use the phone to get info  on “arrests, border guard movements and transport, as well as places to stay and prices ” as well. Not to be left behind, traffickers too use social media to “advertise their services on Facebook like any legitimate travel agency ”, including family discounts! But how do immigrants know if such sites can be trusted? Based on the Like’s and posts of people who used that service, of course: “Migrants share photos and videos of their journeys taken on their smartphones. ” Add GPS to the mix and the data gets even more detailed: “ The...

When it comes to their kids, parents struggle to strike that balance between providing a better life than what they themselves had v/s spoiling the kids rotten. But the next time we feel some other parent over-did the indulgence, maybe we should remember what Alex Balk says : “For all the eye-rolling we do when we consider how children of a certain class are spoiled these days…it’s probably not a terrible thing to do to take a step back and examine where this exasperation comes from: Are we envious? Angry at ourselves for wishing we were handled so delicately during our own youth?” Every generation has a gadget/device that causes parents to fret as to how it is ruining their kids. First TV, then cable TV, and now smartphones. The other day, my 4 year old put the phone casing to her ear, and said, “This is my smartphone”. Smartphone, not phone. Because she’s never seen a non-smartphone! Balk again nails what worries parents about smartphones: “They speak to a larger concern ...

Illegal immigration into Europe continues to make the headlines. Boats full of immigrants capsized. An abandoned van on the Austrian-Hungarian border found with bodies of 71 would-be immigrants. Chaos and riot police at railway stations in Austria and Hungary. The UN estimates that smuggling people into the EU is now a $3 billion a year business . Why exactly is Europe so open to immigrants? Let’s go down in time. After World War II, there was a severe shortage of skilled labourers; hence, laws were enacted throughout Europe to make movement easy for Western European citizens. Next, non-Western immigrant workers were needed and welcomed for the dull and dangerous jobs. But when the economy slowed during the oil crisis of 1973, Europe discovered that the immigrants had settled in: they refused to go back! In the 1970’s, the European Court of Justice expanded the ease of movement to not just workers, but also any Western citizen . Even then, some feared that this would just le...

I love to read and surf the Net. But I don’t like listening to people talk on videos (except TED talks): it’s just too slow; and while I can move the scroll bar to a different point of the video, I really don’t know what I missed. At least with texts, I can glance at words/phrases even while I skip parts. With so much information on the Net, speed reading became popular: there are techniques on speed reading; and even apps that do it for you! Ok, you probably knew all that already. But Ashlee Vance wasn’t prepared for what a reader of his book told him: “LOVED the book. Listened to it on Audible at 2x speed and finished it in three days. Couldn't put it down. Congrats!” Vance, who had done all the things that all authors do: “slowly crafting narratives, painstakingly choosing words, deliberating over the lengths and tones and rhythms of sentences”, was shocked : “It had never occurred to me that people might listen to the book at 2x speed in order to ingest the info...