Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Why are Bob Kahn and Vincent Cerf considered the “inventors of the Internet”? Long, long ago, as computer networks started to get created, they were initially limited to universities and military installations in the US, writes Mitchell Waldrop in The Dream Machine . Further, two different networks could not communicate with each other. Why not? Because they worked on different hardware, had computers that ran different OS’s, application software was written in different programming languages, and most importantly the protocol used for communication within a network was not standardized – each network followed its own method to communicate, so no two networks could communicate with each other.   In such a setup, vendors had no incentive to make things compatible with each other. In fact, corporations (who were major customers) considered the lack of compatibility a feature , not a bug! Why? Because they feared security leaks and industrial espionage. Thus, if a rival corpora...

In recent times, we have seen the Chinese government take on the Big Tech companies of China aggressively, from Alibaba to TenCent. While the West tends to dismiss this as interference and power plays by a “communist” government, Anirudh Suri reminds us this clash between governments and “large, monopolistic corporations” has happened many times in history, including the West…   In The Great Tech Game , he points out how the Medici family of Florence controlled so much money (they were bankers) that it was more powerful than most kings and rulers of the time. In fact, the Medici family’s credibility was so high that money notes issued by them (practically a form of currency) evoked greater trust than the currency issued by the political rulers of the time. Not surprisingly then, the Medicis faced the ire of many kings and popes of the time, who tried to cut them down to size.   Next, he reminds us that both the Dutch and British East India Companies were so powerful that they ...

Decades of attempts at Artificial Intelligence (AI) failed, until the advent of “neural networks”. That is basically an attempt to make computers “learn” the way our brains learn. For example, one feeds the system photos along with labels (cat, dog etc) and lets the computer find the patterns corresponding to each. Once ready, one then feeds it new photos that weren’t part of its training. This is the test – to see whether the patterns it noticed were correct or not.   That approach has yielded the AI we see today all around us – speech recognition (Alexa), image recognition (face unlock on your phone), driverless vehicles etc. While that’s very impressive, it is what is called “narrow AI” – limited to specific topics only. General purpose AI is still far away.   The Chinese venture capitalist and ex-Googler, ex-Microsoft, Kai-Fu Lee wrote an excellent book o n the state of AI in China. While the US is Number 1, he says China is the clear Number 2 and closing in fast,...

The younger, seen-the-West generation has varying degrees of pride in India. Sure, they have their complaints and criticisms too, but when I was a kid, people rarely had any pride in any aspect of modern India. If at all, their pride was limited to ancient philosophies or ways of life from back then. But even today, there are still plenty of Indians who talk of the West as if it is better than us on parameters where the situation has actually turned 180˚, done a U-turn. Take the recent ranking of countries based on the confidence of citizens of a country in their government. Keep in mind this was done by the OECD, a grouping of most of the world’s largest economies, barring China and Brazil. While India was 3rd best on that list, both the US and UK were below even the average confidence ratings among the OECD countries! Some people tend to explain this as a Trump/Brexit induced effect. But even if that was true (and it probably is), it only raises another question. After al...

Ancient Rome by Simon Baker is a history book written like a thriller. It leads me to say something nobody ever says about a history book: it’s a page turner! Rome, from the time of its foundation, hated the idea of being dominated by one man rule. Their solution? To form a republic. It was a trial and error system of government that evolved with time and events: -          They create a body of aristocrats called the Senate. The Senate, however, could not pass laws and had no legal powers. Instead, all adult male citizens voted in the assemblies for the passing of bills. But, of course, the money of the aristocrats still wielded influence. -          From amongst the senators, two were elected as “consuls”, not by the people, but by the senators themselves. The two consuls would have the power of a king. But just for one year, after which they returned to the Senate. Why two of them? So one could...

Balaji Srinivasan, from Stanford, gave this talk (I don’t know the word for it) , where he asked this provocative question: “Is the USA the Microsoft of nations?” That’s Microsoft as in obsolete, a dinosaur. Back in 1998, Bill Gates feared that Microsoft’s rule would end not due to the likes of Oracle but due to “some guys in a garage”. Those guys turned out to be Larry and Sergey (Google’s founders). And now, says Srinivasan, Silicon Valley is becoming the garage guys to the entire US! Pointing out that the post-war US was run by 4 cities (Boston: education; New York: Madison Avenue and Wall Street; Los Angeles: music and Hollywood; and Washington DC: laws), he next says that Silicon Valley is “putting a horse head in all of their beds”: that’s a declaration of war, Godfather style. If you’re wondering how, consider how the Valley’s outputs are taking on the traditional bastions of those 4 cities. Online courses, Khan Academy, and Udacity are the Valley’s assault on...

Some weeks back, there was the news about how the US had considered blowing up the moon as a show of strength during the Cold War. This was around the time the Russians put the first man in space and the Americans felt they were woefully behind the Soviets. There followed the (inevitable) denials that it was never a serious idea, that the world (let alone the Americans) never had the firepower to blow up the moon, that even a massive nuclear explosion on the moon would have just been a blink-and-you-miss-it event in Moscow (and that’s assuming the sky was clear and someone was even looking)… On a more recent note, there was a petition filed in the US that the government build a Death Star, you know, the Star Wars kind. Well, the US government had to respond because the petition had collected the minimum signatures needed! Titled “This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For”, the US rejected the petition (obviously) and went on to list the reasons: -    ...