What is a youth? Impetuous fire.

I would think that for most people the hormonal biology is the same, irrespective of the continents in which we live.  Language, religion, ethnicity, and any cultural marker has got nothing to do with the growth of male facial hair, pubic hair, hair under the armpits, and--most importantly, the sex hormones.

I was a basket case when the biochemistry started changing inside, leading to visible external changes. Imagination ran wild.  If I were looking for cheap notoriety, well, I have my own horror stories to tell.  But, I am too grown up for a tell-all.

To react to those hormonal changes is normal.  It is human.  It is very much a part of the biological species that we are.  Now, it does not mean that we should then behave like dogs in heat and do it doggy-style.  We don't want to behave like animals, no doubt.  But, suppressing those hormonal desires is another.  It is abnormal.  It is destructive.

Trying to control that is like pressing against an inflated balloon.  Either the balloon gets squished into a different shape, or it simply bursts.  Right?  Ellen Barry writes about this sexual oppression balloon in India:

Intentionally dialing wrong numbers is a labor-intensive way to find a girlfriend. But it is increasingly common in a range of countries — Morocco, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh and India are examples — where traditional gender segregation has collided head-on with a wave of cheap new technology.

These are not old men trolling around for trophy wives.  Nope.  Young men.  Like Premsagar Tiwari:

Premsagar Tiwari, whose given name in Hindi translates as “Sea of Love.” Mr. Tiwari, 24, turned out to be a high-strung, pencil-necked man who grew up in two small rooms in the corner of the down-at-heel government school where his father worked as a night watchman. Outside his window, young women came and went in their crisp school uniforms. But the night watchman’s son could not approach them.

24 years old.  Let us say that the hormones have been tormenting him since he was 14.  A full decade of hormone craziness.  He sees girls in the real world. He sees girls in movies and television shows.  He sees girls in porn.  But, there he is in a prison that society has built around him, and his cellphone is the only way to reach the other side.

He said he had heard many stories of men and women meeting over social media and going on to marry.
“I may be a failed man,” he said, “but I am very passionate.”
The police were not impressed, and held him in custody for 15 days.

I don't mean to imply that this Tiwari guy is innocent.  He is guilty as hell.  But, we need to pause and think about the hundreds of millions of young men and women in India, in Morocco, in Bangladesh, ... in societies where the youth are forbidden from interacting across the genders.

BTW, plenty of young women look forward to these cellphone encounters:

Ms. Huang, the anthropologist, said the women she met in Bangladesh were often happy to engage in telephone courtships with anonymous strangers, and some maintained five or six at once. Phone contact, they told her, was safer because it presupposed physical distance. Also, it forced the men on the other end of the line to listen to them for long stretches.
“It’s one of those boundary-expanding experiences that allow you to think about opportunities that were not previously available,” she said. Young women, she said, described these relationships with “kind of a fearful excitement.”

We forget that in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was barely 14, and Romeo was only three years older.  The very ages when teenagers all across the world go cuckoo.  The Tiwaris are 24, even 30.  There is also that other connection to such repressed men and the "blue balls" theory of terrorism; but, that is a post for another day.

Are you a human or a gadget zombie?

Earlier this afternoon, I stepped out to run errands, including getting my hair cut.  I am now uber-conscious about my checklist.  After going through the sequence, I intentionally left my cellphone behind at home and headed out.

I started doing this a while ago, but of course only when I am driving in town.  I leave the cellphone behind fully knowing I might be away from my phone for three hours sometimes.

I was beginning to worry that my mental makeup was getting affected by the tether to this electronic gadget.  A worry that I was becoming the Pavlovian dog responding to the beeps and sounds from the cellphone.  In the old days, when stopped at the traffic light, if I looked at the rear-view or side view mirrors, there was a fair chance that I would see the eyes of the driver behind me.  But, I started noticing that increasingly the drivers' heads were down.  No eye contact anymore.  They were gazing down at their gadgets.

Thus, even though I was a minimal smartphone user when away from home, I decided that I needed to take breaks.  Of course, most of the time when I go for walks I am naked without the phone anyway.   So, driving around in town without the phone was not going to be anything that dramatic. Nonetheless, I decided that I ought to, in order to make sure my brain doesn't get reprogrammed the way the businesses would like to brainwash me.

Even until a few years ago, that's what we did; remember?  The landline is all we had and we went about our lives.  We might have missed calls.  But then we made sure to have an answering machine so that the bill collectors could leave their nasty messages ;)  And remember how some of your annoying friends had some atrocious outgoing messages that made you wait forever for the beep?

Now think about kids and teenagers who are growing up with that tether.  They have no experience whatsoever of being away from gadgets like smartphones.  It should worry you.  It should worry all of us.

Take that one step higher:

Excessive use of computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an alarming turn and may have particular relevance for American parents whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens.

An attachment to books doesn't become something like that.  An attachment to thinking and walking by the river doesn't prevent me from eating and going to the bathroom.

The documentary “Web Junkie,” to be shown next Monday on PBS, highlights the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom. Many come to view the real world as fake.
Chinese doctors consider this phenomenon a clinical disorder and have established rehabilitation centers where afflicted youngsters are confined for months of sometimes draconian therapy, completely isolated from all media, the effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated.

