tamaso mā jyotir gamaya (from darkness to light)
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Must watch song by David Ippolito. Explains why he thinks Facebook is a Stupid Idiot.
Of course, I think that Facebook is a Stupid Idiot for all the different reasons…
I mean… Really… Do you want to be on Facebook?
After this song… And considering the fact that Facebook is one big bad multinational owned by a hormone [read 'economics'] driven twenty six year old? And also considering the fact that Facebook owns everything you put on it? Including last night’s party photos, where you were drunk like a fish? And the last “Love you too” private message you sent to your boyfriend? And your little poetry status message? And that depending on your privacy settings, that big bad multinational can use all your information for their publicity, or even sell it?
For me, friendship is about love. Its about remembering people’s birthdays if I care for them, not about receiving reminders. Its about talking to someone when I remember them, not finding them on my news feed. Its about having my closest friend tell me what has been happening and how (s)he feels, not about reading it from her ‘wall’. Its about reading whats in the news, not what my neighbour thinks about the news – I can ask her that if I wanted to. Its about having a physically-real farm, and a physically-real cow, and not about having a Farmville. (Come on folks, if you have two hours a day for Farmville, why not start a garden and see those physically-real tangible beautiful fragrant flowers and those eatable vegetables?)
Its about meeting a bygone friend in the middle of a forest (ok, lets be more realistic, in the middle of the grocery store?). Or giving a hug because I truly cherish the soul I hug, not to get points. Its about showing pictures – those fleeting events which we arrogantly try to capture – to people who know, not about tagging people and commenting on the X’s balding forehead. Its about letting people who care to ask where I am or what I’m doing, not about publishing that to the world. Please, its about going out there and actually doing something for that poor Panthera tigris and not about clicking a button!
Yes, this is a rant. But for me, its about the non-digital. Yes, the non-digital. Yes, I believe it exists.
Actually, no. Its not about the non-digital. Its about the person, the human, the energy, the force. Digits and non-digits do not play there.
And Ippolito and I have something in common. We both think Facebook is a Stupid Idiot.
A few years back, I began contemplating on the effect Internet could really have on the global population, if it was completely made available in local languages… Having a website in a language was one thing. But for a person speaking a language which follows a non-Latin text, the experience would either be absent, or quite unempowering. Because you needed the Latin script to do a lot of things, one of the main ones being typing in the URL of the web page.
There existed a space for inclusion. Inclusion of millions of people into the information revelation boom powered by the internet. And all that was required to harvest this space was an empowering experience – the expanding of domain name ranges to other languages and scripts. In simpler language, the possibility to type in a web page URL in a non-Latin-script language.
And today, I read via TechCrunch that ICANN (an international non-profit society which regulates the Internet) has decided to move ahead with Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), or domain names in different languages. *applause required here, and I contribute a standing ovation*
ICANN announced this on the last day of their conference in Seoul.
ICANN says that this is the most important decision by them, after eleven years of its inception. ICANN lauds this decision as biggest technical change to the Internet, in its forty years of existence.
This decision will now enable websites to have domain names in different languages. Thats an hundred thousand characters to chose from! As opposed to the existing 37 (A-Z, 0-9 and the hyphen). ICANN is introducing a fast track process to invite nations to apply for domain name extensions in their local language scripts. The first entries to the system would be introduced by mid-2010, said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN president, speaking to the media. How it will be played out, will be an interesting watch. Will domain names be bound to use one single language (Hindi, or Arabic, or English) or can it be a mix of two or more? We will have to wait and see…
The technology behind the different scripts being used will be a translation system, which converts the different languages into the right address. I’m not quite sure of what they mean by that, but I guess we’ll wait and see… But it is indeed, a lot of work. Reviewing each language application, researching into the language, building a translation system, and introducing the language, would be quite a task! I am now wondering how the applications will be processed, and if applications could get rejected…
But, this means a tremendous opening up of the internet… The web will now reach out to millions of people (estimated half the world’s population) who were earlier handicapped by the lack of local language domain names. With powerful translating tools, most of the information openly accessibly on the internet today can be accessed by any literate person now (literate in any language, that is).
