The Roads Less Travelled …

… during which the world seems to have taken a U-turn on its head, I blog again.

Manchester United stutter after their money making trip to Riyadh and drop points drawing with Spurs and losing at home to City. That the loss was on the 50th anniversary of the Munich disaster is a matter of further chagrin. The logo free retro jerseys and one minute silences are all right but IMO a win would have been a better tribute to possibly the finest set young players England has ever seen,  Fergie’s Fledglings and Wenger’s Wedglings included. Capello on the other hand seems to be instilling the winning mentality, the lack of which is the latest scapegoat for England’s failure in international competitions. Now that Joe Cole has made the left sided position a matter of non-issue they had to find a new excuse but seem to be running out of options here.

Big fish attempts to eat big fish fight big fish. Microsoft, the big bad wolf seems to be very keen on eating the lost and wandering Red Riding Hood that now is Yahoo!. With no presence whatsoever in the web domain MS is seeing its leadership position in matters relating to personal computing erode away at rate faster than Carl Lewis record breaking sprint and Yahoo!, though a rambling and directionless firm, has enough user base to give a semblance of competition to Google. Now whether Google is the benign woodcutter or an evil warlock is yet to be seen. But the fate of Red Riding Hood in this story seems to be sealed.

Financial markets continue to their Samudra Manthan, with each new day bringing joy and sorrow in some measure. Indian markets have taken to liking the sine wave functions, rising and falling with the phases of the moon. On the global front, UBS seems to be the hardest hit institution in every financial crisis. They seemed to have discovered some earlier unknown positions in subprime mortgages. Talking of the unknown, Societe Generale or SocGen suddenly discovered that they had been Leesoned by a rogue trader who manipulated their effective management controls to plunge the bank into almost a crisis. If they were a little more aware of their trader’s activities than and not of their obvious frenchness, matters might not have come to this stage.

Lastly, me has been not reading and trying to get a new job so that I can read books and see even after I pass out of IIMA. Hopefully, I will blog again soon.

Imagine a robot that seemingly crashes to the ground every instant and  yet assiduously manages to overcome the obstacles that come in it’s path without any effort. That does not rely on wheels for locomotion in rough terrain. Researchers at NASA have developed such a machine.

A key challenge in the development of walking machines is how to effectively maintain the position of the center of gravity. Too much shifting of the CG would make any machine or human topple. Walking comes to us so naturally that the complexity of the process is not immediately evident to us. Wheels are so popular because a fixed base with wheels keeps the CG within spatial limits and thus allows people to concentrate on locomotion rather than the stability aspect of the problem.

What the researchers above have done is to convert one of the greatest challenges in the area of locomotion studies into an opportunity. With a robot that naturally falls, maintainance of the CG position ceases to be a challenge. Flexible limbs give the robot its shape shifting capabilities. This is thinking out of the box at its very best.

technorati tags:technology, robotics

Blogged with Flock

There was a time when Bajaj scooters ruled the roost on Indian roads. Supers and Chetaks were the order of the day; Lambys had become unfashionable and Vespas tried to compete but just. And bikes with 100 km a litre had not captured the imagination of the masses.

If in those days one had to picture a quintessential middle class Indian family, it would be a snap of a Bajaj scooter with: the father driving,  trying hard to concentrate on the task at hand - that of herding his family safely to their destination; the younger kid, standing in the front, wind rushing through the hair, elation written on the face at this chance of discovering the world outside; the mother, sitting sideways, clucthing the stepney tire, with a rather vacant expression; and the elder kid sandwiched between both parents, twisting his head this side and the other, desperately trying not to miss the view on account of his position. Driving further this picture into the Indian psyche was the famous “Hamara Bajaj” advert; the idea behind which was clearly that a family isn’t complete (or middle enough) without a Bajaj.

