Remember Nineteen Eighty-Four? Not the anti-Sikh riots but the book written by George Orwell?

In that book the government controls and monitors your every action, your every thought, and every aspect of your life. Everywhere there are human and technological spies monitoring whatever you do.

The same thing seems to be happening with the latest effort of the government to monitor content on the Internet on the basis of what is “objectionable”, “defamatory”, or whatever label the so-called government is uncomfortable with.

To be frank, the Internet scares the shit out of them, especially after WikiLeaks, the unshackled conversations over Twitter and Facebook and social networking-supported civic unrests. And it’s not just the government; all the agencies, may it be bureaucracy, the conventional mainstream media and the old school businesses that thrive on people’s inability to communicate with each other, would like to throttle the free flow of information on the Internet. Precisely this is the reason why there is no hue and cry on TV channels on the government’s new censorship drive.

Wondering what’s the big deal?

According to the new Information Technology Guidelines notified by the government

• Your Internet service provider must store your every online activity-related data that the government agencies can access any time without notification or without you ever knowing it
• All your private conversations via e-mail and Skype (and communications via other platforms) will be accessible to the government agencies
• All your private photographs and messages will be available to the babus
• If your content on your blog or Facebook or anywhere else is found “objectionable” it has to be taken down within 36 hours
• Anyone can say that your content is “defamatory” and get it removed from the World Wide Web
• Your every tweet, every Facebook post, every video, every search on Google (and other search engines), everything is going to be monitored

The government has invested Rs. 450 crores (yes, your money) to track the undersea cables for encrypted data and more than 53 modules have already been established. It means, while I’m typing this blog post, this might already be monitored and I may have to take it down in case some nut case finds it objectionable.

This is not just an India specific problem. In the name of SOPA there are efforts also in the USA to censor the Internet and many of the Arabian countries have already convinced the rest of the world why the Internet is to be censored.

The Internet censorship is more nefarious compared to  the usual censorship because no media has impacted the world as the Internet. It is now cliched, but had Facebook been a country, it would have been the third most populated country in the world, so you can very well imagine why even the biggest governments feel sort of powerless in front of its reach. Another problem (from the control freak government’s point of view) is that you no longer have to depend on computers and laptops in order to access the Internet and social networking applications. You can interact on Twitter and Facebook even from cheapest mobile phones these days. You can even post blog posts from your smart phones. It hardly takes a few seconds for the news to spread across the country, whether you are in a train, in a bus, having lunch, having a poop, or whatever you are doing. Hence, the zeal to control it, to censor it, to severe its most important vein — freedom of expression.

Can you stop it?

You can only stop it with collective effort. Make it more damaging for the government to censor the Internet. In India it might be difficult because there is just a small portion of the population that is active on the Internet and it might not be a vote bank but were it so insignificant, why would the government try to choke it? It certainly feels threatened. It certainly has an impact.

To begin with, you can sign this online petition against the government’s new diktat. You can also approach your local MPs and MLAs and your representatives and convey to them what you think of this censorship drive (realistically, I’m not too optimistic of this approach).

Write against it on your blog. In fact, I’m going to link from this blog post to all the blog posts and articles written on this subject.

Create online forums to discuss the matter.

I mean, do whatever you want to do, but do something. Once the damage is done, it will be nearly impossible to undo it.

Related reading

• How India made it easy for everyone to play internet censor
• इंटरनेट की अभूतपूर्व निगरानी शुरू
• What’s behind India’s Internet censorship?

According to this recent article, it is. People instinctively want to upgrade their gadgets like mobile phones, Tablet PCs, computers and laptops. Until a few years ago, it used to be just the software. Whenever there was a new version out, you wanted to install it, or upgrade it. But hardware? It was upgraded only when the existing hardware configurations couldn’t accommodate the new software.

I agree that it is becoming an obsession especially when it comes to gadgets. People not only own multiple gadgets that solve the same purpose (for instance, owning smart phones from different companies) they also want to switch over to the newer version as soon as it is available. For example, whenever there is a new iPhone or iPad or even a Samsung Galaxy phone is introduced, if people can afford it, they upgrade it. Sometimes they upgrade it even when they cannot afford it (thanks to credit cards).

