Which Movie am I??
I was hoping I would get GodFather or something like that 
The Argumentative Indian - Amartya Sen
Just after reading this book, I had the opportunity to watch Thomas L. Freidman’s special episode on Discovery titled “The Other Side of Outsourcing“, where he talks in length about how globalization in its avatar of outsourcing has re-molded the Indian urban landscape; begeting an entirely new generation of Indians who are not loath to pick up a Texan accent and a American name to go ahead in life, leaving behind supposedly a lot of baggage, cultural or otherwise, that the previous generations have been forced to carry. Freidman would probably be put by Sen alongside such luminaries as Huen Tsang and Alberuni as belonging to the curatorial school of studying India; defined in his own words as “… includes various attempts at noting, classifying and exhibiting diverse aspects of Indian culture“. However as Sen points out that this perspective though the most catholic does not present the full view of the India, for curatorists, goaded by their quest for knowledge, are attracted to the differences rather than the similarities; and thus they fail to highlight those aspects of India which are commonplace and hence not interesting enough but nonetheless important.
India for long has been classified as the land of mystics, snake charmers and elephants. This picture panders to those audiences who would either want to see India as an unblemished spiritual idyll or to those who believe that the country is not yet out of the dark ages yet. These are what Sen terms as the exoticist and the magisterial approaches respectively. Sen’s major contention is that all these approaches have produced a skewed image of India both internally and externally; sufficient dialogic engagement with India as a subject is not seen; an egregious omission considering the long tradition we have for such activities. Very little is done to highlight the major advances this country has given to humanity in fields of rational and secular enquiry - sciences, mathematics and astronomy - normally considered as fruits of Western civilization. These strains of human activity, he contends, have as much a hand in shaping our culture as have the mystical and religious achievements.
Sen however is no nationalist in the mould of certain right wing activists who tend to believe and remain ensconced in the idea that we are and have always been the greatest. He takes great pains to bring out the fact that the achievements of Indian culture did not happen in a vacuum. Far from that, they were the effect of centuries of collaboration with other cultures - Chinese, Greek and Persian. Indian culture has always been in a dialogue with the neighboring civilizations - including that of the normally reticent Chinese; a dialogue Sen sees as benefiting both sides equally. It is in the light of such arguments that Sen takes into account the claims of certain sections of the polity that Indian culture is under attack and needs to be protected. This notion of protectionism goes against, he says, one of the basic axioms on which Indian culture is based - a strong dialogic tradition.
Another major issue that Sen tackles in this set of essays is the notion of Indian identity. Indians today, the fruits of such a varied and enormous cultural heritage, often find it difficult to define their identities, especially to outsiders. This, Sen argues is the major motivation for movements such as Hindutva that allow us to pigeonhole and rigidly demarcate our identities apropos of other nationalities and cultures. However in the process, he says, we lose much more than we gain, becoming the eponymous frog in the well, who thinks there is no world outside the well. It is by embracing our tradition of assimilation rather than adhering to an exclusive definition that we will truly find who we are. However in this light I was disappointed with Sen’s rather perfunctory glance at how Indian history is written. Apart from a brief aside at the BJP government for rewriting the history texts, often at odds with factual information, Sen does little cogitation on this subject. However our notions of India and its culture have primarily been molded by how our history is written. This I believe is a major failing of this work.
Sen does not only deal with Indian culture on an abstract level, a capacious idea of India, but discusses the challenges faced by India on various fronts today – poverty, primary education, status of women in society and the varied problems introduced by moving into a globalized environment. He tackles in his later essays topics as varied as primary education, Indian nuclear tests, the continuing endemic hunger and malnutrition and the failure of the ruling parties in broadening the net of success to the lower strata of the society.
These essays are not only instructive in their content but also in their exposition of the argumentative tradition of India. With the burgeoning IT industry and renewed interest in India from outside, it is pertinent that we take a fresh look at our culture and traditions and define ourselves rather than fit into the definition of others of who we are. The innate humanism of Sen coupled with his lucid reasoning in defense of diversity and dialogue makes this book a must read.
The “Pi” is out
Finally, PI is out in the big bad world. Sometime early Saturday morning IST on the 24th day of December 2005, the team at Bangalore signed off with the note that the plane has landed albeit with a little force. I had signed off some hours earlier so I was not around to see the landing or the champagne popping that followed it but reading the mail hours later did give me a feeling of acheivement that very few things have given me.
So what does PI do? The PI application just released in beta and due for a full fledged release in March, is a desktop photo browsing and publishing software. One might see it as a Picasa on steroids though it is only one side of the story. It allows you to import your pictures on the file system into the PI application and browse through them in friendly date driven format; adding further meta data onto these pictures in terms of tags, titles or descriptions, all of which become immediately searchable. PI allows you enormous flexbility in organizing your pictures through albums. One can create albums out of virtually anything - internal sources like user created tags and search results or external sources like RSS feeds, file system folders and emails. After organizing the pictures in form of albums one can publish these albums to the external world (by default everything is published privately) - either by sharing to everyone or sharing only to certain individuals via their email addresses. PI can thus become the one stop solution for the collecting, organizing and sharing your digital pictures.
And now for the coolest thing - the entire application sits on your desktop. The data does not leave your computer and if your PI node is online, your data is accessible to you anywhere in the world as long as you have a browser and a network connection. In case the user does not want to keep his node online constantly, PI allows you avail the facility of 24/7 hosting - but this is done with your explicit approval, in which case your entire data will be replicated to secure PI servers. Any external information arriving for you when your node is down will be kept here, to be replicated when the main node come up.
