Wisdom at the Level of Practice and Articulation

Wisdom at the level of practice and wisdom at the the level of articulation are two different things. We all possess wisdom at the level of practice (well, most people in most situations); what is rare is the ability to bring this wisdom to the level of conscious thought, articulate it, and substantiate it with evidence. This is what academicians do. While common people have strategies or solutions for various situations, academicians provide rationales or explanations for those strategies/solutions. These explanations may however be of "academic" interest only, sans any practical value.

For example, in the field of business, executives or managers know what strategies to use in different situations, whereas academicians/researchers in the field of business provide explanations for those strategies. Business consultants, I think, fall somewhere in between; maybe they are closer to practitioners (executives/managers) than to academicians.

Crime: A Marshy Territory

Crime, in most cases, is a one-way street. It's like a marsh: if you land on it, you will only sink into it; there's little chance of your coming out of it.

Similarly, once you commit a crime, it becomes very difficult not to do it again (and again). In some cases, the rewards of the crime tempts you to do it again. In other cases, the collaborators in your crime push you or blackmail you into commiting the crime again, because they now have incriminating proof against you. In any case, after the first crime, the power of conscience and the fear factor do not deter you any more.

Moreover, once you commit a small crime, it's likely that the gravity of your crimes will go on increasing.

On the Same Wavelength

An advantage of reading other people's blogs is that you'd discover that your ideas, your feelings, your emotions are not odd or quirky; there are many people who share your ideas, feelings, and emotions. This discovery reinforces your ideas, your views. You feel more confident.

We did not have this facility before the Web 2.0 age.

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

Just finished reading 'The Last Lecture'. The book is an expanded print version of the celebrated lecture delivered by Randy Pausch, the late Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor, in September 2007, after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and had just a few months left to live. He passed away in July 2008.

I want to view the lecture too on YouTube, but the slow internet at home is not letting me enjoy the 76-minute video without interruptions.

The book is full of insightful gems... here is my selection:


I won the parent lottery.
I was born with the winning ticket, a major reason I was able to live out my childhood dreams.

(p. 21)

He'd [Randy's father] also warn me that even if I was in a position of strength, whether at work or in relationships, I had to play fair. "Just because you're in the driver's seat," he'd say, "doesn't mean you have to run people over."

(p. 23)

Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.

(p. 33)

The brick walls are there for a reason. They're not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

 (pp. 51-52)

He was proof that, sometimes, the most impenetrable brick walls are made of flesh.

(p. 53)

Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.

(p. 111)

Remember the head fake? That's when you teach somebody something by having them think they're learning something else.

(p. 127)

Somehow, with the passage of time, and the deadlines that life imposes, surrendering became the right thing to do.

(p. 136)

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

(p. 147)

Sometimes, all you have to do is ask.

(p. 177)

Optimism Is Opium

Optimism is the opium of the people.

- Milan Kundera (in the novel 'Joke')

The quote alerts us to a common pitfall.

What we need is a healthy balance of optimism and realism.

Pattern in Thoughts

Sometimes, on looking back at previous work, you find a fortuitous thread that suggests more coherence exists than is felt through daily developments of concepts.

- George Siemens, an expert on learning, in his blog

True. I have myself been surprised by the coherence in the ideas that I expressed at different points in time.

What Is Spawning Violence All Around Us ???

Serial blasts in Assam: news on TV this morning.

There is so much of violence around us today: Islamic terrorism everywhere in India, Maoist violence in the eastern and central parts of the country, ULFA terrorism in Assam, and various streams of terrorism in the rest of the North East. I am intrigued; I feel ignorant for not being able to comprehend all this violence. Well, to be honest, I have little understanding of even the Punjab terrorism prior to the Operation Bluestar - assuming I can ascribe the violence after the Operation Bluestar and the Delhi riots to the injury these events caused to the Sikh psyche.

One can say that the Islamic terrorism is an international phenomenon, but what about the Maoist and other streams of terrorism that are indigenous?

I think I am not clued in on the origins and motivations of this violence because I am disconnected from a large mass of the country. And I am not an outlier; my disconnect and ignorance are reflective of the state of the nation today. There seems to be an unprecedented socio-cultural disconnect in the country today along class, community and regional lines. The urban India is socio-culturally disconnected from the rural India like never before; the middle-class India is socio-culturally disconnected from the lower-class India like never before.

