The Web That Extends beyond the World

Interplanetary Web, Human Brains with IP Addresses, National VPNs, and many more ideas: The following video is a prelude to my next paper in IEEE Computer.

Vishnu Pendyala with Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure & Innovations

TestToasters Award Presentation

Area G5 had a string of successes last year. It was the first area to achieve the rare honor of being Presidents Distinguished. All the contests hosted by the area, including the Division G spring contest had record number of attendees and raised the bar in many other respects. We won the Silver Scribe award for the newsletter. We had a unique potluck. In summary, last year was a huge success for Area G5. The success belongs to all of us and not just me. So, I convinced the District that I need to recognize at least a few key people to thank them and encourage them to contribute more in the coming years. I selected 1 to 3 members from each club to be honored. I deliberately chose 3 members from your club because your club did contribute substantially, in spite of being new and in spite of the troubles you were internally facing in the company. But more importantly, your club needs the encouragement and celebration to become stronger. Karthick Perumal, Philip Joung, and Angel Comonfort demonstrated their leadership skills and were appropriately chosen. Karthick made significant contributions throughout the year towards all the area activities. He was instrumental in helping host the Spring Area Contest at your location. Always responsive to e-mails, Karthick was by-and-large the primary bridge to your club. He helped represent your club for the planning meetings for the contests. As VPE, I can see that Karthick helped keep the momentum in the club. He helped with the open house of the club as well and gave excellent speeches. Philip, as the new president of a new club demonstrated new vision and showed keen willingness in taking it forward. He is very open to ideas and has a very pleasant personality needed to create the right environment to grow. Philip seems to be quite committed to the club in spite of the recent catastrophe of losing significant number of members. A leader needs to be optimistic and promising at times of disaster, as Philip is rightly demonstrating. I’m sure Test Toasters will be back bright and shining, pretty soon, thanks to Philip’s leadership. Angel, very cheerfully accepted to organize the potluck for the Area. He asked the right kind of questions and sought right kind of inputs from me for this activity. He and his team made sure that the potluck would be an enjoyable and memorable one for all of us. As VPM, Angel also contributed quite a lot to the club. I’m sorry that the club lost him, but I do hope that Angel will return pretty soon to the club. Fellow Toastmasters, please join me in honoring the outstanding achievers of your club, Karthick, Philip, and Angel. All though Angel is not here today, let us include him in our appreciations and applauses.

BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, OF THE PEOPLE

These words that were used by Abraham Lincoln to describe democracy have a profound impact on our day-to-day lives as well. The bottom line, the meaning, the essence of our living is people. Our society evolved as a people oriented society. We earn our living by working for the people of the society. Why do we do a job? To make money, you may say. But if we take a deeper look, we are able to earn money because we are able to sell our work to other people. It is the other people who are giving us our jobs and a living. The more people we are able to reach out to, the wealthier we are. That’s the reason why people in the media make many times more for something that many consider many times less than an average person does to earn a living.

 

However selfless and people-oriented our society is designed to make us, we cannot let go the natural instinct of protecting our self-interests. After all, if we cannot protect ourselves, how can we help others? But there is a distinction between defense and offence, even if offence is the best form of defense. In our eagerness to protect our interests, we cannot put someone else at a loss. An ancient two-liner by a famous Indian saint translates to “Oh God, give me just enough to take care of my family and the occasional guest. I do not ask for more.” I would take if I get more, but I’ll not myself seek more than that.

 

It is ironical that the same society that tries to orients us towards the welfare of others, pits us one against the other. In this competitive world where the fittest survive, it is not an easy job to stay contented and still live happily. There’s a never ending demand for more, a rush to excel, and a craving for what others have and more. The net effect is an overworked individual, an economic bubble, a sudden downturn, and gloom everywhere. The story is like that of the tortoise and the hare. It is a simple logic that if the society is overworked to the extent that they don’t have time to enjoy or appreciate the fruits of their own work, there’s no one to work for and the work will have to simply stop.

