After Jaron Lanier and “Digital Maoism” I need a lighter subject to hyperventilate on. Lanier is seen as some kind of oracle in the digital world, because he is a computer guru, a CEO, a performer, a musician and somebody said, “Fifty years from now Lanier will be seen as the wise man who showed us the direction to proceed. But, right now, we don’t know we have a genius in our midst.” (I am making this up, because I can’t remember the exact words.) That’s what genius is, we don’t know when literary and other geniuses are in our midst, we only realize when they have faded into the night.
Take for example: Jim Morison, John Lennon, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, etc. I would have very much liked to see these geniuses in their fifties, a little wrinkled, a bit jaded, trying to ape their adrenaline-sloshed selves of youth. Imagine Jim Morison doing his stage antics at age fifty, or, Lennon singing his elegant compositions in a rheumy voice, or Elvis thrusting his arthritic pelvis. Why did they have to go and die of drug overdoses and other obsessions? They disappointed their fans in death!
The bitch goddess success is a vile female indeed. She first makes you pant after her, tongue out, drool oozing out of lip corners, and then she makes love to you to the extremes. So, after she bestows her favors, you are a trembling bundle of nerves, cornered, and unable to satisfy the mistress who makes too many demands.
Sorry, folks, hehe, I got carried away!
I call a woman friend of mine and imagine what I hear on her mobile phone:
“Oh baby when you talk like that
You make a woman go mad
So be wise and keep on
Reading the signs of my body
“And I'm on tonight
You know my hips don't lie
And I'm starting to feel it's right
All the attraction, the tension
Don't you see baby, this is perfection”
Oh, God! I am glad I didn’t connect. (Draws sign of the cross!) Guess I would have sounded like a blubbering idiot after that sexy number by Shakira.
Shakira| Genius|
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Edge; Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism
Here's more about what Jaron Lanier referred to "Digital Maoism" (The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism. I guess the seeds have been sown by the success of Yahoo and Google. Consider this: a group of teenagers start a directory from their garage and become millionaires overnight. This has corporates panting with tongues out like dobermans, ready to jump into the collectivist philosopy. The management gurus suggests that what you don't like to do - such as attending calls, filling forms, in short grunge work - can be outsourced to low-paid people in developing countries, as a way of conserving resources. What happens? Outsourcing is born and there are even BPOs around every street corner in far away Lucknow. Excerpts:
"What we are witnessing today is the alarming rise of the fallacy of the infallible collective. Numerous elite organizations have been swept off their feet by the idea. They are inspired by the rise of the Wikipedia, by the wealth of Google, and by the rush of entrepreneurs to be the most Meta. Government agencies, top corporate planning departments, and major universities have all gotten the bug.
"As a consultant, I used to be asked to test an idea or propose a new one to solve a problem. In the last couple of years I've often been asked to work quite differently. You might find me and the other consultants filling out survey forms or tweaking edits to a collective essay. I'm saying and doing much less than I used to, even though I'm still being paid the same amount. Maybe I shouldn't complain, but the actions of big institutions do matter, and it's time to speak out against the collectivity fad that is upon us. It's not hard to see why the fallacy of collectivism has become so popular in big organizations: If the principle is correct, then individuals should not be required to take on risks or responsibilities. We live in times of tremendous uncertainties coupled with infinite liability phobia, and we must function within institutions that are loyal to no executive...."
That's what I mean. What Lanier refers as collectivism is being implemented in outsourcing units throughout the world. The idea is to farm out work to a collective, with the result that quality and accountability, not to speak of responsibility becomes a casualty. Once the work has been outsourced, the outsourced worker is not loyal to the originator of the outsourcing work. He only works according to the whims of the executive above him, who is motivated only by his own profitability. Go read the article above.
Digital Maoism
"What we are witnessing today is the alarming rise of the fallacy of the infallible collective. Numerous elite organizations have been swept off their feet by the idea. They are inspired by the rise of the Wikipedia, by the wealth of Google, and by the rush of entrepreneurs to be the most Meta. Government agencies, top corporate planning departments, and major universities have all gotten the bug.
