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. 

Head on with Hadron

The search for the God particle leads to a collision, an answer – and an endless quest for a question.

550 feet below the Franco-Swiss border, a group of scientists convened, excited at the prospect of advancing technology. The touchscreen Ouija board that they gathered around had come alive - the laser pointer moved to form the word ‘universe’. They were puzzled - if the universe was the answer, what was the question? They hadn’t asked one.

 “Technology can find the question when pigs fly,” the critics snorted. Angry Birds made that happen. But the question still eluded them. Finally, a detective was summoned.

Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock Holmes never stated, "It's elementary, my dear Watson” or anything to that effect. Graham Bell did say "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you." And Crick (of the DNA fame) did announce, “Watson, we’ve found the secret of life”. But as for Holmes, he probably said that the game's afoot, which itself is borrowed from Shakespeare’s Henry V, thus leading to the other famous quote - 'When you've eliminated the source, whatever remains, however improbable, is your own quote'. The misquote however, could be attributed to a transmission loss over the ages. What he had actually said was, “It's hypothetical elementary, my dear Watson”.

Holmes was cryptically referring to the Higgs Boson, the world's first hypothetical elementary particle. Then came the key question - if something is hypothetical, how could it be elementary? This divided scientists the world over into two factions – those who espoused concern and those who chose to discern the truth. To avoid a collision course, they embraced common ground – CERN, and made a beeline for Geneva, Switzerland to the Large Hadron Collider, which was located in a deep tunnel, the same one at the end of which they had expected to find light. “Hadron? Doesn’t that sound a lot like Hades?” one of them asked. That’s when the others began to examine the close links.

Hades was associated with the underworld and the Hadron Collider was pretty much in the underworld, around 175 meters below the ground. Hadron is a particle that could be a proton. Hades was also known as Plouton (pardon the lisp). Did the answer – or rather, the question, lie underground?

Heads spun, vision blurred. The Large Hadron Collider seemed to spiral endlessly until it resembled… a large Mayan calendar. The concentric circles at the center, the spokes going outward, everything seemed to match. But the clincher was that the Mayan calendar was rumoured to end in 2012. “Did you say 12?” asked one of the scientists. “But everything in this universe is made up of 12 fundamental particles.”

And what plays a key role in giving these 12 particles mass? The Higgs Boson, also known as God’s particle! And it was the Higgs Boson that was being explored in the Large Hadron Collider. So the scientists were back to where they had started – 550 feet below the Franco-Swiss border.

Finally, a scientist lost it. “Look, we’ve been spending years looking for God’s particle, the Mayans and Sherlock Holmes. We’ve spent over nine billion dollars on the collider and are yet to find a thing. If only we had handed over the search to the guys who make twice that amount each year by just searching for everything on earth, including…”

“…the earth!” the others chorused. That was when they arrived at the question. So, if the universe is the answer, the question is - just how much can a Google search cover?

The shastra of Facebook

A theory on how Facebook offers you the perfect foundation to build your social fiefdom

Since time immemorial, man has depended on books to straighten out key aspects that defined his personality – from rolled up posters of Claudia Schiffer to curled up currency notes. Books, when used appropriately, have been quite effective in straightening out kinks of character – that was how the phrase ‘to throw the book at someone’ originated. The other less famous, but equally effective way of building character has been to open a book and read it. 

Books that guided man on the most important aspects of life have been around for ages. Approximately 2300 years ago, Kautilya wrote Arthashastra, a tome that advised the king on how he should manage the state, the economy and his army. Almost 1800 years later came The Prince by Machiavelli, a treatise on governance, power and human nature.

Subsequently, rampant deforestation and global warming reared their ugly heads, and with the noble intention of saving the earth and its trees, man gave up reading. But he still needed guidance on how to go about life. That was when technology came to the rescue. And it turned out that the only ‘book’ that 900 million people spent hours on, day after day, was Facebook, a fascinating guide on how to win friends, influence people, like comments, share photos and drive the boss and spouse mad at work and at home respectively. More importantly, it captured the essence of both Arthashastra and The Prince, in one web page.

In Arthashastra, Kautilya elaborates on the seven pillars of an organization as ‘the king, the minister, the country, the fortified city, the treasury, the army and the ally’. Similarly, Facebook also lists seven pillars that are crucial for survival in a social network. Naturally, you are the king of your domain,  your close friends are your trusted ministers, their friends - especially the good-looking ones - are your allies, the groups you're a part of form your country – think of your voyeuristic wandering to other’s pages as illegal immigration, the apps become your fortified city – you wouldn’t want your personal information to go beyond the walls, your comments and snaps are your treasury that you desperately guard against ever-changing privacy settings, and the Like button is your army, with which you can change the destiny of a post.

In The Prince, Machiavelli Niccolo talks about human nature and of self-obsession, with every action fuelled by the ‘what’s in it for me?’ syndrome. You don’t have to look beyond one’s Facebook page for proof of this. Machiavelli also believed that people are mainly concerned with their property and honor, a fact that’s evident from the way they spend hours huddled over Farmville.

There are chapters in The Prince that makes you wonder if they've been written for the Facebook generation. For instance, Chapter XVI, ‘Concerning Liberality And Meanness‘, throws broad hints on how naughty your posts can get. Chapter XIX, ‘That One Should Avoid Being Despised And Hated’ tells you why the Hate button has never been introduced in Facebook. Chapter XXIII, ‘How Flatterers Should Be Avoided’ alludes to why fawning remarks to your profile pictures should never be taken seriously.

With Arthashastra being lost for centuries and The Prince being banned, the hidden principles of Facebook had to be guarded from oblivion, internet censorship and more importantly, from Google’s new products. Facebook had to live on forever – and that was why Timeline came into being.

Facebook would now be the future – and Arthashastra and The Prince, history.