There have been a lot of controversies of late - a movie which was claimed to have twisted historical facts, a caste-based protest, a politically influenced crime or the issue of sharing river water between two states. In all these cases, facts elude the public and the vote always remains is pretty divided and vitriolic because there are always two sides of every story.

It is no-one's guess that a filmmaker may have apparently taken a lot of liberties in historical depiction or that a particular law may have been misused or water or financial devolution could have been fairer or anything else. However, protestors have often gone wild with threats to kill or even cause damage to public and private property.

Sane voices argue that these non-issues keep people and media away from discussing real issues like the state of the economy, the rise of crony capitalism, deteriorating finances of the middle class or farmers committing suicide. So why is it that that large hordes of people keep thronging the streets. Why is it that the public today is paying attention to non-issues, why is it that "youth leaders" are spewing venom or announcing bounties on actors and directors or threatening bloodshed in the name of a river - when there are many other major issues they could pick up even if it were to win elections.

The answer probably lies in the role models which the society has conjured up to the masses - especially young people's minds. [Sidenote: It is usually the Young who control what gets discussed in public sphere, but due to the majority of the youth demographic, this is especially true of India].

I love Firefox and the Mozilla foundation - it was the beacon of innovation when Microsoft tried to kill it with repeated versions of its buggy Internet Explorer! If you were involved in software development or managing online products circa 2005-2008, you would know the nightmare it was to develop a website compatible with IE and its myriad of versions (IE6 was especially notorious)!

At that time, Firefox was our ray of hope, and I would have tried to evangelise almost every friend, family or client to ditch IE and embrace FF. With clients, however, the big problem was, Firefox was an Open Source software and the corporate world has a certain amount of scepticism towards this species of software. [Ironical because most of the largest software services in the world run on Operating Systems which are clones of Linux and most of the web's websites run on Apache - these two being probably the largest Open Source projects in the world!]

Source: Netcraft Webserver survey 2017

In spite of this, when I got this blog post from Mozilla (the non-profit which runs Firefox) in my mailbox, I got thinking about whether Open Source community is right in thinking that Software, where no one takes credit, is really the reason for the success of Open Source? I quote:

My apartment building has a community garden. The building owner started it with a donation of raised beds and soil. What happened next amazes me to this day.

One day tools appeared, the next a shed to store them. Seeds were planted. Someone put up string trellises for tomatoes. No one took credit. 

Honestly, other philosophies that pride in "no-one, in particular, taking credit" (or Common Ownership) are Communism and Socialism. The concept of everyone contributing to the best of their abilities and being rewarded universally is very Marxist and the Chinese story notwithstanding, we've seen the model failing to deliver in the erstwhile USSR and several other communist colonies which broke down in mid-90s.

My doubts also emerge from the fact that while Firefox did help keep the hope alive during the dark period of 2000-2010 for browser innovation, the real clincher was Google supported Chrome browser.

Today most organisations - SMBs to MNC Enterprises use (or allow) the Chrome browser. Google did significant amount of (subtle) marketing to ensure that it was able to usurp the hegemony of Microsoft over the browser market since Chrome's launch in 2008. And these 'for profit' dollars poured into evangelising corporations probably helped sideline Internet Explorer.

As this chart shows, IE declined steadily once Chrome was launched, while Firefox's penetration levels have remained steady but not really grown much (proportionally) in the intervening years.


Mozilla Foundation is a great organisation - if you are concerned about your privacy, if you are someone who believes in rights of individuals over the state, if you want to keep the web open and secure - you should support them. Geeks and Intellectuals still use the Firefox browser more than they use Chrome. (I am not one of them, I use FF only on special purpose - bit the self-confessed Google fan that I am, Chrome is my mainstay).

Organisations like Mozilla need to exist so that if one day Google, even against its corporate motto, turns evil - we have a ray of hope. However, the example does set back the hope of the early 90s that Open Source will trump Proprietery software one day to create a truly "Free Software" world.

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Chance and serendipity can often spring profound thoughts and insights; I experienced one such moment today. I was driving towards office and switched on the Radio. All India Radio FM Gold channel was broadcasting an audio re-run of the famed Mahabharat TV Serial.

The Economist argues in this article how online services which provide for personalised services are breaching some age-old notions of privacy.

Google mines the data it collects from users for two purposes. One is to improve the user experience, making its various online services more personal, useful and rewarding for the individual—and thereby increasing their popularity. The other purpose is to provide better targeted information for advertisers.
That is fine for the vast majority of internet users, who are happy to trade a measure of privacy for the convenience. However, most people (though not all) stop short of blurting out more intimate details about their private lives.
Even so, all those innocuous bits of self-revelation can be pieced together, jig-saw fashion, by intelligent algorithms. Throw in the digital paper-trails stashed in Google searches and Amazon purchases, and things can begin to get a little scary.

The above is a foregone conclusion - we all are ignoring the looming fear of privacy invasion for the convenience that online services give us. In fact, after much brouhaha about the US NSA snooping over a vast majority of the world (incl. politicians in other countries), not much seems to have changed in the world perception given how social media platforms (hosted in US data centers and subject to US laws) have snowballed into world's largest corporations.

