Viswanathan K's Thoughts

When actor Alan Rickman died, there was a lot of praise for the outstanding villainous role he had played: Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard movie. And that reminded me of the other box office villains who have developed a cult following. Even moralistic India has its fascination with Gabbar Singh and Mogambo! But the best onscreen villains aren’t the ones who are just powerful or cruel or sadistic (sorry, Darth Vader). Rather, they are the guys who have the best dialogues (and dialogue delivery). Remember the awesome monologue by the smooth talking Jew hunter, Colonel Landa in Inglorious Bastards ? Or the panache of John Travolta in Broken Arrow and Face Off ? We love to understand the plot of the evil one. The villain Joker tosses that out when he tells Batman: “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just… do things.” Other villains rarely do or say...

You can stay on the Internet all day. The ubiquitous smartphone and tablet made it even more so. Of course, those two “culprits” also result in people playing games or watching videos all the time. Since the activities mentioned last have nothing to do with the Internet (except if you are streaming movies), there’s a different term for that too: screen addiction. Except that both terms (Internet addiction and screen addiction) always felt so wrong to me. But I couldn’t put my finger on why , until I read this article by Alan Jacobs . Citing 4 kids who spend all day playing World of Warcraft, being on Facebook, watching porn, and (gasp) learning to program using their devices, he says: “They're addicted to certain experiences that they are getting access to via their computers. That is not at all the same thing…Now, some might reply that this is a frivolous response, that such language is an easily-understood shorthand. But I would counter that it's a highly misleading s...

My parents were considering buying a second desktop for themselves. Second as in “addition to”, not as in “replacement of”. Why? For two reasons (this is just my opinion; I could be totally wrong): 1)       The existing desktop is getting old and might conk out sooner rather than later; 2)       One device ain’t enough for two people! My father was considering a laptop as an option. That is when my wife told me to suggest the tablet option to them. I did; and initially, they were wary of how easy or difficult typing without a (physical) keyboard might be. They then Googled to learn that they could plug in a physical keyboard to a tablet. I was amused by how my dad knew about iPad and Android as the only two options (I guess he learnt about Android from the book I lent him and, surprisingly, one he actually read: Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution ). I pushed them hard to buy the iPad rather th...