The many faces of Facebook... as I see it

"Why do I spend so much time on Facebook?"
"To be in touch with all my friends"
"Whoa! I don't know my own neighbours properly yet I stay in touch with friends separated by thousands and thousands of miles!"

"Why do I spend so much time on Facebook?"
"To be up to date with everything that goes on in the world"
"Whoa! I don't care to know what happens in my colony; don't know who is the ward councillor; don't know who is the Mayor of the city I live in. Yet, I want to know what goes in the entire world!"


"Why do I spend so much time on Facebook?"
I can wish my friends on their birthdays though I never remember any. I can share a pic, link and feel happy because people hit Like Button. I can always be at the surface of things, never need to know them deep. I can measure my popularity based on the likes and comments I get. It makes me feel important in a world that makes me feel insignificant with every passing day. It gratifies my ego. That's the key. In a world of increasing loneliness, I resort to Facebook which fills the void in the short run but ensures it in the long run.

"What do I like about Facebook?"
It connects me to people - something so true of Internet in general and FB in particular. Something so powerful that one blog will not suffice to write about it.

"What do I don't like about Facebook?"
Its rewards are inversely proportional to intellectual depth.

Why I started getting interested in Natural Languages

I was, am and will be an ill-literate in fine arts. However, allow me to make a reference to music as it extremely close to my heart. I know this much that there is lot of science and engineering that lies within music(art); and I find the converse is also true. Both Science and Engineering have lot of overtones of art, in my humble opinion. A case in point is the symmetry in Maxwell's equations.

I vividly remember our English Professor repeatedly telling us, during our Undergraduate days, "Boys, English is for Life." Later on I moved from being student of Physics to Computer Science which meant transition towards Engineering from Science. And today, I repeatedly visualize that writing a good piece has as much of engineering as writing a good piece of code; one deals with natural languages and the other with that of computer. I know that there is a whole field of computer science in natural language processing but let me not digress.

As kids We (I believe I am not alone) were always told to concentrate on the Sciences - Math, Physics, Chemistry... Languages and Social Sciences were always side-lined.  But today, as I look back, I feel Humanities should have been given equal importance if not more.

So, these are some of the reasons why I started getting interested in Natural(Spoken/Written) Languages(apart from the artistic ones):-

• Thoughts are infinite in nature but words are finite. However, I am not sure of the former's mathematical nature - whether the are countably infinite or uncountably infinite. One needs to arrange, re-arrange and engineer words to convey thoughts.
• Syntax and Semantics of Natural Languages are extremely fuzzy unlike that of programming languages where they are extremely precise. This is a challenge for the Computer Scientists in the field of Natural Language Processing but it makes Writers' lives very exciting.
• Thoughts can be packed in varying dosages using language. And I find it very interesting.

My Kindle and the Morning Cab

The morning cab comes at 7.30 and I get to read at least half an hour before reaching the office. This is very rejuvenating as I was deprived of reading for the first two years of my professional career. Now, I get to read when the day is young and mind fresh.

My Kindle was unused for almost a year from the time I bought it. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, I have loaded it with lots and lots of old books now. Presently I am reading lot of short stories(translated to English) from the universal poet Rabindranath Tagore. They are so good, I wonder how scintillating it would have been if I knew Bengali and could read the originals!

It has been years since I read short stories and now I am getting the glimpse of their power. In Telugu, my mother tongue, letter is called as 'Aksharam'(అక్షరం) which means 'That which can not be destroyed.' The letter is a container to put your thoughts. You can make it heavy or light in varying degrees based on the need. I think writing is also like drinking. I don't have any experience in the latter though; not that I am good at the former. You can have it like a power packed tequila or a light weighted breezer.

Going back to the blog's title, I have loaded my Kindle with works of Leo Tolstoy, another favourite of mine, and a lot of other stuff. It's getting more and more exciting!