However, another concern is now coming up which is not so much about someone knowing about the underwear brand I wear (which wouldn't really be very devastating), but about me NOT knowing what I don't know.

One of the foundational principles of democracy - which underpins other more explicit principles like freedom of speech or freedom of practising one's religion - is the freedom and the right to have access to unfettered information. One of the reasons North Korea and even China are castigated by proponents freedom is because of the conditions imposed by these regimes on the flow of information to their citizens.

Recent studies have shown that excessive personalization of say our Facebook feeds or WhatsApp Group based news which we receive, makes us as blind to other perspectives as may be people of a restrictive or oppressed regime.

The information we take in is so personalized that we’re blind to other perspectives. Thats why Trump was a surprisehttps://t.co/MtN8np3jHE

— Nikhil Kulkarni (@kulkarninikhil) November 10, 2016

No wonder that religious preachers, right wing activists and even divisive religion based military group like the ISIS find Social Media a good source of recruiting volunteers!

Activist Eli Pariser who has coined the term Filter Bubble argues that "while we might think of the internet as an impartial, universal library with Google serving as a superhuman Dewey decimal system, it’s remarkably, and perhaps pathologically, individualised". Another article by Rohit Prasad of MDI, Gurgaon, in India, argues that -

"The institution of paid search raises barriers to entry for firms that do not have the required marketing budgets and that apart from paid search which is quite evidently non-neutral, the paradigm of neutral search itself is being questioned as anti-competition"

This is still quite benign as it only attacks the laissez-faire economy principles of the free market, but he also adds that -

"the use of personalization rules in serving search returns implies that we get to see what the search engine thinks we would like based on surfing information it has gathered about any people, rather than some ‘objective’ listing"

Veterans of journalism - the fourth pillar of a democracy - agree with this sentiment. As Rich Jaroslovsky, the chief journalist at SmartNews, puts it - "Excessive personalization creates a rabbit hole ... you never discover anything that you didn't know already and your world view gets narrower .. and ultimately leads people to feel dissatisfied" (Source: futureof.news)

The filter bubble or rabbit hole - whatever you may want to call it is a very dangerous phenomenon for multiple reasons:

1. The Internet is entering  every sphere of our lives - from 'where to buy a house' to 'which route to take for the morning commute to office. If personalised technology makes us take biased decisions, it may be impacting our whole life! Further, it may be preventing us from benefits of serendipity by forcing us to take the beaten path, dumbing us down or killing that chance we have to be more creative!
2. Internet penetration is increasing at an exponential pace and hence more people are being subjected to decision making assisted or influenced by Social Media. Whether it is about the route on your daily commute or who should be your President or Prime Minister; all of us are being subjected to filter bubbles while contributing to these decisions. The ubiquity of internet means that we are at a greater risk of making a collective mistake in making decisions!
3. In the last few years, as the propensity of political leaders to take tough decisions has reduced and the trend of referendums has gained traction. The United Kingdom (who's Westminster model is a template for democracy in several countries), has witnessed two referendums in recent past - one on Scotland remaining a part of the UK and another on UK leaving the EU. As technology - electronic voting et. al. - makes it  easier to conduct elections; direct democracy might become the norm. Some low population countries like Switzerland are already making the switch. This makes over personalised social media even scarier as biases may influence specific political decisions not just personal decision or choice of leader. 
4. In a world where we are heading towards making some very crucial decisions regarding climate change or future of robotics or spacefaring - combined with point #3, biases influenced by narrow social media networks and incomprehensibly tested personalization algorithms (technology), we might just take a wrong decision which may have far reaching impact on future generations and the very existence of mankind!

**

The existence of Intelligent Extraterrestrial life is a common topic for Science fiction - stories, movies or even discussions. There are various visions of an alien proposed - doomsday / apocalypse themed movies portray them as reptiles with high frequency reproduction capabilities. However, few other more benevolent themes like the E.T. or Avatar show them as humanoid. Which of these two versions are more likely to be true?

Let us look at it from another perspective, what are some of the characteristics of an intelligent animal? Some which come to mind are [Source]:

• The use of tools
• The ability to learn and remember (obtain knowledge) through experience, study, or instruction
• The ability to communicate (the ability to give and receive information)
• The ability to solve complex problems

Humans have fingers which gives them a lot of flexibility to handle complex tasks such as writing or drawing art. We can't be exactly sure whether our fingers evolved by usage of increasingly complex tools which finally led to us becoming interested in refined usage of fingers like drawing or writing; or whether our intellectual development resulted in physical needs of having long versatile fingers? The likely answer is that both physical and intellectual development happened simultaneously.

Next is our ability to learn from instruction which takes us to our eyes, ears and mouth - eyes and ears allow us to receive instruction while the mouth helps in giving instruction. Again, cognitive development plays its own role in interpretation of what the eyes see or ears hear.

Next is our ability to communicate - as earlier we communicate using sounds from our mouth (and receive through ears), but one often unappreciated difference between human and animal communication is our ability to form facial expressions. While other animals also emote expressions from faces, none is as versatile as humans. We can communicate through eyes or certain facial muscles as well.