With some software it makes sense to upgrade, especially when it is freely and easily available, for instance WordPress (software used to publish this blog). One must upgrade to the latest version because it always comes up with security patches – the latest version is always more secure than the previous one. If somebody hacks into your account and you hadn’t upgraded, they are going to say, well, you didn’t upgrade.

Another bit of software that you need to regularly update is your antivirus software. Obvious reason.

You can also upgrade free source and open source software like most of the browsers and Linux-based operating systems such as Ubuntu simply because you just have to download them and upgrade your copy (but if you don’t have use for their new features you will be simply wasting precious hours downloading, upgrading and then tweaking).

If there is no security reason and unless the latest features aren’t helping you achieve more of what you intend to do, upgrading, especially when you have to pay for it, doesn’t make sense. You are simply wasting time and money.

Regarding gadgets, well, as my wife always says, these companies have to sell and they have to sell repeatedly. That is why every six months or even three months they are coming up with new features to entice new customers as well as existing customers – it is a never-ending thing. As far as business goes, I think this is a necessary evil that we have to live with.

Provided you have got loads of money with you, you can purchase and upgrade as many gadgets as you feel like (I would) but if you are stretching your budget simply because you cannot resist the craving for the latest gadget, I think you have got a problem. I crave for gadgets, but I have never even purchased an iPod, leave alone an iPhone or an iPad or even the Samsung Galaxy phone (I own a Samsung Galaxy Tab that was gifted to me by my father) simply because I would rather spend that money on my family, or save it.

Although I am an admirer of Malcolm Gladwell’s writing, in this New Yorker article he doesn’t seem to get social media. Coming from an author who is constantly encouraging people to embrace new thoughts and think out of the box it seems a bit strange when he tries to downplay the role of social media tools like Twitter just because you cannot be physically present at a particular place in order to stir up a social revolution.

Social media is effective because it empowers people (at least those who can connect and communicate through text, video and images). It is a communication network. It may not trigger full-fledged revolutions (well, who knows?) but it can easily internationalize local revolutions as we recently saw in the case of Iran, Egypt, and latest, even Saudi Arabia. With just a single tweet you can reach the entire global community. Of course, it doesn’t happen in every case but you can say this even about revolutions in the physical world: not all revolutions catch up and 99% of revolutions die off even before 5 people can join.

The same happens with Twitter and Facebook. After all it’s the people who are interacting and they are moved by the same things that move them in the actual physical world.

Revolution doesn’t always have to be, necessarily, dipped in sweat and blood — it is normally a mass action against an ideology, regime or bias. What is wrong if you can participate in a revolution by simply sending a tweet? It’s about expressing yourself and you don’t always have to be physically present in order to express yourself.

And there is no use of going into “Will you fight wars on Twitter and Facebook?”

The porn websites will now have their own .xxx top level domain name prefixes, just like the way you have .com and .org or these days, .tv (for TV websites). Some people are thrilled (who have been missing some porn websites simply because it wasn’t clear if it were really porn sites) and some are angry (those religious losers) that it is an attempt to legitimize a nefarious activity on the Internet.

Two good things are there if we have clearly defined TLD prefixes:

• Websites can be easily accessed
• Websites can be easily blocked

So it’s a win-win situation for both the parties.

It’s high time we also had TLD prefixes for political websites (.pol), propaganda websites (.propaganda), Maoist websites (.mao) and Jihadi websites (.jihad). Then there can be games websites (.game), religious websites (.rel), news websites (.news). It’ll be interesting to have prefixes for all the niches because one, it’ll be easier to recognize them, and two, all of a sudden there will be so many new domains available for booking. It can be a multi-billion dollar business.

The new studies have shown that how clearly you can see depends a lot on your attitude. Here’s the link to the news.

This is something I have actually experienced. My vision gets blurry when writing a check (cheque) because I always think I’ll make a mistake, or my signatures won’t match. This is because due to cerebral palsy my handwriting depends a lot on what’s on my mind and how I’m sitting and what’s the level of the platform where the checkbook rests.

My problems with my checkbook percolated into other writing activities and soon it affected my laptop vision too and consequently I had to get my eyesight checked and start wearing glasses. But I never picked up the habit and always forgot wearing the glasses and now I no longer need them. Although my problem with the checkbook remains.

