To see is to believe

Technology and Analytics are hot topics these days and I thought why not show my users true picture of Techrust. I used few web analytics tools like Wassup and Google analytics to show what’s going on here.

I’m thankful to 8780 visiters who not only read my blog but have also participated actively. Since last 3 months I see a significant rise in the total number readers. The decline in curve is due to my complete absence from this space since 2 months.

Even though I could not publish anything in last couple of months, total number of loyal readers increased!  I didn’t know this fact till Google Analytics showed me that there is decrease in Bounce Rate by 24.5%. In simple terms, visitors have been finding my work more relevant!

You might be interested in knowing who  these vistors were, where did they come from and what did they really read? Here you go-

Most of the online users found Techrust from Google. Direct traffic was definitely generated by people whom I know personally. Rest were coming from Facebook/Twitter/Linked-in/places where I usually comment.

76 pages were viewed a total of 249 times

Most of the site visitors came on my home page and enjoyed reading new content,  and top read articles included-

1. Technology matters?

2. Sumo Fighters: Beware of Spartan Warriors

3. Understanding Change, Customer Service & Disruptive Technologies.

Also, I realised that most of my readers are Global-

114 visits came from 24 countries/territories

35% of the total crowd were returning visitors. 65% users who were visiting the site for the first time showed high correlation with users directed from Google images! My articles were read in 8 different languages (many users converted it to their local languages) and 11% loyal readers visited the site “26-50 times”.

Thanks to all my friends who have kept me motivated so far. Though I used technology to validate my results, it was done with help of “free Web2.0 tools”.

Change with disruptive technology

PROLOGUE

Motivated by previous comments by my readers, now I am taking technology in backdrop of Change.

In one of my posts on Virtual life , I had talked about the changing online culture and my experiments failing terribly. Twitter  has literally become a new advertisement machine and we all accept advertisements and news by RSS. Then why not see the advertisements which are cusomtised to OUR choice?

I dug some past soil to understand evolution and how things changed with time. I ended up asking myself- Do we really understand change? Is time a good parameter to understand change? Does technology matter when things change ?

UNDERSTANDING CHANGE

Four million years ago, primordial soup of amino acids and other simple molecules managed to turn themselves into first living cell. Though I don’t understand the phenomenon very well, I still consider this creation of life as miracle..

Interesting question is whether the cells evolved or did they make a choice to be?

Classically this question falls in category of Emergence vs Intention.

To test this idea, I took up a huge debate on idea of Free will and choice. I played positive and my friend was completely against it. His best attack was,”How can a newly born kid have a choice?” My counter argument was,”he chose to live and environment helped”. We agreed that idea of choice is in partial agreement with complex phenomenon of emergence. Probably, it answers an important question of viability as well.

Before taking up hard issue of viability of technology, let’s explore a bit more about time.

Kurzweil observed a striking feature of passage of time. He explained that, “time inherently moves in an exponential fashion and unless we’re caught in ‘knee of curve’ of eons, we do not observe things changing quickly.” Simplifying theory of relativity, I say:

Unless we’re moving at the same pace as that of change, we do not understand change very clearly.

Now, that we know how critical the pace and locus of observation is, technology can be viewed from different perspectives and at varying velocities of choices.

CUSTOMERS and SERVICES

Building on, I would like to take up one of the recently critiqued areas on internet:

Online Behavioural Advertising.

I was observing reactions of people  buying products without help of internet. Common answers were:

Product should be:

• New
• Different
• Valuable and Meaningful
• Associated to customer and
• having GOOD SERVICES

Now why did Service hit the sweet sopt? Why was assistance so important? We all know that we need it!

To take this to next level, organisations started moulding their offerings around customer’s likleliness and their needs.

In year 2009 I can clearly claim the fact that almost everyone is online and technology is pervasive! But to understand the concept of richeness and reach associated to customer’s likeliness, I started exploring how behavior is getting targeted online? I came across this interesting book- Everything is Miscellaneous: The Powerof the New Digitial Disorder, in which David explained how things changed and how customers were attracted online. I was shocked to see what Google tried experimenting: They were tracking online user’s eye movements and gave quick and almost relevant results to the users on page1!

