New Discussion 4

Discussing films with my cousin

He: Media is a very passive form of consumption, there is no interaction - when you are sitting in a movie, there is no social interaction. People interact after the movie, right? During the movie, you don't interact with each other in a theatre. So movie going is a social experience, movie watching is a especially a very personal experience. In the home it is different, you can pause, you can discuss, you can do everything...in a theatre, people will be... "shhh..." and then you are just watching the movie. So that's why when we go for team activities, we never go to movies, We are like, it is almost an anti-social thing, because all you are doing is sitting for two hours watching a screen and not talking to each other. So that is why we have stopped going to movies with office going people.... and that's when I started realizing that movie watching is an extremely anti-social experience.

Me: No, but going back to the earlier point . The point I was trying to make was not for choice or angst or something, the point I was trying to make is how movie shapes the society. how they influence the society.

He: There is a huge influence of movies in society. All these Disney movies are. . .you want your life to be perfect, right? Now this Barbie doll, why barbie doll? Why don't you give somebody something else, a girl, why don't you give a girl a circuit board? why do you give her a barbie doll? Why that stereotype? May be the girl does not like the barbie doll, may be she likes something else. And where did barbie come from - it was a Disney character.

Me: Exactly, people start identifying themselves with the stereotypes. And sometimes people assert their identities through stereotypes. They get more and more legitimized.

He: I mean I hate Hollywood movies, the mainstream Hollywood movies are very stupid. I mean I can watch a bad Hindi movie, but I cannot watch a bad English movie. The movies that they make, the studio movies are so pathetic...so everybody is like "have you seen transformers..." I have no interest in transformers." Some Hollywood movies, as much as I can. And the trouble is that all these big Hollywood producers are coming in India and they are going to bring in the same kinds of movies in India.

Me: Yeah, but the verdict is that the Indian common man is so frustrated by his own life, that he wants to escape from reality.

He: Yeah, you know for example the movie Gaban, is it is about hardships in city life, the one of the 1970s that has the song "seene mein jalan...." Why will a common man want to go and see it? Why would I want to see the misery of my life on screen?

Me: I don't know why, but see, when you see such movies, the screen suddenly becomes a reflection...

He: Yeah so he is like "why do I want to see the misery of my life on screen? I am living it, I dont want to see it over and over again. I am living that misery right now."
That is what I think goes on in that person's mind: "I am living this miserable life, I know how bad it is, why do I want to see it?"

Me: Of course, certainly, but the thing is that it is meant to make the person question oneself.

He: When  the stomach is full, you will think about these things!

Me: No but that is not always true, because that is to say that the common man does not have any common intelligence.

He: No, he may have it, but I am saying that his time is limited.

Me: No, I don't mean to say that he does not have the time to invest in reflection. I don't mean to use reflection as a way of intellectualizing, but as a way to recourse your own life, or your own decisions.

He: y--ea--h. The thing is that people are so caught up in living their lives.

Me: The whole idea of a mirror is that it takes you out of yourself so that you can look at yourself objectively.

He: Holding a mirror to yourself is the most frightening that that you will ever do. And that is why people don't want to do it. They don't want to know what they are going to discover.

Me: Oh that is a very well put ... idea.

He: So you may want to, you may think holding a mirror to oneself is what you should do to your life, but it is very hard to do.


my cousin is a computer engineer.

anti-social: he meant socially passive

New Terms and Discussions 3

Out of box experience (OOBE): The OOBE experience is the design of the set of emotions that you go through when you unpack and reveal a new object to yourself. The narrative that gets created in the step by step opening of a box sliding and flipping layers of covering and plastic to decipher a newly purchased product offers a thrill, which is carefully thought of. In the industry, designers give it a lot of importance, and is known as the design of "Out Of Box Experience".

Lane boulder: A car on a lane on a freeway / highway driving slow resulting in all the remaining cars that follow to slow down, eventually causing traffic.

Small term pain for long term gain: The phrase is self explanatory, but quite well put.

Self help industry: Marketing and designing products in a human-starved developed economy as something that can be assembled and constructed by the "self", eventually turning every product or idea into self-help business model.

Blurring the disciplines

disciplinary -
concerning or enforcing discipline.

multidisciplinary - 

combining or involving several academic disciplines or professional specializations in an approach to a topic or problem.

interdisciplinary -

of or relating to more than one branch of knowledge.

transdisciplinary - 

connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach

cross-disciplinary -
Team science initiatives are designed to promote collaborative, and often cross-disciplinary (which includes multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary) approaches to answering research questions about particular phenomena

On knowing

He who knows and knows that he knows,
He is wise, follow him.

He who knows and knows not that he knows,
He is asleep, awaken him.

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not,
He is a fool, shun him.

He who knows not and knows that he knows not,
He is a child, teach him.

Arabian proverb

New Terms, New Discussions 2

Water-cooler conversations: Random trailing conversations that take place over a cup of tea in India, resulting into spaces like the adda in old Kolkata, or the katta in Mumbai happen near the water-cooler in offices in the USA. While much limited, these conversations are thus called to be "water cooler" conversations.

Apple picking: The burglary of products like i-phones, i-pads and so on, manufactured by Apple. Apple picking is a famous phrase in college campuses like Yale (read city of New Haven) that are notorious for its crime rates and thefts. The phrase is a take on the activity of picking real edible apples that people engage in within the US countryside farms during the apple season.

Gamification: The process of turning different activities into a model of gaming in order to learn or de-learn aspects of a practice is called gamification. More can be found on wikipedia.

Paper Publications: My cousin informed me how 50% of peer reviewed papers published in journals are bogus and that there was as study where experts involved in this survey were not able to replicate the experiments under the same conditions, as published in the journals. The paradox of this system is that professors and doctoral students can prove their credibility only by research and publications. Under sure production pressure, tremendous amount is published, much of which is hardly re-traceable. Re-check your beliefs the next time you read, "A recent research from Yale / Harvard / MIT shows that..." It might just be a sample set that is carefully curated for a desired result, or else, a well worded paper hiding its biggest flaws!

On Positive thinking: Another recent book documented that it has been proven that the typical understanding of 'positive thinking' is actually foolish, since it is a fake mask one makes oneself wear to feel good. Being optimistic is different than positive thinking.
To constantly keep telling yourself that you are good is not necessarily the way to go about boosting.
On the other hand, for all we know, pessimists are more realistic people, because they take their decisions based on facts and real circumstances.
Read more here.