As I had previously mentioned, the social sciences came to be heavily influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, especially the naturalist and positivist outlooks. It is in order that one takes a critical look at the methodologies and outlooks of these schools of thought and the attendant consequences.
With some thought, one can notice that the scientific methodology is steeped towards observation and verfication of facts. Now, for scientific method to be a socially acceptable system of generation of knowledge about the world, there must be one important component : reproducibility. Thus, observation and verification of facts must inevitably take the form of constructed experiments, whether they be elaborate or simple, easily reproducible or not. The results which follow and the method for obtaining the results themselves are then published and debated over. The best example for such a phenomenon is the present debate over climate change. If one set of people ( supporting Al Gore, mostly) say that we are going toward decimation, another set ( sponsored by Bush, no doubt) will say that both the method of finding facts of the opposing group and their interpretations of the same are both rubbish, and present other evidence to prove that infact, more petroleum must be burnt, preferably from those companies controlled by the American President. Another parallel is in the Open Source Software debate. Microsoft is decried for making expensive and psychologically damaging software, and Microsoft sponsors a study which shows that Open Source alternatives are much more expensive or more depressing. One thing is to be noted, however, all opposing groups claim to be committed to the same scientific method of observation and verification.
One, however, gets the feeling that both these might contain a grain of truth (unless we look from a partisan point of view), but a lack of larger amount of data is causing the confusion ( Malevolent mischief cannot be counted out, however). I remember reading in a slide of a boring presentation, to an omniscient being, there is no probability, no question of chance. Therefore, until definite information is acquired, nothing can be said. But here lies a weak link in scientific method : it is defined in a negative sense rather than in a positive sense. What I mean by this is that something is held as true only because there have been no observations to refute it. It takes only one antagonistic case to throw elaborate theories into the dustbin. This is due to the fact that most sciences deal with real life, and there is no "Theory of Everything". The only positive proofs that one can give are only related to things which have no actual existence outside the human brain, like mathematics and computer science (CompSci can be taken as a subset of Maths). These are artificially constructed systems which sometimes (fortunately and also by design, sometimes) find applications in real life.
So, one can construct two body experiments in the lab and verify physical laws, stretch a little bit, call change of color of a solution to verify chemical laws, take a leap of faith, you can categorize all things with similar (not same!) features as part of the same species in biology. If it gets this bad in constructed experiments, one can only hope and pray to the unverifiable God that we can generalise and discover (not make, since one also hopes that there is something extra-human called society that makes the laws) laws governing society.
Indeed, the time that we are looking at consists precisely of heroic efforts trying to achieve the above. So, one says humans are brute, scum of the earth being held from destroying each other by people in power who threaten them with dire consequences, and this is the structure of society. Another says, wait a minute, humans are nice things, wanting only to maximize their own pleasure and minimizing their pains, and human society is made to help this happen. Yet another says all crap, humans are divided into classes locked in a death struggle with each other, and finally the lower classes will win. Bull, says another, humans are slowly evolving and so is society (which is taken to be an organism, like all others), and one can see what society was, is and will be by applying Darwinian principles.
And so on and so forth. It is not at all a bad thing to put forth ideas, but to put them forward in a way so as to give it a false legitimacy is what is bad. These were supposed to be 'scientific' opinions, put forth after their proponents delved into 'deep study of humans and society'. Whereas nothing could be more correct than the opposite. In short, most of these propositions were a priori, and not empirically verifiable. This is the firm 'scientific' foundation on which our social sciences, notably economics and sociology came into being.
Added another book from which to draw from: Masters of Sociological Thought by Lewis A. Coser. Sapna bookstore, Indiranagar. Next time will be a more concrete example of how the above theoritical discussion took solid form in Economics or Sociology, depending on mood.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Whence the Social Sciences ?
During and after the final days of 4 years of decadence that has come to be known as Engineering, I developed a certain taste for things non-technical (which is obviously apparent), and decided to try and think of options other than IT as a career. The first attractive option was Economics, after all, these dudes seem(claim) to know why and how we tick, monetarily atleast. Asked around for advice, and Deepak Malghan, (almost sole) author of this blog, gave me very negative opinions about it. Considering that the advice came from a person who studied Economics from Princeton and Maryland, was taken aback and decided to find out for myself the reasons for such an opinion.
The idea was not to study Economic theories, but to study Economics (or Sociology, since I wanted to see what these guys were upto as well) in itself. The fundamental assumptions, the philosophy behind these subjects, which would help me form my own opinion about them. This is still an ongoing process, and thought a mid-term check of what has been gleaned will be in order. This post will be the first in a series of posts which will describe, as the header says, the origin of the social sciences, and I will concentrate on sociology and economics, since they are what I have studied so far, rather than psychology, Anthropology or any others. I will draw my main streams of thought from Isaiah Berlin (the book has been previously mentioned), Reassembling the Social by Bruno LaTour and some other sources like The Worldly Philosophers by Heilbroner, Limitations of Marginal Utility by Veblen, The Affluent Society by John K. Galbraith (who was Ambassador to India, btw), maybe a little from Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher as well, if I can get it back from a friend who is currently (not!!) reading it. If time permits, I will add some notes from The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (which i intend to finish sometime before I die).
