Spinning the web

What if you could access all your contacts, all your photographs, all your music, all your videos & all your blogs from one digital dashboard? With multiply, you have now a single-sign-on dashboard for all your digital content.

And perhaps the web needs a third dimension? Perhaps your bookmarks should not be 2 dimensional list of websites but really an art gallery like setting which you walk through where each favorite website of yours hangs from a wall like a painting? Too good to be true? No. Welcome to the world of three dimensional browsing. And that of a three dimensional browser.

In effect, the web is no longer a platform. The web is an experience. The participative model of web 2.0 can be thought of as a byword for an idea which has political roots. While democratic governments represent people & the ramifications of that discussion are myriad & not always reassuring, the web 2.0 experience is the people it connects in ever more enriching ways.

Footnotes this year

What is so endearing about a gregarious magician pulling fast-ones on a humoring crowd by the chesapeake? And is it not nice to be able to climb 600 odd steps barefoot on a burning afternoon in distant Shravanbelagola? What is the best setting to have a scalding thukpa, if not by a frozen Tsongmo lake? What kind of of people sculpted Hampi, Halebeedu & Belur? And what about the Shenandoah river, or a little Harper's Ferry right in the center of many American histories; what have they seen that the Teesta has not?

Have you had a chance lately to sit by the lake in Yelagiri or walk around it? Do you know that the first mammal, Morganucodon watsoni, looked more like a rodent, & that you need more than a week to fully appreciate all that the Smithsonian museums in Washington DC have to offer? Do you know why turtles come to Maravanthe, & what becalms the sea in Murudeshwar?

What does New York tell you about yourself? Why Pondichery, & why the first rays of sun on the Kanchenjunga?

Winter conversations

Emigration has come up repetitively in my conversations recently. Sometimes, depending on age & familiarity, the question is rather direct & at others, it is arrived at slowly. And there are far too many obvious pluses about the USA that I've already experienced during my short stay here, that it really becomes difficult to justify anything thing other than "I'd love to sometime soon" or words to that effect.

What is not often discussed, for it appears that reason & convenience are the only things we live by, is that our lives are perhaps a little more than a sum total of opportunities we may or may not explore. Unfortunately, without sufficient eloquence, this point of view might come across as the USA not being "good enough" by some people. Looking at all the aspects of a problem is not undermining the US or being sentimental about issues, I feel as I write this.

India is an emerging economy plagued as it is by corruption & beaurocracy. Things are vastly improved from what they were 10 years back or even more. The US is an excellent system, the richest country in the world & the like. The pluses & minues discussion is an endless one & I do not intend to go into that. I want to, rather, say how you might decide on this - just my own personal view - & not how you analyze.

In the end, when you weigh it all together you'll have to decide for yourself what is best for you. And you'll also have to decide if what is best for you is indeed the best you could do.

S!