A considerable amount of time has elapsed since my last blog post, as I'm sure you would have noticed (or rather not). This state of dormancy, shall we say, has not been entirely down to lethargy or a lack of inspiration, but because "life got in the way".
At the end of all this, I am now happy to say that I am officially done with one year of college. God knows, it has been an immensely trying period for me, as well as the 10 million or so other hapless souls pursuing their undergraduate degrees in India.To be honest, I feel much the same way Frodo must have felt after destroying The Ring of Power in the fires of Mount Doom.
As is customary with anything in life, there were highs, there were lows, and through it all I learned a lot, albeit not the kind of learning I thought I would be doing. Nevertheless, I would only be considered daft, were I to say that the experience was not worth it. I am sure that the friends and acquaintances I have made, will have some impact, however small, on the next few years of my life and that fills me with a sense of optimism.
In the time that I have been away from blogging, quite a few interesting things have been going on around the globe. The biggest headline has got to be the revelation of the NSA's PRISM program. That and the meteoric rise of Eric Snowden, who has been hailed as a messiah, a la Julian Assange.
Although none of us may want to admit it, we probably already knew someone was watching. That Big Brother was watching. I mean, it's foolish to think that they weren't, isnt it? In an age where information is power, any country, most of all America, would do anything to have as much of it as it can possibly get its hands on. The only question we have to ask ourselves is, how do we feel about that?
In the past decade or so, there has been a tremendous surge in the number of people that are active on social networks. Consequently, there have been shifts in general societal patterns. Gone are the days when one person telling the other "let's catch up sometime" by default, meant in person. Gone are the days when people limited their efforts to impressing family and friends. They now devote countless hours to building their social profiles to impress strangers. As a result, their own sense of what is true and what isn't, is so warped, that they truly believe that they are who they claim to be. They are driven by a greed, or rather a sense of insecurity, just like the Government watching them, to know what their "friends" are doing. Who they spend time with, where they go, what clothes they were, and a horde of other seemingly trivial questions.
Depending on the answers to those trivial questions, biased opinions are formed. These opinions form thoughts, thoughts lead to actions, actions shape behavior, behavior shapes character, and voila, there you have it, a new social order! As in any social order, there are bound to be miscreants. The miscreants of any real significance to be bothering about, unfortunately, are extremely well hidden. In order to weed these black sheep out, immense amounts of intel are requried. No stone left unturned. No profile left unswept. Surveillaince 1. Privacy 0.
To paraphrase Gary Oldman from The Dark Knight, it is what the people need, not what they deserve. They need it because it can go a long way to saving their skins. What they do not deserve however, is feeling unsafe telling anyone anything knowing that it is not a secret.
Personally, I have a neutral stance on the issue. For two reasons. Number one, I believe that no one really cares about blowing up the relatively docile neighborhood I live in (although one never can say these days!). And number two, most of the stuff people share on social networks are pretty insignificant when looked at from afar. Nevertheless, people do feel agrieved, and they deserve to be heard out. After all, their precious social images stand to be marred.
As far as I can see, the coming months are going to be filled with plenty of sleepless nights for lawmakers and the general public alike in the US, as they try and work out a compromise. The future of Eric Snowden seems uncertain, but then again, it was never going to be easy. I definitely am eager to find out how all this ends. Till then, remember, if you want to say something important to someone, that isn't a 30 something coffee and donut hog, say it in person. Send a postcard. Whatever.
In the time that I have been away from blogging, quite a few interesting things have been going on around the globe. The biggest headline has got to be the revelation of the NSA's PRISM program. That and the meteoric rise of Eric Snowden, who has been hailed as a messiah, a la Julian Assange.
Although none of us may want to admit it, we probably already knew someone was watching. That Big Brother was watching. I mean, it's foolish to think that they weren't, isnt it? In an age where information is power, any country, most of all America, would do anything to have as much of it as it can possibly get its hands on. The only question we have to ask ourselves is, how do we feel about that?
In the past decade or so, there has been a tremendous surge in the number of people that are active on social networks. Consequently, there have been shifts in general societal patterns. Gone are the days when one person telling the other "let's catch up sometime" by default, meant in person. Gone are the days when people limited their efforts to impressing family and friends. They now devote countless hours to building their social profiles to impress strangers. As a result, their own sense of what is true and what isn't, is so warped, that they truly believe that they are who they claim to be. They are driven by a greed, or rather a sense of insecurity, just like the Government watching them, to know what their "friends" are doing. Who they spend time with, where they go, what clothes they were, and a horde of other seemingly trivial questions.
Depending on the answers to those trivial questions, biased opinions are formed. These opinions form thoughts, thoughts lead to actions, actions shape behavior, behavior shapes character, and voila, there you have it, a new social order! As in any social order, there are bound to be miscreants. The miscreants of any real significance to be bothering about, unfortunately, are extremely well hidden. In order to weed these black sheep out, immense amounts of intel are requried. No stone left unturned. No profile left unswept. Surveillaince 1. Privacy 0.
To paraphrase Gary Oldman from The Dark Knight, it is what the people need, not what they deserve. They need it because it can go a long way to saving their skins. What they do not deserve however, is feeling unsafe telling anyone anything knowing that it is not a secret.
Personally, I have a neutral stance on the issue. For two reasons. Number one, I believe that no one really cares about blowing up the relatively docile neighborhood I live in (although one never can say these days!). And number two, most of the stuff people share on social networks are pretty insignificant when looked at from afar. Nevertheless, people do feel agrieved, and they deserve to be heard out. After all, their precious social images stand to be marred.
As far as I can see, the coming months are going to be filled with plenty of sleepless nights for lawmakers and the general public alike in the US, as they try and work out a compromise. The future of Eric Snowden seems uncertain, but then again, it was never going to be easy. I definitely am eager to find out how all this ends. Till then, remember, if you want to say something important to someone, that isn't a 30 something coffee and donut hog, say it in person. Send a postcard. Whatever.
P.S.
For those wondering about the title of this post, it's also the title of a compilation of letters sent to and written by Richard Feynman. I chose it as a sort of explanation to my temporary disappearance.