And finally, the last thing which differentiates mankind from other animals is our ability to think and solve complex problems. Our brain is a powerhouse of not only cognitive intelligence which makes our other 'sensory organs' effective, but also analytical intelligence which is responsible for everything from language to say our ability to build rockets that go into outer space!

Any intelligent animal or say an alien - if intelligent will most probably have to be equal to humans in all the above capabilities and it follows that they will need eyes, ears, mouth, fingers and a significantly large brain! So aliens shaped like cows or goat or sheep or giant lizard or dinosaurs may not be practical. Any advanced life form will mostly evolve into humanoid shapes to able able to carry out complex tasks. In fact, not only will aliens be humanoid, they will actually be Carbon based or at best Silicon based given that Carbon and Silicon are most abundant elements in the Universe!

One caveat here is that we are only talking about intelligent animals capable of being at least as intelligent as a chimpanzee or more. So a Godzilla like alien is still possible, provided we do not call it an 'intelligent animal'! However, most extraterrestrial themed movies show the alien civilizations contacting humans by flying to earth in a spaceship which presumes they are intelligent animals.

To cap the subject, it isn't really necessary that, if there is life elsewhere in the Universe, it is intelligent. Here's an interesting debate between Niel De'grass Tyson and Richard Dawkins on the same subject.


**Image Credit: 'Dobbie the Extra-Terrestrial' on Flickr

My daughter was watching one of those Kindergarten videos on shapes [YouTube] and at this scene where a car is waiting for the 'Shape Train' to cross the level crossing; I ruminated a conversation between the vehicles where ...

The car wonders to itself  - "I wish I could go as fast as the train!"
The train itself responds "I wish I could roam anywhere like the car does!" [and not be forced to run only where the track goes]

I realized my rumination had a lot of similarity to the differences, perceptions and expectations of 'Corporate' vs. 'Entrepreneur' career paths. Corporate career is like the Railway - you have a defined career path to progress up, if you perform well, play your moves properly (including living with or harnessing office politics and networking), you can reach the top echelons very fast and without much financial risk on yourself.

Entrepreneurship is like driving a car on the road - you have a lot of freedom whether to take the highway, the arterial roads, by lanes and if you like it, just wander off into a cozy small village. It is this aspect that attracts professional most to it - 'independence', 'work on any idea', 'freedom to choose your work hours' etc. - a very rosy side of freelance lifestyle.

The similarities don't end here - in fact the analogy gives us several insights into the norms, habits and paradigms of success in both fields. Few examples:

• The train must follow rules, signals, stoppages and follow timings strictly to be efficient and reach its destination on time. For the train, the key metric that matters is reaching on time because the rest of the variables are already controlled by the Railroad company.
• The car, while free to roam exteriors, interiors - whatever - needs self discipline to stay the course. If it lacks its own discipline, it risks just making the journey, but never reaching the destination. On the positive side, that is usually something many people wish for - enjoy the journey, not the outcome.
• Also, the railway comes with its own amenities - food in pantry (nowadays even Wifi onboard!), while you need to manage your own provisions while riding in a car.
• There are times when both cars and trains can run at similar speeds - but cars at high speed are much riskier to drive than a train at similar speed. Hence, a good driver is more important in a car ride than a train. 
• Finally, the train can never be owned by smaller individuals, needs huge capex to set-up and run but lacks maneuverability but cars are nimble, can get 'up-and-running' on any destination fairly quickly but are usually used only for short hauls and run on lower capacities. 

What are lessons from the analogy:

• If you want to do well in a Corporate career - understand the explicit and tacit 'rules of the game' and follow them strictly; sometimes 'challenging status quo / establishment' may be one of the 'rules of the game'; but either ways - the better you follow the rules, the faster you will grow. When you don't get that promotion you believe you deserved - try to analyze which rules you overlooked and how to follow them in future!
• Entrepreneurship require self discipline if you want to prosper - else you will be one of those millions of freelancers or 'small businesses' who dwarf out and remain stuck-in-the-middle without any chance of making that million dollar valuation. (It's a different matter if that's what you choose to remain - dont-report-to-anyone-small-biz-boss!)
• Don't underestimate the importance of scaffolding when planning for Entrepreneurship; from the coffee machine to courier service and office boys, all need money. Unlike 'Intrapreneurship' roles, Entrepreneurship requires that you either take care of the amenities yourself or spend on them (usually more than what big Corporates do on a per head basis). 
• Never underestimate the importance of having a good team in a Entrepreneurial venture - in a corporate set up, a bad accountant doesn't do much harm, but for a small business venture where margins are low, making mistake of one zero can wipe of profits. Relations are more intertwined in a startup - good cofounder relationship can make or break ventures. 
• Corporate set-ups are good for established industries requiring large capex (even if they are "new" - like Solar Power or Space travel ventures) but startups are more suited for low capex businesses which need to be agile in changing processes to 'figure out' their business models.

