Tagged: culture

Troy


Last night we went to watch [[http://troymovie.warnerbros.com/|Troy]]. Nice movie, definitely worth a watch. Though Brad Pitt is not like Russel Crowe in Gladiator, he does a really good job, and frankly speaking I don’t think its fair to compare the two roles. All in all, the movie was entertaining, and I had fun watching it.

And I was really really impressed by Troy and its people. I never found written history very interesting, but whenever I see such movies, I really get fascinated. I mean just imagine how would it be to live in that age? Life would be so unpredictable. It would actually be the survival of the fittest in its most literal sense.

And if you think about it, when life is so unpredictable, you tend to appreciate things more, you tend to live life more fully. I’m quite sure that people in those times were much more emotional and passionate than our generations are.

Then recently there was this movie called “Equilibrium” (which I haven’t seen myself yet). Basically it talks of a future where people have forgot to feel and infact, it is illegal to have any feelings! Sounds quite improbable eh? But what would our world look like to people of Troy? Would they think we are insensitive?

Business networking


First there was [[http://ryze.com/ | ryze]], and now there is [[http://orkut.com | orkut]]. Especially since being acquired by Google, orkut has been making a lot of waves.

So what is this hoopla about business networking anyway? Frankly, I doubt even 10% (strictly arbitrary guess!) of the orkut users actually do any business network. AFAIK, it always starts out with some friend inviting you to this “cool” new e-group type of thing. The first few days there is this flurry of messages when you go “hey cool, check this out!”. And with orkut, this phase can probably last a bit longer as people compete to have the largest number of “friends”, larger membership in communities, and highest ratings!

But eventually, it all fizzes out. People stop checking the messages, stop updating their profiles, communities become quiet and so on. Of course, there are exceptions to all of this, but from what I’ve seen this is generally what happens.

But orkut and ryze are both new, and still very much active. With Google backing it up, orkut it certainly posed to give some nice competition to ryze. May the best network win!

To blog or not to blog


So this dates back to a night when we were driving back from PSU to New York (during the spring break trip). Vibhore and I got into a very interesting discussion (as usual!) on blogging. Apparently, Vibhore had this stereotyped image of a blog as a “personal” diary put out on the web. Not surprisingly then, he found the concept of blogging a bit uncomfortable. He wondered why would anyone want to put up their personal diary out on the web for everyone to read. Not only did he feel that doing this was “not quite right” for the person publishing it, but it was “not quite right” for the person reading it too!

When I realized that he had this stereotypical notion of a blog, I explained to him that a blog is a much more general notion. Different people have different concept of a blog, and for some it may very well be their personal diary. As far as I’m concerned, the right to publish some personal or non-personal is solely the authors’. Further, no one is “forcing” you to publish a blog or even read someone else’s. Of course, responsible bloggers realize that the information they put out is often public and they should be fully aware of its implications. If they publish any “private” information, again that is solely by choice since no one is forcing them to do so. Things get complicated, however, when I start divulging personal information about a friend on my blog, or vice-versa. What happens then?

Another interesting aspect of the discussion was the sudden surge in the number of blogs on the web. My argument was that more people are blogging these days because there is more commercial interest in blogs. True, a whole lot of blogs out there are completely free of charge. So where IS the commercial interest? But think of what happened with email. There are so many free email providers, yet there is a plethora of businesses woven around email. I feel that blogs are also going the same direction, except that the money involved in blogs is much, much more. This is partly because of the “information-intensive” and “public” nature of blogs, which makes them amenable to data mining in ways emails never were.