Memes, Google and more

Memes are interesting things. Memes (etymology - to remember), came into popular use with the book, The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. Simply put memes are the counterpart of genes. They replicate, evolve and spread like genes. However, unlike genes, which replicate by the reproductive processes, memes spread by social diffusion. Memes and contagion are closely related. Memes (as commonly misunderstood are not abstruse thingamajigs) are anything that find acceptance in social networks and spread in a virulent fashion akin to a "virus". Memes may be thoughts, ideas or even technology. Although it is possible that the original thought might be contorted in a way that might not suit the originator. Enough of memes though.

Search engines have existed for long in the web-o-sphere, the oldest being Aliweb launched long time back in 1993. Back in the recesses of early 1990's I-am-doing-a-search was uncommon. Common repositories, books and libraries were the source of information. The scene was ripe to undergo a change with the launch of Google in 1998. So it is not surprising for me (a not so tech-aware user of the web-o-sphere), in 2006 that I-am-doing-a-search is common. Google has now become a synonym for searching.

"A - Do you know what memes are?”
"B - Just a sec. I'll do a Google and tell
you."

Coming back to memes, Doing a Google or just plainly googling, has become worthy of being called as a meme. With the rising popularity of Google and its numerous offerings, the meme called Google is not only common but also the preferred means to search. I could not graduate if there was not a Google by the year 2001. Googling spreads from generation to generation by tradition, cultural practices and of course on-site training, true to the spirit of a meme. Google is just not a story of how a meme unintentionally came out of two Stanford University brains, but how something rudimentary as a search can prioritise and prune the way by which people seek information. Today, I will definitely go to a Google to find what I want rather than peruse among 1000's of books that one can find in a library. Google and the internet are a success story that link information and search, intimately affecting the way you, they and I seek and process information.

Coming to the more part of the title. I find it intriguing that several sites (including this one) do not have an option for the users to specify their g-mail ID's as their primary contact detail. (All they allow is a Yahoo, an IM, or an MSN) Probably that g-mail is still not that popular enough, given the burgeoning number of g-mail users (me being one and g-talk is easy).

Is someone listening?

See further

Memes (an introduction)

Search engines (historical reference)

PS - If I do not have to do it quick and dirty, I use wiki.

juste comme ça - design questions

One of the things that always leave me bemused is the aspects of design and its fundamental principles. Definitely looks like a rather over-creative job that well exceeds my boundaries of creativity.

Read this - A designer's take on Google homepage, intriguing enough

Check out the design psychology page here. Worth reading once.

I do believe that the study of usability (and henceforth design), HCI (human computer interactions) will take the centrestage (aka disciplines in vogue) when site counts exceeds normal cardinalities and people will not take for granted the contents strewn around a web site.

CUT ACROSS – INFORMATION

Information and its barriers

This relates to a profound incident that occurred to me. Somewhere on the demography of the blogosphere, I had literally stumbled on to some interesting yet “restricted” blogs that appealed to my sense of “society”. These blogs had some never-been-seen-or-heard-before views of society, which neither I nor my peer group could conjure up. In other words a culture shock.
However at this juncture, one of my friends (a female one at that) prodded me to forward these names to her e-mail. Not even pondering for an instant, I hit the forward button and sent it. The consequences later dawned on me. Obviously, these blogs are explicit in content and on-your-face, calling sex as “sex”. Nevertheless, obviously, I have learnt to go beyond these stereotypes and that is why these blogs appealed to my intellect.
Not knowing how the “passed-on-information” would be adjudged as, I am in a repentive mood. My bringing up has proffered me (as a male), a right to see and learn about all such media. However, the same upbringing did not temper me to the fact that the same is applicable to the other sex also. Even if I learnt about it, it feels like committing a crime. Here comes the information that virtually leapt at me.
Today internetworked world offers a cosmos without boundaries, without age, without sex, without race to anyone seeking information. Cut across several decades back. Information was in people’s heads and the transfer of information was based on the same criteria that have become redundant in today’s world.
The criteria of sex, race, culture, breed, boundaries whether economic or political pose no threat to the flow of information. Just the prerequisites have changed from notions to capabilities. Rephrased the incumbent must internetworked. Since such a paradigm shift also cuts across the cultural and religious implications of nation-society, now I know why I felt like a "sex-offender".
By the way, I have been referring these two sites all along.

