Clay Christensen: How Will You Measure Your Life?

A tribute to Clayton Christensen, the Harvard professor who introduced "disruption" in his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma, which, in turn, led The Economist to term him "the most influential management thinker of his time." 

Even more influential for some would be his 2012 co-authored book How Will You Measure Your Life?. [try here].

Christensen passed away in Boston on Jan 23, 2020.

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Peter Singer: The Ethics of Food

In this persuasive lecture on ethics about modern diet and eating habits, Dr Peter Singer, the Utilitarian philosopher and professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, highlights and questions ethical issues concerning food involving animals, its corresponding cost to the ecology and considerations for animal rights that the humans have been, perhaps rather conveniently, avoiding to acknowledge.

In his typical free-thinking, lets-face-it approach characterized by pragmatism rooted in down-to-earth reality, one can clearly bear witness to Prof Singer avoiding all possible temptations or invitations to indulging into any kind of rhetoric. Or so much as letting any sentimentalities enter into the frame of reasoning even while discussing gross cruelty to animals and the overall ecological impact it draws. The approach remains factual and clinical, and the presentation is driven by data in its most part. For philosophical indulgences around the issue, the Q&A section that follows offers a few interesting insights. Even there, the premise remains guarded, and avoids cliches including neutral, relevant, ones such as "what you eat is what you will become." Religious beliefs are kept outside of the arguments against factory-farm non-vegetarian diet.

The lecture is filmed at Williams College, Williamstown, sometime in Oct-Nov 2008 while the run-up to the then American presidential elections was in progress. Prof Singer begins by asking why, among all other ethical considerations debated in the public domain, the presidential candidates are not being questioned or judged on the basis of their ethical views on food? Today, as the American electorate faces another wave of persuasions and debates running up to electing the next president in Nov 2012, where incubent President Obama is hoping for his second consecutive term, this presentation remains as relevant as it was four years ago but with an added sense of deja-vu. The questions raised in the presentation remain the same, unresolved, and as previously, without considerations during the public debates.

Some of the aspects that have been discussed during this lecture include: i) How America, that was facing a hunger crisis in the 50s and 60s, has "solved" that problem to such an extent that the major issue which the American society is facing now is obesity. What are the ethics of obesity? ii) Why a ship-load of rice from Bangladesh to California is ecologically more ethical than Californians attempting to harvest the same quantity of rice themselves. iii) What are the ways for our society to transitioning towards a more ethical diet.

In conclusion of the lecture, the ethical choices and steps listed for a sustainable future for us, as well as for the upcoming generation, whose fate is linked with the global warming and hence is likely to be decided in next two decades, are as follows:

- avoid meat products from Factory farms (CAFOs) 

- prefer Organic, Vegetarian/Vegan or "Conscientious Omnivorous" diet, that use "Fair trade". 

- choose Local (seasonal) produce when you can.

• See also:
• Try here for the video on YouTube.
• Try here for Peter Singer's page at Princeton Uni
• Mentions during the lecture: try here for FairTrade (USA) portal, and here for VeganOutreach.org

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Kantian Ethics And Human Dignity

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” - Immanuel Kant (Categorical Imperative. try here)

In this rather short video clipped from the BBC documentary - "Justice: A Citizen's Guide to the 21st Century", Prof. Michael Sandle picks up an ethical dilema from a real-life kidnapping case that took place in Germany in 2002, and bounces it off to a Kantian activist and journalist, and to Peter Singer, the utilitarian Bioethics professor at Princeton University.

A kidnapper of a eleven year old boy of a banker in Germany, after collecting the ransom, is caught by the authorities. When he refused to divulge the whereabouts of the boy, the police threatened him of extreme torture. The kidnapper gave into the threats and confessed to murdering the boy. The German authorities, after further investigation, sentenced the kidnapper with life sentence, while at the same time, the police chief was also prosecuted and sentenced for violating the human dignity of the convict. A judge from German constitutional court is heard defending the police chief's prosecution by saying, "There are certain inherent qualities in a person that the person cannot forfeit even by doing the worst of deeds possible."

