The ‘g’ way of thinking…
June 25, 2008 at 4:21 am | In Humor, Internet | 1 CommentTags: Google, gString, gTalk, Humor
And then he said, let there be ‘gLight’; and he never had to shine light on anyone ever again.
(they just searched for it now!)
Yes people, the world is taking on a prescript – the letter ‘g’. And it all started as a search engine called ‘Google’. Soon we had all kinds of g letter words – gMail, googleDesktop, gGears, gToolbar, googleReader, gNotebook, gMaps and even googleEarth and googleSky! Already, words for many human verbs are becoming prefixed with the letter ‘g’. It has already started; people can ‘gTalk’. Soon they will be able to gWalk and gSleep. Also, maybe we can even gEat soon; once that is accomplished, gGod knows what else we can do! Read More…
Autorickshaw vs the Free Market!
June 24, 2008 at 12:45 pm | In Economics | Leave a CommentTags: Autorickshaw, Free Market
A positive sum game according to game theorists is a transaction where both parties in their own estimation, are better off as a result of the transaction.
Walter E Williams, a distinguished professor of economics at George Mason university quotes in a lecture titled Markets, Governments, and the Common Good. This is the essence of free markets, where there is a good-good exchange. I am a firm beleiver in the goodness of the free market; but one situation which I face daily seems to contradict this. In the evenings, I can’t get autorickshaw drivers in Mumbai to drive me home from the local suburban train stations!
The drive from the nearest suburban train station in Mumbai to where I live is around five kilometers. If I travel this distance by autorickshaw which is running on a meter that has not been tampered, it would cost me Rs. 17, an amount I am more than willing to pay; if only I can convince the autorickshaw driver to take me there in the first place. But this is the most difficult negotiation. The reason; in this transaction, going by the meter in the direction of my residence, may not be in the auto driver’s estimation a transaction which will leave him ‘better off’.
So, am I right in cursing the free market system which allows the auto rickshaw driver to deny me the comfort of travelling to my residence on the autorickshaw, by being willing to pay the requiste fee, when he finds it not to his benefit? Well, I think it would be a premature decision. One must always examine the system’s constraints before deciding if it is a bad one.
Firstly, to blame on the free market system in this situation would be wrong since the autorickshaw-commuter transaction is not a free market transaction. The autorickshaw driver is able to ‘deny’ me conveyence becuase the system is subsidized in his favor becaue of the monopoly of individual public transport that he commands. He leverages on the fact that there is nobody else who can offer me the same conveyance without any run-ins with the autorickshaw owners union! The system is not operating in a free market.
I cannot for instance, decide to purchase a fleet of small cars or private autorickshaws and offer a taxi service to commuters at similar prices without being registered under the union. Also, if I wish to do something of this nature I also stand the danger of being attacked for trying to rob the poor autorickshaw driver’s income!
Hence my friends, its not the free markets that need to be blamed; it is the opposite of free markets which is a cuase of this problem! Restrictive trade practices!
Stumble Upon a pot of Gold!
June 19, 2008 at 2:46 pm | In Advertising, Branding, Internet, Marketing | 1 CommentTags: AdSense, Click Through, Google, StumbleUpon
I have recently installed the now famous Stumbleupon toolbar on my internet explorer, and man! is it addictive! All I have to do is indicate what my preferences are and voila! I can be directed to very interesting websites I never knew existed! This works very well when you have sometime to kill; you have finished reading all the updates on the regular sites you usually visit and don’t know what to find on the internet. (Ofcourse, Stumbleupon is not a substitute for going outdoors or reading a book, when one has time to kill; but it defenitely makes sense when its pouring cats and dogs, especially in Mumbai, where one dares not venture far from home, during the rainy season)
Stumbleupon is a very powerful tool according to me. Google currently makes money by putting up contextual advertising on the website based on one’s search queries. The things one searches for on the net are varied and the reasons for the search are also different. And this is the main problem preventing Google from becoming the ‘BEST EVER’ advertising medium. Google knows what you are searching for, so they place ads for products/services/experiences which they think you might be interested in based on your search. But because most people who are searching may not be interested in purchasing this product/service/experience and only want to know somethings about it, the advertiser may not get ‘conversions’ while he does get visibility. But, as the marketing dollar on the internet is cheaper than other mediums, the ROI is the achievement of higher visibilty. Over time, and if you use gmail, Google gets to know what kind of business you are in, based on the email conversations you have and are able to send you more targeted advertising. This vastly helps the advertisers; if you were to send an email to your friend about her new ipod asking her what price she bought it for, google will be able to put up advertisements of various ipod deals available on the internet.
