The world is screwing itself!

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“We’re getting closer to a world where technology takes care of the hard work—discovery, organization, communication—so that you can get on with what makes you happiest… living and loving. It’s an exciting time to be at Google.”

These are the concluding lines of a recent announcement by the CEO of Google, Larry Page. It sounds great that technology will make our lives easier and we don’t have to work hard anymore. The machines, or in other words - technology they say will run our world. But...

I think we are in the middle of an unfolding horror story!

For, it can’t be a bizarre coincidence that when we are at the peaks of technological innovation, USA is going through its worst recession in 97 years. The story is not too different in Europe and most of the rest of the world; there must be something seriously wrong somewhere.

Plenty of articles have been written on the often repeated topic of machines taking away jobs from humans and also about its other menacing twin - outsourcing, but this time things are different, really different. They are so different that...

I have no hesitation in saying that the world is on the verge of screwing itself in a spectacular fashion!

Here is the proof...

Why should we pray for Boston?

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Whenever tragic incidents like the Boston Marathon blasts take place it shakes our belief in humanity and in society. Such incidents happen with alarming regularity in other parts of the world too and the first thing that comes to our mind is to say...Our prayers are with the victims and their families.

Have you ever wondered if these prayers are of any use?

Why should we pray?

Before I speak about prayer, let's look at what makes us human in the first place...

The Attacks of 26/11 and The Kasabs of Twitter!

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As you can notice from the title this isn't just my take on the Ram Gopal Varma movie 'The Attacks of 26/11’ but also my take on a trend that I have been noticing for a long time on Twitter. If you are only interested in reading about the movie you can skip the second part of this post and if you want to read only about the other burning issue that I speak about in this post ‘The Kasabs of Twitter’ you can skip the first part but I would suggest you read it in entirety so that it makes better sense. I will leave the choice to you.

I shall first start with the movie.

The Curse of Ram Gopal Varma!

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There is a bizarre truth about RGV's films! 

I have written twice about Ram Gopal Varma on my blog, the first one I called 'The truth about the man', and the second 'The De-Evolution of Ram Gopal Varma'.

However, the reason why I am writing this mini post today is to share with you a bizarre observation that struck me after the bomb blasts in Hyderabad a week before the release of his next film 'The Attacks of 26/11”.

Kamal Haasan’s true Vishwaroopam!

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The movie is running smoothly everywhere, the controversy surrounding it has vanished and it has also stopped trending on Twitter. All that had to be written about it has been written and there is really no point in me saying anything now. Yet, the movie Vishwaroopam refuses to leave my mind; more specifically Kamal Haasan refuses to leave my conscience alone. I have too many demons that I need to exorcise and this blog post is my only means for redemption if I can say so. Before I go on to speak about Kamal Haasan and the movie, I need to first make a confession:

I had no inclination whatsoever to watch Vishwaroopam when the promos came out, not even when the DTH controversy broke out!

"Respect the Art, Respect the Artist, Respect the Audience - I Support Kamal Haasan" said everyone after Kamal Haasan gave an emotional speech on TV speaking about his plight to release the film in his home state Tamil Nadu. I bought tickets to the film (Vishwaroop – Hindi version) at a Delhi multiplex as my way of showing support. I was doing an act of charity or so I thought until the lights went off in the auditorium and the movie began. Something strange happened next, guilt was the first emotion that I experienced when I saw Kamal Haasan on screen. To understand why, I need to now speak about my past with Kamal Haasan...

Meet the enemy of the internet!

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Not the government, not some anonymous hacking group, virus or terrorist network; the greatest threat to the internet as it exists today is from none other than its biggest site, Facebook!

Facebook likes you, but hates the internet!

Before I explain why or how, let me first give you a quick background about why Facebook is in a position to threaten the internet.

The back story:

Newspapers, radio and television are the three main sources of news for us till date. They are typically run by Governments or Businesses that have commercial and political interests to cater to. There is always a danger of the news being censored, biased or sensationalized and one can never really believe every word one reads or hears through these mediums. Such is their reputation that the villain in the 1997 James Bond movie ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ was a media baron who controlled and manipulated news to his advantage. That was the year before Google was born and the rest as we all know is history.

Once the flood gates of internet opened, mainstream media was no longer the only gatekeeper of news, it was a free world and anyone was free to post anything anywhere on the internet, my blog is an example of the same. Most of the online content was discovered because we searched for it, mainly via Google Search. Then came social networks and the concept of sharing came into prominence. Twitter and Facebook bring news straight into our News Feeds and we do not have to go anywhere else searching for news.

If it is not shared on Facebook it does not exist!

While Twitter still remains a niche network with a small percentage of active users who make all the noise, the dominance of Facebook has been so huge that almost everyone we know in real life is a member there, and quite active too. Apart from this we have celebrities and brands who keep screaming at us to LIKE their Pages on Facebook at the expense of their own official websites. Facebook Pages are far more attractive to them because that is where all the people are. In due course of time Facebook has become not just another website but...

Facebook is ‘The Internet’ for many!

This places Facebook in a position of great power. And like that famous dialogue from the Spiderman movie “With great power comes great responsibility”, we expect Facebook to act with maturity as people depend on it to bring them the news. Instead, it is slowly turning out to be a very smart villain and with the IPO money, things can get really bad. Hence the focus of my post is on Facebook, on how it treats ‘The Internet’ as its arch enemy, and why we should be concerned about it. When I say ‘The Internet’ I mean the internet that exists outside the walls of Facebook. With respect to Twitter, I already called it a BITCH once; it is now time for Facebook to face the heat. Here it goes...