Let me repeat one sentence in case you didn't get the full weight of it: "Many come to view the real world as fake."  Worried now?

This is not any uniquely Chinese problem.  Japan has its version.  And the internet of things will mean that sometime soon even Malawi's kids could end up as gadget zombies!

While Internet addiction is not yet considered a clinical diagnosis here, there’s no question that American youths are plugged in and tuned out of “live” action for many more hours of the day than experts consider healthy for normal development. And it starts early, often with preverbal toddlers handed their parents’ cellphones and tablets to entertain themselves when they should be observing the world around them and interacting with their caregivers.

Are you beginning to worry now?  Not yet?  Ok, how about some more excerpts:

“If kids are allowed to play ‘Candy Crush’ on the way to school, the car ride will be quiet, but that’s not what kids need,” Dr. Steiner-Adair said in an interview. “They need time to daydream, deal with anxieties, process their thoughts and share them with parents, who can provide reassurance.”
Technology is a poor substitute for personal interaction.

Aha, you recognize this theme from my other posts, right?  Like even in this road-trip post from a few days ago.

Technology is a poor substitute for personal interaction, indeed.

Maybe, if I have the energy, I will write about the wonderful conversation that I had at the barbershop.  In the meanwhile, for your health, plan on systematic disconnect from that ball and chain that restricts you--no, I am not referring to your spouse, but to your cellphone ;)

Did you know smartphones have built-in display projectors? I did not know that!

Far away from metropolitan Chennai, which is very slowly becoming cosmopolitan in nature, here in the small southern towns near the southern tip of the peninsula, electricity is in severe shortage with about eight hours of power outage every day.  That sudden darkness and the stopping of ceiling fans is yet another reminder of the phenomenally luxurious everyday life that I am lucky enough to lead back in the good ol' US of A.

The night sky is full of stars as soon as the lights go off.  Venus and Jupiter are so bright that they could even cast shadows of us mortals here on earth. 

This brilliantly lit night sky is, however, nothing compared to the diamonds that glittered after nightfall in Pommern, Tanzania, thanks to that village without electricity being a lot more isolated from the rest of the electrified world.

Kids being kids, they seem to have even more fun than they usually do, when the power goes off.  I bet that the first thing that comes up in their minds is that they have a wonderful excuse not to do their homework!

Yesterday, there was a great deal of noise next door, with kids screaming in delight.  I stepped towards them; it turned out that one kid was projecting a movie from a cell phone on to the wall, with the sound blaring from the cell phone.

Back in my childhood, excitement was when we found a couple of negatives and projected that image on to a wall using a flashlight.  That is so, so, so lame compared to these hi-tech kids' excitement.

When I asked them how they were doing it, an older person in the group replied: "It is my phone and I had no idea that it has such a feature.  These kids, they figure out everything.  It cost me 7,500 rupees for the phone, and now they are using it as a cinema projector"

After the show was over--because the power supply was back on--I walked up to the kid and asked him what phone it was.  "G5" he said.  I didn't recognize that brand name.  I asked him whether I could take a look at it.  It was a G'Five "wisepad" model, and it comes with a bright built-in projector light.  How awesome!

In the US, I had never a smartphone with a projector feature.  Perhaps this is one of those features customized for markets like India--similar to how Nokia had introduced a few years ago a cellphone with a flashlight. 

I imagined my students doing presentations in the classroom with their smartphones and projectors.  No need then to even boot up the big time display projector in the classroom.  Or public health officials in developing countries doing their campaigns so easily with these smartphones and built-in projectors.  Just awesome.

I ought to thank the power shortage in India; else, I might never have known about smartphones with projectors.  Things we learn, and the strange ways we learn.  But, hey, something new everyday!

Images, and story, of the day

Don't these two images by themselves tell some fantastic stories about India?

The sadhu on the left is one hysterical combination: all the paraphernalia of a holy man, including the "kamandala" in his left hand.  But, also in his left hand is a cigarette.  Or is that good ol' weed rolled up?  And, to make it even more exciting a juxtaposition, he is talking on the cellphone! 

Now, the image on the right might come across as perhaps a meeting of all the holy people discussing some profound theological issues, right? 
Want to guess again?
The caption for the photo on the right is: "PRIESTS FOR MORE PAY: Village priests stage a demonstration in Coimbatore pressing for various demands including pension hikes."  


India is one complicated place where I have run into way more surreal images than I can ever imagine.  Salvador Dali's creation of the dream sequence for Hitchcock's "Spellbound," ahem, pales next to such everyday images in India!  Even neater is the fact that unlike me, a visitor these days, the "locals" don't even pause to consider these as surreal juxtapositions.  A German colleague with whom dad worked in Orissa apparently had a frequent remark that I find absolutely marvelous in situations like this one: "That is India for you" :)


Anyway, I grabbed the photo of the kamandala-holding, cigarette-smoking, sadhu on the cellphone from this note on almost fiive billion cellphones on the planet now:

This month may not actually see the 5 billionth mobile phone subscription, but earlier this year a Singapore research firm estimated that that happy threshold would be passed sometime before the advent of 2011. Keep in mind that total world population is just 6.8 billion. The first commercial cell phone network began operation in Japan in 1979 and the Federal Communications Commission finally authorized the operation of the first cell phone system in the U.S. in 1982. Motorola's first phone weighed two pounds and cost $3,995 ($8,800 in today's dollars).

