Monday, March 30, 2009

Privacy, innovation, the credit crunch, and free-speech, via Hirschman

Chandrachoodan has has speculated that the clamour for privacy stifles innovation in web companies.

In many respects I agree with him that as a voluntary subscriber of a service, one does tacitly agree to the potential risks that come with an innovative product. What if they steal my credit card number? What if they know how large my penis is? Well, bulk ordering condoms online does have such risks attached, but it is so much more convenient no? And who ever asked these people to buy those houses?

Yet, there are certain things in his argument that don't cut it for me; and C being the nice chap he is had a brisk chat with me this morning so that I could clarify my arguments and write this here.

His primary case is for hitherto undiscovered and gloriously beneficial uses of mined data. Now come on, what if there is conclusive proof that those whose visits to the Savita Bhabhi website consistently lasts more than 7.5 minutes everyday have erectile dysfunction? A strategically placed advertisement could save many relationships.

Granted, mindless activism stifles innovation in the name of keeping the best interests of the consumer in mind. But dear Chandru comes up with an equally audacious Orwellian claim to highlight his point: "information about you is essential to safeguard you".

For being respectable proud Capitalists, we tend to be extremely vary of any and every Commie trick.

Unfortunatement!

The market is self correcting, the market is perfect, and the market is good... and that is where we fuck up. For all this to be true, one needs to do two things: have a defined idea of what 'the market' is, and believe that optimum solutions are best solutions. i.e. make a value judgement (always positive in case of Capitalists and negative if your persuasion is Commie) of the 'market product'.

In my continually evolving understanding, neither does the 'market' exist with finite definition, nor is it wise to call it 'good' (or bad). Any high-school nerd who reads Shaiva siddhantha via popular quantum mechanics will tell you that what we desire to understand just is... neither wave not particle. Well, the market is a process, an emergent process, and like the Shiva lingam... just is!

So to attribute values to the outcome of a market process is dubious, more dubious is to assume positive externalities and enforce our limited understanding of the Market/Shivam to define and conserve it.

As a result we believe that "information about you is essential to safeguard you". Why not? We did tell that guy who saw his bank taking up them securitized mortgages, "What on earth you complainin' about, you risk-averse commie nitwit? Don't you know this is the Market? If we sell a duff product, it is rejected. Plus look at what the credit agencies are saying?"

Albert O Hirschman spoke about ‘exit’ and ‘voice’. Basically, as a consumer when you have the option to exit you do. When you have the option to voice, likewise. When exiting is difficult you voice, and when voicing is difficult you bloody well try and exit.

In politics we call ‘voice’ free-speech. And that is because not all nations have open borders that somehow glorious market competition and consumer ‘exit’ will ensure freedom and justice. Unqualified free-speech is essential in the absence/limits of exit (or entry) options.

Therefore, dissent is very much part of that emergent market process. If we think that dissent kills innovation, we must also remember that if there is money to be made of an innovative product, at-least the next bloody inventor will tailor his product to minimise consumer resistance or opposition. Therefore you have innovation as well as safeguards. And products evolve until we get extremely interesting things such as securitized mortgages. This belated, and therefore harder market correction is going to make that innovative product just that bit better.

So it is not just wonky incentives, and copy-cat mentality that perpetuates stupid and risky products or web services. It is also the really dim understanding that Shivaroopam is Shivam. That if it looks like the Market, it is perfect and needs no correction. The Commie cannot kill Capitalism, but can surely thrive on its carcass! As a result you have more regulation, less innovation, and are well on your way on the road to serfdom.

Labels: Economics, Libertarianism, Links, Politics

Saturday, January 10, 2009

On why only pompous gits might read The Hindu

On the front page of today's Hindu is this classic headline:

"Order allowing plea challenging appointment of Ananth stayed" (link)

Now, unless you are Humphrey Appleby intent on throwing your interlocutor entirely out of the loop of understanding by unnecessarily, and by implication utterly callously employing a complicated syntax, thereby effacing your possibly deductible bias, while simultaneously projecting an air of informed formality and rigorous neutrality, obfuscating clarity by employing a redundant turn of phrase, and entirely out of the necessity of not creating unwanted non-negatives proving you are a pompous git, why would you write a headline such as that?

The Times of India on the other hand, spares our brains the gymnastics and says:
"HC backs Ananth as IIT-Madras head"

...

