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Showing posts from August, 2011

Third World Problems

By now hurricane Irene would have made landfall on the Eastern seaboard of America. Enough has been said about the biggest storm to hit New York, marked by it’s first evacuation. Amid all the hysteria and confusion which usually accompanies such an event, what strikes me as most hilarious is how some people seem to be most worried about internet access. I wouldn’t be surprised if people include some sort of wireless dongle in their emergency kit! Probably want to check in to Foursquare, post retro pictures on Instagram and follow Irene’s progress on Twitter. If something is not tweeted, checked in or Instagramed, does it make a sound? We, who live in the third world, have our own set of problems. While New Yorkers are worried about internet access during a hurricane, getting a connection from BSNL takes 3 months even without one. I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t happened to me last year. And the journey to get one was both arduous and hilarious.   The first time I we...

The Future Is Here

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke Sometimes it’s even better than magic. Even Harry Potter had to lug books around in a bag at Hogwarts. But not me. I got myself the Nook. In a gadget the size and weight of a single paperback novel, I can now carry at least 200 books! Many a time what we wish for and what science gives us, turn out to be poles apart. 10 years ago I never wished for a pocket sized phone which lets me access the internet whenever/wherever, yet that’s precisely what I got. Similarly, Asimov’s robots & the robots we now have are poles apart. It’s very rare that you get exactly what you wished for. But the latest crop of ereaders including my Nook is the stuff every bookworm has dreamed of. When I was a kid, I used to have to go to the library practically every day to have enough reading material on hand. I dreamed of the day when science would invent something which could hold more books than I can read! F...