Facebook: No More Social!!! An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg.

 

Hi Mark,

First and foremost thing… This is my Personal opinion, so don't get offended!!!

Facebook, is not social any more. When you started it way back trying to rate the Pics, it was social then, not any more.

This is why I don't thing think it is social:

From my experience (this includes my friends and colleagues as well), what do I get to see on facebook, Videos posts (Mainly some Kolaveri Di shit), copy paste of some one else’s status updates, clicking and saying Many Many Happy returns of the day!!!. Fertilizing some one else crops by just clicking, or feeding some food to their animals. This is not social. if this were a social medium, I would have seen videos of my friend sleeping or farting in office and not video of some one I least care about.

If it were social, 500 people posting on my wall happy returns could have called me on my cell (Which they can get from my personal info page) and wished me, if it were social they would have pasted their own status update like, getting bored at my Org’s all Hands. I don't want to fertilize some one else’s crops by just clicking. I want to go to their Farm (if they have one) and get my hands dirty to fertilize their crops. I dont get to see or do this on Facebook. So for me it is not social. 

When we all say that current age and time are of Social network, what do we really mean by it. For me being social is getting together with People on a Tapri (Road side tea Stall), sipping tea from those age old glasses, Smoking till the Tapri walla shuts down, discussing anything from Death metal to technology to cursing Andriod Phones for low battery and apple for bloody expensive iPhones. For me social means when I can get with my friends, colleagues and discuss something which we want to discuss and not see what Dhanush has sung.

For me being social  means hanging out on Kailash ji Tea shop, giving a long stare at any girl passing by and one of us telling us that he dated this girl and laughing at him knowing he will pee in his pants even talking to her.

Facebook, twitter, orkut, linked in, they are anything but social.
Look what happened to google Plus…. did anyone stop and thought about why it was such a flop. People are getting bored of being social this way. Facebook may boast of 100 million subscribers, but does that mean it is a society of 100 million people.  No it is not.
Following Salman Khan or Amitabh Bachan on twitter can not be called social, I call it Stalking. Getting linked to some one on a website is not social. I may have more that 7000 links on linked in, but that does not mean I am social. With how many I really interact. Being in facebook, twitter and linked in has became a fashion statement than anything else. Every one wants to be 

Being social means getting out of your home, interacting with people and environment around you.
Being on facebook or twitter is sitting in front of a LCD screen and sending some messages. This is like seeing Sunny and Matt Erikson making out, thinking instead of Matt its you. Its not you. This is what facebook and twitter are doing to Being Social.

I am sure in coming 4-5 years we are going to see a revolutionary change in the way we interact or act social. Facebook wont be there to see this in its current formant. The current social network format has to change to make people really social. Google will try to stop being another Microsoft. and Facebook will try to stop being Google.

In the end I would like to say, Mark go out of your office with your colleagues and friends, to Kailash ji Tea Stall and see what being social means.

Cheers!!!!

Flying Domestic Flights? Make Sure you have Life Insurance

Now this is what I call as complete disrespect of Human Lives.

In India, Flying in an Airplane has always been considered ‘The Thing’.
From last month or so, I am seeing news and reports about fake pilots, blind landings, and what is our government doing apart from DGCA’s futile tries to setup a  committee to find who all have fake piloting licenses (Till yesterday they only screened 20% of all the registered pilots). Till they find all the fake pilots, the flyers will always be ‘Bhagwan Bharose’. Come on People, do we need another ‘Anna Movement’ to wake up the responsible people, or a plane crash.

Between 7th April and 10th April, Six airlines did a ‘Blind landing’ in Goa. God forbid, if something would have happened and 200 people could have lost their lives. who would have answers to the families and friends of these 200 innocent people. Manmohan Singh? Vijay Mallaya? or DGCA? Every body would have setup another ‘good for nothing’ committee and down the drain???

Why is life of an Indian so cheap? Is there any one who cares about us apart from out families and friends?

Why is it that in India we always need a BIG wake up call (Anna Movement) for people responsible to sprung into action, be it CWG or 2G or fake pilots?

I wonder who will have answer to these questions of mine? Do I go to Court to get answers? Court is meant to do justice and not wake up people responsible?
If for everything we go to court, then why do even need the bureaucrats in first place, we can very well have LLB and LLMs?

God knows ??? Does even he knows what’s happening in India, I wonder!!!