Recently my dad purchased a cheap Chinese version of Blackberry and since he never intended to use it, I borrowed it from him. This instrument is quite ill-designed (of course, since it’s so cheap), and although it solves my purpose (sending text messages to my writers and clients and other associates) it’s difficult to maneuver it in the lying position. So my vision gets blurred when I’m trying to set the alarm in it or trying to play a song. I never had this problem with my normal Sony Ericsson phone.

Kids in the compound wanted themselves photographed (a trend initiated by our daughter) so that they could post the pics on FaceBook. It was really dark, and with the kind of entry-level camera they had they were anyway going to appear like red-eyed ghosts haunting that leafless tree, but still, more than the joy of climbing a tree they were busy making poses for the camera.

I often see casual enjoyments like these stunted by technology. At home too sometimes I have to stop my wife from running for the camera whenever our daughter is doing something cute and adorable or something is happening that you’d like to photograph. Then everything becomes photograph centric and the focus is moved away from the actual moment.

And it is not just about photographs. On Twitter and FaceBook I see many updates where people seem to be doing things just so that they can post those updates there. Even when they buy a new gadget like an iPhone or a new laptop they want to post the update before they can even get connected to the Internet. I’m not saying it’s abnormal that you want to share your excitement and happiness with your friends and “followers”, but sometimes it becomes too obvious.

Chandrayaan-I, India’s first ever lunar mission, and it has found water on the moon. The reports are, allegedly, ‘unambiguous’, but NASA’s remote sensing instruments installed on Chandrayaan-I have clearly indicated that there might be as much as a liter of water in every ton of lunar soil, and that’s lots of water.

The Indian media is in a frenzy of course. I remember the launch of Chandrayaan-I didn’t create much buzz in the mainstream media, in fact Rahul G and Sonia G travelling in 3rd class and Shashi Tharoor tweeting on cattle class got much more coverage.

When Chandrayaan-I was launched on October 22, 2008 from Sriharikota’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre there were some who even protested that why India is sending a mission to the moon and wasting money, after all, what purpose can be solved by sending probes and people to the moon? Today’s media hubbub may be because of the NASA conference together with scientists from ISRO where they declared that Chandrayaan-I, along with Deep Impact and Cassini probes, have given evidence of the lunar soil containing traces of water.

Why is Chandrayaan-I finding water on the moon a big discovery?

No doubt it is a proud moment for India and re-establishes its scientific prowess. The brilliant Indian scientists who willingly choose to work in India don’t have enough resources to do their work. Hopefully more attention will be paid to them. India is now definitely on the world map of space science.

Why presence on the moon is important?

Space science is not just about releasing satellites into the orbits, sending deep space probes to find new planets and hopefully life or collecting lunar soil and rocks. Lots of scientific discoveries and inventions take place while scientists are working on space shuttles because of the extreme conditions.

In a few years many countries will be setting up lunar bases to conduct scientific experiments. Highly powerful telescopes will be constructed there so that distant stars, constellations, black holes, comets and planets can be seen more clearly. Countries having easy access to the moon may even set up colonies or generate power there to be beamed back to the earth.

Water on the moon also means there can be life there. This is like jumping the gun, but at least, water being there means that water can be extracted for consumption and irrigation once humans start farming in their lunar enclosures.

Of course the Indian media must acknowledge the contribution of the Moon Mineralogy Mapper – M3 – specifically designed by the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to search for water on the lunar surface. This means it’s not an accidental discovery, and scientists were already expecting such a find. To be precise Chandrayaan-I carried 11 scientific instruments built in India, the US, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria.

This is certainly going to be a big boost for Chandrayaan-II, slated for 2012/2013. It will also give it a precise location to land.

It all started with this innocuous exchange between Kanchan Gupta, a prominent columnist who writes for the Pioneer, and Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs, an avid Twitter user and the current media blue-eyed boy (my wife’s expression).

One tweet and from a media darling he has become a pariah, and this was bound to happen, and I wonder why he, or anybody else for that matter, never saw it coming (I’ll explain later). And the most appalling aspect of all this is, "cattle class" wasn’t even his expression, he was simply replying to Kanchan Gupta’s tweet: it was a simple exchange between two individuals that was blown out of proportion by the media as well as politicians. Go through various online links of newspapers and TV channels and nobody mentions even once that the expression did not originate from him.