"As a consultant, I used to be asked to test an idea or propose a new one to solve a problem. In the last couple of years I've often been asked to work quite differently. You might find me and the other consultants filling out survey forms or tweaking edits to a collective essay. I'm saying and doing much less than I used to, even though I'm still being paid the same amount. Maybe I shouldn't complain, but the actions of big institutions do matter, and it's time to speak out against the collectivity fad that is upon us. It's not hard to see why the fallacy of collectivism has become so popular in big organizations: If the principle is correct, then individuals should not be required to take on risks or responsibilities. We live in times of tremendous uncertainties coupled with infinite liability phobia, and we must function within institutions that are loyal to no executive...."
That's what I mean. What Lanier refers as collectivism is being implemented in outsourcing units throughout the world. The idea is to farm out work to a collective, with the result that quality and accountability, not to speak of responsibility becomes a casualty. Once the work has been outsourced, the outsourced worker is not loyal to the originator of the outsourcing work. He only works according to the whims of the executive above him, who is motivated only by his own profitability. Go read the article above.
Digital Maoism
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, "Digital Maoism," etcetera, etcetera
Interesting article by Michael Gorman on the Britannica Blog (Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason). When everyone is talking Web 2.0, I was curious to learn what this earth-shaking new technology is going to be. I don't find answers anywhere. Articles online just confuse and befuddle poor me, instead of giving information about what this new technology would entail, there's a lot of drivel about what its impact would be. Gorman has a point in that earlier the world had depended on individual experts (you know,the learned professorial types) whose findings were published in scholarly journals and books, which had editors, fact-checkers, proof-readers, etc. who acted as the gatekeepers to knowledge and learning. Let's call this the scientific method of disseminating learning.
No longer! In the wired world the Internet is acting on collective information gathering, and publishing online in media such as Wikipedia. Anyone can post/edit an article on Wikipedia as if he'she is an authority on the subject. Gorman quotes Jaron Lanier who called this "digital Maoism," or the communist idea of collectivism. But didn't collectivism fail? It must be recollected that Mao led his peasants to revolution promising them something as revolutionary as Web 2.0, but look how China has turned to capitalism to bale it out of crushing poverty. Excerpts from Gorman's article:
"Expertise and high standards in scholarship and publishing are certainly translatable into the digital age, but there are many obstacles blocking the transition. One chief obstacle is the notion that Jaron Lanier has called “digital Maoism” (in his May 2006 essay of that name on the Edge website). He defines this “new online collectivism” as “nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force.” This “wisdom of the crowds” and “hive mind” mentality is a direct assault on the tradition of individualism in scholarship that has been paramount in Western societies at least since the Renaissance and, before then, can be seen in the Church Fathers and the Greek philosophers, among others. Digital Maoism is an unholy brew made up of the digital utopianism that hailed the Internet as the second coming of Haight-Ashbury — everyone’s tripping and it’s all free; pop sociology derived from misreading books such as James Surowiecki’s 2004 The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations; a desire to...."
I agree with Gorman that when attempt is made to distill wisdom through the funnel of collectivism - as for example in the Wikipedia - it is difficult to prove the expertise of the person who is writing it, and one doesn't know if one's leg is being pulled. For example Jaron Lanier mentions that his Wikipedia entry identifies him as a film maker though he has made one unsuccessful documentary long ago. As another book argues, the gatekeepers are not the editors at the publishing end of knowledge and wisdom but at the receiving end, i.e., the readers. That's what we are witnessing of late.
Publishing companies are no longer the gate-keepers of what should be published. They are more worried about the business of selling books, rather than looking at the scientific dissemination of organizing learning, knowledge or literature. The onus of doing all the aforementioned now rests with literary agents, who are/were: copyright lawyers, graduate school dropouts, failed writers/editors, and the like. And they have very little time to vett the huge quantities of literature they get because they are running after the few celebrities who are already authors. Get the point? Grumble, mumble! Gorman, I am with you on this!
Digital Maoism| Michael Gorman|
No longer! In the wired world the Internet is acting on collective information gathering, and publishing online in media such as Wikipedia. Anyone can post/edit an article on Wikipedia as if he'she is an authority on the subject. Gorman quotes Jaron Lanier who called this "digital Maoism," or the communist idea of collectivism. But didn't collectivism fail? It must be recollected that Mao led his peasants to revolution promising them something as revolutionary as Web 2.0, but look how China has turned to capitalism to bale it out of crushing poverty. Excerpts from Gorman's article:
"Expertise and high standards in scholarship and publishing are certainly translatable into the digital age, but there are many obstacles blocking the transition. One chief obstacle is the notion that Jaron Lanier has called “digital Maoism” (in his May 2006 essay of that name on the Edge website). He defines this “new online collectivism” as “nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force.” This “wisdom of the crowds” and “hive mind” mentality is a direct assault on the tradition of individualism in scholarship that has been paramount in Western societies at least since the Renaissance and, before then, can be seen in the Church Fathers and the Greek philosophers, among others. Digital Maoism is an unholy brew made up of the digital utopianism that hailed the Internet as the second coming of Haight-Ashbury — everyone’s tripping and it’s all free; pop sociology derived from misreading books such as James Surowiecki’s 2004 The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations; a desire to...."