Can you think of other great headlines that can now be Hindufied? Here are a few. Add more in the comments.

Kurukshetra, 7th May 1040BC
Krishna clarifies stand on claims of his not referring to battle elephant while denying his lack of ignorance on the non-demise of Teacher's son

Jerusalem, 4th April 32
Pontius Pilate quashes rumours of his possible support to the alleged non-existence of the Judaen People's Front (J)

New Delhi, 30th January 1948
Paternal Parent of the Nation allegedly assaulted by possible man wielding projectile weapon resulting in no-uncertain termination of living functions of the former

Washinton DC, 20th July 1969
American President denies reports of him as not announcing possible lunar contact by humans

Labels: Humour, Links, Media, WTF

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Meandering thoughts roughly guided by UCSD, Ibn Battuta, and others

The University of California at San Diego runs this absolutely fascinating course called Making of the Modern World. Apart from a very interesting interdisciplinary (literature, history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, and the fine arts) approach to understanding the world and its history, it boasts of some utterly engrossing lectures by Prof. Matthew Herbst.

I first got to know of this when JK wrote about and linked to the MMW4 (fall semester) lectures that were being podcast. I promptly subscribed to the feed and was immediately hooked. Of course me being a slightly clumsy git, forgot to heed JK's warning, and only managed to get lectures 1 through 9 (plus 19 courtesy iTunes automation) before the podcast was killed and all its traces Stalinized. If anyone is reading this at all, I would be happy if you could help me get hold of the rest of the lectures. Thanks in advance.

The early lectures of MMW4 that I have listened to now have kindled my interest in the 13th century Islamic world. I now want to go to Morocco and follow Ibn Battuta's travels. Would even love to go take that course at Eleanor Roosevelt College if I could (Alas I need to earn my booah no?). Have been advised by the lovely Adrianna that I should go to Turkey at least. Though I think learning Arabic and smoking up with some Sufis might only be a remote possibility.

The other great history podcast I listen to is a vestige of my Radio 4 listening days in Bristol, In Our Time with Melvin Bragg. It is through this wonderful programme that I first got a deeper glance at the contributions of the medieval Islamic world. Heck, no Avicenna and Averroes, then no Thomas Aquinas, which means no Latin or Enlish Aristotle nor Plato, down to no Karl Popper even. So much so for western civilization Dr Pandey rightly calls it names! (OK that is a simplistic version of probable events, but you get the implications).

Recently I have been putting some gyan on the Satin mailing list about fractals and religion and state and law and ideas and Jefferson and Iannaccone. Once I clarify my thoughts I might even blog it, but I now have a better understanding of the 13th century Islamic world. Contrast it with how things are today, and it is sad indeed how history has turned out to be.

Meandering further on that thought, I recently finished reading William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal. The first thing that book taught me was a gentle questioning of Edward Said's critique of Orientalism, in the spirit I first encountered in Trautmann's Aryans and British India. Yet, the most important thing I took from Dalrymple's brilliant book was its Burkean warning about learning from history. And talking about books and history, Chapati Mystery has put together a mouth-watering list.

Now, trying to cleverly reconnect my bibliophilic detour back to Prof Herbst's lecture, here is an interesting book he refers to: Before European Hegemony by Janet L. Abu-Lughod. (psst, dont be put off by words like subaltern and hegemony, yes it gets quite irritating after undergrad in places like Loyola or DU, but an open mind is always good). For someone like me who likes to dabble in economics, trade, politics, and their history, this book should be a very good place to spend some time in.

...

(the curious punctuation above points to a general drought of any more clever ways of connecting the next random series of thoughts to the ones before)

Interestingly, today's lazy afternoon TV watching yielded via Dan Cruickshank the knowledge of a Hindu Temple in Azerbaijan. Wikipedia says that:

Quote

Inscriptions in the temple in Sanskrit (in Nagari Devanagari script) and Punjabi (in Gurmukhi script) identify the sanctity as a place of Hindu and Sikh worship. These inscriptions date from Samvat 1725 to Samvat 1873, which though unambiguous references to the Hindu calendar, cannot be precisely dated since there is more than one Samvat calendar. Samvat 1725 could thus be either c. 1646 CE or c. 1782 CE. However, "local records say that it was built by a prominent Hindu traders community living in Baku and its construction coincided with the fall of the dynasty of Shirwanshahs and annexation by Russian Empire following Russo-Iranian war [of 1722-1723]."

