Author: Rohit Pathak

I love you forty-eight.

How much do you love me? … I love you 48.

This does not work. Some things are just best left unmeasured. And of all the things in the world, at least the right brain stuff must be isolated from numbers and tests (especially multiple choice tests!).

Having said that, I scored a 48 on the EQ test (and got a message that said most men scored a 42 and women 47, which means that

Measuring empathy. Image source: http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/What-is-the-Value-of-Your-Social-Media-Assets-and-is-it-Worth-Measuring.jpg

according to that test, I am more “female” than most women – a direct insult to my masculinity!), although I’m not quite sure I answered all the questions correctly. After reading the chapter, my responses were obviously biased.

Tests (and their irrelevance) aside, the chapter on Empathy in Dan Pink’s ‘A Whole New Mind’ was my favorite thus far. Pink does point out that this quality will be important in the new Conceptual Age. More importantly though, unlike everywhere else in the book where he constantly preaches why the six senses will be important for professionals to survive in the the new age, as if the sole purpose of acquiring these new qualities is to establish successful businesses, he actually mentions somewhere that empathy is “much more than a vocational skill necessary for surviving twenty-first century labor markets. It’s an ethic for living”.

And indeed it is. But whether it can be acquired by learning “techniques” to analyse faces is another matter altogether. I think that such a quality comes, and should come, naturally in the sense that one must not consciously be analyzing expressions to be empathetic. Becoming a better person and having a genuine connection with others are prerequisites.

Considering that as the sole criteria, my score of 48 does sort of seem reasonable, masculine or not. I may personally be on the anti-social side, but I do possess the ability to understand and decipher any other person’s state of mind without that person saying anything about it.

I may not have developed all the remaining right-brain senses that Pink mentions in his book. But this, at least, is one that I’m fairly good at – and I’m proud of it.


Some buts are forever

The following is a list of things I’d like to do.

Image taken from- http://what-buddha-said.net/drops/Determination_Determines.htm

  • I’d like to study better and harder, but I have to give exams which come in the way (and Chemistry, besides that).
  • I’d like to earn a lot of money, but I am not anything exceptional, nor do I have a “degree”.
  • I’d like to train at the CRC five times a week, but I’m either too tired at the end of the day or I don’t get up early enough in the mornings.
  • I’d like to get a 4.0 this semester, but I have English 1101.
  • I’d like to become more intelligent, charming, and… powerful, but I’m too lazy to work for it.
  • I’d like to go on a one year solitary retreat, but I have college ( and I will have a job in the future).
  • I’d like to get out of college, but…

On replacing the buts with ands, we get:

  • I’d like to study better and harder, and we have exams. So I have two options. First, I could try methods that would make studying for exams ‘appear’ fun. Or I could forcibly overcome this fear by insane determination and deal with the problem with “un-interesting-ness”.
  • I’d like to earn a lot of money, and I am not exceptional, nor do I have a “degree”. So … I will probably get a “degree” (asap!).
  • I’d like to train at the CRC five times a week, and I’m either too tired at the end of the day or I don’t get up early enough in the mornings. So I’ll go in the afternoon.
  • I’d like to get a 4.0 this semester, and I have English 1101. So I will try to impress Dr. Hunter. Dr. Hunter, you’re the best teacher ever.
  • I’d like to become more intelligent, charming, and powerful, and I’m too lazy to work for it. So, I will increase my determination and work against nature to overcome my laziness and be disciplined enough to work for the things I want.
  • I’d like to go on a one year solitary retreat, and I have college ( and I will have a job in the future). So I will be patient and wait for that day, whenever it arrives. Maybe, in the meantime, I’ll establish a solid ground for the work I’ll undertake in that retreat. That seriously implies increasing my capacity for tolerance and my ability to actually stick to a determination/resolution.
  • I’d like to get out of college, but … … … I have made a determination.
Let’s leave the but in the end, shall we?

When the hero failed

Image courtesy: William Haney - fineartamerica.com

“I’ve got to think of something – anything. So many innocent lives depend on me. I can’t let them down…  I should go for the coastline; I might make it…almost there…”

Reporter: “50 people, including the pilot, were killed when the airliner crashed into the forest in an unsuccessful emergency water-landing…”


The Apple and the Bus

The Bus? No, the apple! Maybe the bus...

