Sometimes it's best to do the Clint Eastwood walk into the sunset and be forgotten about.

The curious case of 'Engineering missing the point'.

Years ago I happened to come across an anecdote that highlighted the difference between problem oriented thinking and solution oriented thinking. I'll quote it here anyhow.

During the space race, back in 60s, it became apparent that writing with a ball point pen in space was going to be a problem. Ink wouldn't flow in 0 gravity and 0 kelvin temperatures. This was a problem. The Americans hired a consulting agency and spent millions of dollars in research and came up with a pen that worked in all weather conditions and under any gravitational situation.

The Russians used a pencil.

Something frightening similar and strikingly.. dumb might still be going on under the thin veil of innovation.

Iphone completely got rid of the keypad and made it touch screen. Great idea! I see the merit in this one simply because we dont use a keypad all the time and there's this chunk of space that could be put to better use. A bigger screen for instance. The keypad will pop into prominence just when you need it. Blackberry, being the fierce competitor that it is, does the same. But the big drawback with all this touching screen business is that there is no tactile feedback. Fancy name for a simple thing like getting a feeling of touch when you press that button on your keypad. So black berry's touch screen (See blackberry storm) display has some mechanism to give you just that tactile feedback thing!

I'm guessing they've spent a good deal of green bills shephearding a bunch of engineers across meadows to come up with this. Which is what the original good ol' school keypad did in the first place, except now it's called touch screen with tactile feedback and it is mindlessly complicated.

Engineering missing the point? Engineering can get you whatever you want. It therefore becomes imperative to set the right kind of goals! And when you see a marketing guy shoot him..

Nano

The Buzz is all over. The world's cheapest car is here. The No frills Indian innovation. $2500 and bang you have a car. But this here best describes the innovation gone into making the nano.

Married.

Not me.. But everyone I know. I mean everyone. This morning, sitting nice and pretty in my mail box, was an invitation from one my friends from back home to view her marriage photographs. I was thinking to myself,while I quickly scanned through the photos, wow most of my closest friends are taking the plunge this year. And then I had this conversation with another friend, someone I bumped into regularly at rock concerts in India. Here's an excerpt with some censorship to spare you some frivolous details:

me: hello

Friend: helloz me: how're u doin? been a long time Friend: am okie:)@ yep...long time...how is u? me: im goodme: hows work? are u still with xyz? Friend: left xyz and moved to zxy Friend: whatz news? me: nothing.. im surprised at the lack of stuff I have to say apart from "hello"me: some folks got married.. dont know if you know.. Friend: anyways...but which folks got married?:)! me: x Friend: okie... me: and y..i think Friend: cool:) way to gookie..... u have fun.....me catch u later.... me: sure Friend: add me to ur list of married folks.... Friend: and pass the update to the next person u catch on gmail and have nutin to say beyond hello!

So there you have it, x y z are all married and a few other folks are in line..times they definitely are a changing..

Freedom

It is the most abused term in mankind. Nobody can fathom the true meaning of freedom. But yet we talk about it like it is a birth right, and every human is entitled to it.

What does it mean? Are you truly ever free? So I've broken it down to essentially two questions. What does it mean? It could mean different things to different people and yet we have just one common word for it. Sometimes I think being a human is a curse, we have language and thats a problem because we can express only so much. So what is freedom. Is it physical or is it something that can only exist in the mental domain. To me it is the freedom to think. We only do what we can think. And there comes the other freedom. So you should firstly be free to think whatever you can or want to and later be able to do whatever you think. But the reality of the situation we never really think whatever we want to think. We can't because we have several self imposed restrictions. I can't think that , "Well nothing good will happen to the economy in a year" Although it is true , we call this form of thinking pessimism or negative thinking. I'm not allowed to think that something is not going to work out. That's negative thinking. All good, but that's not freedom.

I read this interesting article online. There is no such thing as free will. Even god is not free. If there is a god in the sense that we want him to be. Here check this out. I'm sure nothing worthwhile in the conventional sense is going to come out of it. But it will definitely bake your noodles. And hey... think! It's the only thing nobody can stop you from doing. Think about everything.

I had to travel half way across the globe, to the most capitalist nation in the world to begin realizing that I might actually be socialist inside. Well, aren't we all in some way or the other. If some voice inside of you says, " Having a coffee with whipped cream and chocolate chips, worth $4, just because you can afford it,when half the world's people do not have water to drink, is wrong!", then you probably are beginning to think that there's something wrong in the world today.

Global economic downturn or no, I'm beginning to think that the current world make up might not be the best we can come up with. Social capitalism, is probably what's really needed. Something that narayana murthy speaks about very often. Equal distribution of wealth. There should be competition only when the basic needs of men are satisfied. You cannot compete with someone who has far less than you, that's not competition, that's a fight for survival. We should be past that as humans, and leave darwinism to creatures lower down in the food chain. I don't know. Really it's all basic moral science we learn at school and home. You cannot be happy if your neighbor isn't happy. How can there be happiness when there is imbalance of any form in the social strata. I have read some horror stories coming out of america. Here's a glimpse. I'm facing recession in virtually every aspect of my life. I'll smile to that :) But I'll let that pass.

There might be caveats when we apply darwinism to the human mind. It really is a social experiment. Only trouble is there is no Dark knight to save us.

The great dictator speech

How much of this applies today? You tell me. I'm posting after an extremely long hiatus, but there are other matters now that occupy my mind. But I'll be back soon to write about what I think of the world pretty soon.