Searching for the end....

As each of us grow up we get exposed to what I can only describe as sturctured competition -- competition where the metrics of success or failure are clearly measurable. You either pass or you fail. You either come first or you don't. You win the game or you don't. But in each case, the metrics are clear. They are well defined. The amount of time is well defined.

Say for example a video game, you have a fixed number of lives, or a fixed amount of time to rescue the good guys and finish off the bad guys. If you do it you win. If you don't it is simply "Game Over". If only everything was that simple.

More and more after having gotten out of school, I've encountered things in which the metrics are not well defined. There is no clear marker to signify that yes, you're done. Because eveytime you reach that point, the markers moved a step further. A little harder, a little further, a little faster.

There have been key incidences which have helped to shape my outlook on competition. I am fiercely competitive -- not in sports or doing stupid things, not for just doing things which I say I would like to do, but fiercely competitive for things which I have personally committed to myself to do. The competition is internal. It's manifestation may or may not be external.

In sophomore year I was thinking a bit too much for my own good -- similar to what I'm probably doing these days. Thinking about things which most people probably think about at a later stage of their life than while they are in college. I got to the point there that I had to literally pull myself out of it and realize that the things I was thinking about had no easy answers and in order to be able to maintain any semblance of order in my life, what I had to do was create milestones... short steps -- the markers which signified that yes, this is done!

The first few markers were obiously academic - and in that effort I put in more time and more effort towards achiving those markers than I would ever want to again. Taking upto 78 units (26 credits in a single semester) and having absolutely no semblance of a life whatsoever. The next marker was to build a company -- that marker was passed as well and it just moved on to a new position.

The problem with the markers of personal and professional life is that they move to easily... they are redefined to esily. I guess that is why I am tempted to go back into a more structured environment of academia... where the goals are well defined and there is an end -- in most cases.

Things people do to earn a living...

Since I was in the LA area and had never really been to a beach, I decided to drive over to Venice Beach. The beach was prety much what I expected - sand, water, people, birds and all kinds of stuff washed up on the shore. What I did not expect however was the crazy things people were hawking along the sidewalk close to the beach - every other tent/stall was a Psychic, Tarot card reader, spiritual healer, chinese masage therapy from Dr. John all dressed up in a lab coat, tattoos and piercings, sunglasses and the list goes on and on. But the number of people claiming to be psychic far exceeded any others. I guess the one good thing about the gullibility and the stupidity of the people is that it makes for a fairly easy profession that almost anyone can take up as long as they can spin a incredulous tale!

Amazing people...

I just finished watching the A&E Biography for Alexander Graham Bell. Though all of us know of Bell as the inventor of the telephone, his work for the cause of the hearing impaired, aviation, the hydrofoil, assisted respiration and even the pre-cursor to x-rays - a device to locate bullets in the human body are less known.

Similarly, a couple of months ago, while on my roadtrip through most of New England, I also listened to Time's compilation of The 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century -- and each one of them was truly amazing. From the leaders like Churchil, FDR, Hitler (even though he may be screwed in the head, he was a leader), Roosevelt, Kennedy, Mandela, Gandhi to Watson and Crick, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Martin Luther King, Einstein, Alexander Flemming, Sigmund Freud, William Shockley, Tim Berners-Lee, Akio Morita, Sam Walton and even Bart Simpson! It boggles my mind to consider the greatness that has been achieved by these people. And while they reached the pinnacle of their contribution to humanity -- they were all people. Each one with their own flaws. None perfect.

As I listened to Salman Rushdie's piece on Gandhi, I realized that what we are taught in schools and in the media is the image of the person. he image the media wants us to see. But the real person behind that image may not be perfect. May not be the idealized human we expect them to be. Rushdie started his description of Gandhi by describing the multi-million dollar "Think Different" advertising campaign launched by Apple Computer in which they showed Gandhi and the words "Think Different". And Rushdie asks the question as to when did this icon for peace become the medium to sell more computers and notebooks to consumers? Rushdie also pointed out that Gandhi too had character flaws -- surprise surprise.

Besides learning about the amazing accomplishments of these amazing people, I think one of the things that made it that much more memorable for me was that these were all real people. They all had their weaknesses -- which makes them like us -- it doesn't belittle their achievements, but instead tells us that despite our own flaws, we too can do things to leave our mark and make our own history.

It is truly an exhilarating experience for me to watch and listen to the successes of people who have gone over and above what most even dream of achieving in their lifetime. To all those who have done so in he past and to all those who are doing it today and to all those who will do it in the future -- you are all amazing people.

