Loose Grip

You could do it like that..

You could do it like that..

And you could think it like that..

And you could think it like that..

You couldn't do it less loose

And loose it is

And choose you it

What's done is done

AND what's to come is come

Only, you couldn't do it less loose.

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Net Neutrality

What's Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality is a principle agreed upon by Telecom companies that they would not distinguish Internet data based on its source, destination or any other parameters. It means that there are no fast or slow lanes for any specific websites or apps, and Telecoms would simply treat data as data. Most of the countries do no have any legal law stating this but Telecoms have generally been abiding by this principle.

That's good, so what's the issue?

Problem is that the Internet companies (providing services or apps) are now directly competing with the Telecom companies. E.g. voice calls have now turned into VOIP calls cutting losses to Telecoms, SMS have been replaced by IP messages. The Telecom companies feel that they are at a loss because traditionally they were the sole owners of the communication space and had to pay huge sums of money to Government for licenses, i.e. even to start up. Additionally Telecoms are bound by laws to maintain security, quality and other parameters to sustain the license. There are no such laws for Internet companies, plus the start up and maintenance cost barrier is nothing comparable. Internet companies can continue to grow and provide value added services. Telecoms are only left with one growth parameter - which is amount of data. There is hardly any value add possible from their side and they feel reduced to a mere infrastructure provider.

Telecom companies re-looking Net Neutrality

Well, in crude terms they are looking to ways in which they can also become partners in the growth and if that means revising their take on Net Neutrality, then be it. What it might mean is that certain Internet services could seem faster than others, not because of their great content or service, but because they have been given a faster lane by your ISP.

Some very innovative tweets were pulled out by medianama.com, just imagine if these become true:


Karthik Srinivasan @beastoftraal
#FutureAirtelCharges You want to buy something on Flipkart? How can they alone benefit from our network? Pay Rs.100/KB to go past cart page.
8:45 PM - 27 Dec 2014

Prateek @KhuranaPrateek
#FutureAirtelCharges 'Hiring a cab? That'll be Rs. 50 convenience charge. Press OK to continue.'
9:41 PM - 27 Dec 2014

Javed Anwer @Javed_Del
#FutureAirtelCharges "we see you are using our network to send work emails. Pay 100/email before clicking send button"
9:27 PM - 27 Dec 2014

It just doesn't seem fair, does it? 

The good news is that many top executives in Telecom do understand this and realizing that this needs a change in business model with full involvement from all stakeholders - Regulatory bodies (like FCC, TRAI) as well as Internet Companies. This is what Indian Telcos said. One shocking news was that Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for letting it provide video service which Comcast was throttling earlier, but nobody knows the nitty-gritties of the deal. Net Neutrality has already been sacked at large, its just that the realization has happened now. Its not just Airtel Zero: Facebook to WhatsApp, everyone has violated Net Neutrality in India.

In support of Net Neutrality

The Regulatory bodies in various countries are debating this and there has been a huge outcry from the Internet community, various public forums (e.g. save the internet, the open internet) and polls (e.g. University of Delaware poll) have been formed. TRAI released a consultation paper with 20 questions spread across 118 complicated pages to get feedback from public. Though the regulatory authorities are playing a big role, but that's not out of its own dangers, we all know how its with China.

What's with Zuckerberg and Internet.org?

Internet.org was formed as partnership between Facebook and Mobile Phone companies with plans to provide affordable access to selected Internet Services to less developed countries. It was criticized for violating net neutrality and much hyped. According to Zuckerberg, this is not creating any fast lanes so shouldn't be considered against net neutrality. Purists still did not approve but it did prompt a more open developer access to Internet.org, which was announced recently.

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Future beholds the final verdict on who wins and who doesn't, but we are certainly in here for some battle. Good news is that people are becoming aware of the repercussions and that Net Neutrality has already invoked fair amount of global sentiments, gonna be a long haul.

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Internet vs Central Nervous System

As per Wikipedia, "The central nervous system (CNS) is the part of the nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord. The central nervous system is so named because it integrates information it receives from, and coordinates and influences the activity of all parts of the bodies.."

If the same analogy is applied to the physical world, what do we get? Internet, it does seem the closest match. It connects the world like nothing else. Any part is reachable from any other part at incomparable speed. And its not just the connectivity, its also knowledge and data that it holds, and it does hold a lot of it. 


Last I checked, there were 3,124,647,889 live users on the internet !! And looking at the continuously ticking live internet stats, you might feel overwhelmed, like more than 2 million smartphones were sold today (and ticking!!), but that's the thing, Internet is growing at a sprawling pace and thus, consolidating itself. Its unstoppable .. (Homo Sapiens listening..)


But can the Internet become intelligent in itself? Its scary to think so but Internet does have all the fodder and time for thought! Its knows our history, our present and our also future thoughts (imagine a program reading this article and getting inspired!). It knows our habits, our psychology, our technology, our research and so much for the love of books that we have machine readable eBooks now. It also knows what we are thinking currently and may be laughing at how stupid we are sometimes - twitterati, behold your world consciousness. 

Check our other thoughts on zeitgeist, thoughts in the air.

Some say, its a matter of time before we get taken over. Who can forget the conviction by which Agent Smith puts it across "Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet."

So what's stopping THEM? Number of synapses, complex data structures, processing power, efficiency? For one - spirituality, for those who believe, you either have it or don't. Its a connection, a feeling that can't be learnt. It gives us character and ideas. It all boils down to feelings and emotions that we, humans display and witness. Non-believers though, would still argue that feelings & thoughts are nothing more than chemical reactions. The arguments continues and all we can say is - we'll see.

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Thoughts In The Air

If something is in the air, you feel that it is happening or about to happen. The 'feel' part here is interesting as it suggests that somehow one is able to perceive something extra (extra-sensory?). Even in day to day life, thoughts (& events) are connected and it often is the case that one leads to another in completely observable fashion. The whole world seems to conspire then and bring out the prevalent thoughts. There is a feeling of a “global mind” that is spawned by the interconnections of many individual minds, popularly called Global Consciousness or World Consciousness.

World consciousness is not a new concept and even has its place in many cultures. Here is a quote by Swami Vivekananda from one his talks -

"We are the spider in his huge web, who can go on the varied strands wheresoever he desires. The spider is now only conscious of the spot where he is, but he will in time become conscious of the whole web. We are now conscious only where the body is, we can use only one brain; but when we reach ultra-consciousness, we know all, we can use all brains. Even now we can "give the push" in consciousness, and it goes beyond and acts in the super-conscious."

A scientific take on the topic has produced various research projects and the most prominent one is probably the Global Consciousness Project, created originally at Princeton University, and aims to gather & study correlations between Random Number Generators placed across the world. The data is correlated to specific events, for example, analysis done on the latest earthquake that hit Nepal. There is though some pertinent questions about the basis of choosing events, as pointed out by a critique.

How could we leave out Social Platforms from the Zeitgeist? Now a days social platforms have enabled us to capture the "thoughts in the air" and many services dig live content from various parts of the internet, apply aggregation, co-relations and fancy algorithms to present the current trends or the 'Zeitgeist'. A simple Google search on 'current trends' is sufficient because : INTERNET KNOWS.

Internet might just be our new spiritual belonging and Google Trends being the Collective Consciousness...

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