How has this disconnect come about? If anything, poverty and hunger levels have come down sharply in the last 20 years. Then why is there so much of social unrest? Is it because of the widening gulf between the rich and the poor despite the poverty levels coming down? Is it to do with the growing awareness among the marginalized people and their aspiration to claim their rightful place under the sun? I am groping for answers.

There is a lot of triumphalist noise in India today. There is a sense of profound economic achievement and much of it is justified, but it is also important to listen to other noises. Something extraordinary is happening between the rich and the poor. Once, there was at least a common culture between rich and poor, but that has been eroded, and people have noted that.

… A large number of people are not benefiting from the economic boom.

- Arvind Adiga, writer

Profession of Policing

Policing is not like any other profession. A policeman is continually exposed to the underbelly of society. This does not make it an easy or likable profession, at least not for me. As I have written before, your profession influences your personality to a considerable extent.

Lure of Lucre

I don’t really care for money, but love the things money can buy..! :)

These are someone else's words in the blogosphere, but hold true for me as well.

'Things', for me, would include things, experiences, feelings, and relationships.

Here is what money gives me by way of 'feeling':

The happiness that money brings is not having to worry about it.

- Jose Ingenieros

Efficiency Vs. Effectiveness

Recently I attended a training program on time management. Overall the program wasn’t great, but it provided me a couple of useful distinctions:

• Urgent tasks vs. Important tasks
• Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

The Harvard Business Publishing website has a good, short article on how to deal with the dilemma of urgent and important tasks.

The Efficiency vs. Effectiveness distinction was first made by Peter Drucker:

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. For manual work, efficiency was enough. In today’s world, the center of gravity has shifted from the manual worker to the “knowledge worker”. For knowledge work, effectiveness is more important than efficiency.

- Peter Drucker

Effectiveness is basically the ability to pick out and execute the tasks that are important.

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.

- William James

Sound of Music

Browsing through the blogosphere randomly I stumbled upon a picture that reminded me of a similar picture of mine. The dateline of the blog post reveals that the two pictures are one year apart.

These pictures are taken in the Austrian city of Salzburg where the legendary Hollywood movie 'Sound of Music' was filmed. A guided tour of the various shooting locales is an essential item in the itineraries of all tourists from English-speaking countries (the movie is not known in the non-English world). The bus in the pictures is of a popular 'Sound of Music' tour operator in Salzburg.

I must tell you about our guide for this tour - Trudy. She is the most amazing guide I have come across. Her voice quality, bredth of knowledge, sense of humour and exuberance are exceptional. The Net has so many blogs heaping praise on her. Here is a picture of hers. The structure in the background may remind you of 'Sound of Music'.

To Simplify or Not to Simplify

Seek simplicity and distrust it.

- Alfred North Whitehead

What a simple and insightful quote!
 

Assuming that by 'simplicity' Whitehead means 'simplification', I interpret the quote as follows:

Simplification involves ignoring some part of reality, especially exceptions and outliers, and so it does not bring out the whole truth. It is nevertheless immensely useful for comprehension and communication.

 

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
- George E. P. Box

 

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

- Colin Powell

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

- Martin Fischer

Showing Emotions

Hiding your feelings is passe. Now it's cool to be emotional.

- Trend spotting by The Times of India (7 Jan '07)

I think blogging is reinforcing this trend. I, however, remain old-fashioned in this regard.

Lest You Forget

What tools people use to preserve personal memories? Off hand I can think of the following:

• Photographs
• Personal writings (for example, journal, blogs, e-mails, letters, etc)
• Mementos

They also use scrapbooks in the West.
Am I missing out something?

You know the question about what you would grab if you could if your house went on fire? What do you normally answer? I think that one of the things that I have always held dear is my collection of photographs.

- From a blog

One of the reasons why people hold on to memories so tight is because memories are the only thing that don't change when everyone else does.

- Anonymous

When does an 'event' become a 'memory'?

When does 'memory' become 'trivia'?

I agree and hope there are a lot of memories that are not trivia! I am more perturbed by those memories that should not be 'trivia' but end up becoming so...

- From another blog

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

- Gabriel García Márquez

Separated in Childhood

I am so excited at finding two long-lost friends – Pravir Chand and Sanjay Dokania – on the Internet (even while not being able to find several others). I haven’t seen them for years...er, decades. Pravir was my classmate and closest friend in primary school – Shishu Niketan. I knew that he studied engineering at BIT Sindri, but had no clue about his whereabouts afterward.

Sanjay Dokania was my junior in Patna. He went to IIT Mumbai from there. I lost track of him after that.

