God and Heaven

This morning—the first morning of 2010 or the decade—I woke up with the thought that why does it matter whether there is a God in Heaven. How come we are busy in creating a hell on this earth dreaming of heaven after we die or even kill ourselves in the process? Whether we believe in evolution or creationism we know that every material thing on this earth gets recycled and eventually becomes a part of the earth. Maybe there is a soul which flies off to some distant creator's embrace and experience untold joys but for that we inflict untold miseries on our fellow creatures while talking of sacredness of life in the embryo.

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
-Genesis 3:19 (King James Version)

I am an athiest. I could be wrong about God and afterlife.

I simply don't know and don't care. I will only find out when my body lies lifeless and given up the ghost! But does that matter or even worth worrying about rather than thinking about life on earth and how to make it more enjoyable on this earth.

Web 3.0

Open systems and open mind go hand in hand along with a belief in collaboration for the greater good of all. The information and communication technology is at a tipping point where the business model for selling hardware and software will be non-viable, like cell phones, people will pay for the use of a service. Already the idea of cloud computing, information utility and SaaS (Software as a Service) models are beginning to gain a footing because the role of information and communication technology for tasks at hand is reaching beyond the capability of any one organization. AT&T as a monopoly had to be broken up for the growth of a vibrant telecommunication industry. Unfortunately, the breaking up of the monopoly in itself does not make for an user centric information system.

There are many examples where collaborative effort have led to transformational tools. LINUX is one such example.  Apple's aborted VITAL (Virtually Integrated Technical Architecture Lifecycle) was a methodology which could create an unified and harmonious user view of the information out in the world. But genuinely open systems built with an open mind is the next generation technology. Let's call it Web 3.0.

The pieces are there. Thousands of programmers across the world have written millions of lines of code which are freely available to everyone to use and change the world by an intelligent and effective use of information and communication technology for a better world.

What is missing is an openness of mind which does not seek to control but collaborate. caBIG (Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid) and BIG Health Consortium are two attempts in the United States aspiring to carry that openness and collaboration to enterprise of medical research and healthcare in the United States.

Community Banks: Why not Credit Unions?

There is much talk about community banks. They are good because they are local. Why credit unions do not step up to take on this important role in these difficult times. What we need is consumer as owner of the services because only then we can be assured of consumer interests being paramount.

Credit unions are a tested model with adequate regulations. NCUA (National Credit Union Association) needs to look at the present economic crisis as an opportunity to further promote the cooperative principle and promote local institutions to provide financial services.

There is an opportunity to leverage the refinance of mortgages held by people who are keeping up with payments but are unable to benefit from the lower interest rates. Isn't there a possibility for negotiating with the federal government to get funds to create an innovative refinance program?

Chaos Theory and Don Quixote

Chaos Theory, according to one dictionary definition, is the branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions, so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences.

Modern society is a complex system, therefore, small alterations can indeed give rise to strikingly great consequences. These small changes in Gandhi's ever widening, never ascending circles sustained by Engelbart's knowledge improvement communities provide a possible framework for social engineering for our times.

Unfortunately the business schools are too occupied with a management philosophy for yesterday's enterprise where exploitation of capital and labor and 'unfair competitive advantage' was the key to success. Even one of the richest man created by yesterday's post-industrial economy, Bill Gates, is grappling with the concepts of creative capitalism.

Stanford's James March made a film with Steven Schecter, "Passion and Discipline: Don Quixote's Lesson for Leadership" where he enquires into "...the relationship between public & private life, between cleverness & conscience (?), imagination & intelligence".

March's poem in the program with the film screening read:

Quixote reminds us

That if we trust only when

Trust is warranted, love only

When love is returned, learn

Only when learning is valuable,

We abandon an essential feature of our humanness.

According to March, Don Quixote teaches us that life is to be challenged. Quixote doesn't accept reality. Don Quixote addresses the questions:

1. Why fight when success is not assumed?
   
2. Why be virtous when virtue is not rewarded?
   
3. How do we use vision and imagination?
   
4. How do we sustain commitment?
   
5. Possibility of joy—deep emotion of the soul.

See Peter Chou's WisdomPortal for more detailed analysis.

After All

Driving to work I heard on the radio that Ford's United Auto Workers union have reached an agreement under which "...the workers will allow Ford to make part of its contribution into a retiree health-care trust with stock".  This, according to the radio commentator, may eventually mean that the Ford workers' union will eventually own the company. To me this was a cause of celebration because the energy of the private management will now be harnessed to commonweal instead to non-sustainable greed.

