- Sahil’s Take

- Ayushi’s take

Thanks for your help guys!!

My parents have been married 37 years, and i have NEVER given them agift – yes,im like that, a bad son.

Anyway, i had a great idea for a gift.

• Why dont i get the frontpage of TOI of the date they got married?
• Then, to make it even more special, why dont i then replace one of the articles into a news story celebrating my parents’ marriage?

Good idea, no? Yeah i know, im vair creative.

@abhishekaggy helped me get a copy of the paper – they made me an A3 copy of a microfiche, which i scanned… and its pretty bad, but its there.

I got my dads secretary to sneak their wedding album out and scan a pic (its a hilarious story, remind me to tell you about it).

I wrote a small cheezy newsstory

… but, my 2 designer friends, one is out of town and one is sick. I didnt know that because i only contact my graphic designer friends when i have work (yes, thats me, a bad son AND a bad friend)

… SO i need someone to design it…. and hence i turn to you oh twitter. and hoping some of you guys will help me.

Will you help PLEASE help me? PLEASE?

The payment – all the booze you can drink/food you can eat (one night only). If you’re from a different city, i will buy you stuff from Flipkart, your choice (be reasonable! :p)

Some project briefs -

• My parents’ wedding anniversary is on Friday the 27th of January – Friday.
• I need to design AND PRINT the newspaper by then.
• Ideally the final output should be A3
• Its ok if the article is incomplete/illegible – as long as it looks like it belongs to the paper! . We can write a “Contd on page 2″ to truncate the copy, and make a separate larger printout of just the article so they can read it.

Here’s the stuff i have

• a pdf scan of the TOI page
• a slightly um, “fat” scan of the TOI page (jpg)
• my parents wedding photo (DO NOT MAKE FUN OF IT) (jpg)
• my news story (.doc file)

PLEASE help me. PLEASE?!?!?!

It got me thinking, as usual, about economic systems and how companies fundamentally react to any change in the environment

Funnily enough, they seemed to fit the Kubler-Ross Model – a very common model used to explain how patients handle news that they (or their loved ones) are going to die

Kubler-Ross says that there are Five Stages , popularly truncated to DABDA (or as we frustrated students used to to say – dabaadey!), in processing news that “You are going to die”

1. Denial – “Oh this is not going to happen to me!”

2. Anger – “I hate you for letting this happen to me!”

3. Bargaining – “Oh, i will give up my life savings etc, just for a few more years”

4. Depression – ” Oh whats the point of anything”

5. Acceptance – “I cant fight it, i might as well accept it”

The Kubler Ross stages are very clear when you look at how the music industry has reacted to mp3s and filesharing.

1. Denial – Oh this mp3 technology is not going to affect us, lets keep doing what we are doing

2. Anger – SUE EVERYBODY! sue a 71 year old grandfather! sue a 12 year old girl! Killem all!!

3. Bargaining – this is where i think we’re at – eg the attempts at creating a 3 strikes law. The attempt at not suing individuals but “enablers”. Even The fact that the entire music industry has been willing to cede control of their music to itunes, allowing itunes to set pricing etc (very similar to “i will give up my life savings to get a few more years”) points to the fact that the music industry is in a “bargaining” mode

4. Depression – The old music industry is dying, there will be an inevitable phase of companies putting up their hands and saying they just cant do it anymore

5. Acceptance – when something like this is both accepted, legal and profitable for all parties, will be the time that music industries have accepted what is in front of their eyes – that their previous avatar is “dead”

Which brings me to SOPA – i think SOPA is primarily an attempt by the “film and tv” industry to halt online sharing. This is simply becuase THIS industry has now reached the Anger phase of the Kubler-Ross model.

What happens next? who knows? your thoughts?

1. Another “power bloc” - this is just another faceless organisation which will not make a difference to “me”
2. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -  who ensures that the members themselves are not corrupted?

Both arguments have their merits.

I want to suggest a different architecture for an anti-corruption body.