Unquote

Who would have thunk eh?

I guess all my knowledge-gathering reflected in this post is a desperate attempt to understand and appreciate the region before something dreadful happens. Somehow recent (and protracted ancient events) have left me with ugly premonitions of the whole shithouse from the Middle-East through Central-Asia to the Indian subcontinent going up in flames. Maybe I'm just projecting my own recent anxieties on a part of the world (probably falsely) considered to be always volatile. On that note, Happy New Year!

Labels: Avocations, Books, Economics, History, Links, Media, Politics

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Constructive Editing

David Bordwell writes this very enlightening piece about the history and the practice of constructive editing, and aptly titles it “What happens between shots happens between your ears”. Well worth a read.

Labels: Education, Film, Links

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Lost Purposes

Eliezer Yudkowsky's piece Lost Purposes is another one of those thought-provoking things that he regularly churns out at Overcoming Bias.

He writes:
"As you read this, some young man or woman is sitting at a desk in a university, earnestly studying material they have no intention of ever using, and no interest in knowing for its own sake. They want a high-paying job, and the high-paying job requires a piece of paper, and the piece of paper requires a previous master's degree, and the master's degree requires a bachelor's degree, and the university that grants the bachelor's degree requires you to take a class in 12th-century knitting patterns to graduate. So they diligently study, intending to forget it all the moment the final exam is administered, but still seriously working away, because they want that piece of paper."

He continues to explore the intricacies of what is well spelt out in the title of his blog-post.

Take for example the case for a film school in Chennai. Going by the quote above, one should think that it would not get into the rut of producing graduates with paper diplomas because the 'industry' values performance more than paper. In fact, one would safely assume that since the industry is quite comfortable with its apprentice system of education, a film school would actually have to produce performers in order to stay alive.

Of course this might be quite true for the government run film-schools which anyway do not depend on the patronage of the industry to exist. I do not have the numbers to back up a claim that formal education is of no effect in the mainstream industry. It appears that I have to go by 'perception'. But maybe the general absence of any reputable organised private training institutes (considering the scope, scale, and age of the Indian film industry) could point to the irrelevance of formal organised training as far as the film industry is concerned? So taking up 'perception', barring 'technicians' there is generally very little respect for aesthetes out of film school.

So here the general conclusion would be that the idea of lost purposes would not apply to a private film school. This sounds too good to be true (not that this doubt is any cause to deny its correctness).

We need to see at what point in the evolution of the film industry does a formal film-school become relevant, and even possible? This considering the fact that the industry itself has somehow found an optimum in non-formal education. (I seriously doubt the other assumption that the government film-schools were sufficient).

Many hail the 'corporatisation' of the the film-industry as the big thing that is going to take the industry by storm. This necessarily involves a restructuring of 'employment' within the industry. Here is where a paper diploma becomes useful for its paper. And correspondingly, this has seen a sudden surge in the number of private film-schools.

OK, before I come across as a Gandhian champion of subsistence filmmaking, where everybody somehow seemed to have learnt with a 'purpose', I have to start rethinking what employment really means in the film industry.

Am I to assume that somehow everybody found their 'purpose' before blind corporatisation turned them into mindless and purposeless proletariats? No. Am I also to assume, in extension that corporatisation is going to suck creativity and accountability out of the system by getting rid of the close-knit information structures that helped recruitment in the past? No. Why not? Well, probably because for one, I am not a Gandhian romantic.

Even in subsistence-filmmaking, a job was still a job. If you got paid better climbing a ladder and holding onto a light, than sawing planks of wood and painting them pink, you would try to train yourself to climb heights. The sole 'purpose' is to get employed and make money not some romantic ideal of 'I would make a better grip or carpenter'. Smith, rather than Ricardo. Now this idea would be harder to reconcile when talking about other technicians or artists. “Surely, one does not become a Cinematographer just because it paid better, you need to have it in you”. But is this really true? Yes, you need to have it in you, but if you 'had' it, and then if it paid peanuts?

So even in the subsistence industry, employment and wages follow the same basic rules, but one other thing happens. The idea of 'purpose' gets romanticised. In a glamour industry where signalling plays a huge part in remuneration and status, connections and level at entry play a very important role. Ability, or qualification and ironically, ambition and 'purpose' have very little say.

