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Tag: internet

August 15, 2013

Humans are all connected to each other like the world wide web but….

by viggy — Categories: Uncategorized — Tags: , , Leave a comment

“IP Addresses are eternal, they just change systems.”

Any spiritual person says that every being in this world is connected to each other and religious person will go on step ahead saying that they all are in turn connected to the almighty. However what is sad is that even with all those wonderful connections, we no longer feel for people suffering right in front of us. I have often talked to friends asking them to contribute to help someone go to school and help them for their education and the common response that I get is there are no people around me who needs such kind of help. Most often, they are kind enough to offer me money and say that they will gladly transfer the money whenever I ask for such cause but when it comes to actually spending sometime and helping the needy, they find it difficult. If all humans were supposedly connected to each other, why is it so difficult for us to see the stark difference in lives of thousands around us.

Now as per many spiritual and religious theories, everybody is connected either through their so called souls or some other way. To take this analogy to internet, these connections are probably the internet where every server having a public IP address is connected to each other through lot of meshes of cables, switches and routers. However as discussed above, people find it very difficult to connect to someone right in front of us. We have lot of criteria before we feel sorry for the person. Whether that person belongs to my state, whether the person belongs to my religion or my caste or my gender, whether he talks the same language or not, what is the economic condition of the person and if he belongs to the same class as mine. When many of these necessary conditions are fulfilled, our empathy for that person is developed so much so that we would cry for the person even if the person is actually on some reality show or a fictitious character in the soap that comes every night. This I consider as private networks. You can communicate and relate to each other very easily only if you are in the same private network on the LAN. Ofcourse as any LAN networks, some are fast with 100Gbps connection between their systems and some are slower. But nevertheless if you are in same private network, you can easily connect to each other. Just a little bit of handshake protocol is required and then you can easily share with each other.
However its not that you don’t relate to people from a different class, religion, language or caste. But there are certain restrictions on the same. Like on the internet, where whether you are allowed to talk to a computer on a different private network is mainly governed by your Gateway/Firewall/Proxy server and the Gateway/Firewall/Proxy server of the other computer. Now in real life I think, the religious gurus/pandits or texts or those language saving groups who come in forefront in the name to save the language are the gateway/proxy/Firewall servers. The texts or gurus decide outside your network, for whom you should have empathy for. If it is a black child in Africa dying of malnutrition, you are allowed to feel sorry for the same but a child killed due to bomb attacks in Iraq/Afghanistan is killed because of their misdeeds in the last birth. A farmer committing suicide is due to his foolishness and lack of education and financial understanding but a software professional committing suicide is due to bad working environment and huge mental pressure in companies. Children not going to school is bad and due to corruption in government but those coming through caste based reservation are the ones misusing the caste card and are the ones who are not allowing good students to come forward in life. All these are filters done by the Gateway/proxy/firewall servers.

Then you have some of the politicians and spiritual gurus who do not specifically belong to any particular group but they often use the divide and rule policy to corrupt you and your group based on language, caste, sects, religion. I think these are the viruses in the internet. Often, they are allowed into the private networks by Gateway/Firewall/Proxy Server like the nexus between various religious groups and the politicians. Once inside the network they do their best to corrupt the whole private network.

Now where do few people who want to empathize for people breaking those restrictions put by Gateway/Proxy/Firewall Servers come in the internet? I am not sure. But sooner they are plugged into the web, the better it will be.

June 10, 2011

Sharing: That is what internet is all about

by viggy — Categories: discussion, experience, Misc, software — Tags: , , , Leave a comment

When was the last time you lent few hundred rupees to your best friend without thinking of getting it back in return? When was the last time you showed your collection of Coins or Stamps or DVDs to your nephew without being tensed of they spoiling it? When was the last time you lent your car to your dearest friend without hoping that he will return it without an extra bump or scratch on it?

Long long time ago, probably when you were kids. I guess not, kids especially are possessive about their toys and stuff.

Now again, when was the last time you shared a hilarious video link with your friends? When was the last time your shared an idea with your friend and other who follow you on Twitter? When was the last time you kept a movie on torrent even after it was fully downloaded so that others could download it from you? When was the last time you wrote a nice poem or a story or an experience on your blog so that others can enjoy it?

I guess, the answer for almost all the second set of questions is “Today or yesterday”.

Why such a difference? Why is sharing much more easier on Internet but not in real world?

Well, no prizes for the right answer. Because the obvious answer is that sharing on internet does not mean that you are loosing something. You will still have the video with you to watch again, you will still have the idea with you and you will still have the poem or the story or the experience with you. Which means, things on internet are growing as you share  them.

A perfect example is “Wikipedia”. While an Indian match goes on, the score of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar keeps getting updated on his wikipedia page after every run he scores. I can understand why cricinfo guys do it, for the ad money but why is a person sitting in some remote place in front of his T.V. watching the match updating the wiki page simultaneously. Because he just wants to give the most updated information to his set of readers whom he does not even know. He is just contributing to it so that others also do the same for the contents which he reads on the internet.

So the obvious answer for the question was that on internet things grow as you share them and that is why we share them. As long as we do not loose the stuff we have, we are quite happy to share it others.

Then, how about software? Shouldnt they be also shared? I mean, even softwares grow as we share them with others without loss to the source.

Similarly, what about knowledge? Havnt we reached this wonderful world of technology with Iphones and 3D movies and aeroplanes because our predecessors shared the knowledge that they had without restricting it? Zero was discovered in India and it travelled all the way to Persia from where it reached all the corners of the world. Havent we been sharing knowledge from long long time.

So here are some more difficult questions for you.

In the world of sharing of knowledge, where does patents fit in?

In the world of sharing of softwares, where does licenses and proprietary softwares fit in?

And does it makes sense to put any type of restrictions on people sharing over internet?

Please share your views.

P.S. I thought of writing this blog when I read few lines of a junk article in a newspaper by Arindam Chaudhuri where he condemned internet and said that internet was full of articles that were written to spread wrong news and justifies the latest policy of Indian government to put restrictions on internet bloggers/contents.