Peter Singer, from his utilitarian position, dismisses the whole Kantian idea -as followed by the German court in this case- and defends the police chief's actions. The way the (editing of the) clip suggests, Singer's primary issue with the Kantian thoughts seem to be their approach of non-action, but his position seems to begin weakening when Sandel challenges him by supposing that "let's assume the perpetrator wouldn't talk even under extreme torture, but he would talk if you tortured his 14 year old daughter", would Singer allow that? When Sandle adds more "numbers" into the equation, the utilitarian squeeze becomes even more prominent.

Apparently, the answer isn't easy. Though, uneasily perhaps, it seems surprisingly easy to relate to the effects of using man as means rather than respecting his human dignity as ends, with the experience where man seems to witness the everyday world being used as a commodity, that includes himself.

A follow-up question could perhaps be: Could Kantian ethical thinking give back humans -as utilitarian means- their dignified end? 

• See also:
• Go here for details of the BBC documentary "Justice: A Citizen's Guide to the 21st Century" by Prof Michael Sandle.
• Try here for Kantian resources at Online Library of Liberty.
• Try here for Peter Singer's page at Utilitarian.net.

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Humor: Sheldon's Prayer

Theoretical Physicist Dr. Sheldon Cooper Sc.D. has hardly anything to do with this post except for an optimistic allusion toward his positive delight at throwing a monologos tantrum such as this in any of The Big Bang Theory episodes preferably not named as the same suggested title.

You see,

All metaphysics, of/for every
sectarian-/semi-/secular-/pseudo-/anti-religion's theory seems to thrive
on this evolutionary blindspot
in the cognitive process;
Hit by unreferenceable 'knowing';
And admixed with confused human imaginations.

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Infographic: Labour Cost Disparities

DISPARITIES OF LABOR COSTS: Interesting Infographic showing how long does it take other countries to make the equivalent of US minimum wage of USD 15,080.

Click the image to enlarge

Source: FixR

With respect to India, the calculation considers the Government recommended minimum daily wage which is about USD 2.5. In practice, a common worker shall make double to three times of this amount, which is still very less compared to high cost regions but it would make the ratio less skewed. Further, if Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is considered, the difference between USA and India costs shall be about 6 years and 3 months.

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"The Right Thing To Do" - Harvard Lectures on Moral Philosophy

PROF. MICHAEL SANDEL OPENED HIS FAMOUS CLASS ON "JUSTICE" and Moral and Political Philosophy at Harvard University, USA, with the following (cautionary) address:

If you look at the syllabus, you would notice that we read a number of great and famous books. Books by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and others. [...] We will read these books, and we will debate these [philosophical] issues, and we will see how each informs and illuminates the other [school of thought]. This may sound appealing and interesting enough, but here I have to issue a warning:

To read these books, in this way, as an exercise in self-knowledge, carries certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of Political Philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know. There is an irony: the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange. [...] Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing.

But, and here is the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'. What makes this enterprise difficult, but also revetting, is that Moral and Political Philosophy is a story, and you don't know where the story would lead, but you do know that the story is about You. Those were the personal risks.

Now, about the political risks: one way of introducing a course like this is to promise you that by reading these books, and debating these issues, you would become a better, more responsible, citizen. You will examine the presuppositions of public policies, you will hone your political judgement, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs. But this would be a partial and misleading promise. Political Philosophy, for the most part, hasn't worked that way. You have to allow for the possibility that Political Philosophy may make you a worst citizen rather than a better one. Or at least, a worst citizen *before* it makes you a better one. And that is because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating, activity. And you see this going back to Socrates [and his dialogue with his friend Callicles who tried to talk him out of philosophising]. [...] Philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and settled beliefs. Those are the risks - personal and political.