The best homework is no homework. So I thought it would be nice to share the following story. It’s a good metaphor, if you can relate to it.

The other day, after having my breakfast at Woody’s, I was walking towards the bus stop to catch a bus for my nine o clock chemistry class. As usual, I had an apple in my hand, one third of which had gone into my stomach. It was a delicious apple – the ideal blend of sweetness and juiciness.

I was at a reasonable distance from the stop when the Blue Route Bus (it takes you to the student center faster from West Campus) arrived. Since I’d just had my breakfast, I was in no mood to make a sprint for it. And, of course, there was the apple, two thirds of which still remained. But on the other hand, I was also getting a little late, and the buses, especially the Blue Routes, tend to be somewhat erratic. They also always don’t seem to arrive on time whenever you’re getting late for a class.

The “calculations” in my head tentatively suggested me to take the next bus, although I wasn’t very sure of the results my brain had arrived at. The bus was also so much within reach that I didn’t entirely want to eliminate the possibility of not catching it. So I started walking briskly, stuffing the remaining apple, its juiciness and sweetness irrelevant, while trying to solve the dilemma of whether to catch this very bus or to finish my apple and wait for the next one.

Generally, whenever I catch the morning bus in a hurry, I tend to throw away my apple to be able to walk or run faster and catch it. The dilemma that day, however, stretched a bit too long and in my brisk walk, with the uncertainty still occupying my brain’s RAM, I somehow threw the uneaten apple away. After walking, albeit briskly, for a few more meters, I was still … walking! The apple was gone and I still wasn’t going for run.

Finally, a few moments later when I arrived at a conclusion and started running, the bus was gone. And the most delicious apple ever was in the trash.

Damn! I should’ve at least had the apple!


The Computer Guys

Although I’m officially a Mechanical Engineering student right now, I have firmly decided to change my major to Computer Science in the the next semester, primarily because of my dislike of all things ‘Chemistry’ – something that forms an important part of Mechanical Engineering. Of course, apart from that, I have also started appreciating the nuances of computing and programming in whatever experience I’ve gained so far.

That being said, I think it would be appropriate if I profiled people who are (or have been) the most influential in the field of computing and information technology.

1. The Ancients

Joseph Marie Jacquard's portraitin silk made from his Programmable Loom. It required about 24,000 cards to weave this picture.

Charles Babbage

Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) started it all (well, sort of). His attempts at automating the silk looms resulted in his invention of the Jacquard Loom – a machine that used punched paste-boards that instructed a loom to weave in a fixed pattern. This was the first modern use of what we know today as programming.

Jacquard didn’t have a formal education (in fact, he remained illiterate till the age of 13), nor was he very rich to fund his inventions later on in his life (although he had inherited quite a lot from his father). Despite these limitations, his “soft” experiments and explorations in automation, which later led to the development of the Programmable Loom, set a huge precedent for the modern programmer.

Charles Babbage, who is generally known as the Father of Computers, later incorporated Jacquard’s punched hole card technique in his Analytic  Engine – the machine that inspired the development of today’s computers.

2. The ‘Revolution’-aries

I'm a PC

And I'm (was) a Mac

We know these guys as thoroughly as we know our respective countries’ founding fathers, even though there aren’t any lessons that specifically tech about them in any of our history books – Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, and Bill Gates, who in my personal hierarchy of guys to respect comes after Steve Jobs, the founder of Microsoft (erstwhile Micro-Soft).

Both left school (and they were good schools) prematurely. Both loved what they wanted. What resulted was a revolution in personal computing. Somehow, I think that the guys who made the GUI (graphical user interface) were as important as they were. Very few know them, however.

3. The Google guys

(Left to Right) Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Sergey Brin

Google is as important a checkpoint in computing as the PC or the Mac. And we owe it all to these guys.

Lawrence “Larry” Page was born into computing. Both his parents were professors at Michigan State University who taught courses in computing and programming. He attended the University of Michigan and majored in Computer Engineering. After that, when he went to Stanford for his Masters and Doctorate, his explorations into the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web were what led to the conception of Google.

Sergey Brin joined Larry while Larry was working on his thesis. Both of them worked on the project and Google came into being in Stanford and ran under the Stanford University website as google.stanford.edu. The domain name was registered in 1997 and in 1998, the company was incorporated.