Are we living in strange times? or the devolution of capitalism has brought us to a point where we can rebuild the market economy into a creative and constructive capitalism. The collapse of banking institutions in the United States taking along with it the global economy into depression, is a good reason to pause and re-think our future beyond the dogma.

The socialist state degenerated into the dictatorship of the few over many which was one of the reasons of its collapse. The dream of an utopian society remained a dream and many dreamers ended up in the Gulag or sufficiently disillusioned  to accept the ill conceived ideas of market economy without rethinking the new society. The discrepancy between belief and action further causing a fissure which will eventually suck in whatever good that can come out of embracing market economy.

The need of the hour is for pragmatic social engineering not dogmatic pursuit of political ideas which are often irrelevant and conceived for different times. The world needs to rethink the future of humanity and with hope for a better future searching for ways and means peace and prosperity could prevail. Is this the urging of a man in the last lap of his life? It is more likely the quixotic pursuit in the belief that human beings are at a crossroads where they can build a new society because over the last millennium they have put together tools and technologies which makes it possible to construct an age of peace and prosperity. That is the knowledge society, the very opposite of the Ninteen Eighty-Four nightmare that George Orwell wrote about in 1949. They are equally capable of destroying the civilization—not so much as making the human race extinct by nuclear holocast—through conflict, brutalization, intolerance and fundamentalism.

Jodi Tor Dak Shune Na Ashe (If they answer not to thy call) wrote the poet Rabindranath Tagore, exhorting the listener to continue his or her journey. It became one of the favorite songs of Gandhi. This is the clarion call of today for those who, like Obama, believe in change, hope and the ability of a society to recreate itself.

Slumdog Millionaire

By winning eight Oscars, Slumdog Millionaire provided proof, if that was needed, that the film industries of India and United States need to look at each other as partners because there is money to be made.

I have always maintained that the Indian film industry has inherent ability to grow into global markets. This was the basis of my persuading my friend, Michael Clark, at the time of President Clinton's visit to India in 2000 to propose a Knowledge Trade Initiative. That did not go far but the ensuing exchange and dialog between the two of the world's largest film industries did progress.

Coming from someone who has at the helm of NASSCOM (1989-91), this seemed odd. How can a completely disorganized industry like the Indian film industry be a global player? It didn't make sense.

[Before I go any further, let me express my distaste for the term "bollywood". It simply does not make sense to me. I believe Amitabh Bachchan had similar views.]

To me it did. Maybe it was an act of faith (and wishful thinking) because of my association with cinema since my school days. I will try to put down here my rationale:

• Indian film industry has a strong domestic market and is the main source of popular culture.
• It has an informal system of training and bringing up new talents with an almost no barrier to entry except willingness to submit to travails of being an assistant to someone who is willing to teach you the trade and, unwittingly, share his/her network.
• Many masters of the craft had no or little formal education but what they learnt on the job gave them the means to climb to the top. Mehboob Khan is a grand example but there are many. This is not to belitte the Pune institute, and many who came in its wake, but to speak of the "guru-sishya parampara" a tradition which is well and alive in the Indian film industry. 
• It often lured the people who failed to make grade in the traditional system of education or were too distracted to pursue their studies. Whatever were the reasons, if they were willing to rough it out, find a mentor, and work with him/her, one day they will get a chance to try their hand. Most with any perseverance did.
• It didn't distinguish people on basis of class, caste, color of their skin or religion. There is no denying that sons and daughters of established people in the industry do get a chance without having to struggle as hard as Mr or Ms. Nobody but many people with no connection continue to succeed.

Often the film industry in India has embraced and propagated liberal ideas. Often in too simplistic terms jumbled up in romance. The IPTA people who infiltrated the film world came to make a living as well as get their ideas of hope and change into the minds of millions. It was often about hope of a new age, the archetypal fascination with Naya Daur—and socially relevant message of popular cinema.

There was Information Science before Computers.

I got into computing because of my involvement with bibliographic information system and a quixotic attempt in the 70s to create NILES (National Inter-Library Information System) in India. 

Almost after four decades, I find it amazing, that majority of folks in computing do not recognize that information sciences is almost as old as human knowledge and in post-Gutenberg society finding and organizing what humanity knows has emerged as a field of pursuit.

Unless we go into the seminal basis of information science, informatics will remain confined to what the machines and automation can do. There is an urgent need to go beyond the technology of computers to revisit to the quintessential basis of information science.

The promise of Web 2.o and beyond can only be realized if we were to re-learn with a view to understand Dewey and Ranganathan. Viewed from that prism, work of people like Doug Engelbart, becomes meaningful. Unless that happens, the promise of a knowledge society will remain unfulfilled.