 

It is always better to stand and drink a cup of water than run and drink a cup of milk. Rush, to me is always unholy. Excess, of any kind is not at all worth. A solution to the economic downturns is probably to regulate the intensity of competition and the rate of growth. Many of our friends and co-workers were let go. I’m pretty sure that in many cases, the budget-cuts on manpower were far less than the budget-cuts on the machinery. In one case, my friend told me that his team purchased a $50,000 machinery to improve operations by an hour or so in a week, after he was laid off. The same money could have kept his family going for close to a year, he regretted.

 

While it is important to survive in a tough market, it is also important for the decision makers to have a heart for the people. After all, everything we do is for the people. If a truly deserving employee can be supported for a few more months at the cost of a machine, which saved 10% of the time, it may be wise in the long run to opt for the former. A disgruntled family spreads lot more unhappiness in the society than the happiness that a machine saving 10% of manufacturing time to the society can get. This is where human values come into picture. Human values like loyalty, gratitude, love and respect automatically ensure that people are not disadvantaged. Loyalty and gratitude will not let go an employee who contributed to the success of the company in the past, when the times turn around. The same loyalty and gratitude will also not let an employee leave the company for greener pastures when time changes. Human values protect everyone and the society.

 

Unfortunately, the “unholy” rush that the society is demanding is acting as the biggest detriment to practicing human values. World will be a much nicer place if everyone does their best in preserving these values. One of the strong reasons I like with the company I work with is its outreach to the people and its interest in giving back to the community. The company really takes these matters to heart, as can be seen from the past track record. I volunteered for quite a few of such activities

S<--MILE-->S

Can you imagine a world without a smile? It is like life without the soul. A few weeks ago, the thought for the day in one of our toastmaster’s sessions was “If you see someone without a smile, give him one of yours. Smile is the only precious possession that can be easily given to others. We started with nothing in this world and stop with nothing. The mile between the start and the stop is all we have to smile. We want only our smiles to be preserved in this world. That’s why the cry “cheese” before shooting a picture, so that the photographs have only smiles all over.

 

Smile is the best win-all gesture to your audience. The best aide at the time of meeting new people is a smile. Smile begets smile. The spontaneous response to a smile is a smile. Smile brings the inner beauty to the fore. That’s why we find some people very attractive for their smile, even if they are not very good looking. We can actually feel our mind expand when we smile and contract when we frown. Smile acts as an anti-agent to stress. A smiley face never gets stressed out. We can keep out negative feelings like anger and jealousy, by just choosing to smile. A smile need not always be shown on the lips. Even the mind is capable of smiling.

 

Often, we find that the smile is misused to ease the inconvenience that is otherwise being induced by the person. We find politicians, particularly in developing countries like India, going to the voters with a smile, even if they did not show their face to them for the 5 years they stayed in the public office. The good news is that smile still works even if it is misused. But ideally, a smile should be genuine – with the sole intent of making oneself and others happy and pleasant. Only such smiles get the best return. An overconfident smile makes one look arrogant and a purposeless smile makes one look crazy. A genuine smile can be easily distinguished from an Amway smile or a contrived grin.

 

Smile, like other gestures, should best be a reflex. For it to become a reflex, it needs to be practiced. Practice getting easier, light-hearted thoughts in the mind, and the smile automatically appears, first in the mind and if required on the lips. The more we practice this, the more it gets built into our system and appears as a reflex. As we practice this, we will also notice that life gets easier and happier as well. Our surroundings look brighter and our neighbors start looking like our best friends once again. That’s the kind of difference it makes when the lips are stretched about half-an-inch!!

 

I am pretty sure that some of you must be thinking that these things are easier said than done. True, life is not easy. Day-to-day activities put a lot of demand on the mind and pull it down with very heavy thoughts. We often find that the day just cannot progress without such thoughts. The solution I found for this problem is to prioritize and choose. For instance, decide to smile to yours kids instead of thinking of winning an argument with your neighbor. Choose to read a comic instead of thinking on how to outwit colleagues at work. Engage in a social activity over the weekend, instead of earning that extra buck by teaching at the school.