In her genius peice of work, Structuration Model of Technology, Orlikowski had claimed:

Human actions are enabled and constrained by structures, yet that these structures are the result of previous actions.

Hence, I realised that advertisements, or  promotion of services, over a period of time got mixed and aligned with customer habits, which in turn changed customer behavior as well.

Good? Bad? Do you see Emergence along with Intention? Power and domination? There may not be a correct answer from one perspective as this was a change.

Disruptive Technologies

The technologies which bring different value proposition that had been available previously. Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and frequently, more convenient to use- Clayton, Harvard

Google gave advertisements differently, whereas, Amazon targeted consumer’s actions using powerful analytical tools. Every good organisation wanted to ENGAGE with their customers and disruptive technologies helped.

PERSONALISED WEB BROWSING

To change the existing model and move beyond concept of personalised home pages (like iGoogle), an organisation called PHORM, came out with something creative and disruptive, but has been defamed due to fear of privacy and protection. Here is small video, borrowed from Youtube, in which CEO of Phorm defends and explains how this technology works:

I also read several posts on Phorm- here, here, here and here, etc. But the most interesting answer by a user:

a VERY interesting step for Phorm – starting perhaps to use their technology “for the consumer” – is this the beginning of an intelligent agent – that can learn what we are interested in and assemble for US. If so, it’s like an “on the fly” version of the personalised portal/homepage/startpage model – and it could go somewhere – it could even go all over Very interesting – will watch Phorm with even greater interest now.

I believe this technology has power to give consumers a choice and  flexibility to enjoy the world around them. While exploring, I also came across International Advertising Bureau , who are leaders in behavioural advertising good practice and saw that Phorm is one of the signatory members laying down principles on good practice.

My Verdict

Moving at the pace of change and taking multiple perspectives of choices I see this Change as inevitable. It is in nature and it is Freedom..

It would be wrong to predict the future, but some of my observations guide me to project a very assumptive scenario based on my understanding now. Probably that’s why sometimes I try to convey a point under category- Vision. True or untrue- time can judge!

After reading comments in my last log, I was drawn to a point where I had no reason to say, “No we cannot live without machines and our world will be without them.” Meanwhile, I was also re-questioning myself: WHY DO WE NEED MACHINES? The idea of us AND machines is tricky and it seems inevitable. It’s like getting real married with non-real, yet we need them…

WHERE HAVE WE GONE WRONG? Have we REALLY gone wrong? Or is it the VARIETY in US?

Let’s move back in time and understand some facts:

Until Newton discovered why apple fell down from tree, people knew that apples simply fall (things fall, what else!). It’s not that force of gravity never existed before Newton, but he was the one who discovered the fact. Later, Einstein came with theory of relativity, which guided us on relative perceptions of reality. Prior to this people were falling for multi-faceted truths of realities! Ashby’s Law (of requisite variety), as acknowledged by Stafford Beer, helped to guide managers with this fact:

VARIETY ABSORBS VARIETY

What is variety? What does it mean to us?

In simple terms, Ashby put it as: Variety is a set of possibilities. It means a lot to us, because WE, as human beings, have an extremely high capacity of generating different sets of possibilities. Probably, it would be wrong for me to quantify and say how much! But you might not disagree with my statement.

Why is variety in limelight and where are machines?

Look at a very common scenario from our daily lives:

Mr ABC wakes up, puts on the geyser so that water can boil. Once he’s done taking a hot shower, he puts bread in a toaster. He takes out butter from fridge and spreads it smoothly on his bread. He leaves for office in his car.

This scene is very pedestrian, yet complicated to say what’s going on in background with help of technology. We have lot many machines to fill-in our tasks so that we can make our lives easier and manage more number of things around us. Look at cell phones, computers, super cool gadgets, etc. – all these are examples of objects or machines that help us to manage our lives!

But, US, human beings, are much more complicated than what we have or can see. Our thirst for varieties never end (of that which I am aware of!). So, inventions and discoveries keep happening. That’s when you can plug-in ‘Variety absorbs variety’! We need more machines as well. (Ah, Catch-22!).

Are we really trapping varieties?

When people say our product adds value, in clearer terms, it increases your options/ varieties. But human beings have endless varieties (that’s what I assume to know till this point of time).  I’m also thinking whether we could think of any other thing, but machines…Or we had already decided our fates long back?