As Steve Blank puts it:

a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Also note that I didn't compare 'Salaried' vs. 'Business' because several Business folk today feel the same 'locked in' feeling of being restricted as several 'Corporate' guys feel; while several 'Salaried' Intrapreneurs exist who have the freedom to work around their passions - some example being professionals like Devdutt Patnaik or Ajit Ranade.

So, if your objective is just to pursue your passion - you need not necessarily embrace the 'Entrepreneur' track; there are ways to pursue passions in Corporate roles as well.

This analogy can be extended much farther, but you get the gist - hope it helps those in the process of deciding to make the shift!

The irony of our times ...

• Those who oppose crimes against themselves, inflict crimes on their own people 
• Those who want peace within, advocate bombing the 'criminal' states 
• Those who oppose 'repressive' regimes, side with them when the 'rebels' start bombing their countries 
• Those who work for off-shoring IT businesses, condemn governments for allowing cheap Chinese imports 
• 'Export' cloth manufacturers encourage laws restricting of foreign manufactured vehicles
• Families who built houses with repatriation money castigate illegal immigrants from neighboring countries 
• Those who worship most feverishly are also those who preach hatred
• People conduct 'culture' festivals at the Bank of rivers damaging fragile ecosystems on the riverbed 
• Those who find affirmation action 'unfair' to the majority cringe when the government taxes their savings 
• Minorities always cite the law; majorities make the law! 
• My opportunity is fair - if they trouble you, you are incapable of adapting to change 
• My troubles are unfair because they result from injustice meted out by chosen few to the majority 

It is easy to get drowned in the cacophony of media - especially the very personalized Social Media - but it is too damn hard to think with a clear mind about right vs. wrong, courageous vs. tactical, hard-work vs. smart-shortcut; and the answers are often too damning in the short term! History however proves that in the long run, justice is delivered and truth prevails - as they say सत्यमेव जयते !!

davewinerabttwtr

As @DaveWiner, tweeted about twitter's innovation stalling because it closed its API than open it, another friend of mine emailed me asking about which Social Bookmarking service I use.

To put it in context, in 2008-9, I too had started to build a social bookmarking application Bloozle, which was aimed at sharing links (bookmarks) by users, tagging them (to create 'folksonomies), enable sharing and finally presenting a technology curated 'magazine' for end users to browse.

What we envisaged as bloozle, is today available as a combination of Twitter / Facebook based link sharing (with #hashtags acting as tags) and Flipboard based 'curation' of those links for you to read.

Long story short - this friend of mine was a part of the team for Bloozle and hence, we share the love to hate Twitter-Flipboard combo for 'stealing' away our success! :-)

My friend commented (sic)- "i am just back on delicious and find it way better than twitter or facebook even now for researching and studying on the internet." Valid point - there are several features which Twitter / Facebook link sharing lack to be used as effective Social Bookmarking services.

For example, Twitter/ Facebook do a pretty good job at broadcast (twitter) or targetted (facebook) sharing of links, they do not provide effective methods of tagging and categorization. The 'preview' which they display is default, and it is not possible to 'quote' a particular part of an article (or a particular segment of a video) in the preview that gets shared. Twitter's 140 character limit makes it harder to 'comment' on the links; the newsfeed style of display is not particularly suited for rapid browsing the consumption ..... I can go on about why Twitter and Facebook suck at Social Bookmarking features.

However, the bottomline is, there are more people on Twitter than Delicious (the Social Bookmarking app / website), even though using it for social bookmarking is more of a 'hack' than a feature. What can I do of the advanced link-sharing features, if I can't consume links from Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift, Paolo Coelho and Amitabh Bachchan and there is no point of sharing my blog post on Delicious if some of my friends can't consume it there!

It's similar to saying that, as an artist, while Baroda is a great city to live, given the cost vs. time trade offs and will offer you a more creative lifestyle, but you'd still choose to be in Bombay because that's where the art circuit is (there's Kala Ghoda, Bollywood, TV, media houses etc.)  and hence you are able to interact with more likeminded people here. So you give up the luxury of low cost and high time to live in Bombay.

And so I am staying with Twitter and Flipboard combination. Twitter is my bloozler and Flipboard is my bloozpaper. It works - its functional; though there are features I'd desire in them, but without users those features are useless. so having users is more imp than features. IMHO!

So, even though Dave Winer is correct that if Twitter itself would have kept its API open, several 'features' could have been developed on it by third party developers but since it already had a critical mass of users prior to closing down the API, it didn't matter much!

That's one hard truth most consumer startups will have to digest - a superior product without user traction is a failure! 

Your next door neighbour may not be techie enough, he may have an inferior product but if s/he has a rich uncle or knows a VC or lives in the US where funding is easier to get and s/he can fund user acquisition through TV adverts or Google Ads or door-to-door selling or any other means - they are better placed to 'disrupt' the market than you who has superior technical knowledge or better 'product ideas'!


This also has a subtle 'philosophical' meaning - your product is an enabler for superior experience for the end user. But your product alone is not the cause of that superior user experience. For consumer startups, especially those reliant on network effects, the number of users you have is an integral part of the user experience. And so, unless you find out ways of user acquisition; there is no way you are going to succeed.