This is typically an example of the depth of a person’s interest phenomenon. If you were to visit a search for ‘fountain pens’ on google, you might be able to see the Wikipedia link first, followed by other links to makers of fountain pens. Many people are typically using the search engine to ‘research’ the product. If so, they would visit the wikipedia entry on fountain pens and from there be led to other links. They might find out about the top brands and make a note of this and later purchase this from a stationery store in their city. By not visiting the sites of fountain pen sellers on the internet, the advertiser’s dollar spent on the google ad does not have a direct ROI. Sure, the brand of the advertiser may have been visible, but the internet is not the best medium to make one aware of the brand.
Imagine now, if Google actually knew your preferneces and an advertisement of the fountain pen were to come on a website where one is reading up on fountain pens. This I beleive would pique the interest of the surfer. If the person is internet savvy, this might be a better platform for realizing a purchase; if not, the surfer may go and buy the product from a brick and mortar store, but the marketing association which triggered the purchase could be linked to the above contextual ad.
This is the exact functionality StumbleUpon can make use of. If Google can tie up with StumbleUpon and based on the inclination of the particular stumbler, whose preferneces have been identified gathered upon through analysis of the kind of sites he prefers to ‘StumbleUpon’, deliver contextual advertising on that site, it would be a great step forward towards targeted advertising. It’s Google Adsense, with an intermediary preference filter called StumbleUpon. The algorithm for Adsense depends on the content of the website – not the preference of the surfer visiting the website. The magic of targeted advertising would be phenomenal if the algorithm for Adsense actually captured the preferences of the surfer!
StumbleUpon’s current revenue model is selling its subsriber’s occasional stumbles to a website for a fee. If a website wants to ’StumbledUpon’ a certain times in a day, they have to pay StumbleUpon a fee and the website will deliver on this numbers. If the google tie up can be worked out, another revenue model could be on the number of users delivered to a particular website through the StumbleUpon toolbar. If the nuances of this can be worked out, it would defenitely be a move towards mass customized advertisements!
Smaller State? No, Smaller Government is better…
June 17, 2008 at 4:05 pm | In Economics, Geopolitics, Politics | 1 CommentTags: China, Economics, India, Nation States, Separatist Movement
The American magazine has an interesting article on the topic of Geopolitics and how maps are being redrawn. The article titled “Map Quest” talks about the continual flux in the way the various nations of the world keep changing in their ideaologies and with it the economic conditions leading to different postures in foreign policy. Economic changes and the ambitions of the people of a nation always seems to have some kind of correlation. What seems to be interesting is the fact that this economic upswing and downswing seems to be of a cyclical nature.
Take for example the case of India and China; some three hundred years ago, the Indian and Chinese economies were the dominant economies in the world. America and Japan were nothing more that third world countries. During this period, most products that originated in the subcontinent and China were held in very high esteem. And true to the famous saying that ‘imitation is the best form of flattery’ the western businessmen actually copied the articles from the oppulent orient and sold it in their countries for a premium. Ceramic is a classic example of this kind of a situation. It was a product of China and some European entrepreneurs perfected a process to make cheap imitation ceramic and sold it to the western nations. Today, when the US is the dominant economy, we see a reverse situation. Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs are the one becoming competitive by manufacturing western products in a cheaper and better way!
Geopolitically, the economic dominance of nations has a cause & effect relationship with the countries prosperity – that is until, it seems there is a cyclical economic swing in other direction. Now, about the redrawing of maps, I think the most common reason which most separatist movements quote for wanting to form their own countries or states is economic freedom and release from oppression. If one observes the various factions in the Indian states which want their own separate states (Telengana, Vidharba etc) economic liberty to choose a different ideaology from the parent state is one of the strong reasons for the want of separate states.
But is this a productive and forward looking? One of the funadamental tenets of free market capitalism is the right to private property. This right is the genesis of the capitalist society which can lead to entrepreneurial activity and competition leading a robust trade. Is there any causal relation between the formation of smaller states and countries which have governments which control smaller geographies and the increase in the robust trade and better economic conditions? I think not. Even if these smaller newly formed states have free market leaning governments, I think economic conditions will not improve too soo. Of course, Singapore and Hong Kong are classic opposing examples to this arguement. Singapore, separated from the larger nation of Malaysia and is today a leading free-trade embracing nation with a dominant economy. Hong Kong, a economic giant, the true bastion of Free trade, has now been rejoined with a left leaning Chinese mainland and is seeing an economic downturn.
