Over last couple of weeks, I have been floored by the Pranav Mistry’s “Sixth Sense” technology that he showcased at TED India meet. Suddenly there was huge surge of national pride, and everybody went mad talking about it. Twitter, Facebook, forward mails and what not. Talks about Indians leading the technology and all that.
I had seen his technology and realized the immense and game-changing potential it possesses, but around 10 months back in Feb 2009 when he showed it for the first time in TED US meet. Here is the link to that. No questions about the amazing invention it is, and humongous new revolutionary possibilities it opens up. But what pains me is that this news was totally missed back then in Feb-March 2009 when it first came out of labs and was demoed to real world. We say we live in the information age today, whole world is a village, it takes not more than a blink to break the news to each and everyone across the world. And what are we seeing here.
Pranav Mistry became source of national pride only after some media guy gave it that twist. It becomes a rage across Indians when invention actually travels to India physically with its inventor and people get to see it. Is this any different than the middle-ages, just that the modes of transport has improved now and so transportation across seven seas now needs not more than few hours. Why didn’t this ‘Sixth Sense’ took every Indian media by storm back then in March 2009 itself?
What are we talking about? We are talking about a really really futuristic technology, but fail to take advantage of very basic applications of information access we all have right now. Why are we riding a bullock cart on the information highway? I can understand we need to be fed news, but we can choose which source to consume and also need to give some thought before consuming it. Why do we act so dumb and take whatever is thrown at us as a Gospel truth? Information is good, but let us treat it as that only and retain the ability to decipher it with a little application of the reasoning we have.
Makes sense?
In Letter and Spirit 