Blogs of a human (I would definitely say that)
http://fifthnail.blogspot.com

Blogs of an industry (It is the voice of that industry)
http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com

Rakhi and Cupids

HINDUISM, RAKHI AND POTENCY

The determination of potency (rephrased as the power of cupidity) among the various age groups of INDIA poses a nice case. Consider the tradition (or ritual) of Rakhi, in which sisters tie a proverbial thread on the hands of their brothers (prospective), in order to ensure their protection. With the coming of westerly influences, such a ritual is becoming subject to sarcasm.

You are aged 5 boy, studying in some school, someone ties you a rakhi (a proclaimed female), you say ah wonderful.
Fast forward – 10 years
You are aged 15 adolescent (still), perhaps on the threshold of going somewhere with more freedom (that is what we used to feel), there is a rakhi on your hand, perhaps in some recess of your heart you feel why a rakhi ???

Fast forward – 3 years
In college, a beautiful dame comes forward and ties the “knot”. Your heart beats almost cringing “not me, not now, not here”.

Well some say it is a tactic, an artifice to avoid potential “propositions”. Ah there comes February 14, now your heart says “puhleese let it be me, please now, please here”.

Contrary and then interesting. Well the clue in the formative years. A child just into the world, introduced to Hindu ways of life, reveres RAKHI.
The child grows up, is exposed to other culturisms. These Hindu traditions little by little fade into the background. Human tendency, anything new is interesting.
The child / adolescent is now getting conversant with the huge ballyhoo about Feb 14, which is like an antithesis to rakhi. In the ensuing fight between a cupid like avarice and the pristine “brotherhood”, cupidity wins over.

The adolescent, now a proud college goer, fears RAKHI. Why? Who will tie the “knot”, how will she be like? If she is quite a stunner, then I have probably lost a potential candidate as my Valentine. If someone does tie the “knot”, the peers would say hey bachchaa; you know perhaps she wanted to avoid you, so she tied the “knot”.
This character is stuck between the pangs of “being single and not having a GF” and that of the potential brotherhood that entails. Eventually sarcasm and a profound fear downs the latter and a new sense of optimism gets into “him”. He feels till the next RAKHI, let me get a female companion and walk the MALL STREET.
In fact the thread of rakhi is now cast in different light. From a desire to have some one to protect “me”, to let me protect “myself” from some one(s).
Interesting !!!!!

Arrogate, can I ???

Wondered ever why ………

I wonder why Almighty did not give me the powers to stop the inevitable.

I wonder why I cannot stop myself from reaching the climax in an intimate lovemaking experience or preventing myself the afterglow that comes as a consequence of making love with the self.

Have you ever wondered why?

Every one of us gets accustomed and move on when we are staring in the face of a souring relationship. But one sight of our loved ones or the ones who are still the darlings of our heart makes us gloomy, reeling in the aftermath of such a contact, making us feel why?

Though I may say, yes I have moved beyond and ahead of my past relationship. However, I stutter, shortchanged of words, rather feelings, when I see her. I ask myself; why I did not stop myself, stay there in that moment of existence. Can I now move back?

Have you ever wondered why?

That stolen glance, that momentary telepathy between her, and me that can make me or break me into zillions of pieces. Pieces that never meld back into original self. Proving sometimes the whole can be less the sum of the individuals. Even

Wondered ever why ?

After all the human body is just not a “tarred” collection seemingly disparate objects. Something that is called as the icing comes as a special offer only that when it comes it is inevitable and can make or break you.

