‘Theory of Everything’ by Stephen W. Hawking is one book with rich deposits of scientific fundamentals which can reign in on one’s thought-train forever. The emeritus scientist Hawking delves in to direction of  time, expansion of universe at a critical rate, ever increasing disorderliness of things and even absolute truths like remembrance of past but not the future in a super simple language. A superb book, in all respects.

The book brings meaning to nearly all instances of real life using the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A law which states that Entropy – i.e measure of disorderliness – of Universe is always increasing. And remarkably, there is an undeniable relationship between what is explained by Stephen Hawking in the book (i.e. ‘role of Second Law of Thermodynamics’) and the advent of Internet 2.0 and of Government 2.0 as it evolves slowly. Read on.

Before getting into Physics, I’d simply conclude here that Government 2.0 is not only a thermodynamically feasible process but also an irreversible one. And we all (Hierarchy from top to bottom) are just mere pawns of a larger game by nature, by Entropy. As a pre-cursor to the post, for those who are unaware about the subject, there are only two outcomes of a situation in thermodynamics: 100% occurrence or no (0%) occurrence at all – i.e. a binary truth. Time is nothing but a dimension which reflects the rate of change towards an occurrence only.

Oh yes, the naysayers of Internet2.0 & Government 2.0 will find this piece particularly useful.

The First Question

What is common between Internet & Physics? Any Takers, here?

No, no there is no need to dig very deep coz Sir Tim Berners Lee, a well known physicist & the inventor of World Wide Web is definitely an answer. But of course there is one more meaningful answer to this question: The Second Law of Thermodynamics. While I am sure Sir Berners Lee knows what we are talking about here, but his understanding of the subject is probably much deeper coz he has seen it before we did! Well, I will dwell upon this topic but a little later.

An Example – The Memory Stick

Devices like computer memory have two orderly states: say ONE (To remember, Yes) & ZERO (To remember, No).

Let me quote from Stephen Hawking’s book:

“Before an item is recorded, the memory is in disordered state with equal probabilities for one & zero. After the memory interacts with the system to be remembered, it will definitely be in one state or the other according to the state in the system. Thus the memory passes from disordered state (having more probabilities) to an ordered one. However, to ensure that the memory is in the right state, it is necessary to expend certain amount of energy. The energy is dissipated as heat that increases the amount of disorder in the universe...Thus when a computer records an item in memory, the total amount of disorder in the Universe goes up.”

Same goes on in human memory too which records data by increasing the entropy of the universe from past to present. The entropy of present is always higher than entropy of past. And that’s exactly the reason why we remember our past but not the future. So there begins the relevance of Thermodynamics!

The Game of Jigsaw Puzzle

Entropy is more commonly explained with an example of a jigsaw puzzle.

Take a Jigsaw puzzle having a picture of say the model -  Kim Kardashian .

When the Jigsaw is arranged properly, what we get is a very nicely resolved (ordered) picture of Kim. Now shake the box containing the jigsaw pieces vigorously and you’ll see that the picture breaks apart and the arrangement gets altered. The picture destroys more as we shake it more, and the jigsaw finally reaches a state of maximum disorderliness irreversibly. In effect the entropy of the jigsaw puzzle has gone up and the picture will never go back to its original state on it own. Not without at least one of us who is interested in Kim Kardashian to sit down and re-arrange the pieces back to its picture form, expending energy & time along.

The Disruptive Internet Explained:

So why does TechCrunch go ‘ga ga’ whenever it sees a promising startup deploying internet as a means of change? What is that disruptive potential of internet after all?

Well for that let us see Earth from above. Earth is like a big jigsaw puzzle where the jigsaw pieces are nothing but interacting pieces of ‘people’ (or individuals) who are divided under silos called countries, cultures, languages, societies, techies, experts and what not. Each jigsaw piece has its own fit on real earth having a unique energy level, vibrancy and ’separation’ from the rest. This separation gives every piece an identity and brings a kind of orderliness in dividing the pieces into clearly separable parts. Until the pieces are not brought online and shaken up together in the box called the internet, that is.

