Monday, August 2, 2010

Its good to be Kiddish

Does it really matter if a person is a Businessman, Entrepreneur or a blue/white collar worker. Is there some thing great or not so great about a certain means of earning. After all either of them is a means of survival.

To get to the roots, lets us begin at the beginning. Lets reverse the clock by some 26000 years. I consider 26000 years, coz that is the time the tilt of earths axis takes to come back to initial position and within this time, our earth would have seen the extreme cold and extreme heat rendering life impossible on earth.

From then, that is the beginning, let us start with just two human beings. lets us not argue whether these two evolved over a period of time or just got created in a specific point in time. Let us leave it to the philosophers and intellectuals.

Now the whole earth is for the asking; only for those two chosen ones. No competition. No technology. No nothing. Now a new born baby then, would have been pampered for hardly a year or two. The kids lived and learned what their parents did. Sure, they must have been on their own by the age of 6.

As population multiplied, competition intensified and war was inevitable. Now the children, who could afford where sent for training. Mainly on the survival skills, say to hunt, to fight etc.

Not too sure but should be after Ptolemy in 2 AD; of course influenced by Aristotle, the school-men era started. Probably, kids where supposed to learn what their ancestors had learned and the best was who could repeat what their forefathers said or did. Probably up to the age of sixteen. Literally spending the prime 16 years in memorizing and following. Originality was not expected. The life of Copernicus and Galileo are a few documented instances that we know off. There must have been a lot more.

Now, if we look at the past 2 or 3 centuries, initially kids went to study till the age of 18 (+2). Subsequently another 3 more years where added (Degree). The kid has already crossed 22 by now. As though this is not enough, add another 2 years for a masters degree.

Why stop here? Add another 5 more years for a Phd. The kid is 27. Mind you, we are making 27 year old kids. Through out these years, the kid is being taken care of by the parents. Most parents see it as an investment for their old age. If we try to extrapolate this phenomenon, we may end up with 50 or even 75 year old kids in the near future.

As a passing note, it is said that, in India at least, only 15 percent of graduating engineers are employable. Maybe remaining are more suitable for business and entrepreneurship?

Finally, How does this relate to survival and business and all that. I leave it for you to guess (it right). Let me give a clue. What if a worker thinks that the office space, telephone, transportation etc are part of his pay package? The whole salary now becomes a profit.

So enjoy being kiddish. That is what is expected out of us.

Let me leave with this thought, for the moment

If you deserve
you will get.
To deserve
you got to make an effort.
To make an effort
now is the time.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

To go green, use brain

To write something is one and to publish it is another. Had been contemplating on a topic for long and this post is just to get a feel of it. Here we go.

The title comes in a flash. The content for the chosen title comes in small chunks. The overall article takes shape as i assemble the small chunks in a computer; rewritten it at least 3 or 4 times. A good 30 min to 1 hr of time.

This takes me back to days when there were no paper, no pen, no computer. Say let us go back by around 2000 years. If our forefathers wanted to communicate something in writing, they had to carve it on a stone. Imagine the time and effort required. Incidentally, I have not come across any stone engravings with strike marks on it; they cant afford to make mistakes!!!

Even our ancient scriptures on palm leaves required writing with nails. Not so easy either. no room for modification again.

The advent of ink on paper was much easier and so people started writing pages after pages. It would have taken long for newton (17th century) to script his principia. I could only imagine the number of papers, newton would have gifted the waste basket. Euclid writing about geometry around 300 BC is a great wonder.

Astonishingly, one of my favorite author Isaac Asimov had published close to 300 books. How did be manage; only he could tell.

So, Thinking, writing, publishing and of course reading consumes a lot of time and resources. The resources being paper or power consumed by a computer. With computers, the consumption is twice. once for reading and another for writing.

I only wish, if the whole script can be visualized in the mind and better still transferred as a thought. I am told yogi's are/were able to do this with least amount of energy consumption.

So to go green, let us use brain.