Evidently
By a reeling lover……

juste comme ça - part six

“Wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it”.
Shakespeare, in Henry IV
“A vulture flies high in the skies, but its eyes are perched on the piece of garbage littered on the ground”.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa

Products of a panopticon

Here is an excellent article that reflects on our (Indian) education system, which mirrors the TRIPOS system in Britain. We all groomed in our schools to be a foucaultian panopticon. But the truth is that we lose the perspective to be single minded in the pursuit of our interests. While it should be valid that we know something about everything, in that process we end up knowing only something about a particular thing.


The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : School reform: learning from Iqbal

juste comme ça - part cinq

“You believe in the light because of the darkness, You believe in the joy because of the sorrows, You believe in the God because of the Devil…” ENIGMA (From http://wearmyhat.blogspot.com)

I believe that the above statement captures the essence of existentialism. The belief in self is dictated by the existence of the other. One can avoid any debates by saying that "ah everything in this world is relative". That does not end the matter. Saying that you believe in "other" is because of the "self" (Gramsci) . There is one lacuna in this statement. It assumes the implicit existence of the other. Had the other not existed then your cause of belief is lost. It is like a dangling pointer.

The two sides of the coin are connected by the relationship of Oppression.The oppression of the self, creates the need for the other. Simplifying this, it means that due to the oppression of light, the space of darkness is created. This reminds me of a good line from the film BLACK.

"What is the use of eyes if there is no light" ......
In the absence of light, both the blind and the non-blinds are equal. This is what I mean by oppression. If I may say, if there is no light, then all blinds,non blinds are equivalent to darkness.

-----------The violence of self creates the other-------------

If we see at the flip-side of the same argument. Had there been no light, there is no need of darkness. Is darkness the absence of light ? I do not know. If I say that if there is no light, then there is no need of darkness. Is saying that "there is no light" equivalent to saying "there is darkness".

"I DO NOT KNOW". When I write this write this I get this clarion call from the great philosopher of the yesteryears without whom Sartre, Foucault would be like darkness... Nietzche.

HOW DO I KNOW THAT I DO NOT KNOW ..........

Add to this the Neumann principle......

"I KNOW THAT I DO NOT KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT I DO NOT KNOW....."

Going down or turning Page

Reading over the ages has changed a lot. From the days when there was no papyrus to the days when there will be no papyrus. Reading as a concept was popularised with the coming of the printing press. It was the printing press that could make the reading a ubiquitous activity. With the transformation of the papyrus to the stream flow of electrons carrying our fonts and the texts, the way we read has undergone a fundamental change.

The pre-requisite for reading is pleasure. And that pleasure can only be derived from the turning of pages. However in the dog-eat-dog world of today, pleasure has become inversely proportional to the time you have. Therefore we all have to supplement our thirst and quest to read by resorting to the electronic forms. The essential anatomy of reading is co-ordinated from the left to the right. That is why we often feel uneasy to go to captions or footnotes as it breaks this natural movement of eyes from the left to that of the right (Just a note that this does not apply to urdu). Even when we turn the pages of the books it is from the right to
left. Imagine for each page if we had to turn from left to right, we would not be reading anything for the pleasure of it.

However with transport of reading from the left to right to the top to bottom something very fundamental changes. First of all the natural rhythm of reading patterns is broken. That is why we often find it difficult to read in this top-down manner. Moreover books do not have any problems related to that of eye stress originating due to colour or structure of the book. In the electronic forms our eyes are already loaded and irritated due to the intrusion of the top-down mannerism plus one has to adjust the layout of the screen to suit the intensity that can be bared easily.

What used to be referred to as "I have to read 3 pages from Chapter 1" shall now be termed as "I have to read three scrolls from top to bottom". Never were mice so important to reading. Structurally one could the reading is like flow of water. In a book water flows in a continuous manner from the left to right. However in a screen it is like water reaches at the end, then it is re-routed to the next level and so on to the end. Papyrus made using memory as a media of information transfer obsolete. It made information laying and transfer easier.