This is probably the reason why formal education was disregarded, not because it was 'purposeless' but because qualification meant squat. I have already made the case why formal education is not something that is contradictory to informal teaching, but merely the evolution of how people skilled themselves.

Now if ambition and ability had nothing to do with how things were, how does this new 'corporate' culture with its 'lost purposes' fare any better? For one, in its 'ruthless' ways, the corporate would minimise the costs of 'signalling'. There will be those without purpose (as they always were) but the ones who will be more successful are the ones who can still find their own goals and work towards them. Julian Simon comes to mind. The corporate film industry is not ideal, but even less ideal is the feudal subsistence film industry. At-least in the former case, individual human enterprise is unleashed, and maybe even contemplate 'purpose'.

Labels: Economics, Education, Links, Work

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Goethe and evolution

Diegogarcity (there! I've used my new favourite word in a sentence) forced me to the Wikipedia entry on Goethe, and I quote from there:

"Goethe was also a cultural force, and by researching folk traditions, he created many of the norms for celebrating Christmas, and argued that the organic nature of the land moulded the people and their customs

"He argued that laws could not be created by pure rationalism, since geography and history shaped habits and patterns. This stood in sharp contrast to the prevailing Enlightenment view that reason was sufficient to create well-ordered societies and good laws.

"Goethe's influence was dramatic because he understood that there was a transition in European sensibilities, an increasing focus on sense, the indescribable, and the emotional. This is not to say that he was emotionalistic or excessive; on the contrary, he lauded personal restraint and felt that excess was a disease: “There is nothing worse than imagination without taste”. He argued in his scientific works that a “formative impulse”, which he said is operative in every organism, causes an organism to form itself according to its own distinct laws, and therefore rational laws or fiats could not be imposed at all from a higher, transcendent sphere; this placed him in direct opposition to those who attempted to form “enlightened” monarchies based on “rational” laws by, for example, Joseph II of Austria or, the subsequent Emperor of the French, Napoleon I. "

Now read about a Curious Inconsistency as written by Don Boudreaux. And from there go read about the Social Snowflakes as written by Steven Horwitz.

Labels: Libertarianism, Links, WOW

Thursday, October 04, 2007

I ravvu de Japaneesu!

Do not miss the commentators!

Labels: Links, Tech, Video, WOW

Monday, October 01, 2007

Nothing new

But it hurts a little to be repeatedly reminded that I voted to power some utter idiots! T R Baaaa(aa)lu is my MP... woe!

Labels: Links, Politics

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Osama Bin Laden also calls for OBC reservation

Well, OBL will ask for India to rethink the Indo-US Nuclear deal (but naturally), and by the looks of things will also demand the closure of all Reliance Fresh outlets in the country.

But Bin Laden will never get any support from us Tamils unless he also demands Cauvery water, and a statue of Thiruvalluvar in Bangalore!

Labels: Humour, Links, Politics

Friday, September 07, 2007

Best, and the most depressing quote in a while

Ajay Shah writes
"A deep flaw of the intellectual landscape in India is that if you picked one topic, it isn't easy to find six good quality authors to debate it."

Labels: Links, Other

Monday, August 06, 2007

The Chennai Metroblog

Seriously, this place is a joke!

It used to be nice, and it used to have intelligent writers. Now most of the stuff on it seems to be written by utter idiots. It is quite embarrassing really, for these guys in some sense represent what Madras has to offer to the world. Also, sad to see something that had much promise decay and die right under your gaze.

Labels: Links, Media

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

And now Antonioni

Just a day after Bergman, Antonioni has gone ahead and snuffed it! There's something that's killing 'em all off.

Labels: Film, Links

Monday, July 30, 2007

Bergman is dead

Having given us some very good films, he also inspired many comics. Here is a link to The Dove, among the best Bergman parodies.

Update: Here is the full film from Google video (via)

Labels: Film, Links

Monday, May 14, 2007

This news items contains triple-antigenic Zeolytes for optimal moisturation

What the fuck are they talking about?
Morons

Labels: Links, Media, WTF

Sunday, April 15, 2007

The Zimmers are talkin' about my gegege-neration!

via Dave Barry

Labels: Links, Music, Video

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Joshua Bell performs on the DC Metro

Life and work can be pretty frustrating. Especially if you live in a dusty, smelly, sweltering city. But every once in a while, there comes along something that suddenly makes life worth living; and yet painfully demonstrates how weary our city lives can get.

