Changing Communities through Vector Algebra

This is a follow-up post of my previous post on Perspectives and Co-ordinate geometry. Each individual's perspectives form the different axes on which the individual perceives the world - and judges the world, so you have (happiness-sorrow axis, good-bad axis, moral-immoral axis, ethical-unethical axis, and so on). Each of these axes define who you are, your values, your beliefs, et al. If I were to map each of these axes against the society's axes, then we can plot an individual on the society space (its an n-dimensional space, mind you).

Now, get this. The origin of the society (the norms dictated by the society) represented by (0,0,..,0) would be at a certain distance from your own origin say (1,2,1,-4,...,3). The vector (going outwards from the origin) which connects your origin to the society's origin is your vector of existence. Every individual has his vector of existence. The people who are afraid of society and peer pressure have their origins closest to the society's origins. Carefree people tend to be away from that origin. The more deviant you are to the society, the further you would be from the origin.

What makes a society? You, me and everybody. Thus, the society is a summation of these vector misalignments. And that my friend defines the origin of the society. Over a period of time, the origin naturally shifts - it shifts because many people change their origins (values, beliefs, etc), thus ensuring that the society also goes through that same shift (although much more gradually). A fact that would have been a taboo for the society would be a norm today. Take mini-skirts for instance or gay rights. Society changes its norms, because the collective changes their norms. The origin has shifted!!

Social Search: The new frontier

One of my colleagues in a presentation remarked – that the problem these days is not about lack of information, it is about visibility of that information! These days the sheer volumes of information has reached such an extent that one cannot make out the differences between relevant and irrelevant. How many times have you clicked “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google in the past month? The answer is zero for me.

The way Google has chosen to solve that problem is idiotic at best – they let you indicate the relevance of the search result for that particular term (you have to be logged in to your Google Account and search for checking this feature out). The problem with this solution is that I still have to search for the solution which is most relevant to me. Visibility of the most relevant solution is an issue. What would have been great, if Google could have taken the relevance out of my social circle (read Google Contacts) and shown my contact’s relevance to me as well!! So my social circle is defining the context of the search and they are doing the search for me; not Google.

Social search, is what I am talking about. The new paradigm now is not to show all the possible searches – nobody has time to go through 567,198 results, show me what is relevant to me. Know thy customer. Take an application like Twitter and Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck lets me set search through the Twitter community, that way, the relevance and context comes out through the users. That is the way of the future – we used to talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but now it should be Social Media Visibility (SMV).

Legalizing Corruption

On my way home from work, I was having this conversation with a colleague. He made an interesting point, the change in our thinking if we were to legalize corruption. The concept is simple – Declare your black money, pay a nominal amount to the government and you get to keep it for yourself.

I am not thinking through this completely here, but would require your help as well. But here are some points which came to my mind -

• The IT department has to be more thorough and catch all defaulters; that’s a tough task but that is the only way the corrupt people will be encouraged to come forward with their black money
• People will be encouraged to be corrupt, since there is a legitimate way to declare that income!!
• Government gets an inner cut on each bribe it’s official takes!! A kind of a plough back system!!

What do you think?

Addendum -

Seems this is a crazy hair brained idea as any. Read the comments to know more!!

The kids arent gonna be alright

I was reading this article on how the kids of this generation. The article is more centered towards the American kids, but it does strike a chord home. Are’nt we following their lifestyle a little too blindly?

Follow it up with this article, and you start feeling bad for businesses in the US.

Atlas Shrugged and the Samajwadi Party

This Sunday’s headlines read that the Samajwadi Party has promised that they will ban English in schools and the use of computers at work. I assume, these promises are to woo the masses into thinking that banning English will somehow make us “more” Indian. Banning computers means more jobs (although I seriously doubt that).

I was shocked. Reviled even. In one instant I wanted to kill Mulayam, Mayawati and their minions. Yes, minions is the word, because they are demons; demons for Indian economy. People who learn to exploit the country for their personal benefit under the pretext of social/community good.

But this takes the cake, how can banning English and computers help the Indian nation? It can only cripple the economy ensuring that the next genre of professionals are disabled without computers and incompetent in the global market without English. And we vote for these bastards?!? The link to Atlas Shrugged in my mind was almost instantaneous. They know the underlying concept … and they are exploiting it. I hate the way politics has changed, compared to this, the US presidential elections are a treat. Wake up India!!

Jaago Jaago … Jaago Re!!

I am sure that all of you have seen that ad by Tata Tea (I think I got the brand right) … and some of you might even have tried to figure out what does voting have to do with tea? Frankly, not much.

But have you visited the site – Jaagore? Well, I decided to give it a whirl today. The site is all about increasing our awareness about voting and voter registration. It aims at clearing some of the myths that are amongst us … some of them being -

1. That you can vote only from your place of birth/permanent residence (FAIL)
2. You do not have sufficient proof of residence to register as a vote (FAIL)
3. Voter ID card is essential for voting (FAIL)

Coincidentally, I was talking with Baba about having a political based social networking site just this weekend. The data presented on the site is accurate but could be arranged in a better manner. I hope this site gets more hits!!

