The perfect life, that’s what I called it – the phenomenon that has spread across the two social networks I frequent. Facebook Photos is nothing new and has come up here as a subject for discussion earlier. But its rise has been meteoric, just like the social network. The best vacations, the coolest friends, the hottest parties, the snazziest gadgets, seems everyone can haz it. Twitter is not far behind. People, almost like brands, out to show their best side. Made for Facebook/Made for Twitter/ Lies of Life, call it what you will. Of course condolences would pour in if someone had a distressing update. Either outrage against the wrongdoer if any, or at least a +1 to show solidarity. Unfollow, unfriend you’d say, but these are not bad people, they just have a perfect life. Unfortunately, the networks work as emotion aggregators too, forcing me to vent once in a while. [image source Check it out for more awesomeness ] And yes, I generalise.

I have wondered about the motivation. Maybe we like to share happiness more than sadness by default. Maybe sadness is a private thing we choose only to share with dear ones. (do you think there’s a social network idea there? A mutant version of Path) Maybe the algorithms ensure I see only the happy ones. Or maybe it’s indeed true that our vanity stops us from showing that we have been humbled, beaten, saddened by a human hand or a twist of fate.

A few minutes after I tweeted about the perfect life, I got a message on the blog (deleted now) from an old dear friend S, who had gotten in touch after quite a while. In the long years before a virtual home, when a real diary was a lifesaver, hers would probably be the name that was mentioned most, before the rise of the  thenceforth omnipresent D.

S isn’t on twitter, so she would have no idea of the coincidence. She was happy about the progress I was making, doing the things I love to do and generally having fun. And that led me to wonder if I, in my own limited way, was also feeding the perfect life network. So here’s setting the record straight. In case you see my vacation photos, restaurant visits and general attempts at humour and think that the story begins and ends there, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

As many of my posts would indicate, I have multiple ‘missed life crises’ – singer, author, theatre actor, h3ll, even cricketer, and perhaps a few more too, all skills I have either displayed to some degree or think I possess. I think way too much for my own good and am forever irritated at the inequity of life (in terms of those more unfortunate) and not being able to do much about it. I am constantly trying to shed baggage and sometimes failing miserably. My feelings of insecurity would be legend if they were a published work. Thankfully D exists. There is more, but that’s enough fun at my expense. The silver lining is that I’m learning through it all. Meanwhile, all I’m trying to say is that the grass on the other side is probably photoshopped. If it’s not, they’ve probably worked hard to make it this way. And we can too, if we try. Please smile now, and mean it. Or I’ll have to ask you to Like the post

until next time, open source happiness

PS: It was only recently that I gave off my fakemytrip.com domain to mygola. I had bought it thanks to an irritating status on FB, and had a 4sq based idea around it.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant" Albert Einstein

This latest RSA Animate by reknowned psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist (and the accompanying book) is a powerful evcoation of how the divergent, contradistinct nature of the thinking from the two hemispheres of our brain (and how they interelate) have shaped, and continue to shape, our world. 

The right hemisphere, he says, is the 'master', with a capacity for handling uncertainty and a sustained, broad, open, empathetic, flexible view of the world. In contrast the left hemisphere is the 'emissary', narrow, with a sharply focused attention to detail and a preference for the mechanical, the absolute, the literal. Whilst the left brain "yields clarity and things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualised, explicit, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless", the right hemisphere "yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world but in the nature of things never fully graspable, never fully known".

Gilchrist's argument is that the two hemispheres offer us two very different views of the world that we combine in different ways all the time, but that whilst most societies (including our modern one) often begin with a wonderfully balanced view of the world that combines both types of thinking, slowly over time we drift toward favouring left-brain. This is due in no small part to the fact that the left hemisphere's view is attractive and convincing. It's vocal, self-consistent, economical model reducts everything that doesn't fit. We get trapped in a 'hall of mirrors' effect whereby the more we favour this kind of thinking the more we just get reflected back into knowing more about what we know, about what we know, about what we know. In doing so we create a society that "honours the servant, but has forgotten the gift".

I think the same is true in much of life, not least in marketing. We automate for efficiency. We favour the virtual over the real, the mechanical over the conscious, the technical over over the personal. We like certainty. It's an attractive route that has its own advantages and benefits. One of the biggest contrarient contentions in our industry right now is between the art and the science in what we do. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that great marketing is all about achieving a good balance between the two. Technology is an enabler of creativity, not a substitute for it. 