Though it may be noticed that most of the books are Economic literature, and Sociology has been underrepresented (only LaTour), LaTour's book is more philosophical in nature, as compared to the others, and since that is the focus of this series of posts, and due to lack of literature, will have to content myself with it. This will not be a comprehensive, nor well rounded survey, and all mistakes are acts of omission rather than commission.
As Isaiah Berlin rightly points out, the ideas and theories that one studies is incomplete if not viewed along with the historical conditions that surrounded its birth. Thus, it makes sense to
learn about the birth of the social sciences, and the reasons for their coming into existence. The scene is the 17th century, and Isaac Newton is on his way to superstardom after the publication of the Prinicipia Mathematica, Galileo and Copernicus are much admired for their brave stand against the oppressive intellectual climate created by the Church for whatever reasons, and the numerous breakthroughs in physics and mathematics (by above mentioned people and others like Leibniz) have captured the imagination of the intellectuals of the era. Newton actually was able to predict orbits of planets which were empirically given until then by Kepler's laws, and heliocentrism made possible a very accurate picture of the solar system. The triumph of reason over blind belief, of science over theology, of logic over metaphysics was seen as an imminent, inevitable happening. The oppressive feudal system which gave prominence for place of birth over any intrinsic ability was much decried against, and the 'enlightened' people of this era set about building systematic arguments about the idea of divine rights of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and all such nonsense. This was about the same time when the Holy Roman Empire was in its death throes and people were beginning to speak boldly, questioning the basis of despotism, feudalism, nobility and primacy of the Church as a source of both divine and material power.
It was an era of tremendous change, and brought to the fore men of great intellectual ability like Voltaire, Hobbes, Rousseau, Descartes, the list will simply go on and on. They were the pioneers, so to speak, in the wilderness of unreason, irrationality, despotism, trying to find paths which lead to liberty, equality, fraternity (the main themes under which the French Revolution of 1789 was fought) using the guiding torch of reason. Every set about writing their own views about the world, and how it should be, and the printers probably laughed all the way to the bank. These were men with the noble task of ushering in the "Age of Reason", as the Enlightenment is also called. Everything had to be argued on the basis or reason, had to be rational, or else you probably were reactionary (i.e, siding with the Church or the kings, which was very bad). The Medieval Ages were ruled by all kinds of fairy tales, cults of irrationality called religions, and now was the time to break from all that and start another cult : the cult of Reason or Rationality.
Now, all the old institutions were to be disposed of with. The State, as previously identified with a majestic king who was given the right to rule over his subject by someone no less the God himself could no longer be accepted. God is an irrational creation of man, not verifiable in any sense, and therefore could not be a source of authority. Man was not created by the breath of God, and therefore there must be other ways in which to understand him ( Gender sensitivity was not necessary for political correctness then, from what i gather). What better way to start analysing such things if not by the methods adopted by the spectacularly successful natural sciences ? Newton, the blue eyed icon, who stood for all that is Rational, was to be emulated in studying all aspects of the world. Studies had been made and successfully explained why a stone moves if we kick it, and why the moon does not spin away from the earth, and obviously these things were explained using rational arguments, therefore it must be possible to explain man, agglomerations of men in the same manner. After all, everything in the universe followed a rational pattern, and one just required the insight to find it. Man was a bunch of atoms, and we knew how atoms work, so by induction we must be able to postulate general laws as to the behaviour of man. But since not everything is known to us as of now, we must atleast postulate laws which in some sense must be empirically verifiable.
Every genuine question must have a genuine answer : if not, the question is false, irrational. Since questions like "what is the nature of man?", "what is the nature of the State?" "How can economic relations between men explained ?" are genuine questions, they must have genuine, unique answers. And these can be answered, atleast to the extent of the present knowledge, by employing methodologies which have had such success in the natural sciences, i.e, they must be verifiable or be supported by sound reasoning.
This seems to be the bouyant mood in which Western Europe was in the Age of the Enlightenment. This was the time when the systematic study of man and his relations with others started, which was later termed as the Social Sciences. The consequences of this outlook at the birth of the Social Sciences has had many effects, swinging both in the positive and the negative direction. What they were, next time.