So in other words, a world without internet is divided into groups (a state of clearer separation and higher order i.e. lower entropy) where people of same culture, beliefs, expertise stay together. In jargon of Physics, such a model is unstable according to Second law of thermodynamics. Bringing these off-line pieces together over the internet, is like shaking them all in a box and mixing talents, values, identities together.

Internet lets everyone & everything mix together and allows the jigsaw pieces to ‘disorder’ themselves thereby raising the overall entropy of the system. Geeks mix with non-geeks. Blacks mix with Whites. Hispanics meet Asians. Americans meet South Americans meet Russians meet Japanese meet Indonesians meet Europeans and so on. That’s exactly the reason why Facebooks or Twitters or Wikipedia or Google grow.

Internet simply allows everyone to get out of their own silos (geographical limitations) and become a part of much more disordered system where a username and password or not even that is the only separating identity. It is a process that eventually leads to an overall increase in entropy of the Universe, and thus is a ruthlessly disruptive model in a natural way.

Sir Tim Berners Lee surely had a brilliant idea when he invented the internet but I am not sure if he shared the Thermodynamic view or not.

Feasibility of Government 2.0?

Is that still a question? The answer is Government 2.0 is not only feasible, but also irreversible. While Indian Government might be lagging behind in adoption of technology, social media and there might be several separations at the ground level too but an outcome of the overall process of Internet & technology over our country is going to be positive no matter what.

Consider this: What is a more stable eco-system thermodynamically? Having (1). several silos called the Public, Private, Government, Citizens and other entities or (2). having a single unified disordered Social Tree like Facebook where civic action is shared over the internet? IMHO advent of Government 2.0 with social media tools over the internet is all about increasing spread of influence & re-distribution of power among people. This process increases the Entropy and therefore, is a path of no escape for anyone, at least from Thermodynamics point of view .

Besides there is a remarkable upside in the Government 2.0 initiatives too. Social balancing is gonna get easier and perhaps talent is going to shine over bureaucracy any day. The rate of change might be small, but I do believe that system of Government finally will be able to deride itself from same old bunch of suppliers and look outside too.

More Frontiers:

Another frontier, that I’d say is thermodynamics feasible & irreversible is that internet & technology is going to play down the barrier of spoken languages too. Turn a century over (or less) into future and you will see that Chinas & Irans are not able to ban Twitters simply to promote Mandarin or Arabic based clones because people would drive such policies simply by reading English text in Chinese or Arabic without any hiccups.

The order created by means of languages is going to disappear too, entropically.

What do you think?

Reproduced by Arvind from blog at BubbleIdeas.

And with Michael Jackson’s twits raking up the internet, we could trace out some of the top twitter users of Bangkok as well. @bangkok and @bangkokpundit were two anonymous blogger that seemed to lead the race. Covering the political climate and opinions of the Thais, the top two were followed by @insearchofsanuk, @chezpim, @bkmagazine and @busypartyboy too.

Thailand

Perfect for recession @JOB_BKK, was twitting about the latest jobs from influential financial managers to a rugged mechanic in the city. The race to catch on with technology is hot at Bangkok and we felt the awareness over the place quite startling for the first moment.

So who are leading the race in India? Or should we call it from Bangalore, alone? Who are finally the top twittering agents in our country? Or, do we have a different race to follow (i.e. smsgupshup for the Indian genre particularly?).

Is entrepreneurship our true turning edge?

What’s your take?

pic

Infact, couple of you mailed us suggesting that we make it 15 days –and invite some industry people to share their perspective as well.

So here it is – instead of weekly, we make the topics fortnightly.

Topic for this fortnight?

Designing an ecommerce Product – Best Practices, Common Mistakes & Pitfalls to avoid.

If you have an insight/perspective to share, please do so (email: ashish @ plugGd.in)

He was well known for his research in Theoretical Computer Science and was a winner of the Godel Prize.

This is a big loss to Silicon Valley and in general, world of technology as Rajeev was an exemplary person who bridged the gap between academics and entrepreneurship.

Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google has following to say:

‘Officially, Rajeev was not my advisor, and yet he played just as big a role in my research, education, and professional development. In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile.
When my interest turned to data mining, Rajeev helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. Even though I was just one of hundreds of graduate students in the department, he always made the time and effort to help. Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational.
Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.’