The reason, I think a smaller newly formed state, albeit with a free trade embracing government would struggle to be economically strong is that while it might uphold the laws of private property, it is a move which is against another of free market capitalism’s basic tenets. It is a net move towards increased Govenrment. From a single government which governs a large geography to multiple governements which govern smaller geographies in the same total region is a net increase in the interference of government and this would be an obstacle to free trade.
It might make more sense for those who want to separate from a larger parent nation, so that they can follow a free trade policy in their own small country/state, to rather effect change in the existing government to move towards free trade. This would also give them the benefit of ’more’ scare resource to allocate properly for the ‘greater good’. And of course, those separatist movements which focus not on economic liberty but rather seek separation so that they can establish more control and rule over their separate communities, well they are defenitely not in the free trade mould and would anyway not get the benefits of free trading economy!
Krypton-86 vs The Infinite Wisdom
June 16, 2008 at 4:01 am | In Philosophy | 2 CommentsTags: Agnostic, Religion, Science
Jug Suraiya has an interesting article in The Times of India dated 14th, June 2008. It lambasts a research/survey which claims that atheists are smarter than theists. When I read the first few lines I was appalled; how could good ol’ Jug Suraiya do this. As an agnostic myself, I was offended that Jug Suraiya thought that Atheism/Agnosticism did not need intellect.
But after completing the whole article I was in splits. Jug Suraiya contends,
Atheism requires no special brain power. It’s as easy as falling off a log. It’s believing in a God who — omnipotently, omnisciently — creates all these horrors, and more (Hitler, Hiroshima, Mao, Pol Pot, the AIDS virus, sickle cell anaemia, Alzheimer’s, polio etc, etc), which requires adroit intellectual footwork
This indeed is funny stuff. But, however agnostic/atheist I am, there is a seed of doubt. For a believer, there is the blanket of blind faith which covers for all questions; for non-believers on the other hand, there is no such prodigal blanket of faith. He needs to question the faith. And this requires some intellect, I am sure! Both religion and science depend on the irreducable primary. In the case of religion, this irreducable primary happens to be God and his infinite wisdom; for science it is the basic assumptions. For instance, the definition of one of the most basic units of measurement, the ‘metre’ is defined by an organization of standards as equal to 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the Krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.
Now, this is true all around the world. All physicists believe this and accept it to be true. But, it is not to deny the fact that it is an assigned value; an assumption made to standardize measurement. There is no way this can be refuted as being true, by comparing it with any other pre-existing standard. It is an irreducible primary. Similarly, for a believer, this irreducable primary is the infinite God.
Both sides of the coin are ‘believers’. One, in the infinite wisdom of the all knowing creator, the other in the most basic assumptions of measurement and time. Just as we agnostics might find it mind boggling that people believe in the ‘metaphysical flights of fancy’, but on ther other hand, the believers might find it hard to accept 1650763.73 wavelengths of Krypton-86 as a standard!
I think intellect is present on both camps; only we agnostics do not have faith to cushion our fall; hence we have more intellect! <wink>
UPDATE:
It is almost fascinating (as if by intelligent design!!) that I came across an article in today’s edition of The American after writing this post, about the culture war between believers and non-believers. Peter J Wallison, in the article titled “Lets declare a truce in the culture war” argues on a similar premise that both the believer and the non-believer are basically unable to prove or falsify the other’s belief. To quote the author,
To the extent that they believe in the correctness of their own position, both sides are simply relying on faith. The only truly rational position is that of the agnostic, who says there is no way to know and probably never will be
I very much agree with what the author contends on this topic. All the rhetoric from both the believer and the non-believer about the correctness of his personal belief and more so the incorrectness of the other side is unfounded and wasteful.
But, I am not very sure when he points out that Christopher Hitches was wrong in saying that the burden of proof is on the believer. Is it ever possible to prove the negative? How can a non believer like Hitchens be asked to prove the non existence of God? I do not completely accept the supposition that all atheists believe in the presence of multiple universes or multiverses. Some believe that there can be a state of absolute zero. Just like the believers can concieve in their thought process a being with ‘infinite’ powers and also claim that this ‘infinite’ is something which the human mind cannot comprehend, it is similarly possible for the non-believer to accept that absolute zero exists! And that in most scientific parlance can be ascertianed as a state of singularity.
I also strongly disagree on the ‘everything exists in the mind of the creator’ or ‘the objective reality we percieve around us is an illusion’ and that something exists ‘only when they have in some sense been observed’ theory. On the first instance, when the proof of the creator is itself under doubt, existence of reality only in his mind is also as much an illusory theory. In the second case, science may not as yet have reached a conclusive proof as to why the two photons that start out from the same place remain entangled even when they are miles apart, but this is not sufficent to declare that such an explanation will not be found and this in any sense implies the absence of reality in the absence of an observer! There are many things which people in the past found to be unexplained and supernatural, which are now well explained by rigorous scientific proof. The arguement that because something is unexplained scientifically today, it can act as proof for another connected hypothesis is a logical fallacy!