The Jan LokPal Sabha

• 500 Indians chosen by Random lottery  to be part of the primary anti-corruption body. (150 evry quarter)
• Eligibility – you must have a voter card, and have studied till at least 10th class.
• Each JanLok member must spend 2 years tenure in the Jan LokPal Sabha – they will be government servants and will be afforded all the powers/perks that go with them
• THese 500 members will self organise by location/area of focus, and will follow the work guidelines as laid out by Judiciary/Jan Lok Pal Bill
• of the 500, 50 members are voted for an extended 4 year term as per the wishes of the individual and the sabha to ensure continuity

The Jan Lok Pal Sabha is the true notion of self governance – of the people, for the people, by the people. It drives home the shared civic responsibility we have for the state of our nation.

Why this is an interesting solution

I know this sounds like a weird way of thinking of a solution, but i urge you to study it further. It has interesting upsides

• “One of Us” – one of the biggest problems in any of these implementations is the feeling of  ”Us vs them”. Because *anyone* can become member of the Sabha, it is no longer a faceless other.
• True participation – some countries have compulsory enlisting into the armed services. Our country needs something else – as the worlds largest democracy, it needs to be true to its stated desire of participation of its public in the political process. Having nearly any indian citizen as eligible to hold public office will lead to an increased feeling  of civic responsibility.
• Balance of power – As this is simply a random process it will be difficult for self serving blocs to form. Moreover as there is a 2yr tenure, any “power” gained within the system is temporary.
• Spread of impact – because of a a wide variety of people representing a cross section of age, gender, class, caste, religion, location etc – the impact of Jan Lok Pal will be felt more immediately
• Checks and balances – with a widespread number of people, the responsibility of checks and balances lies with many more people. Moreover, media scrutiny will also become widespread.

Some arguments, and why they are unfounded

• “These guys will use those 2 years to just store up money/fulfil personal agendas etc” -

The assumption here is that the average indian is corrupt- in which case the entire idea of anti-corruption is moot.

Moreover a 2yr random tenure means that there may be payback for personal agendas.

And oh yes, dont worry, YOU might get a chance to abuse the power too!

• “It is too hard to organise” -

i dont see why this is harder to organise compared to any other setup

• “They wont be able to do it” -

We cant take a class argument – our constitution believes that panchayats can take decisions. What do you mean “They” anyway?

We cant take the intellectual argument – that just implies a babu us vs the savages mentality, which i know you wont stoop to.

And we cant take the expertise argument – the one thing an average indian knows is corruption!

If we all agree that corruption needs to be addressed, and are cynical about the current set up of the LokPal bill , it is because we fear the creation of another power structure owned by “them”. The approach outlined above seems to be fairer and more inclusive

Of course, something like this must be ratified by current “power holders”, and this will be very scary for them. This is of course where the work begins – if we let our voices and our votes do the talking, we can hopeful influence this. It will require a huge combined effort, but maybe it would be worth it.

What do you think?

Oh yes, this idea came from a Proposed Constitutional Setup on another planet

Kapil Sibal’s latest demand that Social Media screen content has stirred that proverbial hornet’s nest of the mishmashed discussion of the most contentious Internet buzzwords – “values”, freedom of speech, privacy, policing , “censorship” – and all the jingo-ism that goes with them.

A pragmatic way to look at it would be to talk about  the architecture of a system, the hierarchy that is implicit in that system, and the value decisions that architecture and hierarchy implies.

We all crow about the architecture of the internet – about its flatness, its freedom. However, if we think about it, this flatness/freedom is just on the surface. We must remember, there are very few Wikipedias. Most “platforms” for interaction or information are owned and run by the private sector who have shareholder/balance sheet imperatives.

For their part these private sector players can only function under the large superstructure of the political economy. There are certain rules and laws defined by the superstructure of that political economy. Those rules must be followed – and we are often thankful for them.

When it comes to the enduser’s discussion on freedom/privacy must be predicated by the knowledge that, as long as the “providers” of this freedom are in themselves governed upon, our freedom/privacy is also a function of the decision of that superstructure.