And what a vehicle it was. Not particularly appealing to look at, it made up for the lack in the looks by its sheer versatility in usage, its durability on Indian roads and the fact that whatever the problem be it would probably be solved by tilting the vehicle for 30 seconds at an angle of thirty degrees. A popular joke -  “The Indian rocket did not fire. What to do? Just tilt it for a second.” - only helped to reinforce the hold of this vehicle on the Indian mind.

This picture however has gradually faded into obscurity (atleast for me); the once ubiquitous scooter gradually getting replaced by the more fuel efficient bikes; first Hero Honda and then followed by Bajaj Kawasaki amongst others. Therefore, on my way to Airport Road, idling away my time in an auto, I was pleasantly surprized to see this picture in front of me in life. Where earlier it would have looked perfectly natural on an Indian road, today it looked incongrous in a menagerie of vehicles; Santros, Ikons, Pulsars, Autos. And I was struck by how quickly images fade away, confined to the dusty environs that many like to call history. Till once in a while someone gets them out of that cobwebbed corner of memory, glances upon it reminiscing about the days gone by, before casting it back to the same corner.

What then has replaced hamara bajaj? Is there something that would define the state, aspiration and the hopes of the Indian middle class  today? Or is the idea itself anachronistic - with the middle class so diverse as to escape a minimalist generalization of one picture?

However, I believe that this picture remains important milestone in the history of Indian society. It signalled the mass acceptance of an urban lifestyle and of the nuclear family which were important precursors to the widespread changes that liberalization of the economy entailed. In a country of such vast cultural differences, it remains one of the few symbols that was once understood all across the country. If only for this reason, the picture of Hamara Bajaj will remain etched in our memories.

I picked up the following from Apoorva’s blog and bizarrely both of us seem to have similar tastes … may be thats why I read his blogs
Heck one of these days I might end up writing something on the nature and popularity of these “What you are?” tools

Your Quirk Factor: 82%

You’re beyond quirky… You’re downright bizarre. You’ve lost touch with social norms and what’s appropriate. And you’re loving every minute of it!

The Movie Of Your Life Is Film Noir

So what if you’re a little nihilistic at times? Life with meaning is highly over-rated. Your best movie matches: Sin City, L. A. Confidential, Blade Runner [shit ... I really like all of these ]

Reading this post (picked up from Desipundit), I was suddenly transported to an age when the world used to revolve around waiting for the next batch of Raj Comics series to come out. This was before Superman, Spiderman, Batman were known to me; and Tintin and Asterix would have then sound like Greek and Roman philosophers. I had grown fairly bored with the Amar Chitra Katha stack in my house and had completely missed the Diamond comics revolution. So I had jumped straight into the Raj Comics bandawagon - Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Bhokal, Paramanu and later Doga became the super heroes of my childhood.

As with most super heroes - most of these had fairly angsty beginnings; Nagraj was a mutant developed to be a hired killer, Dhruv had his parents killed in front of his eyes (Batmanish I know, but who really cares), Doga had his entire akhada wiped out by a rival gang and so on. Somehow all these incidents made them mentally indestructible endowing them with a will and powers beyond mere mortals. Most of these guys were based out of Rajnagar, except Bhokal who displayed his powers in the ancient world. I personally liked Dhruva the best, he had no special powers per se (except that he could communicate with animals) and succeeded mainly because of the agility of his body and mind. Nagaraj was what I started with; but the series became drab after he went around the world eliminating the different villians who had gathered in the first comic bidding for his services as an assasin. Dhruva series on the other hand continued to be interesting for a much longer time.

Talking of super heroes, can we not talk about super villians? Nagraj’s villians had a global flavour; american gangsters, african poachers, egyptian mummies included. Their motives were mostly power and rarely destruction; they were almost never competent without their armies and henchmen whom Nagraj quickly and efficiently dispatched with the snakes out of his hand or when stretched with that ultimate weapon, Visfoonkar (poison breath). Dhruvas’ were more classy (at least after the first few ones). They were mainly scientists gone mad (Dr. Virus, Grand Master Robo, Bauna Vaman, Chumba) or insane protectors hunting for the objects of their affections (Kirigi, Samri); they were people who had merely flipped, not necessarily born bad. Sometimes these heroes (primarily Nagraj and Dhruva) came together to fight a common evil (Lady Killer). That was a lot of fun. You would two for the price of one !!!