You can see the full lecture, and of-course buy the book.

…at night. The sight of a person looking into infinity from within the confines of a moving vehicle. What sparked this memory was a single scene from a song in a movie (Malayalam) that I saw recently – Salt N’ Pepper. Not in this song, which is absolute foodpr0n, but in the other melodious song (2:50 – 3:05) You’ll probably not recognise Shwetha Menon.

In trains, it works differently for me. The lights are much further away, and flicker, as though desperately trying to get me to imagine their story. In buses, the lights seem much closer, and so are the people outside. Returning from work, knowing they have a night ahead to recoup before they face the daily grind the next day. On their way to meet friends, hoping they’ll have a good time. Rushing home, eager to see a loved one, whom they have missed all day. Stories of hope, stories with a face.

I don’t get to see this these days, but I remember when I was in engineering college and used to return home on weekends. My usual bus dropped me at home by 6, too early for this, but in case I got delayed, I’d be in a plodding bus, half empty, on a route and through a landscape that looked completely different when seen at night. Before I got the Kiney to Goa, the trip from Panjim to Ribandar at night felt just the same. The Mandovi just made it extra special. In my first job, there was a period during which I used to travel daily from Cochin to Paravur, about 20 km away. That was probably the last time I got the window seat in a bus, at night. Ironically, that was also the time I used to go back to an empty home. One of those times, when the spectator had his own story to tell.

There is something about the window-seat-at-night experience – romantic/ nostalgic/ wistful that makes it special. A feeling that I was not alone in the crowd. It used to give me a sense of peace, a feeling that everything would be alright.

until next time, the bus stops here.

Yes, it is quite the shiny new object in the marketing/enterprise conversations around the web. One of the positives is that there are always new and updated resources in addition to some well thought out perspectives from advocates as well as naysayers on its applications on the consumer facing side, as well as the business side. For starters, I quite liked this ‘Gamification and its discontents’ deck (via Tom Fishburne’s post on gamification) that is meant to serve as a primer before marketers set out to apply ‘gamification’.

But though it’s very early days in terms of a structured approach to the concept of gamification, I’m quite upbeat on it. One of the primary reasons for that is its inherent application that has been happening throughout my life so far. The education system’s ranks and grades (performing x task well earns you y points) not only decide entry into schools, colleges, universities and the progression there abut also gets to dictate a lot of ‘real’ social experiences within (standing among peers, popularity) as well as without. (the varying reactions to the answers to ‘Where/what do you study’? in a social gathering) Many systems have even learned how to factor in different kinds of activities – say, sports and academics, as well as types of pedagogy. A constantly evolving ‘rank’ is built over time and the badges earned and the places they’ve been earned at also have a hand in the work stage that happens immediately after education.

From landing the first job to designations that happen later, we continue living in a world of points and badges. In fact, I had tweeted some time ago that gamification already existed in the enterprise in the form of designations. The badges also continue to affect real life through the other reward -the salary we get, which is a function of what we have done so far as well as what we are doing. Other acquisitions from that (car, house, vacations, contacts in the phonebook) decide social standing and open further ‘game’ opportunities. I can visualise life as one gigantic gameplay with said and unsaid rules. The badges and rewards were a system unto itself, until our own evolution made us rethink this. The result has been a linkage to a larger life purpose for many of us. Some of us do this within the existing structures, while others make their own niche/walled structures and rules. But that’s a different post. Meanwhile, unlike most other games, there’s only one life, and that’s what probably makes it more exciting.

When social networks came into our lives, we first had fun connecting with friends and potential friends, and then immediately sought to apply gamification by comparing number of friends and followers, #ff, recommendations, lists, circles and so on. Also arrived continually evolving systems to measure our activities – as a factor of presence, reach and credibility across networks – Klout, PeerIndex and Kred, for example. Increasingly, they will impact and even integrate with our ‘real’ game. My point is that we seem to inherently understand gamification and more often than not accept this. Hence, my belief that well thought out applications – consumer or enterprise, have a good chance of succeeding.

I just realised that the ‘introduction’ itself has been a long drawn one. So I’ll wait till next week to share my thoughts on application.

until next time, game on

I found this video shared by K (part of a series by Professor Russell Stannard) offering me a very interesting perspective on the free will vs determinism debate. (earlier post)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8EI4obG5zM

He starts with talking about the brain as a physical object which is governed by the physical/chemical/biological rules of nature -- like a computer works within a  set of mechanical/electronic laws -- and therefore predictable. So it should be possible to predict our choices. But it doesn’t work that way. Consciousness is different.

