Lamarckian digitalism

Its about my fingers really. Rather my finger tips. Over the last few years, the following gadgets have begun to take their share of the usage of this part of my body - The mobile phone, the remote control and the PC keyboard - these have primarily fought and won their share of usage from the insides of my nostrils, which had primary ownership on the use of my fingertips. Given this rather honest admission of the slimy past of my fingertips, you would empathize with my amusement whenever anyone referred to the "answer being on their fingertips". Not being a great reader, the ends of pages within a book did not really compete in this regard. Also, the lack of a persistent criminal record and minimal fingerprinting also ensured disuse in this regard. Given this background, I am inclined to think how my fingertips will evolve.

Well, at least less of such meaningless posts
The Monk

Reality Bytes

The movie Matrix got it partially right. I was a believer. But now, I am more into Realization. Its fundamentally about reality shows. And here is why it is so, and what it will become.

My basic habit is to flip channels. Years of preferring and watching advertisements instead of actual programs has successfully reduced my attention span to a 10-15 second granularity. So much so that if an ad is a 60 seconder, it seems like a TV show on its own. But thats not the point. The point is flipping channels, and the point is reality shows. Earlier, there was the era of songs. Primarily you would come across hindi-movie songs no matter which channel you went to. This was further spurred by the actress who epitomized the female equivalent of the chest-thumping alpha-male... madhuri dixit and her chest heaving bosom movements, which masqueraded under the garb of a song. Anyways, so now ... its reality shows.

Lead India is one such reality show. The way the Times Group has taken this on makes me feel quite trapped. First off, the complete multi-media dominance of this - be it TV or print. But thats not the irksome part - its the oh-so-high-and-mighty attitude that Times is throwing. Its behaving like the modern day Punjab Kesri. I have never read any Punjab Kesri of the past, all I know is that my history textbooks and the Amar Chitra Katha on Tilak mentioned the Kesri as the newspaper that ignited the spirits and minds of a nation. There was a clear cause then. When newspapers such as the Times attempt to hike their readership and TV ratings thru these inexistent causes, noble as the overall intent is, my cynicism kicks in. And then I liken it to the glut of reality shows.

Another one was one where Cyrus was watching participants pull gags. This was quite truly the eye opener for me. I now wait with bated breath for more such reality shows. Will Harpic sponsor the reality show of people taking a dump or a leak in the public loos in railway stations? Will Johnson & Johnson sponsor the reality show of people cleaning their ears with stuff that aint a Johnsons bud? Will Kamasutra sponsor a reality show where.... hmmm... maybe this website is PG13.

But overall, here's the point. We will move from primitive concepts like work-life balance to Life-Reality balance. This comes from my experience on a recent flight to Delhi. Here is exactly what happened - and it seems remarkably like a prison experience - first, I was frisked at the entry. Then, with a bus full of similar accused, I was heralded to an isolation chamber (the plane). Therein, I walked thru a narrow passage (yes, I've put on 8 kilos) and reached a seat where I was strapped in. Then I was plugged into the Matrix, so to speak, with the headphones and was fed a concentrated dose of artificial laughter in an elimination format version of the laughter challenge III. Yes, the programs are now anthropomorphic, they have generations and each subsequent generation is titled. So we have Ptolemy II, Octavian Ceaser and the Laughter Challenge III. 3 hours of travel aided further by fog, and yes - I am seized with Reality Shows.

And thus the current state of affairs. Reality shows are now soon going to become the birth place of philosophical thought and we should not undermine them. The questions : Who am I, What am I doing, What is my purpose in life... these are the questions that these shows will bring to the minds of the participants and the viewers. For there will be the three classes of society - those that participate in reality shows as contestants, those that participate by casting their vote, and the rest of us... those meaningless nothingness who lead their miserable lives unaffected by all the above, lost in our own reality.

For truly it is the era of the observer, be it the quantum physics version or the Upanishadic version... Reality is in the mind of the be(e)holder

Time to buzz off
The Monk

Return of the Monk

Ok,

Its now 4 months since the last post, 4 months since I joined my new job, 4 months since I had a drink, 4 months since I slept in the afternoon.... 4 months that feel like a full year. Things seem finally in some sort of control - not that its become better, but there is a better sense of control. Rather, if one sees the original structure and setup like a shapeless looped string undergoing a change in shape with any sort of pressure on it, the current structure is embellished with more nodes. The purpose of nodes is to provide a static reference point as pressure is applied on the string, and at the same time, shield the pressure from distorting the overall string architecture.

A useful and easy way to imagine this is to take a rubber band and stretch it across three pins on a board. Vibrations caused by pinching the rubber band would be spread over L/3 in a strong manner, and 2L/3 in a weak manner, where L is the length of the rubber band. With the introduction of more pins along which the rubber band is now stretched, the impact of pinching keeps coming down ... for N pins, the impact is thus L/N. Now, as N-> infinity, the impact is near zero, which is a steady state situation of a perfect circle.

The point here is that there is another hidden variable, which is the interactions between the nodes. If the interaction between the nodes is positive to the overall situation, in my opinion, there spring up virtual nodes between these that work like a surface-tension mechanism to stretch the rubber band to its position of being a part of the arc of the perfect circle that would emanate. In order for this to happen, the idea or the view of the eventual circle that would emanate, in terms of its radius primarily, this idea needs to be consistent across the 2 nodes in question. This is usually referred to by management theorists as "vision alignment", but it is primarily a geometric alignment on the nature of the circle. In more complex geometries or organizational structures, the circle morphs to a sphere and we reach and understand the great Pythagorian obsession with spheres.

Thus, from here on, the blogging begins on Retail.

The Digital Monk who sold from his outlet...