I agree with Gorman that when attempt is made to distill wisdom through the funnel of collectivism - as for example in the Wikipedia - it is difficult to prove the expertise of the person who is writing it, and one doesn't know if one's leg is being pulled. For example Jaron Lanier mentions that his Wikipedia entry identifies him as a film maker though he has made one unsuccessful documentary long ago. As another book argues, the gatekeepers are not the editors at the publishing end of knowledge and wisdom but at the receiving end, i.e., the readers. That's what we are witnessing of late.
Publishing companies are no longer the gate-keepers of what should be published. They are more worried about the business of selling books, rather than looking at the scientific dissemination of organizing learning, knowledge or literature. The onus of doing all the aforementioned now rests with literary agents, who are/were: copyright lawyers, graduate school dropouts, failed writers/editors, and the like. And they have very little time to vett the huge quantities of literature they get because they are running after the few celebrities who are already authors. Get the point? Grumble, mumble! Gorman, I am with you on this!
Digital Maoism| Michael Gorman|
Political Labels: Are a You Right-Wing or a Left-Wing?
I didn't know it till now that the political "Right" and "Left" comes in a wide array of ideological differences until I read this article on the Britannica blog (Political Labels).
"Various other labels have been introduced into the political sphere from time to time, but they tend only to confuse. Thus, for example, the word “liberal,” which originally arose in English politics and was meant to be the same as “left.” But then the particular ideas that comprised liberalism, such things as personal liberty, free markets, and limited government, came to America and gradually became identified with “right.” Then some people in one party that liked to think of itself as right started shouting “Liberal! Boo!” at people in the other party who were generally thought to be “left.” Now nobody knows what “liberal” means but everybody is quite sure he doesn’t want to be thought one."
In India we are used to labeling the Hindutva brigade as the "Right" and the Communists as "Left" and the Congress as the "Centrist." However, there are major differences in their interpretation in the US, UK, and France. To someone as apolitical as me (I never voted except once or twice), it all sounds like a lot of Greek mumbo-jumbo.
Political Left | Political Right |
"Various other labels have been introduced into the political sphere from time to time, but they tend only to confuse. Thus, for example, the word “liberal,” which originally arose in English politics and was meant to be the same as “left.” But then the particular ideas that comprised liberalism, such things as personal liberty, free markets, and limited government, came to America and gradually became identified with “right.” Then some people in one party that liked to think of itself as right started shouting “Liberal! Boo!” at people in the other party who were generally thought to be “left.” Now nobody knows what “liberal” means but everybody is quite sure he doesn’t want to be thought one."
In India we are used to labeling the Hindutva brigade as the "Right" and the Communists as "Left" and the Congress as the "Centrist." However, there are major differences in their interpretation in the US, UK, and France. To someone as apolitical as me (I never voted except once or twice), it all sounds like a lot of Greek mumbo-jumbo.
Political Left | Political Right |
Monday, November 26, 2007
What Do People Search Most in Wikipedia?
Of the fifty odd phrases listed below, five refer to sex (10 per cent isn’t a small figure, which shows people are thinking of sex, um, at least 10 per cent of the time. Yes, if they think about it, they would search for it online, wouldn’t they?). Next in the list is Harry Potter, the boy wizard, and then Naruto, the Japanese cartoon Ninja. The rest are all computer games, rappers, or, WWF. And the whole gamut of writing, reading, criticism, journalism, blogging, reportage and literature doesn’t even find a mention within the top fifty? What a shame!
So what people are looking online are crap and crassness. But I hadn’t imagined in my wildest dreams that the results would be so depraved.
1. Main Page
2. Wiki
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [Such adulation for a practitioner of the occult?]
4. Naruto [comic book hero: Manga Comics]
5. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock [computer game]
6. Wikipedia [of course!]
7.