He then talks about how some are trying to apply quantum theory to the free will -- determinism debate. Apparently, at sub atomic level, the ‘future’ is not predictable with absolute certainty. It has a built-in uncertainty in it. What we can do, however, is predict the odds of various possible outcomes -- the average behaviour of various items. So if this is applied to individual cells whose behaviour is unpredictable, it would be free will, say the proponents of this theory. But the prof refutes this, and says that this is one of the debates that can’t be solved to everyone’s satisfaction.

[This prediction of group behaviour reminded me of Asimov's Foundation series and specifically Hari Seldon's psychohistory, through which he predicts the future in probabilistic terms.]

But more importantly, it made me think that if indeed, there is a creator, maybe he built the automaton inside our head to make us predictable. The automaton grows with us, making most of our decisions unconscious ones, based on baggage accumulated over time -- conditioning. That could explain why those few who break out of it are able to attain a higher level of thinking in which they can bend the rules, predict the future and so on and the only advice they can give others is to be aware of every second.

And when I think of predicting the odds of outcomes, I wonder if the results of all our free will choices are written, like a tree with infinite branches. And as we continue our journey of choices that is life, one by one the branches disappear, until on hindsight, they look like one straight line that was always meant to be that way.

 until next time, a predictable end

There are some movies I watch multiple times -- whenever they show up on TV. One of them happens to be the 2010 version of The Karate Kid, featuring Jackie Chan (as Mr.Han) and Jaden Smith ( as Dre Parker). And the fact that one of my favourite scenes is the ‘snake woman’ is only a coincidence, and nothing to do with my alleged (by Cyn) affection for snake scenes in movies. Actually the part that interests me is the conversation after. (do not quote  this line out of context)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=inZWX5ipBZU

Dre: “She was doing the Cobra thing.   She was like…(makes movements)… copying the snake. And it was like…  right here, and she was like…”
Han: “You did not watch closely enough, Xiao Dre… It was the snake that was copying the woman.”
Dre: “What? I don’t get it.”
Han: “Look.” (points at pool of drinking water) What do you see?”
Dre:“Me, well my reflection.”
Han:“Yes. (whirls water). Now, what do you see?”
Dre:“It’s blurry.”
Han:“Yes. That woman was like still water. Quiet and calm. In here (puts hand on the head) and in here (puts hand on the heart) .
Dre: “So, the snake reflects her action like still water. Like a mirror?”
Han: “Yes.”
Dre: “So, she controlled the snake by doing nothing?”
Han: “Being still and doing nothing…  are two very different things.

(via)

The conversation interests me because the snake’s behaviour is typically the way I react to events and people that life throws at me. The aspiration is to have the clear and calm mind that will allow me to change the relationship equation. It’s an extremely difficult task, thanks to stimuli received from all around, especially social platforms. The real time knee jerk reactions characteristic of ‘social media’ also start influencing the way I make decisions even when they are not involved.

It’ would probably be easy if I just closed myself to these stimuli, but that’s not really practical, or the best way. The better, and more difficult way, is to be there, and yet, not allow it to affect what I am and do. As John Wooden said, “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” That’s something I am trying not to forget, even as I try to make the character as objective as possible. It’s ironic that the platforms which started out (for me) as places to express myself are now trying to ‘force’ me to conform, to become part of cliques, or maybe that’s just the way it’s supposed to work when networks become media.

until next time, character limits

Imagine if you'd seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you're "supposed to see." Imagine you got through everybody's list, until everything you hadn't read didn't really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

The 44-year-old ex-heavyweight champion is in bed by 8 and often up as early as 2 in the morning, at which point he takes a solitary walk around the gated compound in the Las Vegas suburb where he lives while listening to R&B on his iPod. Tyson then occupies himself with reading (he’s an avid student of history, philosophy and psychology), watching karate movies or taking care of his homing pigeons, who live in a coop in the garage, until 6, when his wife, Lakiha (known as Kiki), gets up. The two of them go to a spa nearby where they work out and often get a massage before settling into the daily routine of caring for a 2-year-old daughter, Milan, and a newborn son, Morocco; they also run Tyrannic, a production company they own. It is a willfully low-key life, one in which Tyson’s wilder impulses are held in check by his inner solid citizen.

What has the world come to when Mike Tyson turns into a soccer mom? The suburbs will get us all eventually.

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