Passion is Bull$#!%. Or is it?

I is passionate about ... nothing

Even though I may be fairly good at it, studying is something I have never liked (or at least studying in an institution). It’s boring and it is certainly not better than playing video games or sleeping till 11 or 12 on Saturdays, knowing that you still have Sunday to do your work. It’s also definitely not better than competing with your buddies in a civilized and relaxing game of Cricket on a crisp sunny Sunday morning. And it may be hard to admit, but as far as I’ve seen in people, any type of work, in general, seems a pain, even though they may pretend to “love” it. Work is misery, and hard work is hell.

In fact, this whole concept of “passion” eludes me. I fail to understand why it’s always assumed that everybody has a passion of some sort, especially a passion in a professional field? How can any person, for instance, say ”I love Progressive Site Modeling with Videogrammetry and I want to do this all my life”. Worse still, how can anybody fall in love with polymer chemistry and find pleasure in manufacturing plastics? Are these people so much in love that they cannot bear separation from their work? Does it mean that they like watching movies and playing video games and hanging out with their friends and family less than studying Progressive Site modelling with Videogrammetry or spending time in the factory manufacturing polymers for the “advancement of humankind”? In other words, if there were no pressures, if everybody had everything to satiate their senses, would anyone want to work instead of ‘not work’?

I wouldn’t. I am honest to myself in admitting that the primary reason I will work in the future is so that I can gather enough money in order to not have to work in a farther future – to get a degree and then a job, so that I can earn my own sustenance and be my own master during the weekends. So I don’t think it’s very wise to deceive myself into believing that just because a particular field seems less boring to me, it is a passion that I would like to pursue here at Georgia Tech. No, I do not have a passion, and I have not “found it”. Besides, in my case the list of “things I like” is so dynamic that it is hard for me to select one single field.

Considering all the facts mentioned above, I have presently zeroed down on majoring in Computer Science (right now, though, I’m a Mechanical Engineering major), not only because it has some of the best placements, but also because it involves mathematical abstraction of a sort that to me seems ‘less boring’ in comparison to all the other subjects. Besides, you don’t have to worry about an incompetent right brain as you can still make a decent enough living depending solely on the left. And since finding a job in that field, and succeeding in it thereafter, doesn’t require numerous unnecessary social skills (such as networking) as much as the other fields do, the professional environment it will provide will be ideal for a socially inept person such as I.

And maybe after that, when I have enough resources, when I’m free from all pressures, I can spend time exploring my “passion”. Anything I do then – any type of “work” – will be driven by a pure motivation – one that I think is necessary to have to enjoy real fun. So, maybe you could say that that’s what I want – a life without pressures where I don’t have to limit myself to a single “passion” but where I can spend unlimited time and energy directing my own learning in any field that I wish to. Unfortunately, I don’t know if realizing such a dream is possible.


Unmotivated

Lazy Cat

Why do we have to do this?

Things are not going well after all. To quote Sheng, one of our group members, “I have a bad feeling in my stomach that the project will not go as planned”. This is something that even I started feeling today, when Dr. Hunter told us that our progress report was due Wednesday.

The tragedy is that if the deadline for our presentation had not been Wednesday, we would’ve postponed everything to a future date. This is the degree of ‘unmotivation’ with which we are carrying out the execution of our once brilliant idea. I see the foundation that we so arduously built, collapsing because of sheer laziness.

Admittedly, procrastination and mismanagement have been one of the main causes that have led us to this mess. But the biggest hurdle perhaps may have been the inability of the group members to meet at a common time, as the free slots in our schedules overlap with other members’ class times. Sadly, no matter how true this factor may be, it sounds like a lame excuse. Again, we, as a group, are to blame.

Nothing’s over though. After gathering all the materials for our ‘Untitled’ abstract collaborative art project, we are finally, finally, finally going to perform a full dress rehearsal tomorrow, Tuesday, September 26th at 2 o’ clock somewhere in the Tech walkway. Unfortunately, I’ll be present for a very short while, as I have lab at 3:00 p.m. It will be our black and white canvas that we will be working on and, depending on the response and the degree of participation, also probably our last and final product.