And in the face of these risks, there is a characteristic evasion. The name of the evasion is skepticism  It's an ideal. [It goes something like this] we didn't resolve, once and for all, either the cases or the principles we were arguing about when we began [with the case studies]. And if Aristotle, Locke, Kant and Mill hasn't solved these questions after all these years, who are we to think that we can resolve them? So, maybe, its is just a matter of each person having his or her own set of principles, and there is nothing more to be said about it. No way of reasoning. That's the evasion of skepticism. To which I would offer the following reply:

It is true, these questions have been debated for a very long time. But the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they are impossible in one sense, they are unavoidable in another. And the reason they are unavoidable, the reason they are inescapable, is that we *live* some answers to this questions everyday. [...]

The aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, and to see where it might lead...

[Transcript-ed from the actual lecture. Emphasis added. Official transcript could not be resourced.]

Prof. Michael Sandel's class has commanded one of the highest enrollments at Harvard Business School of a thousand plus in a given semester at times. It is one of the most famous of all management classes at Harvard where Sandle is teaching since '80s after returning from Oxford, England. Recently, one such series of lectures was video-recorded and has been placed into (international) public domain [see details below] where one can virtually participate in the proceedings of Prof. Sandel's lectures. It is as much relevant as it is rewarding.

The foundation here is primarily of Western Philosophy. However, when one gets familier with the contents, it may emerge that many of the fundamental ideas debated by Utilitarianism with/against Categorical moral principles in these discussions have also been acknowledged, contemplated, and commented upon by eastern scholars at India's ancient established "Business-Political" schools such as Taxila. Folklore has it that (management) gurus like 'Chanakya' (sometimes, also 'Kautilya') of these times were entrusted with the mentorship of the princes. Where, arguably, Utilitarianism is more akin to Kutil-niti (Diplomacy) and Arthashastra (Economics). Categorical moral philosophy can be referenced with Chanakya's tactics on Raj-niti (Governance).

[Edit: P.S. A follow-up post may appear on this blog after studying the available lectures.]

• See also:
• Related post: Kantian ethics and the German case of torture
• Go here for more on Michael Sandel and his online classes at Harvard website.
• Go here for more on Utilitarianism, go here for Deontology, and here for Socratic dialogues.
• Go here for more on 'Chanakya'.

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Indian Nodding and TED India

THE FIRST EVER TECHNOLOGY, ENTERTAINMENT, DESIGN (TED) EVENT IN INDIA drew to a close this afternoon at the lavish and state-of-the-art technology campus of Infosys at the Indian city of Mysore - about 120km south of Bangalore. It was an adrenalin pumping experience, and it left so many feeling spent at the end of four days. Absorbing a torrent of ideas condensed in a time-capsule is a demanding event for the creativity centre - glucose consuming frontal cortex of the human brain.

After all, TED may be the new religion. For generation Y + X.

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Shubh Deepavali

Shubh Deepavali
A warm wishes to you and your family for
A Happy and Prosperous Diwali

The Festival of Lights of India - illuminations, oil lamps, firecrackers, colourful lanterns, rangoli mandalas, bright clothing, sweets, feasts, and festivities with families and friends.

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Malthusian Matters(?)

GOLDMAN SACHS PROJECTS THAT India’s middle class will outstrip China’s by 2045. This is some 15 years after half of China’s population becomes either too old or too young to be part of the workforce.



Perhaps instant-ness of contemporary life induces a certain myopia. Social media - twitter, FB, and other "self trumpets" - may make one feel that 2045 is too far away to be bothered about. And perhaps that's true for some as well, those who would want to die out soon, but 35 years is a fairly short turn around time by economic standards.

Malthusian Matters (pun intended), and stands nonetheless to see another day, another argument.

• See also:
• Go here for more on Malthusian catastrophe.
• Go here for more on this interesting article at Reuters.

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NRN: Percepts of Being a Respectable Leader

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood; the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

NR NARAYANA MURTHY OF INFOSYS delivered the opening lecture at Columbia Business School's Khemka Distinguished Speaker Forum at Manhattan on May 26, 2009, where the above quote from Roosevelt were the closing lines.

Mr. Murthy began by describing Capitalism as an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange of wealth is made possible and is maintained chiefly by the private individuals or corporations. It is a system that incentivises individuals to use their enterprise, drive, hard-work and innovation to create wealth for themselves and the society.