The idea was not to study Economic theories, but to study Economics (or Sociology, since I wanted to see what these guys were upto as well) in itself. The fundamental assumptions, the philosophy behind these subjects, which would help me form my own opinion about them. This is still an ongoing process, and thought a mid-term check of what has been gleaned will be in order. This post will be the first in a series of posts which will describe, as the header says, the origin of the social sciences, and I will concentrate on sociology and economics, since they are what I have studied so far, rather than psychology, Anthropology or any others. I will draw my main streams of thought from Isaiah Berlin (the book has been previously mentioned), Reassembling the Social by Bruno LaTour and some other sources like The Worldly Philosophers by Heilbroner, Limitations of Marginal Utility by Veblen, The Affluent Society by John K. Galbraith (who was Ambassador to India, btw), maybe a little from Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher as well, if I can get it back from a friend who is currently (not!!) reading it. If time permits, I will add some notes from The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (which i intend to finish sometime before I die).
Though it may be noticed that most of the books are Economic literature, and Sociology has been underrepresented (only LaTour), LaTour's book is more philosophical in nature, as compared to the others, and since that is the focus of this series of posts, and due to lack of literature, will have to content myself with it. This will not be a comprehensive, nor well rounded survey, and all mistakes are acts of omission rather than commission.
As Isaiah Berlin rightly points out, the ideas and theories that one studies is incomplete if not viewed along with the historical conditions that surrounded its birth. Thus, it makes sense to
learn about the birth of the social sciences, and the reasons for their coming into existence. The scene is the 17th century, and Isaac Newton is on his way to superstardom after the publication of the Prinicipia Mathematica, Galileo and Copernicus are much admired for their brave stand against the oppressive intellectual climate created by the Church for whatever reasons, and the numerous breakthroughs in physics and mathematics (by above mentioned people and others like Leibniz) have captured the imagination of the intellectuals of the era. Newton actually was able to predict orbits of planets which were empirically given until then by Kepler's laws, and heliocentrism made possible a very accurate picture of the solar system. The triumph of reason over blind belief, of science over theology, of logic over metaphysics was seen as an imminent, inevitable happening. The oppressive feudal system which gave prominence for place of birth over any intrinsic ability was much decried against, and the 'enlightened' people of this era set about building systematic arguments about the idea of divine rights of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and all such nonsense. This was about the same time when the Holy Roman Empire was in its death throes and people were beginning to speak boldly, questioning the basis of despotism, feudalism, nobility and primacy of the Church as a source of both divine and material power.
It was an era of tremendous change, and brought to the fore men of great intellectual ability like Voltaire, Hobbes, Rousseau, Descartes, the list will simply go on and on. They were the pioneers, so to speak, in the wilderness of unreason, irrationality, despotism, trying to find paths which lead to liberty, equality, fraternity (the main themes under which the French Revolution of 1789 was fought) using the guiding torch of reason. Every set about writing their own views about the world, and how it should be, and the printers probably laughed all the way to the bank. These were men with the noble task of ushering in the "Age of Reason", as the Enlightenment is also called. Everything had to be argued on the basis or reason, had to be rational, or else you probably were reactionary (i.e, siding with the Church or the kings, which was very bad). The Medieval Ages were ruled by all kinds of fairy tales, cults of irrationality called religions, and now was the time to break from all that and start another cult : the cult of Reason or Rationality.
Now, all the old institutions were to be disposed of with. The State, as previously identified with a majestic king who was given the right to rule over his subject by someone no less the God himself could no longer be accepted. God is an irrational creation of man, not verifiable in any sense, and therefore could not be a source of authority. Man was not created by the breath of God, and therefore there must be other ways in which to understand him ( Gender sensitivity was not necessary for political correctness then, from what i gather). What better way to start analysing such things if not by the methods adopted by the spectacularly successful natural sciences ? Newton, the blue eyed icon, who stood for all that is Rational, was to be emulated in studying all aspects of the world. Studies had been made and successfully explained why a stone moves if we kick it, and why the moon does not spin away from the earth, and obviously these things were explained using rational arguments, therefore it must be possible to explain man, agglomerations of men in the same manner. After all, everything in the universe followed a rational pattern, and one just required the insight to find it. Man was a bunch of atoms, and we knew how atoms work, so by induction we must be able to postulate general laws as to the behaviour of man. But since not everything is known to us as of now, we must atleast postulate laws which in some sense must be empirically verifiable.
Every genuine question must have a genuine answer : if not, the question is false, irrational. Since questions like "what is the nature of man?", "what is the nature of the State?" "How can economic relations between men explained ?" are genuine questions, they must have genuine, unique answers. And these can be answered, atleast to the extent of the present knowledge, by employing methodologies which have had such success in the natural sciences, i.e, they must be verifiable or be supported by sound reasoning.