8. Deaths in 2007
9. Heroes [TV series]
10. Transformers (film) [science fiction film]
11. Halo 3 [computer game]
12. Harry Potter [again?]
13. Vanessa Anne Hudgens [actress]
14. Luciano Pavarotti [opera singer who died]
15. Hypertext Transfer Protocol
16. Bleach (manga) [comics again?]
17. List of sex positions [sex obsession!]
18. Sex [why below sex positions?]
19. 50 Cent [rap singer]
20. World War II
21. World Wrestling Entertainment [stage-managed wrestling]
22. YouTube
23.
24. Akatsuki (Naruto) [comic book character]
25.
26. Adolf Hitler [Man who killed 6 million people to satisfy his ego]
7. Britney Spears [saw her on Jay Leno Show. Absolutely brain dead!]
28. Kanye West [rapper]
29. Masturbation [uh oh!]
30.
31. The Simpsons [cartoon character, again?]
32. WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 [stage managed wrestling]
33. Sexual intercourse [sex obsession, redux]
34. Graduation (album)
35. Family Guy [television series]
36. Wii
37. PlayStation 3 [computer game]
38. Halloween
39. MySpace [social networking]
40.
41. Xbox 360 [game]
42.
43. Zac Efron [American actor]
44. Anal sex [just before
45.
46. List of Naruto: Shippūden episodes
47. List of Naruto characters
48. World Wrestling Entertainment roster
49.
50. Curtis (50 Cent album)
51. List of Konoha ninja
52. Lil Wayne [rapper]
53. Eminem [rapper, singer and songwriter]
54. World War I
Hat tips: Amit Varma of Indiauncut.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Bombay Fort, Redux
Exactly the same feeling came over me when I visited
Sterling cinema is now a multiplex. The Café Noor where I used to enjoy my biryanis houses the Café Coffee Day outlet. Opposite it, Empire Restaurant is now a big Mac complete with Ronnie seated leg over leg. Sterling is where I whetted my appetite for movies right from the Beatles and Elvis movies in morning shows of the seventies, to the horror (Omen, Exorcist) and musical movies (how can I forget: Flash Dance, Grease, My Fair Lady, Sound of Music) of the eighties. The steps of
One restaurant has not changed, and I like it for it. Its survival is legendary, the sort of South Indian zeal that made Udupi hotels a rage in
Thursday, November 22, 2007
My Latest Short Story - The Cobbler
Raman sat on a small wooden bench in the tiny hovel while the cobbler was replacing the soles of his shoes. His footwear tended to chafe fast and this one had developed cracks, and the sides had given way to expose socks. He had used the pair for close to ten years, and it was full of stitches and leather patches. He decided it was time to give it new soles, in which case it would last another five years. This man was his favorite cobbler, sitting by the intersection of the two main roads of Belapur, and he opened early and closed late. The other cobblers in the locality were all lazy and opened at 10 a.m. and closed at 6 p.m. for their nightly drink of bewda.
On previous occasions their exchanges had revealed that he was from Uttar Pradesh, and he was a farmer too. Twice every year he would go to his village to look after his crop.
“Bhai-saab Make it majbooth, so that it will last me a life time,” Raman said to the cobbler.
“Yes I will.”
Go here to read "The Cobbler" on my Short Story Blog.
On previous occasions their exchanges had revealed that he was from Uttar Pradesh, and he was a farmer too. Twice every year he would go to his village to look after his crop.
“Bhai-saab Make it majbooth, so that it will last me a life time,” Raman said to the cobbler.
“Yes I will.”
Go here to read "The Cobbler" on my Short Story Blog.
Uses and Abuses of the Word "Ass"
I concede with head bowed and a diffident smirk that the “ass” is the most abused word in the world. In English I don’t know any insults except the following:
Asshole
Nice Ass (which is praise not an insult)
Ass Licker
Ass Kisser
But Hindi is a more potent language for insults and invective, and the following are some of the profanities that come to mind:
Gand masti – mischief
Gand ungli – to do "gand ungli" means to disrupt something, or throw a spanner in the works
Gand fati – to be afraid of something
Gand pe lath – to be rejected by some one, especially a girl
Gand mein lxxx – too profane for this blog
Gandu – too profane for this blog
Gand mein charbi – to be rash and take too many risks
Gand mein keeda – same as above
I know there are more, which I am not aware of. Do leave a comment. In fact, any and every insult in Hindi begins and ends with Gand (no pun intended).
