Ashutosh Nilkanth's Blog

A pigment in the skin, melanin, determines the skin color in all of us. Melanin itself, however, is red (pheomelanin), or dark-brown to nearly black (eumelanin). Skin color selection is more genetic at birth, but what intrigues me is that as we “evolve” we get selective, in a vastly wasteful attempt to define the race of a person based on their skin tone. In South Asia for instance, fairness has a colonial connotation of power and superiority.

The real motive behind this post, is less mutated though. I often wonder about the obsession of an average Indian with a fair complexion. Hey, nothing bad there. What you do with your fairness cream is not my business. But, on one hand, I find it funny when I see matrimonial classifieds for (or from) a “… fair girl with good temperament …”, and on the other hand, I question the act of consumerism behind “skin lightening/whitening products”.

Are these fairness product companies suggesting that melanin content can be altered after birth? Hasn’t scientific research proved enough, that a healthy skin matters more than fair skin, and that 99% of the fairness products are, well, ineffective. What a bubble burst. The chase then remains, not to get fair, but to live upto a stereotype. The only ones benefiting from this craze are the fairness product companies who are laughing all the way to the bank. Fairness products have been estimated to account for up to 40% of the profits of the cosmetics industry (in India alone). Don’t get me wrong — the color, of our skin that is, depends on what we think, of an “appearance-based social structure” that is.

I wonder if the radiance of Christmas is — white, red, or green?

Books on history and sociology tell us that as civilization grew, we created rules. A group of “powerful” people introduced governments. Then a smaller group of “wealthy” people made corporations. And gradually, the dynamics changed from democracy to corpocracy.

Today, when we talk of corpocracy, its no longer only about American corporations, but its also about the awakening of the talented Chinese (or Indian for that matter). As David Brooks writes in his column – The Dictatorship of Talent:

You feel pride in what the corpocracy has achieved and now expect it to lead China’s next stage of modernization — the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. But in the back of your mind you wonder: Perhaps it’s simply impossible for a top-down memorization-based elite to organize a flexible, innovative information economy, no matter how brilliant its members are.

My first thought on this “innovative corpocracy” would be something close to what Seth John wrote over at Hacker News:

I was thinking the other day about why American scientists are so successful, given that they tend to work much less diligently than the Chinese or Indian scientists I’ve known. Of course issues of funding and infrastucture have a lot to do with it, but I think there’s something else as well…

As a lazy American I spend a lot of time wandering around campus or at home not-working, instead I dream up new ways to adjust my methods so that they take less time and effort. In the long run, tinkering with methods leads to a lot of innovation. It’s this link between a tolerance for laziness and creativity that has made American science so successful.

Maybe, this very “tolerance for laziness” serves as fuel for corpocracy. No matter how talented we are, how much money we earn, how content with life we are, but we are all fueling corpocracy in some way or the other.

A slowdown in the U.S. economy for 2008 now appears inescapable. The corpocracy may weaken, but it has enough anti-aging elements to last a trillenium. So let’s just get back to the holiday mood, and enjoy a cognac by the fireplace.

In the tech community, people often believe that an “idea” can make them the next Google or the next Facebook. However, its not essentially the idea that drives the wagon. It’s the simplicity of the idea in solving something that matters.

Take the toothbrush for example. It’s a fantastic invention, but for centuries the instrument hasn’t gone through a radical change. Maybe an electric toothbrush or a chewable toothbrush, but its basic “design” is still not radically different, than say 50 or 100 or 1000 years ago. I think that’s because the toothbrush is so simple (and effective) an idea, that it hardly leaves a margin for fundamental improvements.

So what’s the next big idea, one that will bring the next great financial opportunity – globally? In a recent interview with the Time Magazine, Mark Cuban, a tech billionaire and the owner of Dallas Mavericks’, was asked about the next great financial opportunity. Here’s what he had to say:

If I were capable of predicting that, I’d already be there. The one thing I know is that the next opportunity won’t be on the Internet. It will be a technology that is somewhere else. Some 10-year-old little girl will come up with it, and we’ll all wonder how we missed it.

Well, somebody has to be lucky, right?

Google’s new Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts, through a ultra-simple HTTP request. Ridiculously easy and useful!

My mind is a garden.
My thoughts are the seeds.
My harvest will be either flower or weeds.

It’s an interesting observation that if people believe that their life (or society, or their work-place for that matter) will be the best that can be, they will do everything possible to make it so. We are all self-driven, deep down inside. You get what you expect. You get what you believe. If you truely want something, the entire universe gets working to make it possible for you.

I was reading an article in the Time magazine on the life of Bill Gates, and what really stands out for me is his vision, which by the way has nothing to do with technology. Gates refers to his philanthropic work as “solving inequity“. When he looks at the world, he isn’t just focused on specific diseases and educational deficits. To him, that’s thinking small. He wants to rewrite the rules of the whole system. He’s all for capitalism. So capitalism itself needs to be re-engineered. In his Harvard speech he introduces an idea he calls “creative capitalism“. It’s about using competition and market incentives but directing it the right way. Maybe, technology doesn’t need him anymore. In July 2008, his primary focus will become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he and his wife founded to address health and education issues. It has an endowment of more than $33 billion, making it by far the largest charitable foundation in the world.

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the ideology of being unbound. And in that context, I’m swayed by the philosophy of the Buddhist prayer flags. Tie up a little coloured flag to a string, and every time it flutters in the wind, it says a prayer for you, and everything around. Tibetans believe that hanging prayer flags with intention releases positive, energized wishes out to the world on the wind. An unconditional, infinite, and everlasting prayer.

So, when you look in the mirror in the morning, see the face of the person who is going to accomplish wonderful things in this lifetime – not just for the self, but for humanity as well.