If you want to come in and contribute, please do so. We have free cookies for anyone who puts up a shape.

And wish us luck!


How generous can you be?

I have no doubt that the intentions of the two programmers who built Ushahidi were very genuine and noble. Ushahidi itself was a tremendous achievement and was used in various other projects all over the world, where it proved to be an essential resource. And again, all of this was done not for monetary gains, but for altruistic satisfaction.

However, while I do agree that at times voluntary commitment in shared projects arises purely because of selfless generosity, I still find it hard to accept Clay Shirky’s claim that all the ‘cognitive surplus’ in the world can be utilized as a generous gift, or because of some ancient motivation of the people to create and share, and can thus be used as a new ‘design resource’.

There are several reasons for my skepticism. First, in a capitalist society such as ours, as we grow more accustomed with everything –tangible and intangible – having a monetary value, very few people would regard social obligations to be of greater importance than contractual ones, especially when they will be expected to pay other contractual debts of their own. Generosity will probably have, and perhaps already has, a price tag.

Secondly, the kind of cognitive surplus required to fuel complex social projects having any civic value is of a very advanced nature and forms a very small percentage of the media landscape Shirky was talking about. Out of that small percentage, only a very small fraction would have enough ancient motivation and desire to contribute without hoping for anything (tangible) in return.

Finally, voluntary commitment, howsoever truthful its existence may be, is unreliable, and for obvious reasons. For large scale projects, having to depend on such an unreliable resource is probably not the best idea. Ushahidi, agreeably, is an exception, but it is important to see it as an exception and not a phenomenon.

Of course, large projects can utilize the ‘generous’ help of advanced cognitive surplus, but I am yet to be convinced that voluntary participation can be fully relied upon to produce big results. How generous can one be to devote so much time and energy on a task that would give in return only the satisfaction of “creating and sharing”? Or perhaps the flaw in my analysis is revealed in my usage of the word “only” in the above sentence.


Principia Jokia

My attempt at creating a joke from an algorithm I invented failed.

The first experiment was creating a funny title for this post (the one that you see above). First experiments are generally trials, and it is not expected that you would get the results you desire, which is exactly what happened.

In mathematical proofs, if you assume a certain statement to be true when actually it is false, and proceed with that assumption, at some point you will arrive at a conclusion that is contradictory to the fundamental axioms of mathematical science. And this is what happened with my second experiment when I tried to make an actual joke, although proving by contradiction wasn’t exactly my intended purpose. And so the theorem arose that it is certainly impossible to make jokes with algorithms.

This is roughly how the algorithm goes.

  1. Choose a noun.
  2. Find it’s opposite. Or if you’re unable to do so, select a situation that the noun can be in, and look for a seemingly opposite situation. [unfortunately, we need algorithms to define opposites, but for now, let's just do the best we can without them]
  3. Choose multiple situations that the original noun can ‘normally’ be in and situations in which the noun’s opposite can be in.
  4. Put the original noun in that situation, or the original situation in the other, and experiment.
  5. Find the best match and you have your joke.

Well actually, not quite.

For instance, consider this.

  1. Man
  2. Woman.
  3. For the normal situation, let’s choose “Man drives a car” (wow! that is sexist) and “A woman cooks food” (and that is even more).
  4. Now after changing situations and nouns we have “Man cooks food”. That is not funny.
  5. “Woman drives a car”  HAhaHAAHaHAHAHAaaaAHAaaHAH !!!

(But seriously, that is not funny. You actually endanger lives when you do that.)

Clearly, the algorithm has flaws.

In the above exercise, I might have oversimplified the process a little by introducing a mathematical algorithm, but on close observation it becomes apparent that most jokes are really a convergence of incongruous events that strike a certain chord in the right brain. The priest-nun-rabbi joke, for example, has a similar design. Firstly, priests and rabbis are “opposites” in a sense (I am not a Nazi), and so are nuns and rabbis (I am not a Nazi). Next, a situation that they can normally be in is a sacred place such as a church or a synagogue. Now according to the genius who made this joke, an “opposite” situation would be, arguably, a bar. This joke, however, goes one step further. Not only does putting those guys in the bar make for the most comical combination, but the presence of a nun with a priest, not to mention a Rabbi, introduces another angle, creating multiple incongruities. And “What is this, a joke?” raises the whole level of humor three times.