With the coming of the electronic media the papyrus has/will become obsolete. We all will end up making different meaning by seeing the same set of electrons in our CRT. It is just that these electrons desctruct some natural rhythms and create rhythms of their own. What the electronic media achieves is to break the structure of the book. Rather than make the book look fatter in breadth dimension, it obliterates the entire dimension itself. In these electronic books there is no breadth, there is only length. This is an example of going back. Remember the days when we used to have those lengthy scrolls. It is the same. The e-book is a long book that goes into pages just that organised in a linear fashion.

Suffice to say that - reading earlier used to belong to the three dimensions, now it is just a linear exercise. The tangible feeling that we all experience while reading is now lost. We all are left asking for more, but something at the end we could say yes I read through the entire of this. In other words reading is now de-objectified.

Go down
Down
Down
and down

and if you want
come up

There is no turning back or seeing left or right.

Vacillation !!!!!

Vacillations, indecision and not being able to agree and stand by a single thing. These are few things that all we normal human beings suffer from. Forgive those leaders and managers are already honed to escape from such indecisiveness. Not for us alas.

Ipso facto, technology is also made to reflect this confusion wholly. Just that it just takes the problem to the visual level from inside the human body and the internal thoughts. Just as an example the common Recycle Bin is the perfect example. Often touted or misquoted as a utility to recover all the deleted items. However it is just a application that aids to the same. It is as if you realised that you in a moment of decisiveness had proscribed some artifact and now repenting for that illusory moment of decisiveness. Ultimately you realise that you have to fall back on your in-born trait of being indecisiveness. Here's where the utility comes in and gives you a satisfaction of not being guilty.

De facto technology is not something that humans have to adjust to and internalise them. However they are just the outcomes of the human characters and feelings.Otherwise what would have happened if you did not have the Recycle Bin, i.e. the levels of proscription would have become absolute. The human factor of being indecisive would have been overlooked. Rephrased now the art of being indecisive can be applied to inanimate objects like some worthless MP3 or a .doc file, just that you have 2 levels of abstraction with complete data abstraction from the user.

Few call it usability - I would prefer "indecisive".
Technology is not a vessel that everyone has to figure out how to use, but a mirror in which everyone can see how they are in that light. UGH

juste comme ça - part quatre

"By the end, he didn't trust anyone any more - not even the cyanide capsule he swallowed."...
ERNA FLEGEL - Adolf Hitler's nurse before he died..

Long after hiberrrrnation....
"You can take an .Indian out of India. but not .India out of an Indian.."
Dr R.A.Mashelkar @ IIIT convocation

Good one
"Career planning is an oxymoron, in case you did not realise....."

The anthropic principle
Says that all the cosmic constants were created in just the right proportions and ratios. However this sparks off a debate that creationists often find suiting themselves.
" It was God who tweaked all the knobs that created the cosmic constituents."
One relevant question arises -
"Who tweaked the knobs of the G"....
Interesting. Scientists like Hawking adopt a perception that there are multitudes of universes with different values of the cosmic constituents. Ah but then are there multiple G's that tweaked the knobs in that proportions.

I think Neumann knows the answer to this ....
"I think that he thinks that I think ........ ad infinitum"

being and nothingness

this is not an ersatz exercise. but that is how i am feeling now. i am now being perturbed by a momentous but really sombre feeling of having nothing to do in life. till now i had something or the other to do in my life. till 23 i had to submit a report of my final year in my graduation. till yesterday i had to give a presentation to give. though during that one i was confused whether i portrayed the guts to speak honestly or was trying to manipulate the judges to my private interests. but anyways now it is all gone.
till the moment before i am writing this i had to mend a broken relationship with a friend. unassumingly i have to submit to the fact that this might be the last chance to make or break the friendship. so that is also done now. therefore now it is like i am "being lived" in an etrenity of nothingness. perhaps my body says and agrees pleasantly to the fact that now atleast it can indulge in the otherness that we associate with life. but the soul demands emancipation from the oppression of the nothingness that is enveloping the existence of it.

anyways however the things are gone. now is the time to recollect and relish the memories that have built up with the four year stint at this college. whatever that may be memories are always cherishable.......

i am just feeling like a cry baby and want to break down and shed tears that would make even the Amazon shy away.