While this may not be true for B2B startups in the absolute sense, but the importance of having user traction can't be belittled for any business - whether consumer or business facing.

Photo credit: https://www.useronboard.com/features-vs-benefits/

The IT geek world is unequivocally undivided since more than a decade on the superiority of the Command Line Interface over the GUI!

For the uninitiated, Command Line is the black screen, that comes up when you go to 'Start Menu' > 'Run' and Type 'cmd', which you often use to do a 'ping' or 'ipconfig'. GUI expands to Graphical User Interface, a technical name to the point-and-click interface we all use in computers today. 

The geekdom has had debates on why we haven't evolved from a purely textual entry mode into something better, a debate which always concludes accepting that Command line is a superior form of human-computer interaction. With introduction of Siri, Google Now and Cortana - while we have added voice commands also to the debate; its uses are currently limited to searching, giving pre-ordained commands like calling someone in your contacts list. For performing complex tasks such as say formatting your hard disk, checking whether a server is up or crashed, or starting a new program - GUI or CLI (another acronym for Command Line Interface) are the only choice or at least far more convenient options.

More importantly, for programming the computer for more complex tasks, we still rely on 'textual code' which issues 'commands' to the computer similar to those used in CLI.

I today want to however point towards a fast emerging offspring of both CLI and GUI - the CLGI. Have you ever started searching for something in Google only to have it 'auto-complete' it for you?
Jira - a popular bug tracking application - has taken this concept to another level. It allows users to create a 'query' in order to customize what gets displayed on the page using their custom Jira Query Language or JQL in short. Since Jira is used by both developers and business users, they have used the auto complete feature to make it simple for non-tech users to build JQL queries.

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1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAYo0IgOxs4
2. https://raam.org/2008/google-autocomplete-for-search/
3. http://www.javacorrection.com/2015/08/spring-interview-questions.html
4. http://blogs.atlassian.com/2009/10/jql/
5. Self created
6. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/correcteurorthographiqueoffice/archive/2006/06/05/contextual-spelling-in-the-2007-microsoft-office-system.aspx

Note: My thoughts on this subject remain unfinished, and I will try to post more as I do more research on the subject. 

I was at a workshop last week conducted by Prof Ashish Nanda [1] and Prof Biju Varkkey [2] - and it was an enlightening experience. There was one thought which came from them towards the end of the session which has been reverberating in my mind ever since. This was about the future of the workplace.

In response to a question about handling the 'new generation' Prof Nanda mentioned that most of the theories and media talk about the Millennials or Next Generation being different and changing the workplace is bunkum; but what he said next was insightful - the workplace of the future will not be influenced so much by the entry or the new generation but by 3 factors:

• Women in the workforce - for the first time in the history of mankind we are going to have a large number of women who would have spent more than 30 years at Corporate and Academic careers. Many of them have reached or are reaching leadership positions and the workplace is going to be far different with so many women change makers, thought leaders and bosses. 
• The post-retirement workforce - with improved health and increased life expectancy, it is quite unfair for us to retire our senior citizens at an age of 60. In fact, several powerful and influential leaders in business and public life are past their 60s and continue to make an impact on how we live our lives and how we will live them in future. And the way trends are, it is more likely that we will see more and more people working in their prime past their 60s. How do we work with these people and how do they influence the workplace is to be seen.
• Technology - The current workplace is already heavily influenced by technology, but this is possibly just the beginning. Virtual teams, Teleworking, and use of Social media may be rewiring our brains as individuals, but it will rewire our work-life completely in the next two decades. There are new ways of working and new professions, but older professions may change the way they work. The opposing forces of personalization and globalization will give rise to a new set of expectations and mannerisms. Much has been written about this and need not be elaborated. 

Flickr image by sayan51

I was listening to my grandma and my uncle talk about the nonsense they show on TV nowadays, about how Children in TV are shown to be arrogant or uttering things which do not suit their age, and then the topic turned to how there is too much 'freedom' given to today's youth, the fact that they are not bound by cultural ethos is making them directionless achievers; and as the discussion got accented, there was a hint that the world needs a dictatorial order - how youth need to be disciplined and made to act within the 'bounds' of our culture, how this will result in a more fruitful generation.

This, I am sure, is a common debate in many households in India and even elsewhere; the conclusion of course is very typical of the rightist philosophy bordering on, though not absolutely, vigilante approach.

I agree and disagree. Yes, freedom is a double edged sword, but absolute freedom does not have an alternative irrespective of its blemishes. In fact the word 'absolute freedom' is a misnomer, if its not absolute, it's not freedom! But why is freedom important? Is it just because it feels good to be free? Is it just because some of today's influential societies and their laws make it a 'fundamental right'?

I believe the answer is more fundamental than that (pun intended!). What determines whether a thought, an idea or a philosophy is right or wrong - time; only the test time can tell if an idea is right or wrong. An idea - Iridium - the global satellite phone network - hailed to be a stupendous success at the time of its launch, was a magnificent failure. So was the Segway, the human transporter. Moving away from science - the Socialist model of Communism hailed as a breakthrough for welfare of mankind at the time of its inception turned out to be a fallacy years later when it failed to deliver.