A good joke, such as the one above, will have just the right mixture of oddities. And a good right brain thinker will be able to recognize those ideal oddities, thus giving him a great advantage over left brainers such as I, who would have to use stupid algorithms and trial and error, which obviously is not the most efficient way to go about it. Sadly, the best people like me can do is ‘analyse’ a joke, as if that’s not a joke in itself.


Why the Left Brain Shouldn’t draw

I thought this would be a good way to demonstrate my understanding of what “Symphony” according to Dan Pink is.

When the author was told to draw a self portrait on the first day of Brian Bomeisler’s drawing class, he thought of his face as consisting of

(a) an outline (b) eyes (c) nose (d) ears (e) lips (f) other facial parts

So he probably started with an outline, drew his eyes, then his nose, his lips and so on, until he came up with a “400 pound Cheese Doodle fiend making his inaugural visit to Weight Watchers”. He drew eyes as he knew eyes should be – two circles in an oval; lips as lips should be – a line through the center of an oval, and so on. In other words, he could just as well have taken Michael Jackson’s eyes from one of his posters, Keeanu Reeves’s lips, Scarlett Johanssen’s ears, and George Bush’s nose and pasted them in Ayn Rand’s facial outline. His hair, moreover, could have come from a cat.

That’s how you draw with a left brain.

But “drawing is all about relationships”. By the end of the five day course, Pink’s right brain is trained enough to see those relationships; now when he draws his portrait, his face is a unity of lines and shapes, each related to one another in such a way that “what emerges on the sketchpad begins to look a little like me on that particular day in that particular place”.

This happened because over five days, Pink’s right brain matured enough to look at his face as an integrated whole. The eyes seemed related to each other and the space in between. They were, as Pink’s right brain found out, actually located in the center of his entire face, including his head. Many similar relationships emerged and when he drew his portrait with that in mind, the end product was remarkably different.

As I write this post, since I am not much of a writer, I too am performing one of the activities the author suggests as a means to develop one’s power of Symphony – celebrating amateurness. Of course, that’s probably not going to be enough for my homework, so I tried several others that were listed, celebrated some more amateruness, and finally succeeded in “finding solutions in search of problems”.

So first let me tell you something about what I learned from an episode I saw on Discovery about the NY subway system. Everything’s automated. A few traffic controllers, with the help of computers, manage the entire train traffic without any accidents. Computers manage the efficiency, and controllers just keep a check on the trains. If, by some weird computational permutation, two trains come head on, each train automatically applies brakes several hundred feet in advance to avoid collision. So not only is the system extremely efficient, but safety is literally guaranteed.

Now let me take you back to my home country, India. Of the several problems that one has to go through, the problem of traffic congestion and road rage has to be among the most pressing and dangerous, especially in the capital city of New Delhi. Driving is a nightmare for many and the road only belongs to those of a certain kind of warrior spirit, which is not very “democratic”. Since very few follow the rules, traffic efficiency is extremely low. Those who do follow the rules generally have to spend twice the time waiting in traffic jams caused by those who don’t. Not only that, the risk of accident is proportionally high.

Besides, there’s nothing more routine than everyday city driving.

But if we could somehow automate driving ONLY WITHIN THE CITY, just like the NY subway, we can achieve the same efficiency and safety of the subway system on the roads. It’s hard to imagine the transformation: a uniform speed for all drivers – skilled or unskilled – which can very according to traffic density; no red lights; no Stop signs; no accidents; no tickets or fines; free virtual chauffeur, and what not. A central database can control overall congestion, and individual censors on cars would determine proximity to avoid accidents.

And it’s quite possible with the current level of technology. Some additional inputs might be required, but I’m sure if this can be done for subways, it can be done for cars as well. This can be done not just in Delhi, but in any city in the world where traffic congestion is a problem.

To be frank though, I don’t quite know how good the idea is. Right brain isn’t really my thing (presently). But I am convinced that this ability to detect subtle patterns and to synthesize elements to look at a problem from a holistic angle – the aptitude of Symphony – among many others, will indeed be a crucial skill for professionals to possess in the future. And, considering that, I am quite pleased that I made a small step towards developing my own aptitude of symphony.