Of course this could be because of the fact that unless you use some extra Twitter tools or a JavaScript addon you cannot see the tweet he had replied to. But before jumping the gun, at least the media dudes should have checked the entire chain of the tweet exchange.

About cattle class, 60 years of Congress governance has made sure that a majority of Indian citizens live like cattle. May be the expression touches a sore spot. May be the party has a ghost of a conscience by a freak chance.

Anyway, back to why they should have seen it coming. The days of individual politicians have gone. Most political parties in India thrive on the halos created around particular families and individuals, and all other members have to operate from under their shadow. Just look what happened to Jaswant Singh. After writing the book, he became an individual and moved outside of the shadow.

Similarly, the Congress party workers have to work within the shadow boundary of the Gandhi family. By using Twitter, by articulating his thoughts, by directly interacting with the common folks Tharoor is building his own mass base — people have begun to adore him and perhaps in the process, have begun to neglect the other blue-eyed boy, Rahul G. Now how can this be tolerated in a party where sycophancy is religion and the 3 Gandhis at the helm are no less than gods?

So in the guise of austerity and an abstract tweet, he is being targeted by his own party men and women, and soon they will be competing with each other just to show how loyal they are to the real blue-eyed trinity.

According to his latest tweets Shashi Tharoor has apologized, and in a country where words and rhetoric matter more than reality, he has done the right thing. Ours is a strange country. Speak truth and people will lunge at your throat; feed them with pleasant lies and they will fall on your feet.

Just downloaded and installed Google Chrome…Google’s entry into the browser world. Many are wondering why Google launched Google Chrome when there are already some excellent browsers available, for instance, FireFox and Opera? I think Google has long-term plans to dominate the online software applications market. From e-mail to wordprocessing, from web analytics to ad-click management, Google is offering cutting-edge applications to its users on a platter.  Of course there is the search engine and RSS reader.  Once people begin to use Google Chrome Google will start building all the applications around this browser.

A time will come very soon when the only software people will have on their computers, apart from the basic operating system, will be the browser, and all the applications will be used through that browser. Most of the day-to-day applications these days are remotely hosted and accessed. For instance, many people in the West use Googledocs for their wordprocessing and spreadsheet requirements.  Entire versions of Microsoft Office applications are available online.  In India we don’t notice such developments very fast because pirated software is so easily available and there are no strict laws against copyright violations.  Google’s aims to target the market that uses remotely hosted versions of legacy applications.  I have already noticed that Gmail looks better in Google Chrome — the display is better, and, I don’t know if this is actual or just an illusion, it is quite fast too.

Google Chrome screenshot

Of course there are many plug-ins and features in Firefox and Opera that we take for granted and are so used to using them. Their absence in Google Chrome is a bit annoying but I am sure these features and plug-ins will be available for the new browser very soon.  Another odd thing was when the browser was installing it mentioned something about importing the Firefox bookmarks but the bookmarks never showed up when I loaded Chrome.  Even when I imported the bookmarks manually they didn’t show up.  Nonetheless, it is a cool browser to use and it organizes information very cleverly, and has a few features that I had begun to miss in FireFox. It doesn’t even have the omnipresent menu bar but I don’t miss it.  I would like to use it as my regular browser as soon as I can use with it the plug-ins that I use with Firefox.

[tags]Google Chrome, FireFox, Opera, browsers[/tags]

According to this link you can charge your cellphone when you are running. There is this company that has introduced a charger that gives you a one-hour charge for walking for six hours. This may seem like a lot of effort for a charge of just one hour but it is a great way of charging your cellphone when there is no electricity around and you have to walk a lot.  This device can be especially useful in rural India where people have to walk for long miles even to fetch water.  But you may ask do such people have cellphones?  Maybe not.

The technology will be more beneficial if such energy can be derived from other movements too (no, I knew you would think like that, but I’m not talking about bowel movement), for instance cycling, swings in the park, walking cattle, newsreaders, and all those movements that are prolonged and consistent.  With millions of cellphones in circulation just imagine how much electricity can be saved by such motion based charging.