Even the web-stream of the full performance is haunting!

Labels: Links, Media, Music

Friday, March 30, 2007

To Protect the Child

When I was a kid, there were consolation prizes in school contests. Until we understood the appallingly patronising semantics, we saw it as the legitimate last rung in the hierarchy of awards. Then there were middle-school debates that were sanctimoniously labelled "academic" (euphemism for "rigged at the time of deciding the topic") lest our sensitive minds be exposed to acrimony and disagreement.

Not too many years ago, kids versions of television contest (mostly singing talent shows) never announced winners—every participant took home the same crummy gift-hamper.

Now apparently, this Super Singer Junior reality show on Vijay TV has pictures of kids being rejected (they have candy I suppose), also of kids behaving like little spoilt divas, and also of kids singing really well and winning.

Then I came across this (via). Now I may not entirely agree with a dogmatic view about "good competition", but I do see in my line of work that a system of incentives (and disincentives) really produces results, if the system is deemed to be even nominally "just" by its members.

Kids, I have seen, have a terrific sense of morality, fairness and "right".

Labels: Libertarianism, Links, Media, Politics, Work

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Money and Sport

Viviana Zelizer talks about why we want to believe that money and intimacy do not go together. It does not take much to extend the discussion to include questions on why we also think (note: not necessarily act on our beliefs) that glorious and "patriotic" activities like sports suffer when money is involved.

It was interesting to see quite a few people dissing India's incredibly inane performance against the Bangladeshis by referring to the "obscene" amounts of money our chaps make in endorsements. (On that thought, I'd like to see the UPA run the Indian Cricket team—should be so much fun).

We sometimes get bad cricket not because our chaps are well-paid, but because Cricket enjoys a rather screwy monopoly. Or rather, the Indian Cricket team enjoys a monopoly status. (click here for some sports-economics juvenilia) Should I stretch the argument to say that it is because of the money that Indian cricket has better talent (and therefore the monopoly) than say Indian Football?

It is therefore nice to read newsreports that go: (linkthanks my boss)

We in India tend to rush out with tri-colours and wrap the dutiful nationalistic sentiment around every sporting achievement and be coy about money matters. Step into Sagroli village, and you won't grudge sportsmen the money they earn. Now, parroting the patriotic theme is common to Sagroli too. Teenaged runners from this arid, non-descript village in the Nanded district of eastern Maharashtra will voice their desire to represent the country at the next Olympics, and even bring home the gold. Once on the beaten, narrow state highway though, these trainees of the Sagroli Sunrise Project line up at the starting grid, keeping paper-chits in their pockets, which bear the amount they will earn if they cross the target-timing to complete a 7 km-daily route. "Trophies, certificates are all fine they make you happy for a day or a week. We want to be realistic theres no better incentive than money," says project convener Deepak Kanegaokar, who hands out cash in multiples of thousand. (very sic)

Labels: Cricket, Economics, Links

Saturday, March 03, 2007

A desk-top I desperately need

Seen something similar twice before: one a video of some Canadian (I think) college guys demonstrating a lab project, second in Spielberg's Minority Report.

Now, Brian Lam at Gizmodo might be right when he points to "the inverse relationship of proper ergonomics and proper viewing distance on such a setup", but in my line of work, this sort of a thing would be a godsend. So much for geeky wowdroolmultitouchwanking.

I spent a good part of last week snipping, labelling, taping, ordering, re-labelling, matching, tagging, checking, and arranging strips of paper to schedule 11-member crews (from a list of 29 persons) to work over three weeks to make 20 short films. Sometimes all that jugglery and anal attention to detail can be pretty fulfilling, Zen even; but most of the time you really feel that your desk could do with some 'memory', that you don't have to take down every little permutation down to cross-reference or reconstruct later.

Labels: Links, Tech, Work

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Somebody please racially abuse me

STEP 2: I can arrange for a film-crew to record it.
STEP 3: You can then threaten to kill me if that film is ever shown.
STEP 4: Priyaranjan Dasmunsi can arrange for the gruesome film of my victimisation to be screened in Parliament.
STEP 5: I may even be able to land some interesting jobs.
STEP 6: Maybe you can get a cut!

PS:Paappaan is not too far from poppadom!

Labels: Links, Media, WTF