![The Lost Years of Shah Rukh Khan](http://www.sunilrajguru.com/"wp-content/uploads"/2023/09/The-Lost-Years-of-Shah-Rukh-Khan.jpg)
SRK is India’s ultimate superstar. Self-made. A Man of Destiny. A Game Changer. He made the transition from TV star to Bollywood superstar seamlessly. He ruled the 1990s and peaked in the 2000s. He virtually created the NRI market. He had a slump in the late 2010s and now he’s back, at least at the box office. This is a collection of columns that take a look at those lost years.
https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0CHQSFWFS/
![Techceleration!!!](http://www.sunilrajguru.com/"wp-content/uploads"/2023/09/Techceleration.jpg)
A collection of articles on the technological acceleration in the post-pandemic era. Saluting Indians from all walks of life who dug down, fought, innovated, upgraded and did whatever jugaad they could to get through the pandemic crisis and ended up laying the foundations for a great future. Small businesses embraced technology. Large enterprises went fully into Digital Transformation mode. Digital Government became a reality and not just a mantra. There was one common theme in all of this: Technological acceleration or techceleration, which will continue in the decades to come.
https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0CHQJG56B/
![fantasy-ga6bab6ff1_640](http://www.sunilrajguru.com/"wp-content/uploads"/2023/08/fantasy-ga6bab6ff1_640.jpg)
I had a Twitter account with 5K+ followers and 10K+ Tweets which had a record of all my articles and blogs. That got hacked and hijacked one day and all my old Tweets just vanished. I used to write regularly for Sify and had more than 1000 articles and one day they just upgraded the website and all those articles now show broken links.
I had made a list of all of my correct predictions on the internet and now there’s no proof as my old Twitter feed and article archive has been 404ed. One of my Tweets had more than 3K ReTweets and 140K views and I found that on the Internet Archive. I was happy since the original Tweet had gone. Now I am hearing that even the Internet Archive is on its way out.
So is the Internet really forever? We were taught that civilization began around 6000 years ago. However now there are theories that Göbekli Tepe, the Sphinx and the submerged city of Dvārakā could be more than 10,000 years old. If that’s true, then most of the records simply vanished.
Paper/papyrus records wither and die. Libraries are burned to the ground. Stone tablets with inscriptions survive, but are gibberish if you don’t know the script. I have many floppy disks (the new generation doesn’t know what they are) which are useless for me. CD/DVD drives are on their way out. They may become like floppy drives.
Websites have to keep getting upgraded otherwise they may lose content. And they may especially lose content thanks to the upgrade. We are creating a record amount of content compared to the history of our civilization, but how long will all that last? In fact one could argue that in a catastrophe, it would be easier for all that content to be wiped out.
Stone tablets last for thousands of years. Paper can too if preserved correctly. In a catastrophe they can be preserved. But for the content of today you need a device, electricity, the Internet and a server and someone who is maintaining all that 24X7. Come to think of it, it’s much easier to lose content today. In fact it’s much easier to lose ALL the content today. That’s quite a sobering thought.
On a side note maybe that’s a good thing for content creators. There have been reports of artists destroying all their works and beginning afresh.
On a personal note, now when I usually meet a person for the first time, they don’t know what my politics is thanks to most of my political Tweets and articles being taken off the grid! Nice to start fresh with someone without having any misconceptions.
![Big Tech Global Grandmasters of Power](http://www.sunilrajguru.com/"wp-content/uploads"/2023/03/Big-Tech-Global-Grandmasters-of-Power.jpg)
The world has seen Big Finance, Big Oil and Big Retail in the past. They have been powerful, ruling and molding the world. But nothing comes close to the power of #BigTech. Silicon Valley is probably the most powerful non-Government in history, with resources from everything from money to political power to influence to data of all kinds. They have unleashed the Culture Wars and know you better than you know yourself.
