Obama In My House

After coming home, I was finishing some work on my laptop. My eldest son was sitting next to me generally doing nothing. He was back home, after playing and was tired, hence was just browsing the book and chit chatting with me. I was responding in mono syllables without listening to him. I was actually immersed in doing some work. He said something and I did not respond. He startled me with his next sentence :
“You are doing something that you should not be doing”. I looked up from my laptop. Now I couldn’t ignore him. It was t

My son
My Son

ime to pay attention and understand what he was trying to say.
So I said, “Yeah, I know, I should be listening to you”.
“No”, he said, “You should read what Obama says”.
“What? Oh.. yeah I saw some news about him in today’s newspaper, I must read that”,
I was desperately trying to show that I was on top of the subject and I was miserably failing.
“No”, he continued surprise me and said further, “You should read the Reader’s Digest”.
I asked him to tell me what was it.  He insisted that I should read it and brought the RD, opened the page and gave it to me.
While pointing the 4 lines that he wanted me to read he said “Actually I don’t mean so much, but you read it”.

By now I had stopped guessing and was ready to face whatever it was.
“A study in 16 countries this year found that TV and videogames are drastically reducing playtime among kids one to 12. And parents also are wired to laptops, pagers and Back Berries”

Hmm.. a big lesson for me coming from my son.

I felt guilty of myself and proud of my son.
(RD, June09 carried an article on “8 lessons from the Obamas on Raising Kids”).

Caring for the listeners – human side of Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar

Last week, I had an opportunity to attend Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar‘s music program once more, this time organised by Maharashtra Mandal Singapore. Listening to him on the stage takes you way above the world of music. His explanations and providing the context of the song or poem makes you truly enjoy the whole experience. He is a gifted singer and composer. Despite remaining very selective about the songs and poems he has made the world of music rich through his 60 years of contribution. He has received many awards not just from the government but from the public, peers and Shankaracharya.

This time I discovered one more noble quality in him as a human being.

It so happened that the program was to start at 5 pm, but it started at 6.10pm. This was not enough, the microphone was found to be not working the moment Panditji started talking. It was such an embarrassment. Then the interval + the sponsor felicitation took almost 40 min and as per the rules of the auditorium Panditji had to stop the program just when it was reaching its peak. This was robbing of music lovers the joy of listening to Panditji.

What I liked in the whole process was Panditji’s attitude. He expressed his grief not just at the state of the organisers, but also the fact that listeners did not get enough value from the program. He showed the sensitivity that not many artist show these days. Mostly the artist are concerned about the fees, stay, travel etc. But caring about the music lovers and thinking from their point of view is the ultimate sign of a great performer and great human being. I salute Panditji for this.

Beyound “Oracle buying Sun” … Into the “Open Source Governement”

Oracle to buy Sun Microsystems is the news getting lot of attention tonight. This is a big news in the industry as once upon a time both were poster boys of the internet boom. A lot is being written and speculated about the impact of this development. A real picture would emerge only after the dust is settled and more is known as to how Oracle deals with hardware, MySQL, middleware and Solaris. This deal has a potential to bring fundamental change in the IT industry landscape depending upon how Oracle approaches it.

While this is happening, I found the article ” An Open Source Government” even more interesting. This article is written by Jim Whitehurst of Red Hat Inc. where I work. The most interesting part that I liked is :

When information is open and individuals have the means to contribute, everyone shares in the responsibility for improvement. Informed citizens become engaged citizens. Engaged citizens contribute opinions, ideas and effort.

and

We must build the structure and culture for participation, from the highest levels of government to municipal town halls. We need to unlock the doors that stand between citizens and information. Both infrastructure and information must be open and easily accessible to all.

I found it to be very important attempt to connect the Governance, Government and Citizen through the principles of open source.

The participation by the citizens is so important to shape the nation that we want. As I am following the elections in the largest democracy of the world – India, I keep wondering how and why would more than 60% of eligible people would come out for voting.

Making people interested in participation, making it easy for them to participate and then making it affordable for the government to reach out to the citizen is a tremendous task.

Use of open source can help governments to find a way to address the last part at least, which will be a big leap. This would need a good leadership at the highest level. Hope the elections in India would bring a change for betterment.