What a remarkable rate of technological diffusion across the planet! 

An interesting parallel between mobile phones and the personal computer: the two electronic devices date back to pretty much the same time period.  The world has never been the same since then.  Good for us all :)

Cellphones and toilets--the Indian story

No, it is not about how people accidentally drop their cellphones in the toilet, then take them out and use them--after cleaning it, of course ... (hey, yes, I know at least one person who reads this blog who has done that; you know who you are!!!)
But, is about

More people in India, the world’s second most crowded country, have access to a mobile telephone than to a toilet, according to a set of recommendations released today by United Nations University (UNU) on how to cut the number of people with inadequate sanitation. ...
India has some 545 million cell phones, enough to serve about 45 per cent of the population, but only about 366 million people or 31 per cent of the population had access to improved sanitation in 2008.

The issue of lack of sanitation in India is not new to this blog.  I have also written at least one op-ed about this.  I hope this situation will change for the better real soon ...
(photo: from flickr)

Photo of the day: cellphone at a paddy field

Slowly, as I blogged earlier too, governments are waking up to making use of cellphones in their development strategies; this excerpt and the photo are from The Hindu:

The Union government is trying to evolve a framework for using the mobile platform to improve the access of a large section of the population, especially the poor, to basic financial and banking services. This coincides with the growing realisation, globally, of the need for developing countries to put mobile technology to optimum use to serve the underprivileged.

Letter of the day

From the NY Times:

Thank you for your article about cellphone-addicted pedestrians.
I am a disabled woman who walks with the aid of two canes. Just recently, I was leaving my local train station, and a man, talking animatedly on his cellphone, kicked one of my canes as he rushed past. I bobbled badly but managed not to fall. I found the man outside the station still talking. I tapped him on the shoulder several times, and when he took no notice, I yelled, “You kicked my cane and I nearly fell!”
His irritated response? “I can’t talk now. Can’t you see I’m on the phone?”
Stephanie Patterson
Collingswood, N.J., Jan. 17, 2010

This letter was in response to a NY Times story on pedestrians being distracted because of cellphones; excerpt:

Slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text. That was twice the number from 2007, which had nearly doubled from 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University, which says it is the first to estimate such accidents.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Jack L. Nasar, a professor of city and regional planning at Ohio State, noting that the number of mishaps is probably much higher considering that most of the injuries are not severe enough to require a hospital visit. What is more, he said, texting is rising sharply and devices like the iPhone have thousands of new, engaging applications to preoccupy phone users.

Photo of the day .... India ... again? :-)

Cell phones have revolutionized India.  Every visit, I am simply amazed at how much of a market penetration they have achieved. 
With innovative and unique plans and calling strategies.  The first time I heard a driver tell me "give me a missed call, sir" it took me a few nanoseconds of conscious processing of that statement to figure out what he meant.  It made sense once I got used to that logic :-)
Or calling plans where one can only receive calls, but cannot make any.  Comes in handy for the much poorer folks who are keen on finding work--if only somebody would let them know where the job is.  Bingo--cellphone with receive only calling plans.

Despite the evil Murdoch taking over the WSJ, the paper continues to do some decent reporting.  Today's paper had a neat feature on cell phone usage in India, which is where this photo is from.  I think believe that cell phones have played a fantastic role in the economic and social transformation of India--way, way more than what Doordarshan and Hum Log managed to accomplish.  Good for them.

Cellphone nightmares :-)

"iPad": Apple's netbook?

I have been drooling for a netbook for almost a year now.... I simply could not justify that purchase though. Meanwhile those suckers are getting more and more attractive, and are selling like crazy.

One idea that I was exploring in my head is apparently almost happening: the idea was whether internet providers would offer free netbooks and hook in customers, just as cell phone providers give away the phone for free and then get us for the services.
Turns out that this is a viable business possibility, according to the Economist:

Some mobile-network operators now throw in free netbooks if subscribers sign up for a mobile-broadband contract. This will put further pressure on prices, since mobile operators have more bargaining power than individual consumers, although it also opens a huge new distribution channel for computer-makers.

Of course, the next step will be the technological merge of cellphones and netbooks. Anyway, the magazine also reports that:

... [Asus], a Taiwanese PC-maker, to develop one of its own, called the Eee PC, which it started selling in late 2007 for $250.

The timing was perfect. A few months later, the credit crunch hit. At the same time, Intel started selling its cheap and power-saving new processor chip, called Atom. By the end of 2008, Asus had sold nearly 5m Eees and all its rivals had jumped on the bandwagon. In total, 21m netbooks will ship this year, almost twice the number in 2008 and more than 15% of the entire market for laptops, according to Gartner, a market-research firm.