Brij Singh's Random Musings

Century of complexity

[Via Due Diligence post] Found link to this site devoted to the science of complexity (from Carl Zimmer blog site)

"I think the next century will be the century of complexity." Stephen Hawking

Its the publishing industry this time

This time its publishing industry, whose margin is now on the chopping block. Nothing surprising its the same college students who shook the music industry, movie industry, software industry etc.

Every industry will go through this internet based college dormroom driven margin restructuring. What about the tourism and healthcare ?

Ideas and pearls

Doc Searle's observation on growing importance of agitation and how linking adds to the common knowledge pool:

"Minds that learn are changed by the process. They can't help it. To inform is to form. As we've said here before, we are all authors of each other.That's what we mean, whether we know it or not, when we link to a post. If something is informative, it has the power to form knowledge and opinions: literally, to change minds.

So every agitation is a pearl in the oyster of common yet unfinished knowledge."

This in many sense similar to Atanu's point that its the "positive externalities" (which in geek fashion get delivered via links and comments) which do the public good. Case in point the pearls we all collect from Rajesh Jain's blog.

Reality check on DCML

Reality check on DCML, adoption will be key. Need to evaluate from AssuredWeb's point of view

They can build adapters to the systems, networking and storage components that will enable their reference code and products to work, but without the direct support of the big systems vendors, DCML will remain of limited use," Travis says.

In general, having a standard that supports provisioning and change management across multiple platforms would be beneficial - if it comes to fruition, Travis says.

However, "the gap between standards and real products is huge, and I don't expect this group to cross that gap in any significant way anytime soon," he says.

Get naked

Management guru Don Tapscott writes about the need for organizations to adopt the concepts of "Naked Corporation" . I dont think there is anything new in this philosophy apart from the fact that there is an attempt to paint this as next management fad to adopt. Anybody who is closely following the impact of blogging, shared/open source involvement in corporations will take this prescription as an obvious one:

Greater transparency, Mr Tapscott argues, is an unstoppable force. It is the product of growing demand from everybody with an interest in any corporation—what he calls its “stakeholder web”—and of rapid technological change, above all the spread of the internet, that makes it far easier for firms to supply information, and harder for them to keep secrets. (Firms now know that their internal e-mail may one day become public knowledge, for instance, and many big companies must co-exist with independent websites where employees can meet anonymously to air their grievances.) With greater transparency, says Mr Tapscott, will come greater accountability and better corporate behaviour. Rather than engage in futile resistance to it, firms should actively embrace transparency, and rethink their values and generally get in better shape. “If you're going to be naked, you'd better be buff,” is how he sums up his argument, ever aware of the need for a colourful soundbite

Birth of a superpower

Christian Science Monitor has a good timeline on American foreign policies over the years. Worth reading if you like history as much as I do.

Eastward Ho!

After 30 odd months , non stop startup lifestyle , and some soul searching (material for that came from postings of Rajesh and Atanu) I have decided to visit India. I will be focussing on the emerging India and hopefully would be blogging on this theme everyday (with pictures). more on this later.

Startup rules are changing

Ross Mayfield, the founder of SocialText and serial entrepreneur talks about how the rules of bootstrapping has changed:

- Our business model is antithetical to traditional enterprise software. Top-down software, with lines of code as barriers to entry, process and ontology that users are expected to fit themselves into, long sales-cycles and inordinate TCO -- is by all accounts dead and leaves users stranded with email.

- The reason for this is the rules and opportunties have changed. You can't screw your customers. You can't lock them in. You can't ask them to take significant risk up front. Risk is shared with customers by providing incremental proof of value in-line with them taking risk on you.

- While startup costs have declined, some have increased. Notably, its harder to sell traditionally (top-down) and you can't raise barriers to entry by locking-in your customers. The only entry point is bottom-up. The only marketable barrier to entry today is network effects.

- The business model shares risk with customers, provides software as service, provides trial and open source options, maps to security requirements, is priced in-line with value, grows organically and above all, meets user needs without false constraints.

China's Technological Ambitions Take Flight

James Flanigan, from LA Times talks about the less emphasized aspects of Chinese economy. Government promoted methodology which carefully works to build high end R&D capability. Which will eventually allow them to leapfrog much of the world. Light weight version of this leapfrog strategy is what we need to standardize as a discipline, which every student/individual should adopt to their own advantage. Whats your leapfrog strategy ?

"China is going to be a technological powerhouse," says Paul Saffo,
director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "They are
being very strategic — making sure that they gain technological
knowledge as part of their manufacturing activities."

China's technological drive may come as a surprise to those accustomed
to viewing it as simply a low-wage workshop, exporting shoes and
T-shirts and all sorts of paraphernalia and roiling other economies in
the process. But manufacturing is only one stage in China's economic
development. In fact, what's most significant about China today is not
the growth of its assembly lines but that of its graduating classes."

The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head

James Moore from Berkman center for Internet and Society, writes about the emergence of second super power and guess what its not a nation !

As the United States government becomes more belligerent in using its power in the world, many people are longing for a “second superpower” that can keep the US in check. Indeed, many people desire a superpower that speaks for the interests of planetary society, for long-term well-being, and that encourages broad participation in the democratic process. Where can the world find such a second superpower? No nation or group of nations seems able to play this role, although the European Union sometimes seeks to, working in concert with a variety of institutions in the field of international law, including the United Nations. But even the common might of the European nations is barely a match for the current power of the United States.

There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights. This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole—and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one. These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world—and not just the members of one or another nation. Consider the members of Amnesty International who write letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience, and the millions of Americans who are participating in email actions against the war in Iraq. Or the physicians who contribute their time to Doctors Without Borders/ Medecins Sans Frontieres.