This seems to be the bouyant mood in which Western Europe was in the Age of the Enlightenment. This was the time when the systematic study of man and his relations with others started, which was later termed as the Social Sciences. The consequences of this outlook at the birth of the Social Sciences has had many effects, swinging both in the positive and the negative direction. What they were, next time.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Of harlots and men.
Short post, just a few random thoughts. Been doing the Bangalore-Mysore trip quite a few times in the past few months, and usually reach the station at B'lore late in the evening (Since I don't believe in political correctness, BengaLuru won't appear more than this one time). A walk through the subway to the bus station from the railway station transports you quite literally (and metaphorically) to the underbelly of this silicon(e?) valley wannabe.
Women lined up, reclining against the subway walls, which are stained with chewed betel leaves, showing that if these women are comfortable in these surroundings, one can only imagine what their regular surroundings would be like. They bear the lewd looks of passersby and retort with stinging remarks to the equally stinging and demeaning remarks of abhorrent men. Being highly enterprising businesswomen, they answer even cursory glances with a questioning stare : "How about it?".
Another interesting group of people are beggars. Their methods have become more and more sophisticated (or crude?) as time passes by. The woeful, pained look which appears only when someone passes by (I have actually seen the transition from normal to unhappy happen!), using kids and handicaps as props, and resorting to touching and pawing at people as a last try. Atleast people would give in not to be pawed at. How many times have we not seen people jumping back or warning beggars not to touch them?
The third group is that of the hijras. This group is probably discriminated against the most, you would not find one travelling via public transport even if they are able to afford it. Wearing loud makeup and using equally loud voices and claps to get paid to get away from a certain place is one of the very few options for them to make money. Though they are getting organised to fight against it, how widespread such a movement would be and how it would help change public perception is to be seen.
The thing to be noticed about all the above mentioned groups is that they are highly incapable of earning money in ways which does not have to reduce them to sideshows due to a large number of factors. Also to be noticed is that the only way to keep body and soul together is by feeding off the lust, shaky ethical stands and disgust of the rest of the society respectively. Interestingly also, these are largely urban phenomena: the more affluent the city, the more prevalent are members of these groups. What inferences can one draw from such observations ? Each will have their own views, i'll leave it at this.
Women lined up, reclining against the subway walls, which are stained with chewed betel leaves, showing that if these women are comfortable in these surroundings, one can only imagine what their regular surroundings would be like. They bear the lewd looks of passersby and retort with stinging remarks to the equally stinging and demeaning remarks of abhorrent men. Being highly enterprising businesswomen, they answer even cursory glances with a questioning stare : "How about it?".
Another interesting group of people are beggars. Their methods have become more and more sophisticated (or crude?) as time passes by. The woeful, pained look which appears only when someone passes by (I have actually seen the transition from normal to unhappy happen!), using kids and handicaps as props, and resorting to touching and pawing at people as a last try. Atleast people would give in not to be pawed at. How many times have we not seen people jumping back or warning beggars not to touch them?
The third group is that of the hijras. This group is probably discriminated against the most, you would not find one travelling via public transport even if they are able to afford it. Wearing loud makeup and using equally loud voices and claps to get paid to get away from a certain place is one of the very few options for them to make money. Though they are getting organised to fight against it, how widespread such a movement would be and how it would help change public perception is to be seen.
The thing to be noticed about all the above mentioned groups is that they are highly incapable of earning money in ways which does not have to reduce them to sideshows due to a large number of factors. Also to be noticed is that the only way to keep body and soul together is by feeding off the lust, shaky ethical stands and disgust of the rest of the society respectively. Interestingly also, these are largely urban phenomena: the more affluent the city, the more prevalent are members of these groups. What inferences can one draw from such observations ? Each will have their own views, i'll leave it at this.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Wireless Sensor Networks -- ICT4D in embedded form ?
One technology that has fascinated me ever since I heard about it was Wireless Sensor Networks. It promises to reduce both cost as well as power consumed for computation. The technical challenges it offers (mainly in the field of routing protocols) are good enough to capture any self-respecting Computer scientist's attention. The amount of research going into this is a good indication that the technology holds tremendous commercial promise, with big players like Intel, Freescale, Texas Instruments vying to get a grip in the market.
The good thing about WSNs is that they are capable of automating various monitoring tasks which otherwise would have to be done by people. They are, being machines, are not susceptible to errors and falling asleep (unless the battery runs out!), and consequently, a highly reliable system. The standard that is presently the most popular is the IEEE 802.15.4, which takes care of low-level things and the Zigbee standard, which is a higher level thing based on the 802.15.4. A properly configured 802.15.4 device can run for months on one set of batteries, which makes it attractive where power is scarce and expensive.
Unlike regular computers, which have one CPU, the network behaves like a giant distributed computer, and hence designing algorithms is an interesting task. To cut up a big task into many small ones, distribute them over many small computers, then collating the results, and to do this reliably and efficiently, are big issues in the research community nowadays.