Hooray for DVD players, MP3s, large hard disks and Bose QuietComfort Noise Reduction headphones!

Every once in a while I go from one extreme to the other in terms of craving interaction with other people. For the most part I enjoy interacting with other people. But there are days in which I'm highly ambivalent about being around people. Those are days on which I prefer to watch people but not necessarily interact with them. Today was definitely one of those days.

So my answer to this was to go to Starbucks, armed with my notebook full of MP3s, a DVD player, a bag full of DVD movies and audio books from the Carnegie Library and he ultimate weapon in creating your onw personal world... the Bose Noise Reduction headphones.

As I context-switched between a multitude of tasks ranging from writing this blog entry, to writing essays for graduate school applications, to watching Elizabeth on DVD or playing with CSS for my website the headphones made sure I was always in my own personal world and though my peripheral vision would catch people moving around and talking I could only see their lips move and not hear a sound outside of what I chose to pump through winamp or PowerDVD - just the way I like it.

A public solitude -- all of my own. A public place with my own space. The ideal place for a pseudo-recluse.

Nothing's changed... we're still animals...

Over the centuries and the millennia, humanity has come to think that it is superior that the other species of the animal kingdom. Humanity is civilized. Civilization has become the cornerstone of history as we know it. We're not the barbarians that we once started out like. Not the animals. We've evolved. We've become intelligent. We've become superior.

I beg to differ. Humans are just as much animal-like as they were when they first started. Just the means and the methods have changed. And in some cases, animals are better than humans. Animals don't systematically plan and organize the destruction of masses of their kind. Though they may kill their kind, it is generally for self defence or with reason and even then, they do not organize concentration camps and devise means of excruciating torture, where death becomes preferable to life itself.

Humans with their advancement of technology, engineering, intelligence and everything else have still missed the boat on the overall ability to really understand the meaning if the word civilized. History is witness to the immense cruelties inflicted on man, by man. Be it for the cause of money and greed, religion and belief (probably the most scary in terms of the scale of attrocities that have been committed in the name of religion...), lust, power, fame, fortune.

Even today, the same story contiues... in one form or the other. Some of the issues surrounding the major conflicts of contemporary times are completely incomprehensible to me and defy my ability to have sympathy for either side. As to me they're both being irrational and there has to be a way and a compromise to be able to resolve their differences without being such mules.

The only explanation which works as a cop-out is one which removes all the basis for even attempting to understand humanity... we're still animals... and nothings changed.

"Insane perseverance in the face of complete resistance"

On the first day of his class on entrepreneurship, my professor Jack Thorne gave us the definition of Entrepreneurship: "Insane perseverance in the face of complete resistance." At the time, I was not officially enrolled in his class. Not because I didn't want to, but because the class was already full and I was enrolled in the School of Computer Science - not in the business school. But in those forts few minutes of the first class, Jack had given me the ultimate argument to make sure he accepted me into his class. I would not take no for an answer.

That was nearly five years ago. And as I think about any human achievement that has ever been attained by the great people in the world, a trait which stands out is perseverance. Perseverance which encompasses patience, tolerance, pain, regret, hard work, diligence, intelligence, vision, passion, courage, strength and will power. So I have to thank Jack for that lesson... and for that definition which seems to be more and more relevant every day.

It seems that the perception of an "entrepreneur" is bi-polar. To most people the word entrepreneur is often synonymous to the words "con-artist", "opportunist". When someone is "enterprising" it could mean that they are using means that you otherwise wouldn't. Unfortunately, that commonplace thinking berates the great entrepreneurs of our time. Most entrepreneurs are different because the things which make an entrepreneur tick are different. And yes, several of them posess character flaws as well, but they also have traits which make them rise to unprecedented levels - be it Bill Gates (Microsoft), Henry Ford (Ford), Sam Walton (Walmart), Akio Morita (Sony) or the numerous others.

The definition of Entreprenuership above is incomplete. It needs a qualifier. Insane perseverance is okay, but only if you know you have a chance, however slim that chance may be. A smart entrepreneur or anyone for that matter, will know how to pick the his of her battles and when to concede and move on to other options.

The ability of humans to persevere and surmount the odds that come their way is fascinating. Somehow... we always survive and and make a comeback.

The hijacking that really wasn't!

In India there is an urban legend, that when the Russian's came to visit India for the first time they looked at the state of the country and commented: "The fact that India runs proves that there must be a God...". I'd call those Russian's optimists... :)

Here are two article about a recent "hijacking" in India... you just *have* to read them....