Side effect of Trust – efficiency

Travelling on a subway/ local trains in Singapore, Hong Kong, Kolkatta, Delhi, Bejing the most common thing that you take for granted is the entry point/ checkpoint automatic doors. They come in different forms – “snap” doors or “lever” doors. Your instinct tells you to tap your pass or push the ticket through, door will open and you go through to the other side. This is the standard operating procedure at almost every subway station and every country I have visited.

Now imagine the contrast. You tap your ticket or pass on the ticket checking point and you look for door to open – either “snap” sound or the levers to push. But there is no door. It it a wide open “Pass through”. This is Tokyo.

You know what. I thought I was busy in tapping the ticket and hence might not have noticed opening of the door. And hence I moved passed the doors and looked back to check if the doors are snapping back to close. But no such thing. I was zapped. Being in a hurry I went and boarded the train. While coming out of the station I decided to keep a closer watch on the doors. Again I realised the doors were open all the time.

I was waiting for the opportunity to know it better and I got it on 3rd day. My pass had run out of money and I tapped the pass on the entrance of the door. It beeped, flashed red light and doors closed. Oh..so there were doors. And in the instance I understood the logic.

The doors are open all the time and they close only when something goes wrong.

Wow.. I liked the logic, made for efficiency. Faster movement of people in the given time.

While I was admiring this efficient mechanism, I wondered why other cities have not implemented such logic. And that is when I felt that this mechanism or logic is not just the efficiency consideration. I felt that it reflects the social mindset as well. To me “keeping the gates open all time time, till some problem” is reflection of “trust” based society. Can you trust your citizens and design the systems just to stop the offenders? In most places we find the systems are designed keeping in mind that the people are going to cheat and checks are implemented accordingly.

Here in Tokyo I found that the system was ready to trust the people. Probably the society was trustworthy. This has helped to create so much efficiency. Trust has so many benefits.

My respect for that society grew multifold.

Opensource – IT Policy – Impact on the society

I am very happy to note that one of the key political parties in India- BJP – has unveiled a comprehensive IT policy. Reference to the use of open source software is even more noteworthy.

It is very nice to see that a political party acknowledges the role of open source software in innovation. (as it mentions on page 23 of the IT vision document). I am just hoping that BJP’s IT policy making team has much more in mind about the use of open source. I am listing how open source software can be leveraged for building good society and  good governance :

Use of open source software and open standards create the level playing field and helps to bridge the gap between haves and haves not. It also helps to bridge the gap between developed and developing nation by making the knowledge available without boundaries. Today’s era is all about access to knowledge, leading to faster innovation. The era of developing knowledge in a the closed door and then try to use it as an edge over the other part of the society or other nations is gone. It is a matter of faster innovation and access to all.

Use of open source software creates empowerment. Today government can not be seen as the only force that offers jobs. Youths and businesses have to come forward and create employment. Through the use of and encouragement of open source software governments can empower youths and students that would make them ready for the jobs. The empowerment is possible because tools needed in today’s knowledge era are affordable and accessible through open source software.

Use of open source software creates open and proud minds. It is like in the poem of Rabindranath Tagore “Where the mind is without fear and head is held high…”. The use of open source software helps to create “made in my country ” feeling in the globalised economy. By developing more software and more applications in the country, making those applications world class the proud feeling of “made in my country” get bolstered.

Local services industry : The use of open source software leads to creation of local service industry. Open source software commoditises the products and thrives on excellence in services, which is a boon to creating more jobs and more opportunities.

Impact on the education segment : When governments want to make the education and knowledge available to the poorest of poor children through the use of laptops, only the use of open source software can make it affordable. Besides that it is not just giving the laptops or software through the government scheme, but it is also about using the legal software on your home computer. Think of the very real issue. Governments make PCs /Laptops along with  the proprietary software available at the subsidized rates.  When the children want to use the PC at the home, they can not afford to buy the costly proprietary software for it. They end up using pirated software. Is this what we want our children to have the feeling? By encouraging the use of open source software we can give them the feeling of use of legal software. That is the way of developing “Free minds”.

Also one important aspect of digital education is availability of contents in local languages : It is very important to have these contents based on open standards and open source technologies. For the proliferation of contents and lowering of their costs, this is a crucial factor. If these vital contents are based on proprietary and costly software, their use gets restricted or becomes unaffordable.

Going further the impact of open source can be harnessed in developing the right mindset in the society. The open source software is based on the principles of “Collaboration”, “Sharing” and “Community Building”. These are vital ingredients of a good and progressive society.

There is more to write about each of these issues. We all can collaborate to turn them into concrete actions and build stong communities.