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Who Would You Trust for News? Newspaper or Blog?
Came across this interesting discussion on longbets, recently, which made me sit up and take note (ulterior motive: I like trumpeting about the virtues of blogging). Dave Winer observed that in a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, blogs written by rank amateur writers ranked higher than the stories written by paid journalists of the New York Times' Web site. Ahem, this is a common problem I face. When there’s an interesting story about which I want to do some research, I get more blogs in my search results than the biggies – the Times, and the Expresses.
No, people don’t know that you are number one. No, really, they don’t visit because you are number one. In fact, they don’t even know who is number one because they may be searching the net from
Dave Winer’s argument:
“As with personal computing, the early days of Web publishing belonged to the hobbyists, reveling that it worked at all. But the Web is maturing, the tools are getting easy, as the understanding of the technology has become widespread. Serious professional journalists use the new tools, moonlighting, publishing the news they don't or can't sell to the big publications who employ them.
“At the same time, we're returning to what I call amateur journalism, people writing for the public for the love of writing, without any expectation of financial compensation. This process is fed by the changing economics of the publishing industry which is employing fewer reporters, editors and writers. But the Web has taught us to expect more information, not less, and that's the sea-change that the NY Times and other big publications face -- how to remain relevant in the face of a population that can do for themselves what the BigPubs won't.”
Here’s the counter argument by New York Times’ Nisenholtz:
“Readers need a source of information that is unbiased, accurate, and coherent. New organizations like the Times can provide that far more consistently than private parties can. Besides, the blog phenomenon does not represent anything fundamentally new in the news media: The New York Times has been publishing individual points of view on the Op Ed page for 100 years. In any case, nytimes.com and blogs are not mutually exclusive. We would like to extend our ability to act as a host for all sorts-of opinions, and blog technology might well be useful in doing so. After all, in countries whose citizens don't enjoy First Amendment protection, blogs are run by people who'd be considered professional journalists in the
Who won? In the public voting, Dave Winer won! Yaaaaayyyy!
You can read the entire discussion and the voting pattern on longbets.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Pliss, pliss Don’t Call Sanjay "Sanjay-baba"
I love to take digs at the electronic media. Well, why shouldn’t I? They are the ones who put a lot of small magazines (such as the one I was working for) out of business, and made me into a mere content writer. So here’s the gripe, which as readers of these lines will testify is endless. Check my other blogposts.
I think Aaaj Tak should stop calling Sanjay Dutt, Sanjay-baba. Yes, they did the offensive thing yesterday, that too, in the news. Editors of Aaaj Tak pliss to note: Baba is an affectionate form of address, used in Bombay and thereabouts for a small child, which term is said out of affection. No way am I going to accept him as a Baba, anymore. No offense, Sanjay, considering I like you as an actor and you and I are almost of the same age, and nobody calls me Baba. Editor-saab, he is well past the age of being called baba, in fact, Shahid Kapoor who is the baby of the brat pack isn’t called baba, then why should Sanjay be, please explain.
Sanjay is a convicted felon and a father of a grown up girl. All of which would place him squarely, I think, out of the purview of baba-dom. हैं न? So why this mollycoddling? I would give more credit to electronic channels if they refrained from being too personal with the people about whom they report. Whatever happened to objectivity in journalism?
Sanjay Dutt | Aaj Tak |
I think Aaaj Tak should stop calling Sanjay Dutt, Sanjay-baba. Yes, they did the offensive thing yesterday, that too, in the news. Editors of Aaaj Tak pliss to note: Baba is an affectionate form of address, used in Bombay and thereabouts for a small child, which term is said out of affection. No way am I going to accept him as a Baba, anymore. No offense, Sanjay, considering I like you as an actor and you and I are almost of the same age, and nobody calls me Baba. Editor-saab, he is well past the age of being called baba, in fact, Shahid Kapoor who is the baby of the brat pack isn’t called baba, then why should Sanjay be, please explain.
Sanjay is a convicted felon and a father of a grown up girl. All of which would place him squarely, I think, out of the purview of baba-dom. हैं न? So why this mollycoddling? I would give more credit to electronic channels if they refrained from being too personal with the people about whom they report. Whatever happened to objectivity in journalism?
Sanjay Dutt | Aaj Tak |
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