Next time you fly, make sure you have well written Wills and power of Attorney and Life insurance apart from your boarding passes!!

May the power be with you!!!

Jaihind!!!

Is India Going to be Next Egypt? Excuse Me….

First of all let me be bow down to the Great ‘Anna’. He is THE real ‘Anna’. His Gandhian way is simply inspirational. As the Great man himself said ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ and our anna is a prime example of this.

I was going through some twits today and saw one from Great Madhur Bhadarkar. It goes like this
mbhandarkar268 Madhur Bhandarkar
Overwhelming momentum generates in for Anna Hazare's fight against corruption. Is India gonna b th next Egypt??

Does he really understands what Anna is doing and what happened in Egypt?

Egyptian revolution was focused on legal and political issues including police brutality, state of emergency laws,lack of free elections and freedom of speech, uncontrollable corruption, and economic issues including high unemployment, food price inflation, and low minimum wages.

Some one please ask him if he really know what is ‘Jan Lokpaal’ Bill? Does he really know what is lokpal ?
People like him are just trying to take undue mileage from the efforts of Anna.
Eat this, Papu Yadav is supporting Anna from Jail (in for multiple crimes against people)!!!!

Come on people, Anna is doing a great stuff here lets not dilute it or divert it in any way. Lets not put any political color to it.

We have infinite number of example in Indian politics and society where our Railway ministers were jailed, where our Telecom ministers were guzzlers of public money, or puppets of corporate, where religious Boards and trusts were misusing the funds and assets. We definitely need a system to stop, avoid, track and punish these people and these processes. 

But calling Jantar Mantar a Tehrir Square is going a bit overboard. They had more than 30 years of dictatorship and we have more than 60 years of democracy. Just dont match.

Going one more step forward Mr Arvind Kejriwal said he want to re-write our constitution. With all due respect to Kejriwal, this is ridiculous. I know  we have many laws that we inherited from British raj, we might need to introspect in those ones, but re-writing the constitution is getting carried away.

This is a great movement and we all need to support this, but lets not get carried away and re-write things that have worked for us.

All Hail to one and only one Anna!!!!

Am I an Indian or What?

 

First of all wish you all a very happy Republic Day!!!

Every year on this day I ask my self a question: ‘Am I an  Indian or What?’

Almost every year political parties like BJP try to make a mountain out of nothing by trying to hoist Indian national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar.
First of all why they want to do this? Just to gain some political mileage and create Chaos in already volatile J&K?
Secondly why doesn't the ruling parties in Centre and state allow them to do it? By not allowing them to do so, they are actually giving BJP undue political mileage.

I saw some images on TV few days back when BJP announced that they intend to hoist the flag in Lal Chowk. These images showed a youth hoisting Pakistani flag. Why did not the Omar Abdullah stop that guy? Is this India or what? Am I still an Indian? or Kashmir is in Pakistan?

Every Indian has this fundamental right to Hoist the India National Flag with all respect. Why is Omar Abdullah  and Congress taking this fundamental right of mine away.
If hoisting a flag causes chaos, then they should look at the root cause of the issue and not block people from hoisting it. This is not right. I am an engineer by profession, and when ever I am faced with an issue to fix, I try to look for the root cause and not the make shift arrangement.

The center policy of considering J&K as sensitive place actually validates that it is a disputed state. This is an internal affair of India and why should India talk to Pakistan about it. Simply clean our house.

I belong to Rajasthan, and in summers there are daily sand storms. We clean our houses of sand and don't blame nature for that or say we will talk to nature and let the sand come in. We install wired windows or closed gates or window blinds to make sure that sand doesn't come in. But still it comes in and we clean it. 

This same logic should be applied to J&K. We have people who are like unwanted sand in our house, center should just go and clean the sand and install some kind of system that doesn't allow sand to come in. We don't have to talk to Pakistan or Uncle Sam to clean our house.

Get some inspiration from our Uncle, Sam. he cleans his house all by himself and some times destroys countries who he think can spoil his way of Life ‘ The American Way of Life’. Let do it all by our selves. Lets not make a small event like flag hoisting  big issue. I hope that all the political parties should raise above these petty issues and unite to clean our house.

Let every Indian feel that J&K belongs to India and no one can ever take it away.

I wish this republic day brings that sense to all political parties!!!

Jai Hind!!!!