So, if time can only tell what works and what will not, the only way for mankind to progress is to allow as many possibilities in every walk of life to be seeded today, so that the best out of these become trees for mankind to grow. Most of them will fail, but some will succeed - and freedom is the most important element for these 'will be successful in future' ideas to sprout today. Cliched, but true, that freedom allows us to experiment and hence is the most 'fundamental' precondition for innovation to prosper and flourish.

And so, even if you hate what youngsters or outcasts today are doing - you should still not put any barriers on them - you never know where the next innovation might sprout out of. You may feel that polygamy and promiscuity is wrong or the gay movement is against the 'laws of nature' - but how do we know - the future of mankind may be saved by the promiscuous and gays. You may feel that children glued to mobile screens will hinder their physical development, but for all you know, the future may need a faster brain than body. You may feel that the gentleman wasting his time playing Candy Crush is going down the drain - but could the future of mankind lie is our abilities to play games better?

I know a lot of the above sounds absurd - so did the idea of democracy or Computers sound when it was seeded - The whole knowledge economy and computing revolution which has transformed our lives was born as a fringe movement of the outcast Hippy culture of the 70s. And while one may argue that it wasn't the drug smoking hippies who invented the personal computer, one cannot miss the fact that one of the leading icons of computing - Steve Jobs - was a hippie in his sophomore years. The freedom which allowed him to become a hippie also allowed him to experiment and create the personal computer - and you cannot classify freedom; it is the same freedom which results into both.

The point being made is simple - we need to allow these multiplicities of life exist; co-exist and intermingle to give a chance to mankind to survive. Freedom is the bedrock of such co-existence and intermingling; and hence it is the most important 'Fundamental Right'!
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2013 has possibly been the busiest year of my life till date; it was busy as hell and the hangover still persists.

The year started with a Baby Shower in mid January, after which Divya went to her parent's place - beginning a persistent nomadic life for me for more than 6 months. I would dash through the week, managing groceries, maids and bills and run off to either Indore or Pune over weekends to spend alternate weekends with Divya or my parents. If there were weekends when I would be in Mumbai, there would be enough office work piled over to catch up.

I spent several train and bus journeys working on my laptop sitting in awkward positions, and being the source of the dim (and for my co-passengers - irritating -) light emanating from my laptop screen. I have been on con-calls at all kinds of odd places - the hospital, highway Dhabas, on way to Mumbai-Pune expressway and Food Plaza on the expressway near Lonavla. Also spent several Monday's coming back from work and going straight to the bed.

To cut the story short - along the way Navyaa was born, adding a few joyous sleepless Saturday nights as well, when I was at Indore and she wouldn't sleep the whole night. Both me and Divya would try till wee hours of the morning, finally giving up and handing over the baton to Divya's mother.

Sometime in June, it seemed that this "travel" rush would end when Divya would return to Mumbai; but the ship's course suddenly went into a reroute. We fixed Abhi's marriage on the very next day of Navyaa's naming ceremony and the circle started again - trips to Pune helping my parents plan for the wedding. And so it went all the way till the marriage in December.

The last 3 months have been tiring, and more so trying - while the preparation of marriage was midway - I lost my beloved grandmother. I was her eldest grandson, and probably the most loved; she meant a lot to me - in more ways than being a grandmother. This was my first close personal loss and made me realize the importance of spiritual awakening in life. Truth to be told, I realized that I am far away from being what the Gita calls [Chapter 12, Verse 13-14] - "समदुःखसुखः क्षमी" - "alike in grief and joy".

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While my life took these several turns, almost like a bus crossing a circuitous route filled with ghats - public life in India has also seen a lot of change, not necessarily in 2013, but definitely in the past 3 years. 2013 in particular saw the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar, the man who has defined so much for India since the 90s, a man whose career graph can also be said to be analogous to that of the Indian economy.

The past few years have seen a lot of icons of the last 50 years pass away - Bollywood legends like Rajesh Khanna, Dev Anand, Yash Chopra; parallel music icons maestros like Manna Dey, Jagjit Singh; the world lost Nelson Mandela this year. It is as if, the first few years of the 2010 decade are trying to wake us up to the fact that the new millennium is already 10% over and its time for the old guard to retire and a new guard to take over.

This is not all - we saw the rise of people's movements across the globe from Syria to Egypt to Turkey; even a communist, authoritarian and centrally controlled China saw public outburst against Bo Xilai turning him from a modern day warlord to a corrupt criminal. There was groundswell in America as well for Barack Obama, as was the public outburst in UK against Gordon Brown. India saw the rise of public protests over apathy of politicians towards key issues like women's safety and widespread corruption - a groundswell which led to the formation of the 'Aam Aadmi Party' (AAP), which is poised to turn tables in the next general election in 2014 in the world's largest democracy.