So, where does this fit into ICT for Development ? we don't really care about complex algorithms, but the attractive feature is low power consumption, and cheap cost of computation. There are competitive solutions which cost less than a thousand rupees per node. The applications are quite a few : Intelligent agriculture, Forest fire detection system, animal monitoring systems, to name a few. These are things that are done manually and with large inefficiencies in the process. Lack of regular, reliable information is the main issue, and that is what these networks address.
At AllGo Embedded, we have been working on some interesting applications which we hope will make a difference in the common man's daily life. More on this matter, as and when progress (or patents ;) happens.
The good thing about WSNs is that they are capable of automating various monitoring tasks which otherwise would have to be done by people. They are, being machines, are not susceptible to errors and falling asleep (unless the battery runs out!), and consequently, a highly reliable system. The standard that is presently the most popular is the IEEE 802.15.4, which takes care of low-level things and the Zigbee standard, which is a higher level thing based on the 802.15.4. A properly configured 802.15.4 device can run for months on one set of batteries, which makes it attractive where power is scarce and expensive.
Unlike regular computers, which have one CPU, the network behaves like a giant distributed computer, and hence designing algorithms is an interesting task. To cut up a big task into many small ones, distribute them over many small computers, then collating the results, and to do this reliably and efficiently, are big issues in the research community nowadays.
So, where does this fit into ICT for Development ? we don't really care about complex algorithms, but the attractive feature is low power consumption, and cheap cost of computation. There are competitive solutions which cost less than a thousand rupees per node. The applications are quite a few : Intelligent agriculture, Forest fire detection system, animal monitoring systems, to name a few. These are things that are done manually and with large inefficiencies in the process. Lack of regular, reliable information is the main issue, and that is what these networks address.
At AllGo Embedded, we have been working on some interesting applications which we hope will make a difference in the common man's daily life. More on this matter, as and when progress (or patents ;) happens.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Chak De!
This movie is doing the rounds, a lot of them(rounds) in fact, and raking in the moolah. Went to watch it, did not like it as much as everyone thought everyone else would (or should). After being told this and that (mostly derogatory this' and thats) about my taste and outlook, well, no qualms or issues. But this was really it, the last straw. Obviously, raving and ranting about it in an email to the editor won't do much good, so thought i'll do the same here.
There are probably things one can appreciate in this movie, though none of them appeared to my cinematically retarded mind. But one thing you cannot say is that the movie is original. Anyone who watches Hollywood will have seen scores of such films with baseball or basketball or football (American ishtyle), in all kinds of movies: drama, comedy, tragedy, horror, any combination of the above. Some of the passages in that horrendous piece of feminist (If one can call it that) rhetoric are worth quoting:
There are probably things one can appreciate in this movie, though none of them appeared to my cinematically retarded mind. But one thing you cannot say is that the movie is original. Anyone who watches Hollywood will have seen scores of such films with baseball or basketball or football (American ishtyle), in all kinds of movies: drama, comedy, tragedy, horror, any combination of the above. Some of the passages in that horrendous piece of feminist (If one can call it that) rhetoric are worth quoting:
None of these is a Hindi Film cliche. They are all
individuals ....
Excellent. The girl who tries to seduce the coach to get her a prominent position in the team, one who tries to prove a point to her boyfriend by scoring a copious amount of goals against the best defences in the world (which are completely bamboozled by her wizardry with the stick, leaving her usually in a one on one situation with the goalie), a girl who gives up her self prestige for a higher cause, none of these are cliches, because they are not portrayed by cliched men, but women! And wonder of wonders, they are all individuals! And all the time I was thinking they were parts of some giant amoeba out to take over the world! The only characters that are developed (however little) in the movie are that of SRK, Chandigarh based hot-babe, the goalie. Naik, to some extent maybe, but the rest are there just to fill up the team. How one can call 'all of these' as 'individuals' is left to the reader's imagination to fill up. Just to take the gender point of view further, why a man lead a women's team ? Are there no competent women to coach, even in the fantasy world of Bollywood ?
Won't even try to comment about this. The author has seen quite a lot of movies for somone who realizes that all movies are mere cliched, male chauvinist portrayals.
Asexual ? biologically, this means these ladies are quite like bacterium. Another instance of social sciences borrowing metaphors from the natural ones, thus making them devoid of meaning and ambiguous. If it means that they do not look smouldering sexually on the screen, I don't see why this is such a great deal. The author's gripe about sexuality expressed on the screen 'from a male view' must elaborate on what a 'male view' is and what expression of sexuality from a 'female view' is. Maybe then the poor directors will stop making such raunchy flicks and try to appeal to a larger demographic. About the unselfconsciousness part, well, even item numbers portray the actresses as quite unselfconscious. The author seems more conscious about their unselfconsciousness than the players themselves. Ask a sportswoman in whatever sport, she would not consider herself to be an 'asexual being' playing 'unselfconsciously'. She is just playing, for the love of playing. The psychological embellishments add no substance to the argument.