Does that mean we keep on building more machines?

Probably we’re not stopping as of now! Though, idea of men getting more choices sounds completely fine, many sociologists like Barry Schwartz argue that the abundance of choice in modern society is actually making us miserable. I would put their point differently as: Sociologists have different varieties of thinking, which remain unfulfilled by a wider group of machine makers. They made a choice.

Have you made your choice? Or, you are looking for more?

Stafford Beer had said:

“It is my deeply considered view that the consequences for humanity will probably be cataclysmic.”

Long back, in my log I had said: Brain rules and Feelings die..Cry Cry Cry

My friend had messaged me these words of wisdom:

“It’s the choices that make us what we are and we can always choose to be right. Remember- the choice still lies in one’s own hands…”

What do you think?

]]> http://www.techrust.com/humane/us-and-machines.html/feed 0 http://www.techrust.com/disruption/age-of-new-machines.html http://www.techrust.com/disruption/age-of-new-machines.html#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:51:28 +0000 admin http://www.techrust.com/?p=300 Infamous for procrastinating, but finally I’m back in my old seat. Excited. Fresh. In my last post I had promised my readers to give something completely new. So here I am

Again, am blogging from Eddie Davies library. Books and machines- gives me a feeling of a new religion!

Q. Are you tired of old geeky stuff?

To see what’s fresh take a closer look at labs of MIT, Massachusetts where Pranav Misrty is desiging SIXTH SENSE. His logics defy silly old touch screens and Pranav takes leap beyond conventional. With help of Artificial Intelligence, he’s coming up with a super cool gadget (hangs around his neck below).

I’m posting the original video, showcased at MIT, so that you can see how this gadget is supposed to change our lives in the near future.

After seeing the video my jaws dropped open and I said- what a genius! Though his ideas are half-baked, they are ground breaking and worth praising.

I was listening to Harvard Professor Christensen Clayton, another genius in Disruptive innovation, who after a minute and half talks about biological evolution and role of machines, which help in transmutation. Even though evloution happens, mutation helps to survive. Now, let’s also look at ideas of Ray Kurzweil, an influential inventor and futurist, who gave beautiful examples to motivate and charge our brain cells-

• Telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication- Western Union Executive, 1876. DEFIED.
• Heavier-than-air flying machines are not possible- Lord Kelvin, 1895. DEFIED
• 640,000 bytes of memory ought to be enough for anybody- Bill Gates, 1981. DEFIED
• The internet will catastrophically collapse in 1996- Robert Metcalfe (inventor of ethernet),who, in 1997, ate his words (literally) infront of audience.

He explains: “Computers today exceed human intelligence in broad variety of intelligent yet narrow domains such as playing chess, diagnosing certain medical conditions, buying and selling stocks, and guiding cruise missiles. Yet human intelligence overall remains far more supple and flexible.” I say DEFIED!

From the video above it is clearly evident that new technologies will emerge at good pace and they will be easy, accurate, cheap and affordable. The most exciting part- now machines will help to “make sense”!

]]> http://www.techrust.com/disruption/age-of-new-machines.html/feed 2 http://www.techrust.com/cybernetics/goggling-and-cognition.html http://www.techrust.com/cybernetics/goggling-and-cognition.html#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 17:54:22 +0000 admin http://www.techrust.com/?p=271 Goggling? What is it all about?

Well, webster’s dictionary explains the meaning of this word as: Look stupidly! But the word sounded similar to Googling!!

Googling, a commonly used word to google something, is misleading and confusing many internet users. It has lead to increased number of misconceptions and has affected ‘the way’ users are searching, learning and defining their ‘experiences’ in a dynamically changing internet space.

Before jumping on to the core, let me begin by taking a simple example. I will use the principles of Cybernetics to solve the problem. Initially you may feel that I digressed from the topic, but later you will discover that the ideas co-relate by eliminating the boundaries or say avoid ‘reductionism’ (also much hated by Stafford Beer (father of Cybernetics), and eminent physicist Feynman).

