Viswanathan K's Thoughts

It’s that time of the year, when people ( not TV channels) look back at the year gone by and, well, have regrets. At the bad choices made. About the road not taken. On missed opportunities. Countries like the US, however, never have regrets about actions taken. Or so my friend said (note we’re talking about US, the country, not individuals). Sure, they do look back but only to learn what to do differently the next time. Or for political mudslinging. But neither of that is what we call “regret”. Thus, post-World War II, they didn’t impose a harsh Versailles style peace treaty on the losers. They might have changed their usage of nukes policy but they don’t have any regrets about Hiroshima or Nagasaki. That’s a done deal. Contrast that with how Germany continues to behave about its Nazi past. Sometimes (note I say sometimes, not always) not having regrets can be a good thing for individuals too. After all, most things cannot be undone, so what good comes from beating your

A lot of those pics we see on our Facebook and Instagram feeds are what Thai photographer Chompoo Baritone calls “artistic-looking photos”. And yet it only pretends to create art, what Jonathan Jones blasted : “We are turning into a world of bad artists, cosily congratulating one another on every new slice of sheer kitsch.” Baritone says pretty much the same thing; that most pics just seek to show off trendy aspects of life “with the end goal of getting praise” (a phrase from Baritone’s Facebook album on the same topic). As Annalisa Merelli said : “Such nicely framed images, pretty filters, witty captions and hashtags break no boundaries, but rather strengthen a pre-defined taxonomy of what’s trendy.” So what’s the way to avoid that? Eugene Wei talks about the simplest tip to improve one’s photography : “Take photos where your subjects aren't looking directly into the lens.” Why not? And why would that make any difference to the shot? First, let’s understand th

Facebook had teamed up with Reliance Communications to provide Free Basics, a Facebook initiative to provide free Internet access to certain web sites. That sounds like a good thing, right? Poor people, who might otherwise be unable to afford access Internet access would get, well, free access. So what did the Indian government find wrong that? The key part of contention is that Free Basics only applies to certain web sites , not the entire Internet. So what, you wonder. Isn’t some access for the poor better than no access? And that’s the argument that Facebook takes on the topic, not just in India but worldwide where they have similar initiatives. Ah, but that’s where things get tricky. There is an Internet principle called Net Neutrality: simply put, just like we don’t provide better roads for BMW owners as opposed to 2-wheelers, the Internet providers are supposed to provide the same connectivity speeds regardless of which web site is being connected to. The idea here is

So much is our addiction for Wi-fi that Alex Balk isn’t exaggerating too much when he writes : “The other day, I overheard someone say, ‘If trees gave off Wi-Fi they’d be everywhere. Too bad they only give off oxygen.’” Perhaps that’s what they should have decided in Paris during the climate change discussions: plant a tree and get free Wi-fi! Talking of Wi-fi reminded me of certain Russian cemeteries that will be offering free Wi-fi starting 2016. Wait a minute, wouldn’t you be mourning at the cemetery, not in a mood to post selfies? Ah, but these aren’t just any cemeteries: they host (is that the right word?) famous people’s graves. Like Boris Yeltsin. So the reasoning goes : “Since these particular cemeteries are steeped in history, they're now treated much "like open-air museums." Moscow's city-run funeral service spokesperson Lilya Lvovskaya told AFP that a lot of people "come and find themselves standing in front of a grave and want to know more

There used to be a time when making money in the stock market only needed expertise in finance and looking at long term prospects of companies and industries. But in the last decade or so, the finance industry employed lots of mathematicians, quantum physicists, electrical engineers and of course, software programmers. Put together, that seemingly weird set of people help come up with AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms that buy and sell stocks at insane speeds and are in fact now the norm in the Western world! Other industries like journalism seem to be unable (or unwilling) to react to an age where “many people start their day reading news on a phone or tablet”, as Cindy Krum, chief executive at MobileMoxie puts it. Thomas Urbain wrote : “News organizations have to decide whether to go after digital readers on their own or to team up with tech firms. In these new apps, the publishers appear to have chosen the latter.” Apps like Apple News, Facebook’s Instant Articles an

