In troubled waters…

An investigative report on why water and technology often combine to result in explosive face-offs…

It was a bright, blistering hot day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. “Time to send all of them to the service centre,” announced a man, wondering why the clocks had gone cuckoo all of a sudden. “Water clocks,” growled Big Brother. “Since time immemorial, a deluge of water has invariably resulted in an epic disaster. Haven’t you seen Waterworld?” “But why does it hapen?” the man asked. “Technology will give you the answers,” said Big Brother, and the giant telescreen switched to a commercial break.

It was 1984. The man decided to follow the trail of technology from the beginning of the world. And sure enough, he found proof – water in any form and in any quantity (usually large ones) resulted in the polarisation of people into groups that competed with each other against a larger technological backdrop.

There was a time when mankind was presumed to be far more advanced than we are today. They called themselves the antediluvian (pre-flood) civilisation even before the floods came – that’s how smart they were. And when the deluge did arrive, two things happened. One, lives were saved in pairs, possibly the inspiration for binary opposites in critical theory. And two, it was the good versus the bad, the former being saved by Noah’s ark and the latter perishing to rains and floods. 

The waters receded, but the floods have seeped into technology in various forms. The act of inundating a particular system or network with data, signals or requests, causing it to slowdown or stop is, not surprisingly, called flooding. And so, using evocative names like ping flood, SYN (sin?) flood and crapflood, technology has singled out many of these disasters for us to be good and avoid.

In another era, a water dispute of a different kind raged between the devas and the asuras. The ocean was being churned in search of the nectar of immortality. One of the outcomes of this exercise was the release of a deadly poison, the intake of which turned Lord Shiva’s throat blue. In a poor game of Chinese whispers played in Danish, blue throat became Bluetooth and led to the famous wireless protocol. Proof of this lies in the fact that the ‘h’ and ‘b’ in the Bluetooth logo actually represents Halahala (the poison) and Bali (the demon king who started it all when he defeated the devas) - and not the initials of Harald Blatand, as is popularly believed.

The phenomenon continues in today’s times - behind every technology battle is a representation of a water body. Intel’s strength in chipping away at AMD’s market share lay in its projects like Clackamas, Deschutes, Klamath, Merced, Nehalem, Potomac, Tillamook, Tualatin, Willamette and Yamhill – all named after rivers.

Android’s legendary fight with iOS can be attributed to mankind salivating in anticipation of its operating systems named after desserts. With names like Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, a dribble deluge was inevitable. Furthermore, when both Apple and Google outdo each other in promoting a puzzle video game named Where's My Water?, you know that disaster has arrived in the form of a crocodile fishing in troubled waters.

As for the next instalment of the water disputes, get ready with your flood gear and expect thunder and lighting. Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft are waging the mother of all battles – and according to reports, it has to everything to do with a cloud.