Cognitive surplus and Roadies...

Why do people like Mtv roadies this much? Led me to think. These days stories and movies are getting too hard to empathize with. Not every other person is a homicide detective or masked vigilante. So there is this vacuum to be filled in at prime time. Audience at these hours seek to meet their ‘cognitive surplus’.

There is certain idea floated by sociologist and thinker, Clay shirky, called ‘cognitive surplus’…(designers too are fond of this word, if we want to order bheja fry in Irani hotel, we would ask for cognitive tadka!). I see a good deal of substance in this observation. A man would like to spend his faculties in pursuits of different things in a day. What he calls cognitive surplus may sound like a heavy word for ‘free time’. But it is more than that. Of course what we do with our free time is only thing where one exercises choice. The rest of the activities are becoming so basic and commonplace that even expressing affection is also getting packaged in different forms and ready off-the-shelf.

In his book, here comes everybody (have not read it but read about it) he says, in 70’s cognitive surplus was a need which was met with soaps and sitcoms, but now it is an asset at work, as one finds it as a prime driver in collaborative authoring like Wikipedia. A concept also promoted in the book, wisdom of crowd.

Talking of sitcoms and soaps, we have it in our own K series and now let me stretch it to today’s reality shows like Roadies. Every one watch them and like to talk about them and give an opinion and feel included in the ‘game’. We hate them but still we watch it. Its most vicarious pleasure in seeing somebody doing things you would not do yourselves either ‘cause they are taboo or you do not have balls.

These shows result into engaging experience (?!) to many is ‘cause of one fact. What the characters in this show script is just a little bit more than average acceptable behavior.

They want the behavioral envelope to be pushed just a little bit not too much, like in a meeting or coffee conversation I score by saying this, or I could have done that.
Reality shows and the people in them try to recreate the similar situations resulting into consciously scripted situational entertainment around the emotional needs of this audience.

Mtv audience is one of the most brash and exposed lot. To make them stick around this channel, they are always in need for freshness in ideas and thinking. I used to like it for that. But with reality shows and catering to ‘needs’ feels like going out of hand.

I am not a big time Tv fan, but whenever got time in front of it, I surf channels till I drop dead. I get my quota of sitcoms through p2p and watch them in one-go one after the other like stress eating.

The form of entertainment we are subjected these days, there is need for filtering and suggestion mechanism to bring up the good from mediocre. Till the time I am better off with my pc.

Usage patterns - mobile phones

When piggy chops say shaking her bootie, "it’s not just phone, it’s who we are", it does make a lot of sense.
On an average, the time we spend on phones is reaching the point where it will match other competing media like cable TV, broadband computer. There lies the big opportunity. This comes as a boon to the so far poor ignored baby of the group will be more than happy if eyeball ear-time seeking corporations pay for their usage at the cost of embedded ads.

If mobile phones are the defining innovations of this era, then missed call is our own Indian low cost contribution. (instead of an Indian phenomenon of our generation) It’s about many things like affordability, power structure - "let him call when he is free - I can wait", who needs the most - "it’s his work, let him call me."

I don’t like model of this missed calls. it has too much redundancy.
It involves disconnecting the call, redialing it back. Why not to get rid of this by allowing to have "collect call" option,
I see my phone ringing and it says "collect call from xyz" and I receive, but it gets charged as if I called him. Simple. saves my navigation time.

India is fast becoming urban and the shock of change is softened by this cell phone bridge. Sam Petroda did it with 1 Rupee coin box and that is nicely augmented by “receive only” cell phones. This is the bridge that connects a displaced laborer to its remote village, and an IT nomad to his near and dear.

if you ask a house maid, a dhoodhwalah, an IT guy, a college goer to draw the navigation as you perceive it will all be so different. each got different level of stickiness with different features.
For doodhwalah or paperwalah, his contact list may be his clientele.
For a illiterate, last three numbers is the identity of the person on the other end. A clear design implication could be numbers shown in the way that uses this fact.

Cell phone is a shadow that follows you, gives a best way to excuse yourself from a group whenever you want, how much long you want it.
its an easiest self analysis tool for aspirants in interviews and leave it on and later on find where you lost the plot.
its a best and easiest spying tool for wives and girl friends. just pick up the phone and see what he or she is up to.

We still lack many things ... we don’t see things or we don’t want to see them as it does not fit in business model... incumbents would never try it and entrant faces uphill task. What one need is a innovation cell within giants that keep eyes are ears open to the usage trends in the emerging markets.

Why don’t we build a multi-user feature... typically for lower middle class where a phone like a PC is shared asset and it is carried by 'who needs it most at this hour" basis. So you get a number and its derivative and with a OS level change, these derivative numbers will kick in as per user selection in the phone.
Like a evolution of computing from personal to cloud, when I see how mobiles are evolving, they are driven by marketing than user needs, they want to mimic handheld PC than inherent mobile ubiquitous needs. whatever can be stuffed in that form factor is finding its place in final stank list. oh I can easily fit in a IR device, ...who uses it for crying out loud.