Q. Can you provide a simple definition of this word- PHYSICS?
Though the word is very abstract, you may come up with a rough definition in mind. A person may also think- “I know some things about the word, but a definition? Ok, let me Google it.” He might start Googling (you may discover later that it was more of a goggling activity) the keywords: “definition+ Physics”. The search may look something like this:

Thanks to Google, which is such a life saviour at times like these, but did you get what you looked for? Google tries to give quick results and not the best results (Google has its +ve and –ve sides, but I’m deeply concerned about the ‘value addition to the user’s knowledge pool‘ at this moment).

What I found on page 1 are trashed results and pathetically defined definitions floating on the web! In terms of Wisdom of Crowd, as acknowledged by James Surowieki, the masses clicked on these results again and again. That made the results more prominent. I say that- PLAGUE is on the rise and masses are adopting incomplete definitions. Let me probe in deeper (I sound like a surgeon, but there’s something peculiar going on).

Result 1: www.thefreedictionary.com/physics :

Ok let’s try another trick, say, a definition from Wikipedia (written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world):

Physics (Greek: physis – φύσις meaning “nature”) a natural science, is the study of matter^[1] and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force.^[2] More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the world and universe behave.^[3][4]

Let me also put the definition of the hot word PHYSICS from Webster’s Dictionary and consolidate my ideas further:

Did you notice: “LAWS of SOMETHING “. Ouch!!! Out of vain I also tried looking for a definition of the word in Oxford dictionary on Google:

Webster defines reminiscence as a ‘remembered past’.

When change is the only constant and dynamism is so true why do we carry memories from the past? Why do we miss friends and families and a congenial smile till long? Why is that some ‘kind ‘ words always inspired us and some acerbic moments always send shrudders? Why did not ‘reminiscence’ fail when ‘obduracy’ was also there..

We learn, care, share, adapt, evolve and everything is so natural. Take this analogy: if you pour sand on a piece of paper it will fall under force of gravity and never get upright or rearrange. Thankfully, we- human-beings, learn and adapt. But we also tend to stick with things. In her seminal work, Orlikowski (prof. at MIT), recon that human actions are enabled and constrained by structures, yet these structures are result of previous actions. Gareth Morgan explained similar phenomenon and called it as ‘psychic prisons’. He said that systems get trapped in their own thoughts and actions.

Obduracy has some role to play. We move on or rather tend to move on with new things as we cannot stick to the past.  Just like we cannot have bread and jam every morning, we cannot enjoy life if things get repetitive. It’s like a cyclic wave which never stops. We end up saying- ‘we need something new’.

But famous psychologists claim that, “one should not change for change’s sake”. Now here’s the catch-22. When do you know that you need to move on? Obduracy can be obscured and striking a balance could be difficult.

I’ll express my déjà vu differently as:

Smile is what made my day

I cherish the real beauty

I love the sound of your heart

How comfortbale you’ve made me…

You take me as I am, no matter how bad I may be

this special comfort of yours, I always keep safe with me..

But these are memories of my past and I hold ‘em in my heart,

If brain is a rational tool please take it all apart…

If obduracy is related to time, remniscence is stronger

If newton’s body is at rest, then stability is stronger

The threat of death and the promise of sex promote instability

If these are edges of Chaos..then I cross the boundary…

Bottle the ideas, you may die quickly

If you wanna innovate, you have to think differently

I tilt the nature of thinking but am caught in the prison

If my soul is free and the song is true you may believe in my vision..

Q. How do you pick up an object?
Conventionally we may think that our hands, guided by our eyes,move directly toward the object.
Cybernectics suggests not. We pick an object by actually avoiding not picking it up!
This action occurs through a process of error elimination, whereby deviations between hand and object are reduced at each and every stage of the process, so that in the end no error remains.

I remember a student saying, “I passed this exams because I feared I might fail.” Boxing champions admit that they punched damn hard to avoid getting knocked out. You might not consider me wrong when I say that you managed to ride a bicycle to avoid falling off.

This simple idea guides us to understand how technologies are not to be designed, so that newer technologies can be made. In fact very complex ideas have simple scientific approaches. Edison, the genius, claimed that none of his inventions came by accident. He used to see a worthwhile need to be met and made trial after trial until he got what he needed. Everytime he failed, he knew all the ways which won’t give him the correct answer and it helped him to eliminate wrong choices. When I was preparing for GMAT, I was taught the golden rule of Process of Elimination, which helped me to guess the right answer, even when I didn’t know it!