Originally from New Delhi, Motwani earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from IIT Kanpur in 1983, and his doctorate from UC Berkeley in 1988.

Mathemetician at heart, Rajeev Motwani sat on the boards of Google, Mimosa Systems,Kaboodle and Stanford Student Enterprises etc.

Rajeev Motwani's Only Tweet

Rajeev Motwani on Google

Pre-IPO days:

Meanwhile the World Wide Web was coming around at that time and I just got sucked into that. Sergey Brin and Larry Page were running a search engine out of Stanford. These 21- year-olds would come in and make demands on me – we need more disk space because we are crawling the Web and its getting bigger, we need to buy more disk… I’d give them more money and they’d go buy more disks. At some point these guys said, we want to go do a company. Everybody said you must be out of your minds. There are like 37 search engines out there and what are you guys going to do? And how are you going to raise money, how will you build a company, and these two guys said, we’ll just do it and they went off and did it. And there are some big names who supported the company in its early stages. And then they took over the world. And right now, you know, other search engines do not even compare. It is just amazing. Just feels like a part of a little bit of history and I contributed a little bit to that history. Now I have become a start-up Junkie” – source

Ron Conway Tribute to Rajeev Motwani

Indeed a great loss to Silicon Valley and to the world of technology.
May Rajeev’s soul rests in peace. Our condolences to Rajeev’s family.

Visit Rajeev’s Stanford page | His Twitter Handle

• Orkut leads in the Indian subcontinent, as well as Brazil;
• Facebook is stronger, internationally, than Myspace, with surprising strongholds in the Middle East;
• hi5.com is the most international of all the social networks, leading in Peru, Colombia, Central America, and other, scattered countries such as Mongolia, Romania, and Tunisia;
• both Bebo and Skyblog follow colonial patterns, the first strong in smaller English-speaking countries such as Ireland and New Zealand, and the latter in Francophone countries;
• and Friendster, the original social network, leads all across Southeast Asia.
• Fotolog, a photo service defeated in the US by Friendster, has re-emerged as the dominant social network in Argentina and Chile.
• Blogger is famous in Iran and Spain!

I wonder why Blogger has been included in this list. I agree with inclusion of LiveJournal (since it’s a walled-garden blogging network), but why Blogger? Is it a social network? How? If that’s the case, where is WordPress?

>> More here.

Related: Social networking in India – what’s the missing link?

Technorati tags: social networks

What’s the story?
Flickr added “Safe search” filters few months back, and as expected it was an optional checkbox (i.e. if you want to mark your pics as safe/unsafe).

But, since yesterday, Flickr users in few countries (Germany, Singapore, Korea and Hing Kong) aren’t able to access the pics that are “unsafe” (aka porn pics).

I don’t understand why Flickr has to do these sorts of things – First of all, when your users love you, it’s your duty to respect and give them the basic freedom of speech/expression (hey! isn’t Internet a democratic place?).

And if you really have a problem with porn pics, develop these filters right at the beginning.

Don’t take away features/freedom from users (after all, zoomr is just a URL away)..
Morality can’t be an on-demand offering!

Does Flickr really loves you? What do you think?

[photo courtesy:drysach]
FL

Mobile search company, JumpTap has released an interesting stats about what people are searching on their mobile and here is the list:

1. eminem
2. 50 cent
3. sean paul
4. shakira
5. sex
6. metallica
7. family guy
8. porn
9. t.i.
10. madonna
11. playboy
12. tetris
13. reggae
14. rihanna
15. country
16. tv theme
17. theme
18. game theme
19. nhl
20. Disney

If you remember Y!’s 2006 data of www searches, the results were pretty much the same.
Infact, I did a similar analysis of what Indians are searching on the www and the common theme is : sex and celebrities rule the world.

So in short, if you can game the above two, you’ve got the eye-Balls.

Ever since the product was launched, expansion across geographies has been an issue for Google.

