Back in the day...

As a kid, I loved going to my grandparents home on weekends to play with my cousins. And we used to go there almost every week.

I was in 1st Standard and it so happened that one weekend, my school, 'Greets Academy' (which my brother used to call 'Monkey Greets' for some reason), announced an event on the Saturday and Dad decided that we would skip this weekend. I was angry, obviously, at the disruption of my normal weekend routine to attend school on the weekend.

But come Friday and the principal announced that the Saturday thing was cancelled.

Yippe! Now we can go but how do we get a car? We didn't have a phone at home at that time.

As I was walking past the 'V Gaurd' office on the way back home after school that evening, I realized, I could make a call from there.

Of course, I didn't have the money to pay for the call, but I knew that if the call was quick and because I was small, they wouldn't ask for money.

So, I entered the office, went to the manager and asked him if I could make a call. He showed me the phone and I made a call to my uncle in Kochi to send a car that evening because I didn't have 'school' on Saturday.

After the call, I put my hand in my pocket as if to reach for money and asked:

"How much?"

"Hey, don't bother." said the manager there.

Phew. I said "thanks" and walked out quickly home.

When I reached home, I told this to my mother who didn't believe me until the car arrived to pick us up.

Whoa!

Mindblowing thoughts from Arundhati Roy on the 'charade' of democracy in India.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/28/author_arundhati_roy_on_conflicts_and

Are these claims true? Or she trying to win the Nobel peace prize? Or is she mad?

Just another brick in the wall

I saw this 1975 movie 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' yesterday. Brilliant movie starring Jack Nicholson.

The central plot of the movie is around how patients in a mental institution become institutionalized under an authoritarian nurse and become patients forever rather than looking forward to go to the outside world. The nurse breaks the patients spirits and makes them a patient for the rest of their lives.

I couldn't help thinking about 'institutionalization' elsewhere.

Employees of an organization which doesn't respect their creativity, end up losing their spirit and become dependent on the system so much that they are afraid to leave the organization to find a new job. Govt employees for e.g. are institutionalized. Employees in large corporates too.

Too many people who are capable of doing better things are instead doing mundane work just because they are afraid of change.

I read an article a while back which said that kids when they start out are very curious about things and quickly grasp things. Curiosity declines in school and finally plateaus when he enters the workforce. Something is wrong.

Pink Floyd nailed it in this song:

My manager often used to say that if not for these rigid organizations, mankind would have made 'Star Trek' a reality by now. I agree.

Essence of a Hacker

Every system has two sets of rules: The rules as they are intended or commonly perceived, and the actual rules ("reality"). In most complex systems, the gap between these two sets of rules is huge.

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the truth, and discover the actual rules of a system. Once the actual rules are known, it may be possible to perform "miracles" -- things which violate the perceived rules.

We're often told that there are no shortcuts to success -- that it's all a matter of hard work and doing what we're told. The hacking mindset takes there opposite approach: There are always shortcuts and loopholes.

Important new businesses are usually some kind of hack. The established businesses think they understand the system and have setup rules to guard their profits and prevent real competition. New businesses must find a gap in the rules -- something that the established powers either don't see, or don't perceive as important.

To discover great hacks, we must always be searching for the true nature of our reality, while acknowledging that we do not currently possess the truth, and never will.

From Applied Philosophy, a.k.a. "Hacking"

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Sometimes, its just the little things...

A colleague at my desk today morning

Thank you for that funny link you sent on Friday. I was rotten after hearing that I was fired that day and it helped lighten me up.

I was shocked. I hadn't known until then that the person had lost her job.

Not really known for being a patient guy, there would have been a countless other occasions when I have shouted or been rude to someone, not knowing what is going on with the other person.

I be damned.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I obviously liked this blog from Dilbert author Scott Adams http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/china_is_doomed/

There is a practicality to an engineer's ideas because they build real stuff. They are generally rational and more focused on getting things done rather than on ideologies.

As Scott Adams puts it:

In other words, they value efficiency over feelings.

But what good is efficiency if there is no freedom? I mean, the Chinese can build all the cool stuff but what use is it if you cannot watch a YouTube video inside your designer house? Or your news is always censored? Or your blog is blocked if it has the word "Tiananmen"?

That is why I think the India model is the right approach. A really inefficient system but with the freedom of thought (for the most part).

A mixed economy with multi party politics resembles a diverse range of opinions where the fittest will eventually survive. See for e.g. How India overtook China in Auto exports.

The problem with centralized thinking is that a single entity cannot really think about every thing, because there are too many things happening.

I think its more akin to asexual reproduction.

A lack of sexual reproduction is relatively rare among multicellular organisms, for reasons that are not completely understood. Current hypotheses suggest that, while asexual reproduction may have short term benefits when rapid population growth is important or in stable environments, sexual reproduction offers a net advantage by allowing more rapid generation of genetic diversity, allowing adaptation to changing environments. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction

And evolution has shown us what wins.