Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Back in 1956, computers were still new. They were as large as rooms and broke down frequently (they used vacuum tubes, not the IC’s of today). They consumed a huge amount of power, heated up, and had to be cooled. Interaction was via punched cards and printouts – there was no keyboard or monitors, no mouse or GUI. There were no programming languages yet, instructions had to be entered in 1’s and 0’s format. Access to computers was a precious and expensive service. One had to book slots to use the computer. Usage was designed with “efficiency” of the machine, not users. After all: “Machine time was far more valuable than human time.”   Yet, even then, writes Mitchell Waldrop in The Dream Machine , a handful of people were already imagining a world where computers could be used for fun! Reactions to this outrageous idea? “Some people thought it was wrong . They almost spoke in ethical terms. Computers are serious, you shouldn’t treat them lightly. You shouldn’t have fun with ...

Some people in entertainment just don’t get it. Take the Walt Disney marketing team for the movie, Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens . Rather than releasing the trailer on TV or online, they decided to create artificial scarcity by deciding to air it only in 30 theaters worldwide (read that as the US and Canada). What was Disney thinking? That nobody who saw the trailer would record it on their phone and post it on the Net? Did they not understand the consequence of that as one Reddit explained: “It’s like Disney WANTS the first thing people to see about ‘The Force Awakens’ to be a grainy, shaky footage someone at the back of the screen took with their iPhone.” Responding to the online fury of the Star Wars faithful, Disney backtracked and said the trailer would also be made available on the iTunes Trailer site. Wait. So they decided to leave Android users out? Are these people brain dead? Star Wars has a global audience; and globally there are far, far more Android de...