The GMail trademark was challenged in UK and Google finally lost to a UK-based financial research company called Independent International Investment Research (IIIR).
And to Google’s nightmare, IIIR has filed a petition challenging Gmail trademark in US too!!

“They must have given absolutely no thought at all to their product.” ..IIIR launched their GMail product in the US in 2002. The “G” stood for “Graphiti,” a combination of “graphics with integrated text intelligence.” A subscription service offered through the their website, it was intended to allow stock brokers to incorporate IIIR’s equity and currency data for investment banks.”

Now that Google has lost Gmail domain in UK [Gmail = Googlemail in UK], it’s still fighting in Germany [to a local business guy, who refused $250,000 for the domain and instead, decided to go ahead with the lawsuit]

“”Knowing Google is very powerful, I liked it at the time; I Googled myself everyday. I said, ‘you know what? I want to call these guys,’” Giersch said in a telephone interview. “I did my MBA, and I know what a big company is looking for, and that is international growth. I knew sooner or later they would go to Germany.”

Funny that Google’s love for lawsuit doesn’t end here. They filed one against Polish Poets for using Gmail.pl domain name [the poets were part of a group called Grupa Mlodych Artystow i Literatow, i.e. Gmail!].

Goog – How about paying some attention to product development and find ways to kill ever expanding Google Bureaucracy, instead of focusing too much on vague stuff?

Also read: iPhone controversy

It’s not that these companies are the first ones to copy Digg, there are tons of Digg clones. But it’s stunning to see tech giants doing the same [after all, Y!/Dell guys are supposed to innovate!]

But Techcrunch justifies Y!’s copy/paste act

“I don’t have any problem with what Yahoo did. First, Yahoo credited Digg in a blog post announcing the new product. Second, the purpose of the site has nothing to do with finding and promoting news stories. Rather, they’re using the Digg-voting mechanism to power the Yahoo Suggestion Board where users can submit their comments to Yahoo on various products.”

And like me, if you think that the ‘voting mechanism’ is Digg’s brainchild, Jason Calacanis tells the truth [I don't care how much of this is true].

“Kevin Rose did not create the concept of voting…Kevin Rose DID copy the idea for digg from our friend Josh at delicious.com and has been very public about that. [ Note: I sad copy, not "stole.]“..

So in short, Y!’s position is justified by Industry, but not by Diggination!

“Wow, ripping off Digg UI? How low can Yahoo and it’s employees get? Grow a back bone and design something original.”

Similarly, Dell has copied the Digg voting mechanism in it’s new site: DellIdeaStorm.

Reminds me of one of the prediction of 2007 — New web apps over the existing web2.0 platform; and looks like the prediction is coming true.

Though Y! and Dell copied the Voting mechanism, their end results are quite different.
Y! - is using the platform to power the suggestion board, tips on Y! products, while
Dell is using the platform for brainstorming ideas.

As one of the user [or a Y! employee?] comments points out:

“Yahoo has used a similar layout as Digg because it’s what works and everyone is used to it. The Digg design is ingrained in our heads, we are comfortable with it. We like the large icon on the left hand side, one click voting, all of that. Yahoo is doing what’s best for their users by taking what works, what everyone is used to, and applying it to something new.
It wouldn’t be possible to invent something entirely new; they are using the Digg model because there is nothing better.”

While I completely agree with all this BS, I have just one qn. for Y! and Dell guys – Have you stopped innovating? Is *short-cut-approach*, the best one? Would you allow somebody to copy your product design?

So Mr. Y! and Dell – next time you see a clone of your product, don’t panic. Somebody is just “inspired” by your design!!

Related: See what it takes to make an Indian Digg tick.

And the latest attack is by IBM and Y!.

IBM-Y! teamed up to launch ‘OmniFind! Yahoo Edition‘ – a free downloadable search appliance that businesses can use to find information on the web or intranet [and is integrated with Y! search].

OmniFind supports 500,000 documents in 30 languages and has support for 200 file types.
Compare this with Google’s appliance – 500,000 documents, 109 languages and 220 file formats.
While OmniFind is for free, Goog costs a whopping whopping $30,000!

Know more about IBM-Y!’s Omnidrive here, and here.
Filed under:omnifind