What I did not know, then, and till today, is that ICANN has been working on it for the past nine years. Along with many others. And it was an idea from 1996… Long before I had even heard of computers… But I take a moment of silence to appreciate this huge move, and its possible tremendous impacts on our world.
I can imagine the impact this would have on my country. With over 3000 different languages, most of them not following the Latin script*, and most people not literate in English, the opportunity to use the local language to open a website is… quite something… And beautifully empowering.
Watch this video by ICANN, regarding the announcement… Its beautiful… Take my word for it!
Read more about IDNs on Wikipedia.
* – I did not know that there were certain Indian languages which used the Latin script! Thanks M for the info! He says that certain Indian languages, like Konkani, Mizo, and a few Naga dialects, do use the Latin script.
I remember.
I was excited. I was at it for almost an hour now. I’m glad that my parents are in the other room. I wouldn’t want them to know that I was online for almost an hour! Dial up is so expensive! I hope it won’t show too much on the phone bill..
But its ok… Right now, its this moment that matters. This moment. I might be caught in lust, momentary infatuations.. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing it. But never mind, I can’t stop… Anyway I had done so much.. Why not do a little more and reach the.. end.. or the beginning..
I was excited. Every time the 56k connection lagged, I sighed, I prayed deeply to all Gods introduced to me by people around me. I was so close… so close..
And yesss! I was there! Wow! Amazing! For the first time… wow.. This is what I had always wanted to do.
I was excited. I called my best friend and comrade-in-action…
I was 11 years old.
I remember that time, when I was so excited. When I had made my first public online presence. With a huge URL which no one would know, or remember. Something like http://www.geocities.yahoo.com/geocities/users/….. And I had some ridiculous id, which I, then, thought was cool. Something like bwmo….. or something. But all that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I was there, up there, on that huge being which I thought was so cool, which I wanted to get to know better, and conquer, which had become my latest companion, and my best friend in a world where I had none.
And it had all started with this service called Yahoo! GeoCities.
It has been a run since then. For almost half a year, racing with my friend to make the better website. Adding bouncing hippos, and falling snow, mouse overs, and colourful text.. It didn’t matter that no one knew about our ‘websites’. Did not matter that no one, but we ourselves, used or visited those ‘sites’. After two or three GeoCities websites, we moved on to other hosting firms, using software to make websites, as opposed to the web application, learning code, designing, making better websites, programming, making concept ideas for websites, designing and working on them, blogging..
But it all started with Yahoo! GeoCities. And I remember.
And my remembrance will it all be. Goodbye GeoCities. And thank you. For making my world for those many years. For making me live.
[For more information, visit Yahoo! Support Pages. If you want to see a website which was on GeoCities, visit the Internet Archive]
Dear readsfolk,
PayPal, the e-commerce division of eBay, is opening up to developers on November 3rd. I happened to chance across a cool video of the announcement on TechCrunch…
Opening up to developers do mean a lot of possibilities. Like TechCrunch comments, the scenes shown in the video may not happen in the near future, but it is definitely a start, and we can look forward to it.
I would definitely love to see a time when I could walk into a shop and pay using my PayPal id. Now that would truly be cashless shopping! And of course, it does increase physical security – you can walk around with no money, or credit cards…
Throwing it open for developers could see fantastic ideas being visualised. It might be the first time that such a big ecommerce venture is opening up, and it does take the idea of developing way beyond iPhone apps.
However, it does throw open a lot of security related questions, especially since we are talking about the most sensitive sector here – banking. For example, if PayPal is serious about the fingerprint scanning shown in the video, either they will have to develop an entirely new system of authentication and encryption, or they will have to form an addon system, which will supply the username and password to the existing system on verification of the fingerprint. But then, another level of system adds on to security risks, and if this system is hosted by somebody else (which would probably be, in the case of developers) then how safe is our authentication details? And therefore, our money?
These are challenges which PayPal will have to address, but I’m hoping that they will! Lets see, and hope for a PayPal future 
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