Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Way back in 2002, an Indian non-profit organization named Simputer Trust created by 7 scientists and engineers created the eponymous Simputer. It stood for “simple, inexpensive and multilingual people's computer”.   It included very-advanced-for-the-time features. Text-to-speech software. Linux operating system. Size of the Palm Pilot. A touch sensitive screen! Operable via a stylus. Even a simple handwriting recognition software. A serial port. USB connections. Both a color and a black and white (greyscale) version.   The creators hoped it would enable even the poor to get familiar with computers, and eventually, get onto the still emerging-in-India Internet. Agricultural and fertilizer info was one obvious use. The market could have been not just the poor - sales teams on the move, insurance agents on the go could have stored content on it (Remember, laptops were very rare and expensive; the smartphone and the tablet had not yet been invented).   S...

Horsepower. A unit of power. Devansh Malik tells the story behind it and it is very interesting.   When the steam engine was invented, it served one purpose only. For 50 years! “(A steam engine) did only one job: pumping water out of coal mines, which flooded quite often. They could only move up and down, which is perfect for a pump but useless for anything else.”   James Watt (“the same dude from your physics textbooks”) was a builder of things – barometers, compasses, toys, musical instruments etc. Once, someone asked him to fix a broken steam engine. Those initial steam engines were very inefficient. So Watt decided to both fix it and improve its design. “His version did the same amount of work while burning about 75% less coal. He also worked out a gear system that turned the engine’s up-and-down motion into a spinning one. Which meant a steam engine could now turn a wheel.”   This hugely expanded the possible uses and applications of the steam engin...

Another aspect described in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please is isolation.   As everyone orders meals, members of the same house begin to order at different times. Gone is the catching up time as a family. On a related note, as one interviewee told the author: “Coffee shops are no longer places to socialize. People come to cafes to be alone with their laptops.” Quick commerce makes going to the grocery store redundant. And with fewer people coming to the shop, some of them close down, setting off a cycle.   Unlike those of us who work at offices, schools or colleges, gig workers don’t even get to interact (much) with co-workers since they are all on the move. Plus, attrition is high, so even the few one may know switch work frequently. Interactions with HR are through the app only.   Loneliness and lack of human contact aside, this also leads to the “atomization” of the workers. If they don’t know each other, how can they possibly group up to raise grievanc...

Cueta. It came into the news recently (July, ’26) when an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people swam or crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave within a couple of days.   Tomas Pueyo dug into what that was all about.   First, you need to know where Cueta is. No, though part of Spain, it is not in Europe. Rather, it lies on the African (Morrocco) side of the Mediterranean.   Since Cueta is adjoining Morrocco, which is much poorer than Spain, people have been trying (for decades) to get into Cueta as an entry into Spain (and eventually Europe) for a better life. So much easier than having to cross the Mediterranean. Unsurprisingly, the Morocco - Cueta border is heavily fenced, has barb wires, and is monitored tightly by Spain. Not at all easy to cross.   But… it is possible to swim across the border! The pic explains the route.   See how easy that is? But also, nothing new. People have been trying this for ages. And getting deported back. Doesn’t work...

Once upon a time, people weren’t sure how inheritance worked. At that time, the Lamarckian inheritance was a legitimate candidate – it said that organisms could pass on acquired traits to their descendants. In this view, a giraffe whose neck got longer by stretching in its lifetime would pass on the longer neck characteristic to its babies. Once Mendel’s findings were re-discovered, it was generally accepted that inheritance didn’t work that way.   Not Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet biologist. He still believed in Lamarckian inheritance. He merged that idea with his political support for communism, declaring that subjecting crops to the harsh "power of collectivism" and environmental conditioning, they would magically adapt and transform!   Well, it was a crazy view and that could have been the end of the story. Except Stalin supported Lysenko. Unsurprisingly, Lysenko’s career bloomed. Since this was communist USSR, those scientists who didn’t agree with the view espoused b...

The next emotion in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please is anxiety.   Delivery boys have to drive through congested streets. Might they have an accident? Could a cop catch them? If deliveries are late, would the company penalize them? Street dogs can be a menace. Sometimes, they have been robbed on the way. Or college kids gang up, take the food and then refuse to pay (always a risk with Cash on Delivery).   In the subcontinent, the extreme heat is another problem. Being on the road in such conditions can be problematic, though to be fair, alternate jobs too expose them to the same elements.   Then there are the odd weird customers. In places like Greater Noida, with villages juxtaposed by urban life, rural folks try and trick. Like ordering food and then cancelling the order at the last minute. The restaurant won’t take the food back, and knowing this, the villagers will often offer (lesser) cash to the delivery boy to give them the food. Some folks taste the foo...