.. social networks need to get organized.  This requires a level of hierarchy above ‘friends and contacts’.  That level will be determined by a political system within the network.  Leaders will be chosen and they will use the collective power of the network to get ahead in their online lives.

Everything is self-serve, online, quick and simple right?  So they will quickly write code and create widgets to get better deals in everything they do, everything they buy and every service they pay for. 

In Web 2.0 we had friends, in web 3.0 we’ll have online governors, mayors and elections.  They will collect taxes from advertisers and build their online countries with very real impact to their physical lives.

I have been thinking along these lines. My hunch is we are going to see more and more vocal interest group emerge from these social networks and they will have following characteristics:

• Moody, bursty action with very planned outcome
• More incidence of competitive manipulation and hijacking of meme-spread
• Man-versus-group and group-versus-man security issues hit online network
• Group action on hire - thanks to globalization. Replace Cialis with your favorite meme !

More edge of the seat business management practices and bigger legal team. Welcome to post-Myspace and post-Digg era.

I first learned about his work in 1991 while arranging temporary shelters for earthquake affected villagers, which happened in the cold Himalayan region of Uttarkashi.

His key contribution was the unique architectural style.

Baker’s architectural method is one of improvisation, in which initial drawings have only an idealistic link to the final construction, with most of the accommodations and design choices being made on-site by the architect himself. Compartments for milk bottles near the doorstep, windowsills that double as bench surfaces, and a heavy emphasis on taking cues from the natural condition of the site are just some examples. His Quaker-instilled respect for nature lead him to let the idiosyncrasies of a site inform his architectural improvisations, rarely is a topography line marred or a tree uprooted. This saves construction cost as well, since working around difficult site conditions is much more cost-effective than clear-cutting.

Though he was never a big fan of technology. This man was practising green and sustainable design practices many years before the concept became fashionable.

Amitabha Sadangi of International Development Enterprises India (IDEI). IDEI has developed and marketed affordable small-plot micro-irrigation technologies to India’s marginal and small farmers.

Padmanabha Rao and Rama Rao of Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER). RIVER has developed a multi-grade, multi-level (MGML) model of primary education that arrests the multiple barriers faced by marginalized groups in getting quality education for their children.

TIDE has a broader focus which includes energy and rural entrepreneurship

S. Rajagopalan and Svati Bhogle of Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE).  promotes sustainable development through technological interventions, focusing on technologies that are suitable for the rural environment, address energy issues and help create rural entrepreneurs. TIDE has established nearly twenty enterprises, whose collective turnover last year was Rs 15 million.

And the last contender is a known project (as compared to the first three)

Vikram Akula of SKS Microfinance Private Limited, Hyderabad. SKS Microfinance applies global business practices to the field of microfinance, and since it was establishment in 1998, has benefited approximately 1.5 million individuals through income-generating loans.

Interesting aspect  is the global relevance of all these projects. Education, energy, self reliance via entrepreneurship and water conservation are some of the challenges many countries would be facing in the coming decades. That probably explains why World Economic Forum is recognizing their efforts.

Digg lawyers  send C&D to similar named site called DiggGames. They did what they were getting paid for. Which is to protect Digg’s intellectual property interests. This is a totally legitimate way to protect company’s interests. Comments on TechCrunch are throwing more light on why this is a reasonable thing to do. Do it now or keep your mouth shut forever. That’s how trademark law works.

But…..Digg is no enterprise focused boring supply chain management type  company. They are a company at the forefront of an ideological mashup  of “user generated content”, “wisdom of the crowds”, “creative commons”, “social network”, “citizen journalism”, “next generation media”, “long tail” and I am sure there are more buzzwords out there. So there is a natural expectation that they will not do something old world.

They cannot just cherry pick ethics and legal tools here. They need to get creative and come up with some kind of affiliate or syndication model with these Digg-clones and Digg-fanclubs. One would expect that the young management team of Digg will go that way. Instead they decided to play hardball.

Hardball legal tactics is a legitimate business practice but taking some kind of trademark2.0 model would have played well considering their culture and positioning.

Lets see how this evolves. There will be interesting lessons here.