Mr. Murthy argued that capitalism is also a system most conducive of creation of jobs and elimination of poverty and no other social or political system has succeeded as much as capitalism in benefiting the society at large. Providing his reactions on the issue of things going wrong with capitalism in recent months - especially the disproportional funds and bonuses claimed by executives of organizations going bankrupt, billions worth of fraud funds, and leaders cooking up accounting books - Mr. Murthy, who was declared by The Economist in 2005 as one of the top 10 most admired global business leaders, called for looking inward and for cultivating better ethical qualities to become a respectable leader. Following are the eight of them as he recounts.

Percepts of being a Respectable Leader:

1. Create a good culture around you: Decent behaviour stems from a good culture surrounding a person. It is required to have the culture of openness, fairness, honesty, decency, transparency and accountability in a corporation. This task has to start from day one, and can not wait till you become a CEO.

2. Cultivate simple and inexpensive habits: The best way to overcoming greed is to derive pleasure and spend time on small, simple and inexpensive habits in life. Every decent town has a modest library. And, the government (still) does not tax having a good conversation.

3. Do not equate success with money and power: Success is your acceptance by the circle of you family, friends, your officemates, and your community that you are indeed valuable. Success is also about having good sleep every night.

4. Create an environment of happiness around you: A happy leader has a circle of supportive family and friends. Building such a circle requires a lot of emotional investment on your part. I do not know of anybody who is a demon at his office and an angel at home.

5. Don't get fixated on extreme desires: Desire is the root cause of all sorrows, said the Buddha. Extreme fixation with material things leads to greed, fraud and acts that we would later regret.

6. Shun jealousy: Jealousy is a rationalization of your failure vis-a-vis another's success or achievements.

7. Maintain transparency and develop a sense of humility: When in doubt, disclose (with your family, friends and at workplace). Humility is admitting that there could be other people better than me, and helps cultivate team-spirit.

8. Take part in charitable activities in your spare time: The opportunity of meeting other generous people outside the hierarchy of your organization is a sure way of escaping the orbit of jealousy.


[Above: NR Narayan Murthy delivering speech at Columbia. Go here at YouTube.]

• See also:
• Go here for the related article on Columbia website.
• Go here for more on Mr. Murthy on the official Infosys website.

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TED, Memes, Metaphors, but no Economics?

TED: IDEAS WORTH SPREADING is the welcome line at ted.com - an intellectual platform blending Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and almost attaining a cult status. Who's who of the world have marked their presence at its annual conferences starting 1984. This is the stage where Prof. Stephen Hawking urged mankind to colonise neighbouring planets; where the UN peace ambassador Jane Goodall spoke about her 45 years old chimpanzee studies; where Bono won the price of expressing three wishes in a bid to change the world; and where Bill Gates opened a jar of mosquitoes to the audience to spread (with them) awareness about malaria (later, when the panic subsided it was declared that the mosquitoes were harmless for they were cured of the germs. I am not entirely sure though which anti-virus was used by Mr. Gates.)

A meme is an information packet with an attitude. For the current young generation world over, and those leaning towards entrepreneurship, TED is the "in thing". So also for the Darwin look-alike scientist-philosophers such as Daniel (Dan) Dennet, who is deliberately mistaken by his followers for a living personification of the old Greek philosopher statues of Delphi museum. In the video clip that follows Canadian professor Dan Dennet, during his presentation on the stage at TED, spoke about the subject he is famous as well as controversial for: Memes and Atheism.

In a interesting spin to the subject, Dan places Creationists, Terrorists, Memes, and Viruses in the same basket. What comes out is a curious argument surrounding memes (pronounced meem, as in theme), presented in a rather entertaining and gently forceful manner. You are free to disagree with it, that may prove to be the harder part though.


[Above: Prof. Dan Dennet on stage of TED talking about Memes and their power.]