Like Mercedes Benz defines the farthest point in the stylizing for a generation. Rest of the herd try and aim their trajectories to it in surface styling. We need pioneers of that kind who set the bar high enough. iPhone did that with touch factor to some extent.

I strongly feel, Need to hold something to ear is one big No No for me.
this is first to get rid off when you want to put that farthest point.
I have seen a projector based keyboard sometime back, can we build the same for the phone.

Imagine a face appearing with whom you can talk. projector resides at the inner band of wrist watch and lets you project it on palm of other hand.
For hands free version you just put it down and project it on any surface.

I saw an ad today of multi-touch that lets you play piano on touch-screen of the phone. Imagine with the projector the limitation of 4 inch by 3 inch goes away. You can even play drums on this.

It can easily port the content of web with least changes in the wrapper “container of the content” since now the form factor is “stretchable”. You can browse web like in a dual monitor J

What I am writing must already be invented the way far eastern countries are adopting the mobile tech. But appropriateness for its audience is the key thing in design and one just cannot lift up a design and use it here in Indian market.

Google has a knack of doing the right thing at right time. They are entering the emerging markets when whole world is focusing on deep pockets US/EU markets.

Google started it with a voice enabled service on its no. 80041999999, for India and it give results with a fair amount of accuracy to normal queries like cab service etc. I don’t know what they plan to do next but I see a big eco-system of services evolving around it. It’s a baby with big hopes and big potential. Imagine once you establish a phone number in the heads of one million people, you need ways to “extend the brand”…may be last 3 numbers will change to search specific commodities like hotel, bus, electrician and all you need is register it back to Google’s server that I am an electrician operating in such and such area. It would capture the un-organized sector which is right now “loosely connected” with cell phones.
Do you notice how Volve bus operators optimize using a bunch of jobless people with cell phones and a shrewd orchestrator plus a scheme well understood by all (I know at the cost of frustrated and annoyed customer). In India cell phones made these people “intelligent agents that transmit back information” in an multi-agent system. Google can hold it all together and can orchestrate a productivity revolution in this market. Airtel / Idea etc are not thinking out of box. They are happy with margins and customer base. Some are moving or making a cautious attempts to move to holy grail of convergence when broadband-mobile telephony-entertainment will be through single pipe. Don’t know when will this happen. With recession dawning the bitter truth to these companies, it is now more farther than it was.

Like any other ‘stuff’, cell phone is a status-quo. I am not saying anything new here. Earlier days, having a house used to give that respect and social standing. It’s an extended identity and sense of permanence which so many people of different strata search and find in different things. For the lowest rungs now cell phone is doing it. Having a number is something. It’s getting counted. Its license to be included. I feel we are not doing enough. We are not doing it right.

Euphoria around good cause like literacy projects are just ad gimmicks used by leading cell phones companies. Nobody generates content and such things remain white board ideas or idea whose time has not come because I want some other ‘thought leader’ to come and show me how.

A mature Devnagari text or Indic script messaging is still a distant dream. Far east did not let go their past and heritage in their idea of development and progress. Middle east can afford it so long oil is there. No other BRIC nation is doing it. But we devalue our cultural markers in the name of progress. It’s like once my friend Anchal said, to drive faster and lose weight dumbass driver is shedding carburetor and engine. What will be left and how far will you go.

Have you voted today?

This post is like a ideas put in the bottle and thrown in the sea.
Polls are around the corner. We live in the biggest democracy of the world and to make it work in its true sense we should vote. IDC, my design school, I am proud to say, was instrumental in designing the electronic voting machine.
Today we need a ad-push like Jaago-re or we need people coming down to our doorsteps to create that necessary stir that is a driving force if the things got to change.
Through 'jaago-re', I understand one can register on web, provide ID proof and residence proof and automatically your old voting card gets cancelled and new one gets delivered at the given address. For the mobile population like us, who like to throw empty rhetorics from the AC cabins of IT companies and post blogs filled with angst (like this one), who are 'supposed' to be worried about the running the nation than any other guy on the street, such convenience of 'getting hold' of voting card is not enough. We want more.
Here are some ways to make voting a faster, secure, cheap and all-inclusive.
1. Make voting machines talk to server in real time (if it is not already), if tampered with will black list all the entries uploaded.
2. Use ATM machines as a means of voting or online authentication followed by a voting interface. Since postal ballot is allowed for 'army bhaiyon' ko, then we might as well adapt the new ways of picking options. (Can a government body rent out / ask for already existing privately owned infrastructure by raising the issue of national forum and cooperation / participation?)
3. Mobile banks concept is picking up fast to connect the last mile 'the grassroot', so this can act as polling booth in villages as well where ATMs are not there.
4.Telephone based interface for authentication and voting. So one can start with any proof like PAN, DL, Passport, and land into the voting options. This sounds like a best option since today the connectivity is snowballing and Poll can be another prime mover to this 'telephony based economy'
5. The issue of lack of secrecy and possibility of coercion is significant in all the above discussed options, I agree, but some work around can be found and such thing evolve on its own if let develop. Atleast the chances of coercion is far more if the people are made to wait in a que in the scrotching heat where a free distribution of cold-drink can also sway the lesser minds. I am not trying to over-simplify but atleast the next poll should be far different than this one in its intrumentation is what I want.
6. how about social softwares to facilitate the voting or a quick app on facebook/orkut? May be tehre is quick links to party manifesto and 'whats there for me' comes filtered based on your demographics. Assume I login to facebook and decide to vote, it says, this party is offering tax reliefs, while this one is notching up the reform expenditures, etc... and I would be rational enough to vote with a reason than becoming a victim of tailered propaganda.