Shaadi 2.0

No, its not about collaborative marriage over the web :-). Amol gave me this crazy idea. We were discussing the Indian SMS site, Vakow which enables us to push normal SMS into a web-based RSS/Atom feed. There are about a gazillion applications for an RSS feed. Well, this is just one such mashup between a practical application of Vakow and Google Reader.

Well to be honest, the title of the blog should not be Shaadi 2.0, but rather Event 2.0, but since we are using the my marriage as the event to cover, I decided to name the title so, well ..  and this one is more exciting na? So here is what we did.

1. Register on Vakow, get a username and have your phone number associated with that username, so that you can SMS messages to your Vakow id.
2. You are on track now, and you should be able to post a feed … now that your feed is set, we just need to integrate that feed with my marriage feed
3. Send me the RSS link, I will add it in my Google Reader public folder, and voila!! You can view the sample page here.

People who cannot attend the wedding in person can keep on hitting the RSS page for an up-to-date status.

Happy Dasara!!

Wishing you and your family Happy Dasara!!

Twitter uses

I have posted earlier on Twitter as well, but this time, its for a more practical purpose. It is on how to use this web tool to market your site online, to get those readers/customers to your portal. Social media is a powerful thing, and using it to promote your product/service online at minimal cost is even better :-)

So here are a few ways you can use twitter to tweet your way to more hits.

1. Have an RSS Feed on your site, if it is content based, eg. Crazy Engineers, put that RSS in Twitterfeed, and push out regular updates through twitter! Similar updates can then be sent to your twitter of your blog/corporate blog as well.
2. Once you have your twitter account setup and your tweets are flowing a-go-go, then you can have your social networking accounts like Facebook, to display the same tweet.
3. Take care not to over do the feeds, since your followers can get bugged with you. I know a few friends who have complained of me tweeting of what songs I am listening to and all that jazz, so keep a filter on those feeds.
4. It also helps if you are tweeting every once in a while by yourself, so you get a more human face. For eg. Zappos' CEO, Tony Hsieh is there on twitter, and he actively tweets about his daily routine. How cool is that, direct access to a firms CEO, can you be more customer-centric?
5. Use twitter for simple market surveys, qualitative and quantitative as well. For eg. You can tweet, "What do you think is going to happen to the Indian economy?", the answers would be more than enough to put forth a blog post. Later, you can tweet that post url, and there is a likely chance that people who participated in your twitisurvey would also read your post

Try it out, give twitter a twhirl!!

 

Related Links:-

Pipes, Twits and Feeds

Microblogging

We need more products

With the changes in the US economy, India is feeling the ripple effects pretty early on. Even before the financial giants announced to the world that they are either wrapping up or being taken over, the Indian IT sector knew that times were going to be hard. Layoffs are bound to follow. The dotcom bust 2.0 is here :-). I had earlier written about this on my previous blog. A senior management professional at TechMahindra had predicted this as early as August 2006.

If you see the graph above, the dependence of the Indian economy lies largely with the Service sector, and that dependence has been growing constantly over the past years. We had the green revolution to bolster our agricultural sector, over the past decade, we have seen the IT revolution, that has significantly bolstered our services contribution to the GDP. I know this is obvious to most of you ... but did we all see it coming? And if we did see it coming, then how come none of us sat up and took action.

Would we now try to start a belated industrial revolution, giving more priority for a product-based economy instead of a service-based economy? Can we see the contribution of Indian industry to our nation's GDP increase? Or will our aam aadmi continue giving service to the firangs, depending on derived demand to earn his daily bread.

Smokers Beware

I am generally a tolerant person, but I have decided to step up my protest against smoking. Quite a few of my friends smoke (you know who you are!!). Is it not unfair, to smoke it every day, it's almost criminal. You are not only killing yourself (which is OK with me), but you are also polluting the air for your peers. Thankfully most of the people I know are considerate enough to remove themselves off the premises and go for a smoke. Out in the office corridors, or just outside the restaurant, et al. Have I got some news for them!?!

From Oct. 2, 2008, the Government of India will put a ban on smoking on private AND public premises. Punishable with a fine of Rs. 200/- (to be hiked to Rs. 1200/- soon). These fines can not only be exercised by policemen, but also by school-teachers, bus drivers, motor-men, social workers, etc. Restaurants who have a smoking section will have to keep that in a separate enclosure with a separate ventilation. Employers will be fined a heft Rs. 5000/- per employee. Whoooweee!!! I hope they increase the tax on cigarettes as well.

Let the smokers burn in their own heaven!! Sing the song with me fellows - Bh3nch0d Sutta, Sutta na mila ...