True, not doing some of these things will cost us something. But we should be ready to pay that price for better life in the long run. That is the kind of trade-off that we need to do, to get back that child-like smile and look back on our face. We should do only as much as can keep us and others happy. It is not worth doing that extra bit by cutting into our happiness and our ability to smile. Remember? The mile that’s between start and stop is to smile and not to accumulate. After all, we don’t take anything that we accumulate with us when we stop. Why waste the mile for something that is anyway not useful?

 

So, here’s my recommendation to all of you to smile and make me smile!!

TO LIE OR NOT TO LIE

“Whatever I tell is a lie.” This famous Russell’s paradox was used by the cruise captain in one of the episodes of Star Trek to crash a robot. The robot could not comprehend the sentence and crashed in trying to do so. Imagine living in a world where nothing is known to be true for sure. The same thing that happened to the robot will happen to the civilization as well. Truth and trust are the foundations of our civilization and our togetherness. It is almost impossible to live with a person or persons if what they say is mostly lies – white or not.

 

“Truth is light” was the motto of our school in which I studied for 12 years. I grew up listening to stories of heroes who never told lies and punished those who did. Fortunately, I was gifted with all that was needed for me to always tell the truth. There were hardly any instances in my childhood, which would have put me in a better position if I lied. I was quite a contented person for most of the first 25 years of my life. Also, I hardly came across people who were habitual liars. Lying was more a rare exception than the norm those days. Then started a new phase in life, when most of what I heard was lies – the so-called white lies. I knew they were lies, but could not do anything about it. My feelings ranged from indifference to frustration.

 

The first time I realized that lies are a way of life was actually in a course on professionalism. I walked away from the course with the feeling that it is impolite to be direct. Everything had to be told in very indirect and subtle ways. White lies are the norm than the exception. It was very hard for me to come to terms with this new realization. The course helped me a lot in accepting lies and liars from then on. My reaction then started to range from laughter to indifference. Laughter because when someone tells an obvious lie, I picture a cat closing its eyes when drinking milk thinking that no one is watching it. I feel the person telling a white lie is fooling himself rather than fooling others. In fact some of such lies expose the liar’s lack of something, which would otherwise not have been exposed.

 

After all these years of seeing the world, I came to a conclusion that the society has degenerated to a state where it is impossible to live without the help of lies. From the times when truth was the only known way of life, the society has now come to a stage when there are courses, which teach lying as a way of life. One of the main reasons for this shift seems to be the growth of false ego. There are people who like to boast about things they don’t have and there are people who do not like to hear bad things about themselves. Both of these growing classes of people contribute to the lies.

 

The other major contribution to lies and the way of life at any time is the governance. Impractical rules, unreasonable laws, indifferent bosses all contribute to the lies. Take for example, the use tax. I never bought anything that will trigger a use tax, but I’m borrowing this example from a recent article in the Mercury News. The government seems to be making a pun on the penalty of perjuries clause by asking the taxpayers to declare the use tax under penalty of perjury. One of the main reasons for illegal immigration and visa fraud is because of impractical immigration laws. Government plays a major role in the degeneration or regeneration of a society, just like the management plays a major role in the success or failure of a company.

 

In spite of all the external factors, to lie or not to lie is still a personal choice. I personally prefer and advocate silence to lying or telling an uncomfortable truth. For example, Bill Clinton could have just remained silent about his private life and refused to testify in public about a matter that is so private to him. It will then be inappropriate and unprofessional on part of the demanding opposition to press him to speak. Tact, rather than a lie, I believe will save a situation. Lying, at best would invoke laughter and at worst frustration as it happened in Bill Clinton’s case. I now return the control to you on this topic of whether to lie or not to lie. It is your choice now.