Bizarre 'hijack' drama ends peacefully

'Hijack fishy', says passenger

Netspeed...

This evening as I sat at the office at 11:30 PM at night (not unusual for me by any means), I was doing atleast about half a dozen things at the same time... I was composing a document for work, chatting with a co-worker on ICQ, chatting with my mother on Yahoo! Messenger, talking with Karenika and another friend on AIM and at the same time also surfing the web and writing up the previous blog entry. And while I did all of that at once, it was a just an amazing feeling to realize that ALL of that... every single one of them was only possible because of the power of the Web.

Yes, it's cliched to say the Net changes everything.... but for me and for ALL of those people who have grown up with the Net and especially the generation after ours for whom the Net has always been there... it's a complete paradigm shift. The social impact of the Net is probably orders of magnitude more profound than anything anyone could dream up of in "e-commerce", "b-2-b" or <insert buzzword-compliant word from e-high-tech jargon dictionary here>.

Socially, the Net has caused changes which we didn't even imagine or forsee. IM'ing is a huge one. I still don't believe that the full potential of IM'ing has been realized to date. As I write this, I'm concurrently holding conversations with people in New Delhi, New York, Boston and Pittsburgh.... all at once. And my mind, like the minds of several others out there and especially the newer generation, implicitly understands the concept of "threading" conversations, i.e. holding multiple conversations at once, while maintaing the state in each individual one. The ability of the mind to multi-process has become a heck of a lot more commonplace than our parents and grandparents could ever imagine.

Information access... I talk to people from different countries and different cultures everyday. There are cultural references which are now resolves in under seconds... My friend in Boston used a reference in our discussion this eveing which was alien to me... but within seconds, I was on a page which explained it. (Did I mention that Google rocks :-) ) I truly cannot imagine what people did in the days without google! Last week, as I was writing code, I made the same remark to a co-worker, "how the heck did people write code without google!?"

I know that Carnegie Mellon, my alma mater, has a reputation for being about as geeky as geeky can get (It was recently again named "Most Wired" - which is somewhat ironic, since the reason CMU was named most wired is because it is really the most unwired since CMU has the single largest installation of a wireless network - you can literally take your notebook and walk anywhere on campus and be on the Net all the time.) So my being from CMU and and interacting with primarily CMU folks doesn't give the upcoming observation a very un-biased sample set.... but... Even in something as basic as dating, the Net generation doesn't think of getting phone numbers... they thing of getting an email address or an IM id.

I'm sur there are enough people doing their Ph.Ds in examing the social impacts of the Web and I really didn't write this to steal any of their thunder... but I truly do believe that of everything the Net is credited for, its role in reshaping society and culture as we knew it is probably not given its due credit.

Copycats

In the days after the aftermath of September 11th, the thing that bothered me the most and what I wrote about was that suicide attacks essentially changes the entire dynamics of dealing with hijackings, hostage situations and virtually any threat. Thus far, the assumption has always beent hat the prepetrators atleast fear death and want to get themselves out alive and therefore that gives us a few means of trying to analyze a situation. But when people lose respect for life and they have nothing more to lose, then it changes the rules of the game.

My mom forwarded me this news story this evening: Suicide attack in J&K assembly kills 29. If you look at the story and see the picture of the car that was used in the attack... a Tata Sumo is about as big as a Land Cruiser (okay, definitely yuckier than a Land Cruiser, but dimension wise that would give you an idea). This is precisely what is scary... the fact that there will be more lunatics who will make belief their weapon (see my previous diatribe on this in the archives).

I think the best illustration of how this changes the rules of the game is in this story where a United Airlines pilot delivered a pre-flight speech in which he instructed passengers how to overpower any hijackers that might be aboard. An article on Salon.com - Experts urge airline passengers to fight that was linked to the story also put it well:

The take-charge approach is a shift in decades-long attitudes by both pilots and passengers that cooperation is the best approach for dealing with hijackers.

But that belief "was based on the fundamental premise that the hijackers are rational human beings and want to live," said Raleigh Truitt, a pilot who heads his own aviation consulting firm in New Jersey.

"When you're on an airplane and it's controlled by people who are ... bent on destroying themselves and others," he said, "the reaction has to be different."

Be it a plane, a car bomb, a shooting spree, biological weapons, chemical weapons or any other form of action that causes harm to innocent people... what is really the recourse against such brainwashing and complete loss of sensibility? Is there any?