*Side-Note* – At the same time, this whole talk about privacy is completely skewed – how can we talk about privacy for what we have essentially put up for public display?How can we talk about privacy when all our data is used by these platforms to sell to advertisers? *end-note*

The architecture of the internet in itself is value neutral. In other words there is nothing inherent on the internet which stops you from doing this for example. However we depend on the the political economy to afford certain guidelines which it deems are against a defined moral value. Pedophilia and child p0rn for example. the only reason they dont exist (or are “hard to find”) is because they are illegal and this guideline must be followed in all cases. or Does banning childporn form an outrageous “fascist” indicator of Big Brotherly Censorship?

Or take the case of National Security – if google maps shows the indian army barracks positions on our borders – would the government be right in asking for its removal, citing national security?

There is obviously a problem that comes in with this of course which is – where does the government draw the line. And once the line is drawn how is it implemented? should a wikipidia-esque self policing for example, become a norm?

The more overarching question is the question of true freedom. Even if the internet is able to miraculously self-regulate, it still exists within a a political/economic superstructure, and will be defined by that hierarchy – how can the internet be made free of that?

That will be the discussion of another post – for now id like to leave you with some food for thought -

- Was the “usage of social media” “right” during the jasmine spring? how about during the london riots? was it “right” then? WHats the difference between the two?

- How do you define Freedom of Speech. Is anything but complete freedom of speech acceptable to you?

ooh! chck out @angadc’s article about roughly the same areas – its a great read!

I dont think i had a favorite teacher in college.

In MBA, it was Professor Yogendra Aggarwal, Yogi. His animated ppts made quantitative analysis nearly into a comic book.

There’s something about teachers, isnt there. The really really good ones especially. They can change your LIFE. They stick with you forever.

Who are some of your favorite teachers? and why? what did they do that was different from the rest? Are you still in touch with any of them? Id love to interview them if possible.

Thanks for helping out guys.

Lets organise a simultaneous flashmob hungerfast in delhi, Mumbai, and Ahmedabad and bangalore. We need to have someone who can take responsibility for each city and at least 20 supporters. Its a FULL DAY FAST, we congregate at 9 and stay till night. We ONLY drink water. lets DO this guys. lets DO this

Locations – Delhi – India Gate, AHmedabad – Sabarmati Ashram, Mumbai – Gateway of India, Bangalore – i dont know.

Date – Saturday or sunday?

Coax your friends family anyone you know to join you. together we have a voice. Together we are lions. Its time they hear us roar.

Inputs/volunteers? lets organise ourselves… fast! he’ll die soon… for us.

(For those of you who cant commit this one day of your lives – do SOMETHING else – pester every “public figure” you know on twitter…. enough of you pesterting them will help)

I wrote a post some time ago about how there’s a fundamental shift in the way kids are processing information. When I present Prensky’s Digital Natives to my students, some of them cant help from nodding enthusiastically – FINALLY, someone’s explaining to them why things are the way they are.

And the way things are, well – any recent MBA/BMM student will admit – they can do with improvement.

In my opinion, going by prensky’s paper, other readings, and my own experience I think these are the new “Tenets of Learning”, at least from the Undergrad Level forward. Some of them sound really old-school (Think “pre Industrial Revolution”, but I stand by them)

• Freedom of Information – All Information should be free – why *shouldn’t* a post grad student have his computer in class, with all information at his fingertips? It then becomes the responsibility of US the TEACHERS to set the kind of killer paper that still tests them.
• Collaboration – Right now, there is a very simple concept – MBA students call it RG (Relative grading) – its worse than “every man for himself” – under RG, its not only enough that you do well, but it is equally important that others do BADLY. We teachers are educating our “clients” for a future that is going to demand collaboration – and if we remove some institutionalised rules, we’ll see that students WANT to collaborate.
• Apprentissage and Mentoring – You never stop being a student. And, pretty much, you never stop being a teacher. Those of you who have done even 1 guest lecture will agree – when you get their attention, and see them understand something you’re trying to explain, you want to do it again and again. and its not enough to speak to a faceless class of 100 students. work WITH a smaller group. really work with them
• Training for Flexibility – The next 30 years are going to be very turbulent – older tools are being replaced by newer paradigms – why are we still teaching the “History of the newspaper printing industry”?
• Live projects – Mahatma Gandhi said, “What we Learn to do, We learn by doing”. . Companies are going to emply these kids – shouldn’t they be working with them to make sure the kids have the right tools?

