Archive for October, 2008
Technological Obsolescence
Oct 28th
Its been a while since I posted something. Last 10 days were hectic and didn’t find time to put down my thoughts. Yesterday I flew from Hong Kong to Los Angeles – long flight and the new movie options were not exciting at all. So I decided to watch Mission Impossible. What caught my attention was Tom Cruise using Usenet & primitive version of email. It looked so dated that I almost wondered whether I ever used those tools.
Technological Obsolescence is taking place at the speed of light. Last 10 years have seen Mobile Handsets changing a lot – emails getting associated with gmail – people using phrases like ‘just skype me’ for messaging or calls. It will be interesting to see how quickly iPhone, Facebook, Joost, Skype, Gmail become obsolete – any guesses?
God’s Debris & Indian Philosophy
Oct 18th
Today we finally landed at the FIPHK Literary Group meeting – small group from Forum of Indian Professionals in Hong Kong who meet on a monthly basis to discuss a book or two and talk about their own reflections on the books under discussion. Today’s book under review was God’s Debris – written by Dilbert creator Scott Adams… it was presented by Hrishikesh Kulkarni. I’m yet to read the full book – I have just seen parts of it and seen the discussions on blogs & other social media platforms. I think Hrishikesh did a great job in bringing alive the book – lot of work gone into putting the entire book in a presentation.
The book made me think & I felt quite a few philosophical concepts were inspired by Ancient Indian Philosophy. I personally thought that some of the issues were handled very superficially. Not fully equipped to comment as I’m yet to read it fully but that was my first impression. Also I don’t claim to know Indian Philosophy but my exposure to people who know it is pretty high. I somewhere feel that there are a series of Western authors are taking inspiration from Indian Philosophy & then trying to interpret it in their own way. Nothing wrong in that but what disturbs me a bit is that most people try to interpret ancient Indian Philosophy in a very literal manner & thereby missing the deeper meaning attached to different philosophical constructs. Their exposure to India is through translated literature – so they essentially see India through the eyes of the translators (and their perceptions).
Status Broadcast through Ping.fm
Oct 18th
I seriously started using Ping.fm & I must say I’m finding it very useful. The status updates across my networks are quick – in fact Facebook & Twitter are super quick. There are some bugs – my Linkedin status is still not getting updated but I’m sure that will get sorted out shortly. What I like about Ping is its simplicity & multi-device/platform approach. I don’t necessary have to go to the website to do it. I can simply do the updates through emails, msgers or even my iPhone/Blackberry. I know it can be used for many more applications than just Status Updates but I’m yet to fully explore it.
FYI – .fm is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Federated States of Micronesia, a group of islands located in the Pacific Ocean. Just like .tv belonged to Tuvalu – another Pacific Ocean Island. Two small Pacific Ocean Islands controlling two most important media domains – TV & FM – interesting isn’t it?
Strong recommend to try Ping.fm
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