And so on and so forth ... The director seems to be a decent man trying to make a honest buck by showing people what they want to see, and reading feminist victories in cinema after 60 years of oppression by the 'male view' seems to be going too far.
As to the question if a Hindi film can alter deep rooted prejudices, the answer lies .... applause richocheting through cinema halls ..... Beating the daylights out of men who whistle.Right. Hooliganism, if practiced by women is called empowerment. God knows where the author learnt about freedom or empowerment, it definitely was not from Gandhi. I may not know the problems a Delhi woman faces, but it can be debated as to whether beating up eve-teasers is going to solve anything. And people applauding loudly is a sign of alteration of deep rooted prejudices. People applauded with greater gusto during the screening of Rang De Basanti, but (un?)fortunately, our youth did not take the matter of governance into their own hands. Wonder why.
And the cliche smashing scenes roll on: woman risks marriage .... girl ... won't stop playing hockey ... cricketer boyfriend .. player offers herself coach .. realizes ... without self respect will only go so far and no further...
Won't even try to comment about this. The author has seen quite a lot of movies for somone who realizes that all movies are mere cliched, male chauvinist portrayals.
The women sweat not in kitchens ....like ... Barjatya films .. dance bars and steam baths to appease voyeurs.. but on hockey field. They are asexual creatures though not dispassionate. They play unselfconsciously ....
Asexual ? biologically, this means these ladies are quite like bacterium. Another instance of social sciences borrowing metaphors from the natural ones, thus making them devoid of meaning and ambiguous. If it means that they do not look smouldering sexually on the screen, I don't see why this is such a great deal. The author's gripe about sexuality expressed on the screen 'from a male view' must elaborate on what a 'male view' is and what expression of sexuality from a 'female view' is. Maybe then the poor directors will stop making such raunchy flicks and try to appeal to a larger demographic. About the unselfconsciousness part, well, even item numbers portray the actresses as quite unselfconscious. The author seems more conscious about their unselfconsciousness than the players themselves. Ask a sportswoman in whatever sport, she would not consider herself to be an 'asexual being' playing 'unselfconsciously'. She is just playing, for the love of playing. The psychological embellishments add no substance to the argument.
And so on and so forth ... The director seems to be a decent man trying to make a honest buck by showing people what they want to see, and reading feminist victories in cinema after 60 years of oppression by the 'male view' seems to be going too far.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
What is freedom ?
Statutory Warning: Content that follows may be unsuitable for science, math, engineering majors, and similar juveniles.
Was reading (yet!) another book, this one is named Political Ideas in the Romantic Age by Isaiah Berlin. Halfway through, and there is definitely no way I will review this book, being far too philosophical in content. So, thought I'll just write a few words about the central theme of the book, or rather set of lectures compiled into a book.
Berlin was a professional philosopher and became interested in politics (like most people in his time, living through two world wars). The idea that Berlin explores is that any work of a (wo)man is only understood fully with reference to the context of the time that (s)he lived in. Hence, he explores the history of the political ideas of the most turbulent times in recent European history in terms of conflicting views, opinions and philosophies, the 18th and 19th centuries. He does not delve into deep analysis of each and every philosopher (Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Helvetius, Bentham, Adam Smith, Rousseau ......), rather, he tries to capture the spirit of the age, or as is popularly known, the zeitgeist.
For Berlin, the central question of political philosophy is "Why should one man obey another ?" and from here flows the logical successors : "What is more important, obedience to the State or personal liberty ?"; "Can a person be subservient and still claim to be free?" . Taking this as the starting point, the solutions proposed by various stalwarts of the Enlightenment and beyond are explored, will not go into the details, as promised.
The central talking point of the presently read 100-odd pages are two words : does and should. The question is not why does a man obey, but rather, why should a man obey. The first question can be answered by empirical data, the second question is far more difficult to answer. If someone can write 250+ pages showing how people confused does and should, or even took does and should to be identical, it no doubt will not be easy reading :D
On a more earthly level, the questions posed are quite interesting even to the non-professional (and hence more creative) philosophers, which consists of most of the humans on this planet. What does it mean to be free ? Why should we bow down before a King or a Prime Minister ? Can duty toward a State be consistent with the idea of personal freedom ? Does being free necessarily imply that you are happy ? Take the case of Singapore. Quite a wealthy state, but absolutely no freedom. Take the case of some Sub-Saharan nomadic tribe : not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but as much freedom as the breadth of the Sahara (barring visa restrictions ;). What relation exists between money and freedom ? Does one increase proportionally with the other ? Or upto a certain limit ? Can we say Anil Ambani is more free than a naked wandering Jain monk ? If yes, why ? If no, why ? Can there be singular answers to such questions ?