I may soon be in a position to effect  ACTUAL CHANGE in the way students are being taught across the country. I cant talk about it just yet (sorry, but when I can – you’ll be the FIRST to know), but before I take that step I need to do it in the same spirit that will drive the change. I need to follow my own tenets.

SO Here goes.

Help me understand stuff from your point of view – be you a student, a recent student, a teacher, an employer who will be hiring these students, or someone just interested in education in general. Please help me answer questions like

-        What should we be teaching undergrad and postgrad students ?

-        What did you LOVE about Learning ?

-        What did you HATE about studies?

-        Any anecdotes when you taught something well, or something was taught to you well?

-        How do YOU study? How do you teach?

-        What things would you like to see changed

…. Yknow. Stuff like that.

I wait with baited breath for your response.

Trippy.

“The album is dead. The Mp3 killed it. ” we all know that. And underpinning this simple statement are the fundamental shifts in creation distribution and consumption of content.

You may remember my previous wordy and complicated part-one of a (someday) three post exposition on “The Future of Culture”, and the small convoluted chat about memes. I think the flaming lips announcement is another opportunity to try and talk about “universal darwinism” and how competition leads to evolution, not only in living organism’s, but in “living” culture

Our culture is made up, at least in part, of “manufactured content”. And manufactured content has its own environment in which to survive. That environment is, simply, the profit motive of capitalism. Simply put, the best way to make money in any given environment will survive. That which does not make profit, is dead. xkcd has a tongue-in-cheek take on this which i like – check it out

The “album”, and all the “strategies” around it, existed because it was simply the most profitable way to manufacture content given the environment. Distribution technology didnt make transporting merely one song profitable – the money you could reasonably expect to earn was far outweighed by physical distribution costs. So you had to package a bunch of songs together – hence, the album.

You also had a reasonable strategy for album release taking into account things such as competitive content, content percolation times and audience attention spans. A generation ago, there was less content, which diffused slowly to an audience whose “time-spent” on any content was considerably higher. The “one album every 18 months” was, simply put, the best way to milk/maximise profits.

Of course the “digital revolution” and “media explosion” changed the environment completely. More music was able to release, which spread through the an increasingly distracted audience faster and faster. Suddenly, the previous strategy wasn’t as effective.

The first calamity would, of course, be the physical product.  Simply put, the profit motive would force music to go “online”. But even online, given competition and audience attention spans, even the album strategy is a no go. Simply put, a distracted audience doesnt want 12 songs every 18 months, it wants something short, and it wants it NOW.

Given that environment – dont you think the flaming lips announcement makes sense? wouldnt this be the way distribution of “manufactured content” would evolve to maximise profits?

I will approach this from three facets – the concept of Memetics, The evolution of Culture Industries, and the implication of Complexity. I hope to make the following points -

- The creation and transmission of memes/culture is perhaps the single most important function of our race. Hence, whatever best benefits a meme in the existing environment, will be an “inevitable” cultural/technological result.

- The mass industrialisation of culture, while initially beneficial to transmission of memes, has been replaced by a “mass customisation” of culture which overcomes the structural blocks to memetic transmission inherent in the system it is replacing

- Methods/Process of Culture creation and transmission can increasingly be seen as emergent behavior within the complex Adaptive system of what i call “Culture-tech”

Part 1 – Of culture, evolution and memes

TO begin with – a simple question – What is culture? Well as you can see there are a myriad definitions but the following seems to encompass most of it. Culture is “An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning.“

Now its obvious to us how important “culture” is – its what makes us human, isn’t it? Research shows that, at birth our brains are not too different from a monkey’s, and then grows prodigiously through infancy. The areas that grow fastest – the ones that differentiate us from monkeys – are precisely the areas that allow us to participate in “culture”.  In the researcher’s words –  ”Extra-large helpings of social and cultural knowledge customize the infant brain, making both babies and the species more adaptable and allowing for complex social institutions to develop.”

Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” is a very good read. He talks about “universal darwinism” and gives amazing insight into the mathematics of replication, using the gene as a primary example of a “replicating unit”. Using simple, axiomatic “rules”, he brings forth a very logical explanation of our behavior, all trickled down to game theory, probabilities, and an extremely large number of iterations.