In retrospect, I think that this debate, like many other debates on similar topics, usually ends in one conclusion. Let each man decide for himself what is correct according to his system of knowledge, and that would be the most rational thing to do!
Constraints, and the way to approach issues
June 13, 2008 at 8:46 pm | In Economics | Leave a CommentTags: Business, Constraints, Management
Manangement techniques and aproaches argue that there are constraints which govern any business model and the businesses need to exploit their available resources to the maximum extent therby achieving the best possible outcome that is ‘allowed’, as defined by the limits imposed by the constraints.
A thought came to me when I was travelling on the local suburban trains here in Mumbai. Amongst the three suburban rail corridors which run in Mumbai, the Western Railway system is considered to be better than that of the Central Railway and the Harbour Line. Not that the Western Railway is any less crowded, but what one observes is that rakes on the Western corridor are better maintained and rattle and sway less, literally!
I was being thrown about on the Central Railway earlier today, between the Currey Road junction and Victoria Terminus; and this dichotomy came to my mind. I wonder if the members of the Central Railway management, who may have lesser funds to work with than their Western Railway counterparts, be victims of the ‘Exploit to the maximum the available resource to get the best possible result under the situations imposed by the constraints’ management theory? One justification, which the Central Railway management might be coming up with, to justify poor quality of their suburban lines (when compared to the Western Railways ones) could be “We lack the funds they have. We are doing the best utilization of our resources under the constraints”
I think this management approach is a poor one. Why can’t one instead, think differently, and use the available resources not to strain the maximum out of the constraint, but rather render the constraint irrelevant – thereby removing the ‘limits’ imposed by them? Opportunity costs and feasibility are generally the variables which are thrown against such an arguement; but I think this approach needs to be further examined.
Whose plate is half full?
June 13, 2008 at 2:52 pm | In Economics, Environment | Leave a CommentTags: Economics, Environment, Green
The global food crisis which has been in the media for a while now has prompted many reactions from across the spectrum of observers. Policy makers in the government have gone on to increase price controls on food commodities to control the spiraling food prices leading to greater regulatory architecture coming into the market. Other reactions which have come to the media, mainly because of their comical nature, is the assertion of President Bush that food prices around the world are increasing as Indians are eating more!
One intriguing argument as a result of the increasing food prices, which has been popping up on the internet on many major blogs and news editorials, is the revisiting of the famous argument by Thomas Malthus. Thomas Malthus in his famous essay on the Principle of Population published in 1798 essentially argued that in a world where global population grows geometrically and the food production grows arithmetically, the math indicates towards an eternally damned human population which would in the future face massive food shortages. This argument had been proven wrong over the years after 1798 when the population grew at a geometric rate and food production thanks to improvements in technology also grew so as to make the world self sufficient in the matters of food. The current food shortage, along with the increased media awareness about the global warming (or as it is popularly known, Climate Change) which is also caused, most people theorize due to exponential increase in population, has reopened the debate on Malthus’ argument.
Malthus famously wrote, “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race”. Increasing exhaustion of cultivable land was one of the major facts which Malthus laid out to support his arguments. Is fertility of soil and availability of cultivable land one of the main reasons behind the increasing food shortage today? With many other articles talking about the critical population limit which certain economies can sustain mainly due to the access to cultivable land problem also gaining ground, the idea that lack of land could be one of the culprits.
This got me thinking; has the human population really grown to such an extent that there is no more cultivable land available now? A distribution of population around the world definitely does not seem to indicate a ‘lack of land’. A look at the population density map of the world seems to indicate that the population of the world is concentrated in certain regions and the world is vastly ‘empty’ in a majority of the place. Although I know that my idea might seem juvenile and without depth by agriculturists, what is lacking in the world is not the availability of land, but rather a lack of cultivable land. And this according to me is the critical flaw where Thomas Malthus’ famous essay falls short.
What was the problem of the age when Malthus wrote his famous essay was the lack accessibility for the famer to the cultivable lands. With the advance of technology has seen this problem increasingly disappear. Accessibility and communication is not a primary constraint in the world today. Similarly, I would like to think that with the increase in technology, if the availability of ‘cultivable land’ can also be made to increase, coupled with the already better accessibility infrastructure, land will not be a primary reason for shortage of food.
Now, I know that there an innumerable number of ‘holes’ that can be poked into this argument, even I can suggest a few. But hey! We optimists are accustomed to seeing a plate full of food!
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