A few points that shall immediately stick an observer:

• Where is Economics? There is no apparent stab against commerce and economics, but there is no explicit mention of it as being one of the driving forces for T / E / D either. (Do have a look at the list of sponsors. After all, running TED is not without large commercial help.)
• If memes are all about spreading ideas, would you call TED's slogan a good meme? (Apparently, Dan seem to have taken a frown at all kind of memes.)
• Spending a good amount of time on Google wasn't that helpful in trying to ascertain the definitive difference between what Richard Dawkings coined as Meme in 1976, and what historians, philosophers and priests over the millennia have traditionally called a Metaphor.
• The viral social media seem to provide the perfect medium for meme concept; it remains unclear, however, how far and deep it take the impact of meme theory into the social fabric already. And what, where and who are the checks and balances?
• Dan and Dawkings may take offence on the use of the word coincidental on their part, but coincidental it might be that Meme and the social media moto of "Me, me, me..." sounds so alike. (If it was intentional on Dawkings' part, he is surely a visionary. And should belong to the Social Sciences rather than Biology.)

Daniel Dennet's book, Kinds of Minds, is as entertaining as it is serious and thought provoking.

• See also:
• Go here for the above video of Dan Dennet on YouTube, and here for more on memes.
• Go here for Ted.com and its various links, and here for subscribing to TEDtalk videos.

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The Dunbar Number and Limits of Our Social Networks

THE SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEB 2.0 (though both are considered synonymous by some) provided the netizens with amazing new possibilities, like a new universe opening up with everyone mingling with everyone else. While the web (no pun intended) of these collaboration network, social in nature, kept increasing in complexity and continued expanding, there was no measure for if it were to follow the same yo-yo model of the actual Universe (try here). In other words, it was very difficult to ascertain if the motion was inward or outward, for there were no clear boundaries defined or known.

The size of the neocortex of the brain allows humans to have stable networks of about 150. This is known as "the Dunbar number".

With the help of Dr. Robin Dunbar’s research, perhaps we now have the first indications toward the limitations of Web 2.0 vis-a-vis human psychology and behaviour. Dr. Dunbar is an anthropologist currently with the Oxford University and has studied primates and humans and their social behaviour.

Many of the activities and exchanges on the online social networks are considered "grooming". In the wild, grooming is time-consuming: keeping track of who to groom —and why— demands quite a bit of mental computation. One needs to remember who is allied with, hostile to, or lusts after whom, and act accordingly.

On the web, social 'networking' algorithms and computations power help with these calculations. Yet, the cognitive power of the human brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. Dr. Dunbar suggested that the size of the neocortex of the human brain allows for having stable networks of about 148 connections (or 150 in round figures). This is known as "the Dunbar number", and recent sampling of Facebook users network gives an average of about 120, which seems consistent with this hypothesis. The research continues further as follows:

Many institutions, from Neolithic villages to the maniples of the Roman army, seem to be organised around the Dunbar number.

[In the modern era] An average man —one with 120 friends— generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual's photos, status messages or "wall". An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.

This also goes on to say that if you are "in touch" with that person fairly regularly with whom you are perhaps yet to work out a one-on-one, you are better off treasuring those interactions, for you have gotten into the "core" within the Dunbar circle. At the same time, in his 2005 book —The Human Story— Dunbar quotes Bob Marley's Redemption Song (try here), suggesting not to fall pray to the omnipresent temptations of 'grooming'.

(More to read and write on the Attention Economy in the coming posts.)

• See also:
• Go here for the relevant research paper [PDF] by Dr. Dunbar titled "The Social Brain Hypothesis" at the University of Liverpool website
  
• Go here for The Economist article: "The size of social network".
• Go here for a video lecture by Dr. Dunbar titled "What Makes Us Human?" at pulse-project.org

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Language, Commerce, and Google Translate

WILL DURANT CHRONICLED IN HIS HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS THAT ancient trade provided the necessity for the invention of the alphabets. A theory contested by many, but not rejected in its entirety.

In this guest post, my friend and Language Technology researcher Jason M. Adams discusses the mutual history of language and commerce by looking at some of the ways that each has been changed by the other and how they will continue to shape each other going forward.