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These two threads of my personal life and developments in public life have been intertwining in my mind in the last few days and there's a voice which calls out ....

the days of trying are over, take control, your time is here;
the days of taking comfort in being an apprentice are over;
the old guard is no more there to guide you,
beware life is uncharted territory now;
the world is your playground now,
but it is no more a child's play;
Rise up to the occasion, or fade into oblivion,
Shut up and live a life of silent comfort
or have your say and save the day.

2014 clearly looks to me as a watershed - I hope, it will mark a point where a whole generation will mature to take control and another will fade away into past, yet, taking solace in the knowledge that the world is now entrusted into better hands!

Amen.

Arbit Choudhury

For the uninitiated, Arbit Choudhury is a web-comic run by 4 friends (including me) focusing on Management jargon related humour and features 'Arpit Choudhury' - a B-school student in India who is famous for his wisecracks among his friends. We release regular comics - you can subscribe to them on Facebook, Twitter or email.

Way back in 2004 when we started Arbit, we had initially chosen a different name for it - it was part parody of a then famous Management Guru, part a play on words (something which Arbit is famous for!).  We for some reason did not like the name and asked our friends to suggest other names - of the several names which were proposed, "Arbit" was one. While I and Shubham were convinced of the name 'Arbit', Hemant wasn't quite so. So we ended up going back to our friends, conducted a poll on the NITIE LAN, and "Arbit" won!

But it was not until recently that the spiritual relevance of this name we gave to our creation, strike me.  I was brooding a couple of days back on events happening in office and our lives in general, when I came to a realization that events in life, when they happen, almost always seem pretty 'Arbitrary'. Of course there are times when one gets amused at a lucky or peculiar coincidence of events looking fateful, but these are more exceptions to the rule.

In general, life is very Arbitrary - but at the same time, these arbitrary events give rise to spectacular results also. Steve Jobs' now famous Staford Commencement address illustrates how he dropped in (uninvited) to a calligraphy class, after dropping out of the college itself - which led to his insight of adding equal spaced typeface (TrueType) fonts to the Mac (which was later copied to Windows) [read the story, see the video, read why fonts were an important 'invention'].

In fact Steve himself is one of the most classic examples of what wonders some arbitrary events can result into. Steve is unquestionably one of the greatest thinkers and influencers for the 21st century (like Newton was for 19th and Einstein for 20th) - but Steve's birth and upbringing was full of coincidences. Steve was born to the then unmarried college students - an American with Swiss origin and an Syrian father - the couple eventually did marry and have another child, but at that time, his mother put him up for adoption. The coincidences continued where his adopted parents decided to move to Sillicon Valley, California where the future of mankind was being written, and eventually had Jobs make it to the A list of inventors.

The existence of mankind itself has involved several arbitrary events which led to the birth of the first living microbe which eventually led to evolution of various life forms - from dinosaurs to chimpanzees. And possibly some other random event led to the end of 135 million year dominance of dinosaurs, which created way for domination of the world by an intelligent species of humans.

Even selection of the name 'Arbit' can be considered a random choice because it resulted from a random poll result - neither was the poll conducted on a sample of people chosen scientifically, nor did we get 100% responses. But the name anyhow seems to have served itself well, so much so that, for the past 8 years we have continued publishing regular comic strips (24 comics an year).

And Arbit, is an auspicious name because it summarizes quite aptly the very nature of our lives, the nature of the universe and possibly our very existence!
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About 8 years ago, I blogged about how our generation has disappointed the science fiction writers by not making much progress in the area of Space Travel - something considered achievable by them by the 21st century.

Space however is an area where we may not have matched fictional expectations in any form. We have an international space station in place but that I believe is a far cry from a space city and the days of Star Trek do not seem close enough.

Time has come, when we will redeem our honour soon.  Space hasn't progressed much in the past few decades because it has remained, until now, a high expense, high government (funded and) controlled industry; much like Telecom sector in India until 2000s and Banking until 90s. Also, entry barriers in terms of cost and regulation made experimentation difficult, which in turn made risk taking difficult. Less risk taking meant less chance of disproportionate reward, lesser private sector involvement resulting ultimately into less innovation.

Image Credits by Flickr user urbaneapts

I recently went to the showroom of 'Sleek' - a modular kitchen furnishing company. I and my wife were discussing the various options for fitments to be bought when we came to the point of discussing the Chimney. Both me and my wife were sold out on buying a Chimney, but the salesperson asked us if we were non-vegetarian and whether our apartment had a window in front of the stove - the answer to the former being no and the latter being yes. To my surprise, the salesperson suggested we do not buy the Chimney because we will have little use for it. The salesperson knew she was reducing the ticket size of her sale by almost 10% and this was not a discount to make the sale, the discount was to come after this.

The experience reminded me of how we work in consulting - there are times when we tell our clients that they are not ready for a particular initiative or a new software implementation, even though these initiatives would fetch us consulting projects (and a pretty good fees). However, coming from a kitchen furnishing company, it was a welcome difference - given that here was someone who was not hell bent on selling me 'as much as possible' but rather giving me sane advice.

This highlights the difference between a salesperson and a professional.

