There was a time when smart meant intelligent people. But it’s now being used to promote meaningless drivel. Everything is now smart – from phones to cars to cards to electricity grids to washing machines. Put in some obscure bit of machine logic into a system or a device and we suddenly have miraculous machines …
Politicians are the ultimate salesmen. They sell abstract concepts like freedom and values, even if they don’t subscribe to or practice them. They know how to break it down in ways that people with little education or intelligence will understand and relate to. They can take stock of a situation and come up with effective …
There’s a fundamental difference in the way the US sees opportunity and the way India sees it. In India, when there are scores of unemployed with few skills, they are drafted into a government program like NREGA, which promises a minimum wage for a large part of the year, doing menial labor. The single biggest …
His video at TED has been watched over 6 million times. His gentle, yet highly incisive analysis of how education systems need to evolve and handle the unique challenges that children face today has won converts from all across the world. His brand of wry humour portrays the frustrations that parents and students deal with on a …
In a striking Radiolab video titled Symmetry, a simple split screen forces us to contemplate opposites in the same frame. A cat licks its lips while a mouse busily paws its own face. Half of one screen is a close-up of a little girl’s face and the other half a boy’s. A newborn bawls lustily in one-half …
Julian Treasure spoke at TED and one of the things he said made immense sense …” we are moving from an era of conversations to personal broadcasting” So true, isn’t it? We want the world to listen to what we are saying but we aren’t tuned into what the world’s response is. We have given up our …
There’s an ad for a radio station in Chennai imploring listeners to ‘Like’ them on Facebook. It starts off with a weird guy’s voice ‘I am making a sandwich’ (Keyboard sounds) ‘I am eating a sandwich’ (Keyboard sounds) ‘I think I used too much spicy brown mustard'( burp) ‘I burped’. Then a voice over comes …
It’s a true story that defies the convoluted plots fiction writers dream up. Girl meets Boy. Girl Likes Boy. They start living together. Girl discovers Boy is a pathological liar. Girl asks Boy to move out. Boy refuses. Boy rapes Girl. Girl lodges police complaint. Boy is arrested and released on bail. A few months …
Who owns an idea? The one who thought of it or the one who executes it first? In the famous Facebook case, the Winklevoss twins were awarded a settlement of $65 million – a fair price, one would think for simply having an idea and having done very little to bring it to life. In …
By the looks of it, this generation, connected like never before, has everything going for it. They can keep in touch with their friends right from school, get to know what each one is doing without having to make the effort of individually contacting them. All they have to do is follow the status updates …