Update: Created my first Wikipedia entry with the topic of trademark2.0. Please add to it. This issue needs more discussion and understanding. Will be a good experiment to see how quickly this entry gets canned.

Technology gave me an equal footing for everything I have done in my life and career. I have said this before. Technology is a great leveler, second only to death. I have always negotiated challenges on the basis of my whatever little intrinsic merit quality and perseverance. I have never taken the route of quota or reservations. I hope this shows that it is possible.

He has already shown what is possible with sheer hard work and good use of technology.

Now Dean Kamen is partnering with Grameen Foundation to commercialize this  innovation. Though there are economical challenges but solving water problem will be a breakthrough applicable to urban settings as well.

Kamen’s goal is to produce machines that cost $1,000 to $2,000 each. That’s a far cry from the $100,000 that each hand-machined prototype cost to build.

Genius lies in stating problem differently:

A satellite picture of the earth at night shows swaths of darkness across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. For the people living there, a simple light bulb would mean an extension of both their productivity and their leisure times.

Project of this type needs all the support it can get. Let there be clean water and clean energy for all.

I am so overwhelmed with events and observations that I will need good time to soak up all the crazy things happening around us and make some sense of that. India for NRIs can be a great energy-sucking comparison exercise. Traditionally people made comparison between urban India and rural Bharat. To this one can safely add a new layer - connected India which can be further sexed up as GIndia. So for US-based NRI like me any event or observation has to go through four layers - India, Bharat, GIndia and offcourse US. It’s like a network switch supporting 64k, 256k, 2Mbs, and 60Mbs at the same time. Talk about impedance mismatch !

On top of that travel to North India and specially to Uttar Pradesh is like a study in sociology, political science and in some wierd way crash course of family anthropology thrown in. Joint family entertainment comes in many flavors ranging from The Last Burden to Gerald Durrell’s My Family… Proving a point that families keep on gathering the comedy along their evolutionary path.

As always events have internal(controllable) and external (not in your hands) characteristic. This is going to be the week to understand and make sense of many internal events.

Back in Bangalore to hit the reset button.

Speaking at the technology institute here in Bangalore he quoted some depressing numbers: nearly 1% of the GDP circulates as bribes. Gini Index, a measurement of income inequality rose from 30 to 38 during the 90s. 260 million people stayed below the poverty line and 357 million survived on one dollar a day.

While emphasizing that the new breed of businessmen are not shy from speaking out the truth he highlighted few positives for India as well - thriving democracy, secularism and the power of the youth.

Much as I admire Mr Murthy for his style and vision there are few things I wish people like him did more. Which is using their money to drive the change they want to see in the world. Setting up a venture fund which will invest in next generation start-ups. Start-ups which are part NGOs and part computer science department and have a clear purpose to “change the world” by tools which will level the existing knowledge asymmetry in the society. We need smart mob technique to overcome jaded approach to deal with social issues. That’s where Mr Murthy should be investing his time and money.

Dedicated venture fund which helps the creation of tools which exploits mobility, media and technology to take knowledge away from those who have it and give it to those who never had this before ! There are good examples of such funds - Omidyar Network is definitely leading the way there. India still doesn’t have anything remotely close to this fund.
 

Most of these are the signs of unprecendented pace of economic development taking place in Bangalore. So dusty work-in-progress is very much a yin of the rapid economic development yang.

Workers came in the morning, blocked the road and quickly got down to digging the road. There is a wicked efficiency when it comes to digging the road (which is usually missing when the time comes to fill it). In few hours they managed to do something which will put any civil engineer into depression. At the end of the work they quickly patched up, leaving huge chunk of dirt lying on the surface.

And they fled ! No audit, no review, nobody bothering to make anybody accountable for this shoddy work.

Potholes in Bangalore are like orphans. Infact they are orphans, result of a system which has no accountability and result of a civic society which has no stake in it’s public spaces. I am not aware of any study done to calculate the overall economic impact of potholes but if one combines the collective damage society pays towards -

bad traffic
poor productivity
accident hazards
wear and tear of automobiles
poor image of the city
health hazards due to excessive dust

One can very well fix this problem. Again the problem is who will fix it?

Found two interesting websites in this context :

- Bangalore Potholes
- Bangalore Pothole