These ideas also help me to understand why professors at universities take cases of failure more closely than cases of success. Failures help students to understand how a system is not to be designed. It also means breaking old-non-working patterns; I call it CREATIVITY. The lastest slogan at MBS is: Apply Original Thinking. Now you know why

In this video, CEO of Google, Schmidt, explains the idea of Web3.0. If I apply ideas of cybernetics to answer how web3.0 will be developed, I would simply suggest how not to think of making applications as the way they are made for web2.0. Sounds weird and difficult, but developers need to think of the same problems from fresh perspectives. They can leverage the idea of negative thinking creatively and make something which has never been done..

“Sow the seeds of change…Today”

Though I’m standing inside a shop, I look more busy and amazed with things around me! Ok, take a look at this pic now:

I’m dancing with Jo! Who’s Jo?

Jo is 3 weeks old (in SL), which is considerably more than mine- 8hrs! I see unique things in SL and was trying to know what’s more than 3D and avtaars here..Charming Jo explained,”you can chat, dance, fly and you can be someone you thought you wanted to be”. hmm…Interesting!

Jo couldn’t clear the litmus test and she admitted that she’s from England and is 45 yrs old, though looks incredibly young in the pic above. Also, she loves to be herself, has similar behaviours in SL as in real life and is open to meet people. After a long and boring day at job, SL helps her to relax and she likes to meet new people there. Moreover, she said that she’s going to visit Lake District today.

My test fails: Jo doesn’t want any connection in Real Life (RL -as she said) and refused to give her identity on FaceBook. Hmm..both are Social Networking Sites (SNS), but this is strange! True..

I’m confused. I can say that she was ready to give intimate informations, without disclosing her identity. Either this new culture is different, or it is so real that I am still not ready to believe it.

Let’s think what happens in RL. Let’s say, I meet a stranger and I’m nice and catch up fast, but the person is not ready to give any close information, than what is known from the top. Here, it’s the opposite. I’m not even sure whether Jo is going to see this beautiful scene of “Herdwick grazing above Thirlmere”

So what exactly is SL?

Everything sounded exactly as in movies. It involved drama, action, songs, emotions, shopping, gaming, avtaars, hi-fi technologies, 3D world- where YOU can CREATE what YOU want. I should say I had a good experience in SL.

Can you smell coffee in virtual world?

This was my ’status message’ in GTalk & FaceBook since last 2 days. I can hear music and do some jargons with avtaars and may be make cross cultural teams sit together and discuss new ideas. But, can I really smell the fresh grass and feel the drops of rain? Is it really any different than 3D video games?

How attached are we with our virutal lives?
I believe it’s not completely black or white but somewhere in between. A good friend of mine keeps in touch with help of GTalk and she said that, “Whatever you say, I assume it to be real”.

Are we simply falling for seductive technologies and have forgotten to look beyond?
I’ve seen people video chatting and they behave to be different than they really are. My friend will never be ableto discover what I’m doing on phone, lest I tell the truth! There has been a sudden increase in the way technologies have affected our behaviors and I see an explosion in the number of researches in my UNI on Human Computer Interation (HCI).

I love Real Life.
This is because I can have everything I might need and I can still think beyond Second Life. I can feel physical, meta-physical and beyond.. I can be humane! Though I can explain with theories that SL will take some time to catch up, I’d love my readers to pour their comments on Virtual Life..Please

Kamlesh Patel (KP) is from a small city in India called Baroda. He suffers from paralyses since he was 5 years old, but all he has to say is: See my work, efforts and performance..I’ll give my best shot in front of judges..
Though judges were skeptical and confused in the beginning he ripped apart everyone’s imagination within first few seconds..

His song is all about how India is taking the lead.

I bet what he’s done cannot be imagined..At 4th min when he salutes with one hand I went speechless and instead of clapping I simply bowed down..

Q. Can technology do the same?
A. Inventions and innovations have always inspired human beings. As I said in my last post : we live in exponential times and there’s more to come..Thanks to Professor Peter Kawalek who send me these links few days back on my other blog:

link1
link2

Truly inspiring.

Special thanks to Karls Fisch for making an impressive video