* * *

Commerce is a human convention deeply entwined with language. Economic motivations were among the many reasons ancient (and modern) empires conquered other lands, spreading their languages beyond their natural range. Traders would travel to distant lands, encountering speakers of exotic languages. Recent study of the immediate commerce and trade (focusing mainly around the era of last 500 years of European Maritime expansion) describes the exchange of languages at trade as follows: In cases where bilingual speakers were few to none, Pidgin languages –with simplified grammar and vocabulary– developed, which come about as a means of communication solely for the purpose of trade. When flourishing trade routes last long enough, and at the hubs trading travelers start settling down locally, a Pidgin starts being spoken widely enough. The children of such a community start growing up learning a Pidgin as a first language. This is when a Pidgin language changes into a Creole language (having many fascinating characteristics of its own). Contrary to simple trade relationships, when a conquering or dominating group of people bring their own languages, it either supplants the native language or influences it heavily, and later goes for linguistic homogenization. Pidgins, on the other hand, develop because speakers are motivated to communicate in order to trade.

[Above: "The Lydian Lion", arguably the oldest surviving coins, representing organized trade and the associated language it bore which gave it its "value".]
Commerce is one of the many factors that drive linguistic homogenization. In the modern era of the internet and mass media, attention is the scarce resource. Choosing a language of commerce (e.g. English being adopted as a language of business by other European and former Russian communities) helps to maximize one's reach in business. On the personal aspect, the attention economy of modern mass media is highly language dependant as well.

On the other hand, the same internet proliferation and mass media has provided us with what is called "Machine translation services", such as Google Translate. As the quality of these services improve, it becomes less and less necessary to publish exclusively in commerce languages. Linguistic homogenization may not be the inexorable force it appears to be today. Will the quality of machine translation improve fast enough, and will the business case for them be strong enough to turn the tide of linguistic homogenization? Certainly those betting on machine translation services hope so. But there is a dueling problem here: Tackling human languages using machines requires a significant investment. However, at the same time, in order for machine translation to truly counteract linguistic homogenization, it has to be freely available as a ridiculously cheap service.

While the future progress of commerce and language may be uncertain, what is certain is that they will continue to heavily influence each other. And there's nothing new about that.

• See also:
• Go here for articles related to the current economic crisis.
• Go here for Jason Adams' blog website.
• Go here for further discussion on "attention is the scarce resource".

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2008 in Pictures via The Big Picture at Boston Globe

ONE OF THE MOST REVIVING EXPERIENCE OF THE MONTH was to get the feeds from The Boston Globe's The Big picture compilation for 2008. These high-quality pictures capturing real life events from across the world left many spellbound. Whilst we live in this age of information overdose, and when "sensationalization" by every possible news breaker/baker blunts the senses of amazement in a normal mind, this photo-documentary of the time that we just lived past aroused mixed feelings.

Joys & sorrows, triumphs & trials, trusts & traumas: through these vivid pictures of selected events captured within this three-part series of 40 each, I came to be reminded that we hardly seem to live away from the pairs of opposites.

Following are just a couple of them that I randomly selected without applying any thoughts (for I would want you to enjoy at all of them).

[Kenyan athletes during the 2008 Summer Olympics. Courtesy: Boston.com]
2008 was here.

Edit: When I came back to this post and looked at the selected picture above (which I said I chose without any particular reason or thinking) I realized that perhaps this was the only picture among the set of 120 that actually glorified Africa. Arguably, peoples of that continent are challenged by more means than one - economically, medically, nutrition-wise, et al - however, after experiencing their living by spending a few months among them, I must mention that against all odds these people exhume Life - the spirit of being alive!

• See also:
• Go here for part I, then here for part II and here is part III.
• Go here to subscribe to this amazing picture feed from The Boston Globe.

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Indian Epic Goes Back to the Future: Ramayan 3392 AD

RECESSION, DEPRESSION, TERRORISM AND TERMINATIONS are rife. Someone said, we live in interesting times. And that makes me wonder about the difference between 'desperate' and 'interesting'.

The recent data shows that Beer consumption worldwide is on the rise, and the entertainment industry is all set to launch one mega project after another. Re-session!? On the same lines, Scott Thill of Wired magazine reports interviewing Gotham Chopra who is a part of the management team at Los Angeles-based Liquid Comics.