Yup, the spectrum over which we can analyse is huge and very interesting. Most of these will at the end turn out to be subjective issues. But are there objective metrics which we can use, if not to answer all questions, atleast to serve as indicators ? Can social policy be formulated with regard to such parameters ? How easy or difficult will it be to empirically measure these parameters to ascertain the progress of an implemented policy ? What can be considered as a viable endpoint in development programmes which involve such parameters ? Most of the questions in this paragraph were raised in class today by Ashok Rao, and most of this semester will go into trying to answer such things, if possible.
The approach to development lies in these questions, one intuitively feels. One can approach development from the pseudo(or quasi?)-scientific outlook of the social sciences like economics or sociology, or from the (more pseudo?) philosophical/empirical basis delineated above, in a highly nebulous form. This course is turning out to be fun :D
Was reading (yet!) another book, this one is named Political Ideas in the Romantic Age by Isaiah Berlin. Halfway through, and there is definitely no way I will review this book, being far too philosophical in content. So, thought I'll just write a few words about the central theme of the book, or rather set of lectures compiled into a book.
Berlin was a professional philosopher and became interested in politics (like most people in his time, living through two world wars). The idea that Berlin explores is that any work of a (wo)man is only understood fully with reference to the context of the time that (s)he lived in. Hence, he explores the history of the political ideas of the most turbulent times in recent European history in terms of conflicting views, opinions and philosophies, the 18th and 19th centuries. He does not delve into deep analysis of each and every philosopher (Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Helvetius, Bentham, Adam Smith, Rousseau ......), rather, he tries to capture the spirit of the age, or as is popularly known, the zeitgeist.
For Berlin, the central question of political philosophy is "Why should one man obey another ?" and from here flows the logical successors : "What is more important, obedience to the State or personal liberty ?"; "Can a person be subservient and still claim to be free?" . Taking this as the starting point, the solutions proposed by various stalwarts of the Enlightenment and beyond are explored, will not go into the details, as promised.
The central talking point of the presently read 100-odd pages are two words : does and should. The question is not why does a man obey, but rather, why should a man obey. The first question can be answered by empirical data, the second question is far more difficult to answer. If someone can write 250+ pages showing how people confused does and should, or even took does and should to be identical, it no doubt will not be easy reading :D
On a more earthly level, the questions posed are quite interesting even to the non-professional (and hence more creative) philosophers, which consists of most of the humans on this planet. What does it mean to be free ? Why should we bow down before a King or a Prime Minister ? Can duty toward a State be consistent with the idea of personal freedom ? Does being free necessarily imply that you are happy ? Take the case of Singapore. Quite a wealthy state, but absolutely no freedom. Take the case of some Sub-Saharan nomadic tribe : not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but as much freedom as the breadth of the Sahara (barring visa restrictions ;). What relation exists between money and freedom ? Does one increase proportionally with the other ? Or upto a certain limit ? Can we say Anil Ambani is more free than a naked wandering Jain monk ? If yes, why ? If no, why ? Can there be singular answers to such questions ?
Yup, the spectrum over which we can analyse is huge and very interesting. Most of these will at the end turn out to be subjective issues. But are there objective metrics which we can use, if not to answer all questions, atleast to serve as indicators ? Can social policy be formulated with regard to such parameters ? How easy or difficult will it be to empirically measure these parameters to ascertain the progress of an implemented policy ? What can be considered as a viable endpoint in development programmes which involve such parameters ? Most of the questions in this paragraph were raised in class today by Ashok Rao, and most of this semester will go into trying to answer such things, if possible.
The approach to development lies in these questions, one intuitively feels. One can approach development from the pseudo(or quasi?)-scientific outlook of the social sciences like economics or sociology, or from the (more pseudo?) philosophical/empirical basis delineated above, in a highly nebulous form. This course is turning out to be fun :D
Sunday, August 26, 2007
LED lighting : when rather than if !
For the past few months, I have been looking at alternate lighting using LEDs. These devices show tremendous promise with regard to power saving, ease of use, and durability. So, thought would write a post for spread of info and concretizing my own readings.
LEDs, especially white LEDs are coming in big time into the market, and you can see them in all sizes and shapes in small flashlights and mobiles phones instead of flash bulbs. The biggest volume market right now is for low wattage(less power consuming) LEDs and Chinese goods are simply flooding the market. However, there is a silent background revolution happening, led by Philips, Cree, Nichia and Seoul Semiconductor. There is also an Indian company in the fray, based in Hyderabad. These and many other companies are trying to bring out high power LEDs which have direct applications in home and architectural lighting. These are rated in the range 1 Watt to 5 Watt. In contrast, the LEDs are found in your phones and flashlights are in the in the 200 milliWatt or less range, around one-fifth of the big guys.