The current PI release is a limited release i.e. signup only by invitation. We should hopefully be able to scale up as soon we get a taste of real user loads and how well the infra holds upto those.
It has been just over a year since I have joined PI and the experience so far has been exhilarating to say the least. Working with a team as varied as the colours on the dress of the Pied Piper, over timelines that stretch the concept of day and night, on ideas rather than rigidly defined product specs all have contributed in some way to this experience. And the beta release was the sone pe suhaga for this entire journey.
The draw sure looks yummy
The matchups for the Champions League 2005-06 round of 16 were announced today. Details here.
The top half of the table surely throws up some prospective crackers. We see Barcelona vs Chelsea again. The Catalans now have the opportunity to take revenge for their defeat at the hands of the same opponents. The clash is not merely between the two of the strongest clubs in Europe right now, but is also one between two radically different and equally effective footballing philosophies. Barcelona play to entertain and with a prodigious talent like Ronaldinho in their team believe they can always outscore their rivals. Their defensive frailities notwithstanding the team won the Primera Liga last season. Chelsea under the stewardship of Mourinho would rather bore and win. They have achieved magnificent success in the English League, leaving Sir Alex Ferguson to rue that Chelsea’s achievements makes it “embarrassing” for other teams. Though having some fantastically gifted players in their ranks, they rely on organization and tenacity rather than genius. Overall I think Barca have a slight edge, having the second leg at home.
AC Milan faces a real test against an increasingly confident Bayern Munich. Clearly the dominant team in german football Bayern are looking to make their mark in Europe this year. AC on the other hand look to be on the decline with their normally mean defence leaking goals with alarming regularity. The movement of Michael Ballack from Bayern however might jus tip the scales in favour of the Italians. The inspirational midfielder is still the major driver in the Bayern engine room and they would find it hard to replace him, especially on such big matches.
The third tie which caught my attention is Real Madrid vs Arsenal. Both the teams capable of playing scintillating football on their day and going down to dumps the next match. Arsenal have long been tagged as chokers in Europe. And the young team of Arsene Wenger does not look like it is ready yet to take that tag off. Real, though have their own set of problems - mainly self inflicted. They are currently without a regular coach and apparently with a slew of differences between the Brazilians and the Spaniards in the club. There is little to choose between the teams; but I would consider Real to hold a slight edge due to the experience they have in their ranks.
The other matches are no less interesting but they come in with clear favourites and underdogs. PSV and Lyon play each other in a rematch of last seasons quarter finals but Lyon almost look unbeatable this year. However in the past two seasons the unexpected has come to pass as far as Champions League is concerned and with the quality present in the so called weak sides, it might just happen three years in a row. Now that would be truely embarrassing for the Madrids, Chelseas and Milans.
technorati tags: soccer
Pandora - The box of music opened
How does one find new music that one likes? In part by learning the intricacies of why one likes what one likes and then searching accordingly. And more often than not by recommendation of friends. But, to find two people with exactly similar musical tastes is task at which even Hercules would have balked. Can then, one build a product that addresses the above problem for such a varied audience? The guys at Pandora seem to have done it. And done it well.
The trick they use is that when asked about the music one likes, the answer is often a list of artists, albums and songs rather than a list of musical traits. Pandora relies on this information, often at the tip of every music lover’s tongue to expose users to new songs and artists that it feels they might like. These are the same guys who were in the Music Genome Project, whose aim was to classify every musical bit in this world according to certain musical traits or genes. Traditional classifications of genre and outlook were thrown away, concentrating only on the musical aspect. And this was done at the level of each song. Now this database powers Pandora to deliver a great product.
The feature set of Pandora is limited. It allows the user to create stations based on songs or artists they like and proceeds to play on the station music that it thinks they might like. User can give feedback in the traditional Roman way; thumbs up or down. And thats about it. One can edit the stations but I have rarely found it useful. Easier to create a new station. A list of stations in a sidebar to the main player window allows the user to choose any of his created stations. And the main player is also very simple - with a volume controller, pause/play and go forward button. Pretty clean. As for the licensing they have 2 plans - free one with ads on the main page or the paid one with no ads. In terms of features both options are exactly the same. For more details - here is there FAQ.
Clearly this is a project which requires massive resources - both human and mechanical. It is still the task of humans to classify each song by its trait. I wonder whether Amazon’s Mechanical Turk can really be leveraged here. And if a user digs a little deep these days, he encounters a cul de sac. Also as per the current licensing norms they cannot play the user a specific song. Also the feedback mechanism needs to be made more granular, allowing the user to tell why he like or did not like a particular song rather than just good or bad. Further the next step should be bring in user feedback at a macro level, creating communities of users based on what one listens to and allowing users to share stations; this would also leverage the so called “network effect” and allow users to find music they like very easily. Some of the things I would be expecting in a future release.
Pandora is interesting because it works on many of the attributes that Brandon Schauer listed in his recent essay - Experience Attributes: Crucial DNA of Web 2.0 viz User Contributed Value, Long Tail, Decentralization, Co-creation. It also has the potential to leverage other attributes like Network effect and Remixability with very effort. Pandora today has a good mix of what are called Foundation attributes leading to good economic model and the Experience Attributes which in future can differentiate it from competing products. After the success of Flickr, the ante has been upped considerably for purported Web 2.0 products but Pandora matches these expectations.
Now, let the music begin.