In a nustshell, Dawkins states that, given that the ‘prime directive’ of any replicating unit (for example, the gene), is to create a copy of itself, over enough iterations and enough mutations, there will be some “winning strategies” which will  emerge. A simple way to explain this to yourself is by examining the simple model of evolution – the creature that “fits” best in its environment will survive, and beneficial random mutations will be passed through the generations.

In other words certain genetic “traits” exist because they’re beneficial to us in the given environment – if they were detrimental, then those with that trait would have a lower possibility of surviving/reproducing. Again simplistically it explains (for example) the difference in physical features of people living in the tropics vs those who live in higher latitudes.

Now, going back to brain development. The development of  ”the trait” of participating in culture is SO important to our genes, we actually risk our lives to make it happen! Compared to all other species, human childbirth is the single most life-threatening for the mother – simply because the head of the child is so big. Even then, its not good enough – compared to their life expectancy, Humans also have one of the largest periods of “infancy”, as their culture-hungry brains grow. During this period the individual is in continuously “dangerous position”

For humans to risk SO much to allow us to participate in culture, it must be extremely important for our survical, isn’t it?

In Chapter 7 of “A selfish gene”, Dawkins went on a thought experiment. While he had been talking about genes as an example of replicators, he posited that there was a “universal darwinism” in the evolution of any replicating unit. While searching for any other “replicating” unit he hit upon culture.

There is no doubt – Culture (as defined at the start) replicates – it is transmitted laterally and horizontally. The fact that we speak english, local slang and lingo, any movie we see, or book we read, is a testament that cultural ideas are being created, transmitted and replicated.

Dawkins decided to try and analyse culture using the principles of Universal Darwinism. To do so he hypothesised a cultural unit similar to the gene. Just like the gene is a single unit of transmission of genetic information, he attempted to explain cultural evolution through the transmission of a “meme” – the single unit of cultural transmission. Culture then, is a collection of memes, that are created and copied, often mutating and evolving en route

Although the meme (and its study, memetics) has its detractors, i find it a fascinating way of understanding cultural evolution. These are the salient features which i want to pull out

1. Evolution is not planned – it consists of random mutations some of which are benficial to the gene, others which are detrimental – on the whole, those mutations that are detrimental will winnow themselves out of the system

2. We can perhaps use the same logic for cultural (memetic) evolution – ie, the memetic/cultural ideas that benefit our genes are more likely to be replicated,  than those cultural ideas that are detrimental to our genes

Music, one of the earliest “memeplexes”, demonstrates the above points. Having originated nearly 40,000 years ago, researchers feel that it may be one of the big advantages that allowed Homo Sapiens (us) were able to succeed over the Neanderthals!

Over iterations, ability to create, understand and transmit memes seems to have become synonymous with genetic success. Simplistically the most “attractive” people are those who have been succesful in creating and transmitting memes (Movie stars, musicians, writers etc). What is good for the “meme” has become synonymous with what is good for the gene. And most of our mental effort goes into “figuring out” how better to create/transmit memes

Evolutions in technology that help “memetic transmission” compared to previous technologies are hence not only preferable but also therefore inevitable.

So although it sounds like a silly question, it becomes worth asking – what does the meme “want” to be better transmitted?

As mentioned in a previous post there are three factors that define the success of any replicator

- Fecundity – How often does a replicator create a copy of itself in a given period of time

- Copying Fidelity – How “true to the original” is the replicated copy

- Longevity – How long does the replicator live?

If we think about it –  the giant strides in communications can be seen as improving the overall environment for memes, no? From developing language, to the printing press, to electromagnetic transmission, to this whole “internet” phenomenon – how has each of these affected the above three factors for memes?

Could we go as far as to say that “Digital, Free” will be an inevitable outcome simply because it is the most beneficial for memes?

Think about it.

So this ends part one of this article. In this i’ve dealt with the 1st point mentioned at the very start of this post. Next time we’ll move on to point two!

I really look forward to your feedback.

PS – i found this - how many are directly or indirectly connected to meme creation?