ALAS....

retrospection

it is a kind of talent. the demographies of this world must learn how effectively make themselves poor. ( huh i forgot in terms of the seconds of the day they have). it is an art to while away time in a just-like-that manner. thats what i have been trying to do. just while away time in my friend's room asking to burn some CD's. suddenly lotsa people are coming to his room with similar requests. so i am kinda backbenching my requests as it is bound to cause some burn-ass sensation for my friend.
anyways if i dont do this, i just sit in front of the officially allotted at my alma-mater (soon going to be). this pc is supposed to be used to study purposes. owing to time-unbound students like me we have found lotsa other ways to pass our time (or make ourselves poor). we play get bored utter some explosively obscene language. the game we play cOuNtEr - StRiKe. it kinda gives u a feel of killing someone though i am pretty clumsy at that.
meanwhile if iam bored with this i try or sometimes feign to read which i used to do voraciously sometime back. i go to the library pretending to get issued good books that are just added to the multitudes of things on my shelf.

thats it. this is what my life has become in the last four months. i donot say this is agreeably pleasant. but still you have to get past april 26 to get to april 27. wonder if the scientists could invent to help junta like us. to jump back and froth in time. to fast forward it. not to say never to rewind it except for certain occasions.......

juste comme ça - part trois

Ashanti’s song said
“My days are cold with out you, but I’m hurtin’ while I’m here… though my heart can’t take no more I still keep running back to you.”

From a black to a white
"we bout to take that away from you too. first basketball. then boxing. then football.then music. then, to much surprise, tennis. then, to even more surprise and shock, golf.now freaky serial killers.ha!"
.......................................... from a freaky place you never want to go

i am a lunatic
"we all are lunatics , but he who can analyse his delusions is called a philosopher"

an intro for me
"Astrophysicist, round-the-world yatchsman, television presenter. No , I am none of these."

juste comme ça - part deux

" even wrong books outlast their authors" ... from essays on grief and reason , Joseph
Brodsky
that statement captures the infinitive temporaneity of books. well on that strand of thought anything that this human mind produces like one's thoughts, notions, idiosyncracies and well rantings. picture this own blogspot after you and me attain the kingdom of god carrying this huge bulk of worthless blogs in a huge, momentous and really mammoth hard disk. well these blogs are really the outpouring of the few who really blot their lives here on the cyber-ville, in the virtual spaces written in an menacinglyd-delible virtual ink (aha voila the keyboard). anyways such rantings are really going to outlast us, me, you, the person behind (who may blog in the near future) and chaqu'un.

on an "other" note i seem to have discovered that there is no real moment of happiness and contentedness except in the arms of death. just like whats happening nowadays with me. its like a state of being static, being rendered without time. time has no meaning for me these days. its like i have become "ahistoric", without memories.

"we have no past and we think we have no future" and " this present is just like a wind that is blowing but hitherto no one can feel it"

imagine this. i am living in reality which is just a conundrum. i have grown anti-gnostic because i just do not know what to do this moment. what am i going to do the next moment, the next second, the next minute, the next hour, the next day and the next month....................................