These light sources are among the most efficient light sources available today, with efficiencies comparable with Compact Flourescent Lamps(CFL). However, most CFLs do not add the power consumed by a choke present on every lamp, and hence are usually less efficient than claimed. The unit of brightness is called lumen, and both LEDs and CFLs have an efficiency of around 50 lumen/Watt. In contrast, normal incandescent bulbs have an efficiency of 15 lumen/Watt! This implies you can replace a 100 Watt bulb with a 30 Watt CFL or LED and not perceive a difference in brightness. However, the light emitted by normal bulbs is more pleasing to the eye when compared to the other two. Therefore, you can see amber coloured CFLs and LEDs, neither of which have made a big dent in the market as of now, but promise to.
If CFLs are as good as LEDs, then why the whole fuss of typing out a whole post on them ? LEDs have many advantages, despite the fact that those in the market are only as efficient as CFLs.
So, why does not anyone as yet have LED lights in their house ? Packaging, lack of awareness, high prices (low volume :( ) all have contributed to this. Hopefully, this will change soon.
LEDs, especially white LEDs are coming in big time into the market, and you can see them in all sizes and shapes in small flashlights and mobiles phones instead of flash bulbs. The biggest volume market right now is for low wattage(less power consuming) LEDs and Chinese goods are simply flooding the market. However, there is a silent background revolution happening, led by Philips, Cree, Nichia and Seoul Semiconductor. There is also an Indian company in the fray, based in Hyderabad. These and many other companies are trying to bring out high power LEDs which have direct applications in home and architectural lighting. These are rated in the range 1 Watt to 5 Watt. In contrast, the LEDs are found in your phones and flashlights are in the in the 200 milliWatt or less range, around one-fifth of the big guys.
These light sources are among the most efficient light sources available today, with efficiencies comparable with Compact Flourescent Lamps(CFL). However, most CFLs do not add the power consumed by a choke present on every lamp, and hence are usually less efficient than claimed. The unit of brightness is called lumen, and both LEDs and CFLs have an efficiency of around 50 lumen/Watt. In contrast, normal incandescent bulbs have an efficiency of 15 lumen/Watt! This implies you can replace a 100 Watt bulb with a 30 Watt CFL or LED and not perceive a difference in brightness. However, the light emitted by normal bulbs is more pleasing to the eye when compared to the other two. Therefore, you can see amber coloured CFLs and LEDs, neither of which have made a big dent in the market as of now, but promise to.
If CFLs are as good as LEDs, then why the whole fuss of typing out a whole post on them ? LEDs have many advantages, despite the fact that those in the market are only as efficient as CFLs.
- Prototype LEDs are available in labs of the above mentioned companies which are as efficient as 100 lumen/watt. However, most of these are sub 1 Watt category as of now. With all companies scrambling to outdo each other, this situation is likely to be rectified very soon.
- LEDs are solid state lighting devices, which means that they have no moving, breakable parts unlike either CFLs or bulbs. This means they can be used in more extreme places and applications.
- They are made from established manufacturing methods which make all our computer chips so cheap, which means at large volumes, the cost of lighting will be negligible. (Note: companies might keep cost high initially to recover cost. But once the Chinese get their hands on the technology, it should come down :) Evidence is available in the cost at which you get cheap LED based chinese goods. )
- These lights can be dimmed to suitable requirements, which is not an option on the CFLs. Bulbs can do this, but they do not even figure in the discussion.
- For spot lighting applications, where the light is required in only a particular area (street lights), LEDs are more suitable than the conventional tubelights (Sodium vapor lamps are not considered, since they are the most efficient lighting solutions with efficiencies of 150 lumen/Watt, but they are high voltage lights, and not used everywhere.) since they have a small angle beyond which the light output is almost zero. This means that all the light is focused onto a small area, unlike tubelights which radiate light every which way, which is essentially a waste of light.
- These run on DC current, which means that they can run off batteries in areas which do not have access to grid power. With suitable circuits, they can even run on AC current. These are cheap circuits and do not require as much circus work as running CFLs on DC, which require another kind of light itself.
- The (claimed) lifetime of LED lights is around 10,000 hours, which works out to be close to 10 years of operation. In comparison, CFLs have an average lifetime of 5-7 years, and forget about bulbs.
- The size of CFLs increases significantly with wattage increase, not so with LEDs.
So, why does not anyone as yet have LED lights in their house ? Packaging, lack of awareness, high prices (low volume :( ) all have contributed to this. Hopefully, this will change soon.
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