A professional believes that his/her job is to help their clients take decisions which are in their own best interests. As a corollary, a professional does not believe that s/he sells a product or a service which they make/run, rather their advice is their most valued offering. As a result, they many times also undersell their 'advertised' product / services but are later able to command a premium for the very same product/service if sold and often this happens with the same set of clients who are initially undersold the offering.

To illustrate using the example above, I had visited 3 other modular kitchen furnishing stores before visiting Sleek and found Sleek to be at least 25-50% more expensive than the others. But the quality of their product coupled with the sane and unbiased advice, resulted in me deciding in their favor. Now, even if I do not buy the Chimney, I will surely buy several other fitments which at Sleek are priced higher than what their competitors offer at.

A cloth salesman who tells his customer that the particular color will not suit on him/her is a professional who values his/her advice more than the product s/he sells. A barber who tells you that the particular 'funky' (and expensive) hairstyle will not suit your personality is a professional who values your satisfaction with the service more than the money s/he makes from it. A home theater salesman who recommends a less powerful (and less expensive) set of speakers because your room size doesn't need a powerful one, is a professional who values your listening quality more than the product s/he sells. A consultant who tells his client not to embark on an IT transformation because they are not ready yet, believes that there is honest money to be made in the long run helping the client make the right choice than selling what you sell in the short term.

Integrity of thought and ability to rise above short term monetary targets is what separates Professionals from Salesmen.
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Image Credits flickr user chippenziedeutch

"A Director of Human Resources for a federal agency told me I was looking at the (Best Places to Work for) lists all wrong. 'I think they're great!' he said. Just not for employees. I was looking at the wrong consumers." Traditional companies (like the government), offer solid benefits like a great retirement plan
- ReadWrite.com

That quote above is so true. The last 2 decades of rapid economic growth across the globe, the coming and going of recessions and rallies has created a lopsided environment about the importance of 'work' (and its derivatives 'job satisfaction', 'learning', 'growth' etc.) in an employment relationship. Prior to the 90s, when the old economy jobs ruled, trade unions (and even officer unions) controlled what went into employment contracts - the important things were job security, retirement benefits, fixed work hours etc.

Today, most workplace surveys and initiatives do not even consider any of the above aspects. It is arguable that the economy, job descriptions and even the work force has undergone a complete change. Unlike the majority unskilled or vocationally skilled employees of yesteryears, most work force today is composed of skilled to highly special skilled workers. And the new job descriptions also throw open several new conveniences for us. But it is as much arguable whether these new conveniences really enhance quality of life for all of us.

Take work hours as an example. Fixed hours of the industrial era are now an anachronism in the era of flexi-timing and work-from-home. But as much are these new concepts open to misuse. How many times have you felt that you work longer hours when you work from home? Or that, we are now working all the time - on weekends, on holidays, even while traveling! Work-life balance, a term which entered our lingo in the 80s is now something we (and sometimes our family) have to forcibly enforce on our lives!

One can go on to argue similarly for the other benefits such as the emotional and mental satisfaction of learning new things and constant growth in our job roles might have adverse effects, if not regulated, and until now we have possibly not even understood all such implications.

With the recession, rise in neo-socialist movements like "Occupy Wall Street", some notions of the industrial world like the 8 hour workday, retirement benefits, compensation regulation and job security might gain currency again, alongside the newly discovered ones like learning and growth.

There is an even more subtle point - as employees go through the different phases of their life, their priorities change. There comes a point in life [ref] when career, growth aspirations are not so important as is spending time with one's family or giving time to one's hobbies / passions - achieving the golden 'balance' between work and life. As the frenzied economic activity fueled by the rallies of 90s and 2000s dies down, and average age of the workforce moves from middle age to late middles in the West, and from young to middle age in Asia - companies will have to adjust their compass of what constitutes the 'Best Place to Work'.
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Edison's Menlo Park Lab; flickr photo by roger4336

In the whole din of work-life balance which surrounds the corporate world today, professionals - especially young professionals - often loose the sense of real achievement. We often get confused about what exactly does success and achievement mean - is rising faster in the corporate ladder success, or is it doing meaningful work, or even more fundamentally is it about doing work enough to earn you a good "life"?

Flickr Image courtesy Mr. Conguito

How many of you know that the close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in most elevators built in the United States or that buttons below the signal at crosswalks "meant" for people to trigger the signal change are mostly all disabled! [Source]

Well - I just realized that there are several actions we do which are also such "placebo" actions. One example is pressing a "Ctrl + Home" or "Ctrl+End" on a browser. Pressing the Control key makes sense only in either a Word Processing software like MS word or when you are typing inside a textarea (like composing a mail etc.) wherein pressing a "Home" key will take you to the beginning of the line you are typing in while pressing a "Ctrl+ Home" will take you to the beginning of the document / text.

However, when we are browsing a webpage on a browser - there is absolutely no reason to press the Control key because either ways pressing "Home" will take you to the beginning of the document and pressing "End" will take you to its end - irrespective of whether you press the control key or not!

I am keen to do a mental exercise to identify what other 'Pleacebo Actions' are embedded in our behaviour on computers, while driving vehicles or while walking etc. Do a any of you recollect any examples? Please leave comments!