In his awesome book, The Story of Philosophy , Will Durant describes Plato’s concept of the “philosopher king”: 1)       First learn the Doctrine of Ideas, the “art of perceiving significant forms and causal sequences and ideal potentialities amid the welter and hazard of sensation”; 2)      Then follows “five years of training in the application of this principle to the behavior of men and the conduct of states”; 3)      Next come the practicals because “generalizations and abstractions are worthless except they be tested by this concrete world”; 4)      And finally, “shorn of scholastic vanity by the merciless friction of life, and armed now with all the wisdom that tradition and experience, culture and conflict”, he is ready to the ruler of the state. Now you know why Arvind Kejriwal has failed so miserably: all theory, no practical experience. I am guessing Plato would approve of Narendra Modi’s rise to PM: he is the perfect example of the philosopher king! In his

Barry Schwartz gave a great TED talk on the “paradox of choice”: beyond a point, the number of choices is overwhelming to many. Many thought that the problem was the lack of information on the choices. But that wasn’t the issue. After all, isn’t Eugene Wei right when he writes: “The internet has intensified this curse, no one can make a purchase decision without reading a bunch of reviews online, or Googling “what is the best [X]” and trying to sift through a bunch of spammy websites to find some authoritative-sounding article. After all, the internet has democratized information and put it at our fingertips, isn't it our own fault if we don't own the best SLR or printer or kitchen blender, or if we don't go to the best ramen house in Tokyo on our one visit there?” Then again, if all you get is only “raw” information with no recommendations, it creates a new problem; what Dan Ariely calls the “burden of knowledge” : “If a doctor tells you that you have to make a dec

Finally. A few Western public figures are saying what many feel privately but dared not say publicly. Ex-Aussie PM Tony Abbott declared: “(The West) can't remain in denial about the massive problem within Islam…Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.” Now compare that with what Donald Trump said and it sounds almost tame! All he said was that the US stop allowing Muslim non - citizens into the US until lawmakers find a solution to this terrorism problem. Oh, in case you forgot, the US Congress already voted to disallow Syrian refugees from entering America! Scott Adams writes a series of blogs on Trump’s persuasive skills. While Adams doesn’t always agree with Trump, he is quite impressed with the techniques employed. For example, he says that sooner or later another ISIS attack will happen. At that point, Adams says : “You probably don’t know of any other

I have these ongoing debates with my dad on Narendra Modi. And that got me thinking of the parallels with Donald Trump. No matter what they did or said, they are extremely popular during election campaigns. And even win. But how can that be? How can such things happen in countries with a free press, with freedom of speech? How can it happen in a growing country and a rich country? Howard Kurtz points out how aggravating Trump is to his detractors: “They struggle to understand why he pays no penalty when they blow the whistle. What they don’t quite grasp is that their attacks only make him stronger. This is not to let him off the hook for mistakes, just to recognize that Trump has completely rewritten the rule book, infuriating those who thought they enforced the rules.” Those lines would apply equally to how many feel about Modi. But why doesn’t all this “blowing the whistle” work? Matt Taibbi talks of an increasingly common approach these days: “(A common approach is

Apple is loved; Google is admired more than it is loved; and Facebook? Though used almost as universally as Google, yet it is criticized by almost everyone. No matter what Facebook or Mark Zuckerburg do, people will find a way to find fault. They’ll hate it and still use the site… Take Safety Check, a Facebook feature that is activated in specific areas at specific times when disaster strikes. It allows users to flag themselves as safe after a disaster for friends and family to see. It was activated after the Nepal earthquake and after the Paris attacks and now during the Chennai flooding. But it didn’t activate the same after a recent terrorist attack in Beirut. So why Paris and why not Beirut? Two reasons , said Facebook VP, Alex Shultz: 1)       There was lot of activity on Facebook as events unfolded in Paris (“Facebook became a place where people were sharing information and looking to understand the condition of their loved ones. ”). 2)      War zones like Lebanon aren’

I remember reading Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto and coming away very surprised. Surely having checklists couldn’t possibly be making such a big difference in areas like surgery and aviation, I scoffed. Wouldn’t surgeons and pilots with years of experience have internalized such checks already: why would noting it down make such a big difference? And yet, such checklists have been found to be effective: studies listed in Gawande’s book proved just that. Ironically, it may be the very effectiveness of these checklists which is making airline accidents more and more bizarre: the Malaysian Airlines flight that zigzagged over the Indian Ocean before vanishing and the German pilot who deliberately flew a plane into the mountainside are prime exhibits. The easy and obvious causes have all been addressed already, argues Steve Coast ; which only leaves us with the weird scenarios! As Coast says, sometimes even the best intentioned rules end up creating new loopholes: “We