Liquid Comics is in the process of re-telling the nearly 500 centuries old Indian (Indic?) story of Ramayana as it would be set in 3392 CE. In other words, their project is to transport a tale through six millennia.

[Above: An artists rendition of the "Future" Ramayan where Lord Ram (the hero) is being carried on the shoulders of Hanuman (best supporting cast).]
And who knows, if the warmongerism under the shadow of terrorism (or the other way around!) continues at the same pitch of today, Albert Einstein might be proved right yet again - World War IV would be fought with stones, bows and arrows... Just like Ramayana!

["Ring the alarm... Lock the gates... Call RAMA! We are under attack!"]

• See also:
• Go here for the interview with Gotham Chopra at wired.com
• Go here for more on the original artist contributors Mukesh Singh and here for Jeevan Kang.

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The Machine is Us/ing Us -- by Michael Wesch

THIS APPARENTLY IS A GREAT START OF THE WEEKEND: watching this very interesting and equally famous clips by Michael Wesch, Prof. of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.


[Above: this 5 minute clip is about ‘Web 2.0’, but it in fact narrates how IT works today, and has got integrated into social human lives. Apparently, this is also food for thought for the next business transformation endeavour...]
The 33 year old highly tech savvy Anthropologist also has this another great short clip on the same subject, this time on Information R/evolution - here on YouTube.

[Go here for Michael Wesch's personal pages on Kansas State Uni website.]
[Go here for the first clip about Web2.0 on YouTube.]

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Warne Lifts Maiden IPL

A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO I was sitting over the fence of 80% and 20% of the opinion makers reacting to the possibility of success of the IPL business model. 80% were the sceptics and believed that as it happened with ICL (Indian Cricket League – Chaired by Kapil Dev and sponsored by Zee Entertainment), IPL would find very few takers – perhaps only the useless of the useless lot would devote time to this remix masala version of the gentlemen’s game. To my mind, both these Indian T20 “cricetainment” versions were not at par: ICL was but a “zee thing”, where as the Premier League had the mind, money and muscle backing of BCCI – an important element that could make it swing and bounce.

[Above: Team Jaipur after winning the maiden IPL. 1 June 2008. Source: http://ipl.indiatimes.com]

It appears that this compressed format of the game may not have gone down too well with all quarters of the cricket, especially the British media and "empirical" standards. Lord Archer, for example, has been quoted saying during his hugely successful India tour last month that Twenty20 is entertainment and not a cricket. Lord Archer may offer a dead defensive bat, and silly mid-on and Shane go up in appeal to Billy nonetheless, the whole of the stadium also erupts in asking the same question. That essentially is the appeal of the game. Spectacle.

Twenty20 is not going anywhere, and while the possessives (or the hypocrites like Ponting who, after getting a hefty pay-cheque for just a couple of appearance at IPL, goes back to leading the test squad and condemns the T20 format), cling to the ‘real’ word for Cricket, the economics are hugely against them. Fundamentally, I tend to agree that the game is played for the honour and patriotism, and that motive is now being played now purely for money. And the players are like hired "mercenaries" in certain cases. But sport, as much as it may be for the spirit, is also about entertainment, and while the contemporary youth is on a fast track for almost everything in his life, let T20 be a door for him to enter and sustain interest in Test Cricket. Let the format have best of both the worlds of English Premier League Football and American Baseball. While visiting the US I found it very difficult to convince my American boss that there could be a game that goes on for five days. Worst still, people go and watch it! Now I have something for him to relate to with his favourite Baseball team - LA Dodgers. (And then, there surely were some American cheerleaders around.) Let’s say that a Test match is like a grand five-course unlimited dinner, compared to which an ODI is like a limited lunch, and so T20 is but a quick snack or a breakfast. Having said that, the likelihood of T20 eating into the limited format of the game (ODI) is pretty strong – a brunch, if you like. (Did you hear also or is it only me that they are thinking of renaming BCCI? The new name got to be BCCCI - Beware of Cricket Crazy Countrymen of India.)
[Right: Washington Redskins cheering for IPL in Bangalore. Apparently, Bangalore Royal Challengers had "Bangalored" that job to the US.]