When I started, these comics were priced at Rs. 7 /- for the normal ones and Rs. 15 /- for the digests which were thicker, involved the more glamorous and deadly villians and had glossy covers. Every month five of such issues would come out and the local bookshop would lend out each for a day at Re 1 /- or Rs 2 /- for the normal ones and digests respectively. I still remember me and my brother tossing coins as to who would get to read first. Another vivid memory is that of us playing the comic vs comic game. We would each pick out one comic and pit the characters of each against the other in some kind of battle in our minds and somehow come come to conclusion that one character would win. Almost always the person who took “Kirigi ka Kahar” won; primarily because it had duplicates of the major characters.

I remember reading these till 10th standard but seriously followed the series till around 8th. First Hardy Boys and then the Forsyths, Archers and Ludlums took over their places in my bookshelves. And though it has been close to 10 years since I picked up one of those, the images remain vivid in my memory and only a small push is needed to trigger a wave of nostalgia.

Reading the special survey of the Economist on new media, one will probably end up believing this. The above statement begs the question, what exactly is “New Media”? What does it change? And exactly why is it revolutionary?

For a moment let us look into media without distinguishing between “new” and “old”. The primary function of this entity is to filter and aggregate useful and interesting information and serve them to consumers. This is in effect a kind of a circular linking because any information is generated by the masses and not “media” and to them it is ultimately passed. In the past, however, technological limitations warranted a centralised structure (with the media companies sitting at the top) so that events distributed in time, space and domain are not missed out by others not subscribed to the same; every thing that was to be distributed became an industry - movies, news and music - dominated by few players.

The crux of the arguement presented in the survey is that due to technological advances and recent developments the existing structure of the media industry is under threat and that the existing players have to radically change or risk being outdated. Revolutions are a natural consequence of power getting centralized and concentrated in too few hands that hold all the cards. It is a disruption - sometimes gradual and peaceful and on other occasions violent and sudden, of the status quo, of the established norms, of the ingrained ways of being. While publishing managed to free the masses from the grip of the liturgy making education accessible and affordable, over centuries it has itself turned into a mafia (reading Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, will make this clearer than daylight), which has stodgidly refused to either improve or change the with the times. And they have been able to do this because the barriers to entry remain unscalable for new entrants.

What the so called new media - blogs, wikis and podcasts - has done is take a dig at the existing hierarchy using methods completely alien to them. They leverage the increasingly ubiquitous presence computers and broadband connections to sidestep the entrenched players. Internet with some help from companies like Google and Yahoo! (providing services like Blogger, del.icio.us and Flickr) has allowed them  to reach out to the masses without even investing an extra buck, revolutionizing both content publishing and delivery. Everyone today with a broadband connection can become a publisher (as I am being with this blog) and similarly anyone can become a consumer without relying on the media giants for distribution.

Another huge change in the “new media” is that pieces of information published rarely remains static; any information published is merely the starting thread for a conversation between the publisher and the subscriber. The content is in the truest sense dynamic, atleast for wikis and blogs.

Since everyone is now able to publish and each information snippet ensues a conversation the basic challenge of media companies change from information gathering to information sieving; separating the wheat from the chaff. Information changes from discrete entities to a continuum and search along this continuum becomes a task of primary importance. Another valid question is, how does one compare the wisdom of the masses to the wisdom of one known knowledgeable man? Does the name “Albert Einstein” at the end of an article entitled “Relativity” mean nothing and is rated equally with one written by a high school geek just learning about Relativity? While wisdom of the masses is all good, when the time of reckoning comes how many will stand by it? Good search techniques should ensure that the name “Albert Einstein” does indeed mean something.