Digsby : all in one

tired of maintaining hazzar networking sites,....we all have our reasons "hey, 'cause I have been using it from start, ...this, I started since I liked the interface,.. this one...oh..I just have coupla friends there, this id is just to provide whenever asked in typical web form for registering " .... We had meebo earlier for consolidation, here is one more Umbrella client which will take care of your messengers, mail clients, networking sites in one place... digsby... worth a try.... i liked the homepage as I could find one character of Family guy in their avatars... you never what thing you will like in an app.

Thoughts on pot

Quantum of solace se yaad aaya... that’s what are we missing in our lives... at least let me speak for myself... I heard all the bond movie names are picked from such cheesy words from Ian Fleming’s novels...

The constant turmoil that we live into.. I mean... every dig we take on internet starts with Google... it is a new world’s web address bar... for a while think about a scenario where you are living in a room and everything you want involves a hunting ... long ago we used live in simpler times... where a book finished used to linger in our minds for days... quoting that used to be way of enjoying it... calling bro from other room and reading him passages were the fun part... something is getting lost today..maybe there are distances.,...maybe people we care about part... and there comes a need for talking with many at a time ... we are constantly hard pressed for time....
I go blank in front of blank screen and get careful and politically correct and filter my own thoughts... but true me do meet me sometime.... thoughts come rushing in...
It peaks when I am on my morning 8km run and climaxes when I am taking hot showers on my back...(my lord, ye baat note ki jaye..ye insaan aaj kal sexual metaphors bahot use karne laga hain)
But I feel the blog should not give away ..but should talk about the things that culminate out of your intense brooding over a thing, thought, issue... it should surface with more clarity than clutter.

Things I like to share I get it in that ephemeral moments when my mind is completely light and feathery .. watching over the steps one after the other and thinking nothing else... i fact these days...we hardly do anything for a prolonged period of time... something is always there to disrupt u .. a buzzing cell...talap for tea/coffee... somebody at the door... unwanted mail alert... ... we tend to get something close to this thing..that higher state of mind..on pot(I don’t have that experience as yet but my friends from arts school tell me) or on the pot... (assuming some invest good amount of time for the ROI sitting there) ... some find such lighter moments... moments of clarity in their sleep ...at 4 am... my Prof Bapat.. use to say.. sleep after a good wrestling with a tricky design problem and let the mind synthesis it ... and in the morning..it will be all clear and crystalline for u... they call it “let me sleep over it”..

For me this part of sleep comes not at 4 am but pretty late in the morning... and that supposedly design breakthrough moment actually turns out to be sleep breaking moment ,,,..

I see I write in a muddled up manner, try to be relentless. It reminds me what Sean Connery says to his prodigy in ‘Finding Forrester’ ... Don’t stop ... Keep writing...Don’t stop even for a moment.. it is a key to good writing.... but ... when unlike the seasoned writers it should be good to be able to write one full page of your state of mind... I admire those who can do this..may be through a diary .. sometime they are the one who use it to motivate themselves... for people like me.... by constantly pushing myself .. as to show me what u are capable of.. this results into a constant watchfulness I would say till the level beyond which it is difficult to call healthy.... blog is on such poking to myself... I don’t believe in mass media but I blog...I believe the key to good conversations is knowing how the listener is responding... and growing into that conversation in such a way that you both discover something more valuable and connect... sometime I feel there can be a nice tool one can develop that creates a collage of my conversations with many into a coherent publishable feed... so i tell my friend.. about this movie... and then about how was stuck in traffic... it would be nice to extract that conversation into something others like to overhear and add... no....not a chat room.... we don’t want more chaos to what we already get exposed to... we don’t want to land up in the privacy law suits also. ..

Freeing the Social Networks

I was going through some of the recent web2.0 mash ups at a site that keeps the log of all web20 ventures ...'everything 2.0'. I realize everyother guy now wants to start a social networking site/app with little or nothing new to offer. It makes me think, why not to decouple the actual social network from the client I am viewing/managing it with. This way I get a good choice to switch and use new and fresh apps without having to spend time to bring it up-to-date and without having to send mass invites.

It should be like portability of an address book.

It's a classical question about service provider and service. If orkut holds all my contacts and I want to switch to facebook; the transition should be one-click.
Only interface and features should change.

There is clear and present need for a client independent social network, the way 'meeboo' lets to chat with Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Google talk. Thats being real user centric and valuing the freedom of his choice.

This a right time for freeing social networks from the tyranny of the early entrants and allowing more feature to bloom and co-exist with the old.

Is it same as number portability in telecom industry; the way I can switch from Idea to hutch, keeping my cell number same.