I am excited to find them also because they have hardly any footprints on the Internet. Google could find just one page each carrying their names. They have obviously played no role in creating these pages, and most probably are not even aware of these pages. The solitary link for Sanjay is in fact broken; I could view it thanks to Google’s cache. :)

Christina's Online Interview on National Identity

I responded to an online interview by Christina Daniels on her blog. Christina is an ex-colleague and friend from my IBM days. She is doing this interview for a book she is writing on the theme of national identity.

Christina’s questions and my answers

1. Going back to the time when we had only one channel in India, how would you say that Doordarshan affected your concept of what it means to be Indian?
   Before the advent of cable television, Doordarshan was the only audio-visual medium (apart from the occasional movies), and it naturally exercised a powerful influence on my perceptions and thoughts. Doordarshan projected the image of India as a country that embodied ‘unity in diversity’, that had a glorious history, rich culture and great leaders, that had a secular, socialist and welfare state, and that, though presently impoverished and underdeveloped, was poised to develop into a great nation before long. Being an Indian was being a citizen of such a country.
   
2. In the days, when Doordarshan was the only television broadcasting body in India, which are some of the programmes that stand out in your memory?
   Quiz Time, Chitrahaar, Hum Log, Buniyaad, Ramayan, Mahabharat, Nukkad, Janvani
   
3. Did you perceive Doordarshan as attempting to create an ‘Indian’ identity? And if so, was this identity accurate?
   Doordarshan, being a government channel, did try to overlook the darker side of our lives – the hierarchical and feudal character of the Indian society, the corrupt and pseudo-democratic nature of the Indian polity, and the highly inegalitarian and monopolistic nature of the Indian economy – and projected only the brighter side. Thus the Indian identity created by Doordarshan was partly real and partly false.
   
4. Has your concept of being Indian changed since then, or does it remain the same?
   My concept of the Indian identity has definitely undergone a change, as I have access to a variety of media now.
   
5. Since the time that cable television has been introduced, what are some of the programmes that stand out on TV?
   News programs with on-the-spot, live footage; reality shows on singing competitions
   
6. Do you think that cable television has in any way changed your concept of what it means to be Indian?
   Cable TV channels are different from Doordarshan in that they exist to earn profits from advertisements. They therefore cater to those sections of the society that have purchasing power. So their programs are mostly for and about the high-class, Westernized, urban section of the Indian society. This naturally colours my perception of the Indian identity.
   
7. Moving on to the coming of the Internet, how do you use the Net?
   This question is not clear to me, yet I will give it a try. I use the Net for several hours every day, and I use it at both office and home. Does that answer the question?
   
8. Which are some of the sites that you most often frequent?
   Gmail, Google, Wikipedia, Linkedin, Orkut
   
9. Has the Internet in any way affected your perception of yourself as Indian?
   Since Indian engineers have played a big role in the IT revolution, Indians in general have a significant presence on the Net, for example, in online groups, discussion boards, blogs, etc. This makes one more confident and more proud of one’s Indian identity.
   
10. Does the Internet make you feel part of a larger global community, as against an Indian community?
    Yes, the Internet has made me much more of a global citizen. National identities are definitely blurring.

Term-dropping

New terms are hitting me so frequently these days that I am almost suffering from a terms-overload. Intrapreneurs... crowdsourcing... cloud computing... it's an unabated downpour.

I think it's high time I also coined a term and unleashed it into the webosphere :)

One Side of the Story

Your profession colors your thoughts, your perspectives - because in different professions, you face different kinds of issues, interact with different kinds of people.

As I was reading yesterday's (30 May, 2006) newspapers, I felt that your thoughts and perspectives are colored even by the newspaper you read. If you read TOI, you are likely to become an anti-reservationist, and if you read Hindu, you would perhaps become a pro-reservationist. The extent of selective (and thereby biased) reporting these newspapers do is atrocious. However aware and alert you are as a reader, it would be really difficult to recognize the biases of the newspaper in all cases, and consequently to escape being influenced by them.

Total Internal Reflection

I have heard one story about a worker who got so distracted by a mole on the back of her colleague’s neck that she was unable to think about anything else. When making important phone calls she’d see the mole and would be unable to hold back fits of the dreaded giggles. This didn’t go down too well with clients and she got the sack.

This is an extreme, amusing, (and rather unusual) case but it illustrates an important truth. Our environment can create one-track-mindedness. It can stifle the flow of new ideas. Same mole, day in day out. One track-thinking, mole in, mole out.

- from the Net