Remote is not so remote. You can get real time, deep coverage, in text, photo and video formats, from any corner of the world. There is real time cheap to free communication.
The so called First World collapsed a few years back because it did not invest its surplus trillions into Third Worldinfrastructure that give guaranteed 10% annualized returns.
Instead those surplus trillions were used to torpedo the basic financial infrastructure in the First World. Shady real estate investments that collapsed like a house of cards.
Real estate is thought of as a safe investment. The house is still there no matter what happens. That is the thinking. What if the house is there but it lost 80% of its value? Is the house still there? If you think it is still there, I call it gold standard thinking. Getting rid of the gold standard was a good thing. Not all people, including some people in Congress, agree.
How can Wall Street do the damage it has done and still not be taken over by a whole new generation of finance startups? It is like if Blogger were to refuse to let you migrate all your content to Wordpress. In a more of a market economy you should be able to move your money from one bank to the next in a flash.
A globalized world does not quite jive with the nation state moat. And damage happens.
There is global infrastructure, and there is global microfinance.
Image via WikipediaBy now people from my homevillage have gone to far away places like the Arab countries and Malaysia to do manual labor. A bunch of them are on Facebook. Like one guy said recently, brother, I can't talk to you right now, I am off to have dinner.
So going to Kathmandu, the capital city, is less big of a deal these days. But back when I was attending school in Kathmandu, it was a big deal. It was an even bigger deal when my father was doing high school in Kathmandu. At least I got to take the overnight bus, he had to fly. There was no other way to get there.
And so it was all known that I was attending school with the crown prince of the country, the future king, the same guy who in 2001 mowed down his family in a palace massacre, but then back then you could not have seen that coming, not by the furthest stretch of the imagination.
When I was home for one of my vacations a neighbor approached. He knew I had just come home from Kathmandu. Kathmandu was this mythical place far, far away.
"Next time you come home will you please bring an African?" he delivered. "I hear they are really black, I would really like to see one."
Image via CrunchBaseI just sent out tweet pitches to every Twitter handle I could get hold of on this page: A Field Guide To The Female Founders, Influencers And Deal Makers Of The New York Tech And Media Scene.
These First World women need to be caring about my Third World women, and my FinTech startup would be a great way to do that.
That is an old dictum from journalism school, that man (sic) bit dog is news, but dog bit man is not. How new media has changed that and turned it upside down! If a dog bit man, and that man is your friend, that is not only news, that is big news. If that man walked his dog, and sent out a tweet about it, that is still news, to you. How things have changed!
Dell has not done something this exciting in a long time. Maybe it is the Third World guy in me, but I have been a long time fan of Dell's legendary push to keep the price point at the lowest possible.
Or people I follow must tweet a lot. I was just on my Twitter main page hoping to click over to my Direct Messages, but right before I clicked on to Direct Messages, I caught eye of a tweet by a woman who said something along the lines of, I love football, men wearing funny clothes, falling over each other. The tweet I thought was funny, very funny actually. Call me a Third World guy enamored by soccer and soccer alone, but I never quite got the hang of football. But by then I had already clicked on to my Direct Messages. I clicked the back button. But that does not do the trick. You are
still on the same web address when you click on Direct Messages. So I had to click on Home. The tweet was gone, flushed downstream. I kept clicking on More, until I could not do it no more. I guess Twitter allows you to click on More only so many times. The lady and her tweet were gone, nowhere to be found. That is when I realized to follow 27,000 people is to follow a lot of people. A refresh in 10 seconds puts you on another planet.
Remembering RajeevIt is with great sadness that I write about the passing of my teacher and good friend Professor Rajeev Motwani. But I would rather not dwell on the sorrow of his death and instead celebrate his life. ........ When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. ...... Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational...... Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly.
Rajeev Motwani's death has made me think about a few things at a very fundamental level. I did not know the guy, although I had read about him a few times in passing, had taken pride in an Indian's involvement with something as fundamental as Google: I am half Indian, born in India, grew up next door in Nepal, the poorest country outside of Africa. But had forgotten his name.
Why was he alone? That was the question that struck me, echoed in my mind.
Growing up it was hard if not impossible for me to be alone. There were always people around. The first American city I got to see was Indianapolis. I was taken downtown. My first question was, but where are the people?
At a gut level I always thought of the phrase Third World to be racist. The suggestion is that the so-called Third World is two steps behind the First World on everything. And that simply put is not true.
I went to a school in Kathmandu founded by the British. Every year they would bring along two high school graduates from Britain. They would teach for a year and then go back to college in Britain. I asked one of them after they had been in Nepal a month. So what's the difference? He said he had been in Nepal a month, and he had yet to meet someone who was depressed. That was his tribute to the emotional infrastructure he witnessed.
A few years in America I read online somewhere that Nepal has been the top choice among Peace Corps volunteers during the entire half century of that program's existence.
I once read in an anthropological journal article somewhere that some "tribes" - another racist term - in Africa handled adolescence better than the American society did.
pretty hard nosed about where I come from. I don't glamorize poverty, I don't glamorize children dying from petty diseases. There is much sexism where I come from. Complaining of ethnic prejudice is almost second nature to me. I wish wealth and broadband upon my peoples.
But Global South is the term to use. Otherwise the same white people who have destroyed the environment over 500 years are turning around to lecture you on the environment. What's wrong in the picture?
Why was Rajeev Motwani alone? Why was Ramanujan lonely in England?
Motwani was in the prime of his life, both personally and professionally.
These questions also tie into my recurring theme at this blog, that the human element is central to the web as technology.
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