Viswanathan K's Thoughts

A year or so back, my daughter asked how mountains are formed. I told her about the (tectonic) plates that move, bump into each other, and cause the land to “fold” thereby creating mountains. It was fairly easy to show that effect with a bedsheet, but there was no reaction from her. So I left it there. Now she’s 6. Some time back, I pointed to the globe and asked her whether the eastern edge of South America and the western edge of Africa look like they “fit” into each other, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Yes, she said. And doesn’t Madagascar’s western edge align with the eastern edge of Africa? She looked and agreed. And doesn’t Madagascar’s eastern edge align with India’s western edge? This isn’t such a good fit, so her response was a bit muted. It is, I continued, India used to be a part of Africa, and started moving to reach where it is today. And when it bumped into Asia, it led to the folding of the land to create mountains, what we call the Himalayas, I told her. Now she...

We have unbelievably huge amounts of data about pretty much everything that is getting generated, stored and tracked. And yet intelligence agencies don’t seem to be able to put all that data together to nail terrorists before they strike. Why can’t they connect the dots, we ask? And in the question lies the answer, according to some. Huh? Sound very Zen? We use the wrong metaphor (connecting the dots), then take that metaphor to its logical conclusion (a figure should emerge), and are surprised when real life doesn’t imitate our childhood books! When put like that, it does seem pretty stupid, doesn’t it? As Bruce Schneier wrote : “In real life, the dots can only be numbered after the fact…In hindsight, we know who the bad guys are. Before the fact, there are an enormous number of potential bad guys…The television show "Person of Interest" is fiction, not fact.” Besides, with so many “dots”, Schneier says it is very tough to know which dots form the “image” and w...