this reminds me of a rather pathetic song in a hindi film

"ham hai is pal yahaaan , jaane ho pal kahaaaan.....
agle pal rahein naa rahien"

adios

problemo

after working with a handsome stipend in a reputed co for the past four months or so my friend/ roommate is now stuck in an awful situation. he and some other scapegoats have been identified to be sacrificed here @ ahmedabad. yes this place has been our alma-mater but given the condition of the city we are just like caged birds waiting to stretch our wings and fly away to the nestles of our home-towns and cities. our college which is soon going to end is situated nearby.(though 4 me it is really unlucky as mes parents recently shifted to b'lore leaving delhi)

anyways they are thinking up all sorts of excuses / ploys / and getaways to really get away from here. to all the birdies that are by chance reading this blog kindly send a wish in form of a comment for my friends and other scapegoats.

to all the birdies of the reputed co who do not wish to stay and rot here in ahmedabad.......

my wishes

to talk

whatever medium you might talk, it always gives me an immense pleasure to talk in an "other" language not just "another" language...... it is always like being a member of a langauge speaking community rather than branding myself as "i know this language". just as an example i have learnt french recently (maybe just a survival kit in french from alliance francaise) but it takes me immense pleasure to say that "je comprends francaise et je peux parle de ca aussi"........

maybe its an innate capability.my father is also a polyglot.....another example is telugu. telugu is very close to my own mother-tongue (ma langue maternelle) tamizh (well for all it is not tamil and very few people can pronounce that unique "zh" phonetic) and i simply enjoy speaking in telugu. often people remark that i spoil and destroy when i do so but they just dont get it.....
to put it very succinctly it is like having a "linguistic orgasm"
it is like people internalise somethings.english is such an example. zillions of people all over the world have internalised english.... so it is nothing but normal for all of them.

maybe speaking in an "other" language may seem awkward but since the process of internalisation has not yet begun so it is comaprable to having sex.... very interesting initially ... and then it gets internalised and then excreted... like the same for me speaking an un-internalised language is like having an orgasm (i still havent one in hetero - mode, though i frequently have it in mono - mode)

nenu ninnu premistunnaanu ------ well find out for yourself.

wonderful

i used to think that i have this wonderful capability to shape things up at the last moment and then say yes now i can tell the tale about that. but thats not so it is really wonderful how people can take tension and then procrastinate not just the work but also the tension or pressure that builds up for the last moment.
but hey then another thing happens. people do really work it up very nicely in the last stages also. this was the thing that i observed last three days.i met three friends who were working on something, rather tediously for the past week yet they had relegate or delegate it. contrariwise they achieved the same the last day in less than two hours of effort. (just imagine a project of temporal dimensions of four months being wrapped up in just two hours of slog)

well thats the way students like me and in my soon going to be alma mater work. we just cannot work until the time has come or there is someone who is always trying to shove a bamboo up our "you-know-what"........

melange

everyday i look for new and creative ways to waste time and money. then i take a look at myself and say
there is nothing coming
there is nothing going

i am just waiting
and be waiting

for an end that i am seeing
then i take a nap.

out of work

till yesterday i had been with screaming at myself for not being attentivetowards my project. well till yesterday it seemed that i had a lot of workto do, lots of catching up to do. (well i met my guide also who fed me thepills of fear, anyways i am doomed i know so it is kind of apathy catchingup on me). anyways i was talking about having lots of work to do. well idid some work (lots at that) did some cooking up and lots of use of facial expressions and lies which i think was perfected unto satisfaction.
but as of now after finishing the work and submitting the work to theguide/prof now i am directionless. in the evening/morning/noons i seem tobe without direction with nothing to do like a lost traveller who forgotto take any maps when he left home.well another thing. due lack of attention and apathy are like a symbiotictuple. and it is true. today after the con-se-quence of the sabbatical ihad taken i find myself taken over by apathy, a grave disrespect for whatis going to happen in the coming days of the completion of my graduation.the long period of neglection (better put evasion) has planted the seeds of apathy firmly in the terra firma of my soul.

here i am
i've just begun
yeah here i am
still going bad
going to be still bad
i'm just waiting for the new day

when i can say
it's a new day
it's a new world
i've been waiting for this........

talk about being ersatz........................