And so we come to the question of what are media companies? Given the trend of search becoming so important are Google and Yahoo! media companies? Is MS with live.com trying to become one? Though each of them is trying to solve the problem of search in a different manner, this point of view is not without justification. Additionally Google and Yahoo! generate most of their revenues [>98% and ~85% respectively] from advertisements the standard revenue source for all media companies.

However as the new media marches on against the strongholds of the media strongmen, there is a chance that the flagbearers of the new wave, the Googles and the Yahoo!s themselves are in some danger of being overrun. Most of these companies rely on huge and costly infrastructure in the backend to drive their innovations. The availability of building such backend support is a barrier to entry for new players. However with the arrival of services such as Amazon’s S3 this might not remain true for a long time.

It is however again important to note that the aim of the new media and their publishers (not pushers) is rarely to generate commercial gains. These innovations reduce the entry levels for people trying to gain knowledge and give them atleast a flavour of the topic. That way they help increase the market base for the traditonal companies because somebody who becomes really interested in Programming will buy a boxed set of Art of Computer Programming rather than reading my rants on the same. Businesses are already maturing towards these synergies; we need to look no further than the record giants and Apple for the iTunes and the still in rumour phase linkup between Apple and Disney for examples.

Technorati Tags: media

The last 2 days of my uneventful life have been pretty eventful.

First, I got calls from all IIMs (Indian Institute for Managements). The process of waiting for the results was nothing less than excruciating and the final hours were downright nail biting. Ya ya I know, I make it sound like a Hitchcock thriller but the suspense was no less intense for me. It was made worse with the IIMs announcing that the results would be declared on the 12th of April. Hence started the watch from around 11 p.m. of the 11th. Calcutta was the first. Sharp midnight. Through and a sigh of relief. Something atleast. And then the ordeal started. It was made worse by the fact that IIM Bangalore had put a final calls link on their home page without really linking to anything. Refreshing IIMs homepage every 30 minutes while trying to work on bugs is not really my idea of fun. Finally gave up and saw “Baton Baton Main” for the second or third time on Zee Movies. And then devoid of sleep and hope of seeing results, started to work. Around 8 in the morning news comes that the results will come after 11. So went to sleep, instructing roomies to wake me up at the appointed time. And hardly had I slept for 45 minutes when I was rudely awakened with the words “abbe tera A main ho gaya”; and all I could say was “whatever”. And then the flurry started; B, L, K and I followed. Went to the office around noon. The news is yet to sink in.

The second does not have an happy ending. Hardly had I started to work when news reached that Dr. Rajkumar, the iconic Kannada actor was no more. Since his residence was right behind my office and at the minimum, thousands of people were expected in an outpouring of grief, we decided to close shop and head home. Had to madly scramble up energy to draw money and stack up the house with food for atleast the night and the next day. What has followed since then has shook my belief of Bangalore being a cosmopolitan haven. Bangalore has been turned into a ghost town with burnt vechiles and glass offices with broken windows with an unspoken curfew in place. Some semblance of life returned in late evening with people appearing again on the streets. In the afternoon as the body of the legendary actor was passing before my eyes towards its final resting spot, I saw for the first time in my life , a mob; and it was not like in the TV. From my balcony I could see the individuals, laughing all the way as they clashed with police and ransacked the In&Out store as well as the petrol bunk next to my house. Theirs was not a farewell of loving fans to a great actor. They were just lumpen elements out to have some fun, hiding behind the grieving masses. Grossly outnumbered the police shot teargas shells and barely managed to control them but not before they had done the damage. I find it hideous that such events mar the end of an era, the final journey of a person for whom humanity came before everthing else. A person who had fought for Kannada language and culture, but with dignity. The people of Karnataka could not have given their hero, their champion a final farewell any worse.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I was hoping I would get GodFather or something like that

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

ps:: I have to say that this is pretty accurate.