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/
Category Archives: Virtual World
Is the Internet really forever?
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.
Hotel Tech California
On a dark desert information highway,
Cool wind in my lair,
Warm smell of margaritas,
Rising up through the air,
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light,
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim,
I had to stop for the night,
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell,
And I was thinking to myself,
“This could be Heaven or this could be Hell”
Then she put on a switch and she showed me the way
There were voices down the tech corridor,
I thought I heard them say…
Welcome to the Hotel Tech California
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face,
Plenty of room at the Hotel Tech California,
Any time, day and year (Any time, day and year)
You can find it here,
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the latest trends,
She got a lot of pretty, pretty girls and boys she calls social media friends,
How they dance in the virtual courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
So I called up the Captain,
“Please take me offline”
He said, “We haven’t had that request here since Two O O Nine”
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say…
Welcome to the Hotel Tech California
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
They livin’ it up at the Hotel Tech California
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Bring your virtual alibis
Screens all the more compelling,
No thoughts on virtue and vice,
And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own tech device”
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”
Original song: Hotel California.
Band: Eagles.
Year: 1976.
The Curious Case of the Facebook Algorithm
I have been on Facebook for more than a decade and have 3000 plus friends but the last few years the News Feed Algorithm has been showing me the same 25-30 friends, blanking the other 3K. I noticed sub-conciously and stopped looking at the feed for months, but would just post my articles since I am a journalist. So I decided to do an experiment. Every day I would snooze 5 of those friends for a month. Would the algorithm replace them with 5 others. It didn’t and I was down to just 5 friends after some days. I logged in all day and was shown a static feed of those 5 friends. So I snoozed those 5 and waited next day for nothing.
But no, dozens of new friends popped up who I hadn’t seen in the feed for years. So I kept up my experiment and started snoozing 5 friends a day. After a few months, I was probably seeing the posts a 100+ friends, but still not the other 3K plus. Why does Facebook do this? Why does it thrust a useless algorithm down my throat? Why can’t I see all 3K friends in real time? Because then my feed would be totally different even if I checked 10 times a day instead of becoming static if I log in 2-3 times a day. I guess it also worked the other way around as some people messaged me asking: Why weren’t you on Facebook for all these years? Also in the last few years I got practically zero friend requests. Maybe 1 a month at best. And now I am getting dozens of friend requests a day. What is the logic of that?
Silicon Valley Social Media claims to have a domain of billions of pages, billions of videos, billions of articles posted by billions of people, but it will never show you that ocean. It will take a glass from that ocean and tell you that you are allowed to see that only and nothing else.
A Twitter account hacked, hijacked, renamed repeatedly and gone
I had been on My Twitter handle @sunilrajguru since 2009 and have Tweeted more than 15K Tweets, with more than 5K followers, but all that has just vanished.
I had given my email ID and mobile number as a safeguard but don’t remember whether I did opt for a two factor authentication.
It all started when I got a mail saying someone tried to change my password…
So I went to change my password, but I found I couldn’t even login to Twitter
Then I got this message saying my email ID had already been changed…
So now I couldn’t use my old email ID or mobile No. to change any details or change PW, they couldn’t be found.
I complained to Twitter Support Hacked Account, got a reply and further replied with the extra details.
Meanwhile, my handle vanished.
Then my followers reported following an account which they never followed. When they clicked the link to my profile, their mobile cache showed my old account which got immediately refreshed to this…
Same joining date. Same followers. A lot of my followers reported getting this when they clicked my profile.
So it appears my account was Hacked, Hijacked & Renamed.
Then I got an email from Twitter saying that they couldn’t locate my account or other details…
And this person, thanks to his or her hacking skills, gets 5K followers for free.
And I lose my 15K Tweets!
Identity Theft is one thing, this is a taking over of someone’s identity and renaming it to their own!
All in all a neat trick!!!
Post Script…
The hacker keeps changing the name of the handle multiple times, so I can’t keep track.
For Twitter Support it should show as one continuous account from 2009-20, but apparently it doesn’t, so nothing much can be done by the user!
Meanwhile I am off Twitter, but opened another account in my name in case I ever decide to get active again and no-one else takes my username.
Also the highest ReTweets I got for a single Tweet was in excess of 3000. That has been preserved thanks to good ole Wayback Machine.
Also one from 2010, the earliest it captured…
Harrowing tale from another tech journo…
The day my Twitter account was hacked and left to rot out in the sun
The Jio Data revolution…
Desktop ho ya laptop ya ho mobile, 100GB per connection per device zaroori hone wala hai.
2017 will be year of Indian data explosion.
Reliance gives mobile data at fantastic rates.
That’s Jio.
All other players scramble to match that.
That’s Aur Jeene Do.
If all calls are free and mobile data is dirt cheap, then how will they make money?
Acche Din for consumers.
Bure Din for mobile operators.
Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho,
Kya Whatsapp forward hai jisko chhupa rahe ho?
Great for government.
Convenient for citizens.
Terrible for privacy.
#Aadhar
These versions by Sunil Rajguru