Prosumers and their impact

Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler coined the word “prosumer” to describe people who consume what they themselves produce. Prosuming takes forms as varied as helping in a fund raiser or writing a shareware program. One tribe of prosumers who have exploded in the last four or five years have been in the web world of social media. The likes of MySpace, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Orkut are all products of the prosumer economy. Social Networks offer people new ways to meet and exchange information, forge alliances and relationships, exchange pictures and music, make friends, share ideas and activities. All of us contribute to this economy by checking upon each other on social networks and expressing our views on blogs

Will prosumers run the world? They might not. But, as shown by the tremendous impact of Linux, (which originated from the unpaid work of Torvalds and a large network of prosumer programmers) on the business world, they are going to shape the emerging economy.

What about the profit potential of the Social Sites? Facebook has been valued at $15 Billion courtesy the Microsoft stake, Google bought Youtube for $1.65 Billion, NewsCorp bought MySpace for $588 Million. Then, you have tech entrepreneurs like Marc Andreeson, backing new sites like Ning. In spite of the Venture funds racing to fund them, the business plans of most of these sites are hazy. Even biggies like MySpace and Facebook are struggling to figure out their revenue streams apart from online ads.

Will the Social Networks bubble bust like the .Com bust? Yes, it might, but the impact of social media on individuals, society and business will only grow!

Black Swans in your life

Just had a "Black Swan" event in my job, which has a big impact on what I do.

What's a Black Swan? Let me explain..

Nassim Nicholas Taleb author of bestselling "Fooled by Randomness" writes on problems of luck, uncertainty, probability and knowledge. He also wrote on the phenomenon of "The Black Swan" which is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: its unpredictability, its massive impact and after the event has happened, our desire to make it appear less random and more predictable than it was. Taleb argues that a small number of Black Swans explain everything in our world and that their effect is ever increasing. While the effect of Black Swans is growing, the ones we try to predict have increasingly become inconsequential. Taleb concentrates on our blindness with respect to randomness, particularly the large deviations. As per him, a handful of cumulative shocks make our lives what they are. Still we concentrate on the minute and miss the large events.

As examples of the Black Swan phenomenon, Taleb refers to the astonishing success of Google and the tragic 9/11 event. We do not acknowledge the phenomenon of the Black Swan as we are unable to estimate risk. We take the shorter route to simplify, narrate and categorize events rather than opening ourselves to the 'impossible'.
Hence large events continue to surprise us and shape our world, like one has just done to mine.

On Turning a year older

Birthdays are a handy guideposts to stop, reminisce and look ahead. As you turn older, you are plagued with a question: am i too old for this and that? Fact is, it’s probably not too late for anything, really. But it certainly feels that way, sometimes.
A long time ago, i decided that for my birthday I'm going to ask for things I know I can't have so that I won't be disappointed when I actually don't get them. Here is this year's list:
1. My company's stock hitting $100
2. Free moving traffic in Bangalore
3. Corruption free government
4. High Tolerence levels for all Indians, especially drivers in bangalore
5. My Boss agreeing to whatever i say or do!

Today's Google doodle made me realize that i share my birthday with Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969) who was a German architect. Along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, he is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of "modern" architecture. Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs ever.

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”

Dance of Democracy

It is election time in Karnataka and the code of conduct has ensured that the usual hullabo is missing. Candidates have been forced to do more of door to door campaigns, SMS and email campaigns and Ads in Newspapers. This time too, the unpredicability of the democratic process will manifest in the results. All of us have to keep in mind that bad governments are elected by good citizens who do not vote. Not that we have much of a choice.

The Mediocrity Trap

Are all people created equally?? Are we equally innately good? Are we equally creative?

The fact of life is that people are not created equally nor are they equally good or creative. Society prods us to fall in the trap of mediocrity by teaching that everyone is equal and
to stifle those few who do have higher or lower potential (intelligence/drive/contextual consciousness) so as to fit them into the equality (mediocrity) mould.

With a whole universe to learn from if one has an attitude of humility (and encouragement and inspiration from another), succumbing to the peer pressure of ignorant, arrogant self-gratification is the ultimate waste of spirit.