I suppose it was Geoffrey Boycott who, while commenting during India's tour to England, first put forth the point that ODI is a Batsman’s game, for all the rules are against the bowlers regarding what they could do, and more importantly, what they can’t. The situation just got worse, and we have Twenty20 where the bowler is to be slogged. Or that’s what the initial impression was. It turns out, such is not the case, for all the important games did a turn-around mid-course because of some very clever bowling – be it Mumbai Indian’s ouster from the IPL because of a sad last over finish, or be it “Balaji – the weak-link” for Chennai Super Kings whose rather stupid last over did them in and they lost the trophy. (It was a rather modest Dhoni, with his first-time-on-TV huddle of his team on the ground before getting into the dressing room after the defeat in the finals, that he said it was a team effort, win or loose, and there was no one single event or player to be singled out or blamed for. A leadership quality that better not be lost on the likes of the "legendary" Tendulkar who, rather curtly, passed the buck of loosing out of IPL to the Sri Lankan Dilhara Fernando who bowled that last over.)

BCCCI - Beware of Cricket Crazy Countrymen of India...

Warne’s squad was considered an underdog on the ground that they didn’t have any star player (and where of the cheapest bidding of the eight during the auction). Somehow, I disagreed with that statement. Rather I considered Jaipur team a real good value-for-money for the bid-winners. Warne is no less than a legend in his own right, and when you have the captain of the South African team also as your opener, you surely have a side to reckon with. If at all someone would want to consider them as starting underdogs, the reason has to be that the total squad didn't had the best of the commercial value at the bidding time. And then again it was the error of judgement on the bidder's part then anything else (one more indication to this effect is that Anil Ambani is rumoured to have backed out of Royal's bidding at the very last moment for Ahmedabad, and the team was won by Jaipur). The real important part, however, was the captaincy by a leg spinner: IMHO successful spinners are born tacticians; shrewd and deceptive in their strategy and their main weapon. This may not be the case with the fast-bowlers who depend on their physical strength for pace more than anything else. Warne’s so-called "role-based approach" to the game might have given him the first IPL success, but it would be extremely difficult for him to repeat it in the comings seasons, and I am almost certain that he is also aware of it.

Some Trivia and Not-so-trivia about the IPL - maiden season:

• The broadcast rights for IPL for India were sold at USD 1bn.
  
• Before the tournament began, even 90% of India was unaware of a Cement brand called Super Kings. Wikipedia had no mention of India Cements Ltd. In 45 days, Super Kings goes on to become a globally known name and brand, and like N. Srinivasan, CEO, puts it, every penny invested in the franchise by them is worth it - No other branding strategy could have delivered within the given time-frame.
• Delhi Daredevils had the best ROI with their Feroz Shah Kotla ground turning in nearly Rs. 90 to 100 million in gate collections. They are the first franchise to break-even and go profitable.
• For Shah Rukh Khan, it was a double loss: first, Kolkata lost out, and then the TPR of IPL ate heavily into his newly launched game-show "Panchvi Pass". He is surely praying for the revival of both.
• Vijay Mallya remained at the receiving end as Royal Challenge as a brand also goes down with his IPL team, and Blender's Pride (Seagram) takes over the #1 spot in sales - almost after a decade.

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The Bard's Birth Day

April 23 - TODAY BEING ST. GEORGE'S DAY is also considered to be the Birth Day of William Shakespeare. (Nobody knows for sure of the bard's exact date of birth.)

If one wonders about the alchemists of that era, and if they would have got a couple of 'immortality' pills of which one was taken by Shakespeare such that he would still be alive at this time, what kind of blogs would he be maintaining..?

Perhaps a blog with the highest hits on the net!

Footnote: Sampling only Technorati may perhaps be a rather narrow view, but looking at their popular index stats available of top 100, the most popular blog as of this moment is - The Huffington Post, closely followed by (my personal preference) TechCrunch. (Well, by including weblinks here, I just contributed one more point to the 'authority' count on Technorati for both.)

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