A collection of articles I have written for the CyberMedia Group, including Dataquest, PCQuest and CiOL.com.
https://www.amazon.in/Big-Tech-Global-Grandmasters-Power-collection-ebook/dp/B0BXQ1SWMC/
![Absolutely Random Musings Old](http://www.sunilrajguru.com/"wp-content/uploads"/2023/03/Absolutely-Random-Musings-Old.jpg)
A collection of eclectic articles and blogs related to marriage, Hinduism, life, nostalgia, alternative realities and even something called Sloan’s Balm. I used to write regularly for Sify.com and India Today’s DailyO.in. Also includes writings from this blog and my newspaper articles from the 1990s. Absolutely random…
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5tOVY1bzQVpeqtDfivpXIw
Podcast summary…
![breaking-news-7613046_1280](http://www.sunilrajguru.com/"wp-content/uploads"/2023/03/breaking-news-7613046_1280.jpg)
Most of the media of the world is Left leaning or Marxist in nature. It supports Leftist ideologies, causes, people and parties. All diverse and differing non-Marxist is clubbed together and called the Right and in intellectual opinion is an exception and is usually lost in the crowd. Or it just carves out a niche in some corner and is happy.
In America, like many other countries, most of the national newspapers, news channels, newspapers, radio stations have traditionally been Leftists. It was in such a setting that Fox News was launched in 1996. How would Fox News get itself heard in a crowd and with all the odds against it? Well, it would shout the loudest. It would take an extreme stand. It would never accept that it was wrong and double-down. And it would tell non-Fox News audiences to go to hell. Well maybe they didn’t exactly say that in the launch strategy, but that’s what they ended up doing anyway.
At that time such a thing was difficult to imagine because no matter how high the bias of a media organisation and what their target audience was, they in those days would at least pay lip service to their opponents and pretend that they heard them as well.
I guess a lot of analysts would have said Fox would sink without a trace. But it didn’t and started gaining great traction and became a brand name. A “shouting” Bill O’Reilly on prime time became a staple. Now it may have ended here and Fox would become just another successful media house.
Fox ended up becoming the most demonised media house and was presented as an outcast and an anathema. But a curious thing started happening. Despite calling it the devil and shunning it, all the media houses started aping Fox News. I first started watching TV news with BBC and ITV in London in 1978 as a child and I have witnessed the Foxification of the entire media industry in the last couple of decades.
Today almost every media house shouts the loudest, takes an extreme stand, never accepts that it is wrong and double-downs. And it also tells their opponents to go to hell. Think over it. Every media channel is like that. In fact come to India and every host aspires to be a Bill O’Reilly and shouts and insults all the guests that he calls on his own show. Right wing media has also risen.
If it ended with the media, then itself would be something. It spread to other forms of media. Look at the way Disney and the spectacularly successful MCU has turned out. They have curiously decided to cater to a minority of audiences. They take an extreme stand and if they fail, then they double down and abuse those who don’t like their movies as being racists and misogynistic.
The bug even got to corporations. Now even these have decided that they will only cater to their target audiences in an aggressive way and the rest of humanity can go to hell. On failure they too double down and blame those who don’t buy their products.
The entire political discourse has become like that. You carve out a niche political world for yourself, shout, never admit you are wrong, double down and call your opponents the choicest abusive words. That’s how political parties have become. In the past they used to find common ground. Not anymore. They have all been Foxified.
Think of political discourse in the last century. Then came Bill O’Reilly thundering on his media pulpit. Now think of a few decades back Trump doing the same on the political pulpit. You could say it has been a natural evolution. Everyone hates Fox, Bill O’Reilly and Trump. But the truth is that everyone wants to be like them. You can argue that there may be many reasons for the current state of affairs, but at least I personally saw the change right after Fox News was launched.
Fox News was Fox News. Media became Fox Media. Corporations became Fox Corporations. Political parties became Fox parties. Global discourse went the Fox way. The Social Media era only made this more potent and polarised.
Hate it or love it, Fox has become the most influential brand in the world.