Category — philosophy

If you are an Indian and watch Hindi movies, chances are you must have heard of the hugely popular film “Munnabhai MBBS” starring Sanjay Dutt(as Munna) and Arshad Warsi(as Circuit). I too like millions others watched and re-watched the film to cherish the beautiful message of putting the human touch in Medicare and focusing on improving patients quality of life.

While the film was great, I (and most others) didn’t know that it was inspired (not copied, ok?) from Hollywood film Patch Adams. The bad bit is that Vidhu Vinod Chopra and co didn’t even bother to give credits to the film or the man himself at the end of the film.

Me and my brother happened to see the film yesterday and loved it to tears.  The best thing about the film however is that it’s based on real life story of Hunter “Patch” Adams . There’s nothing more beautiful and inspiring than a honest pursuit of  simple philosophy which one holds dear.

My immediate reaction after finishing the film at 1:30AM was to read more about the real Patch Adams and here’s what I found. There’s indeed a  Gesundheit Institute (you can read more about it here http://patchadams.org/) and Dr Patch Adams is alive and still trying to revolutionize the system.

While some of us might expect that after two films by two of the biggest film industries (Hollywood and Bollywood) things would have changed for Dr Patch Adams and Gesundheit Institute for good but sadly none of that happened, no big donations came forward their way and their team had to struggle to get the project off ground.

This talk shares more details about the real deal

What’s disappointing really is the fact no big names and not enough smaller ones came forward to support such a noble cause. Is it too Utopian to be true?

What do you think is the real reason?  What would it take to catch fancy of the Social Media Generation?

PS: Really bad of the film maker Tom Shadyac and co for not doing anything for Dr Patch’s work

Here’s a goodie for all software developers(especially web). The mavericks at 37signals have compiled their thoughts on software development in form of a book aptly titled “Getting Real“.

What is getting real ?

• Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.
• Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).
• Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
• Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

- http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_What_is_Getting_Real.php

Another amazing thing about this book is that its FREE in web version(HTML) and if you want it in pdf or paperback you can buy it too . I recommend you to check the book out. Click here to get started

Do you remember hearing/reading that most people use only a very small portion of their brains ?
Or the story of a guy who got injected with a syringe in a movie theater and had a sticky on his back that read “Welcome to the world of aids” ? or the fact that Nostradamus had predicted 9/11 ?.

While facts/urban legends like these are as far from truth as possible what’s surprising is the fact that they are unbelievably popular and widespread. This and more is the subject matter of Chip and Dan Heath’s book
aptly titled “Made to Stick“. The book tries to reverse engineer what makes ideas, messages, proverbs and urban legends stick. Stick here means that they tend not only to pass the test of time but the fact that they are viral and transcend borders of languages, regions, religions and more.

According to “Made to stick” for an idea to stick it needs to have the following attributes.
S – Simple, U – Unexpected, C- Concrete, C-Credible, E-Emotional, S-Story –> SUCCES
Simplicity helps in virality because simple things are easy to retain and reproduce/share.
Unexpectedness helps in gaining people’s attention by offering them something that’ll surprise them to pay attention and maybe think.
Concreteness helps in visualizing things which in turn adds life to a thought/idea and fosters retention.
Credibility helps people to trust and believe things. Before sharing something one has to believe it first.
Emotional chord has to be stuck for people to start caring about anything to the extent of sharing it with others or doing something about it.
Stories help open a new & indirect channel to reach people who otherwise wouldn’t have bothered to hear things upfront. Stories can inspire people and help them gain from vicarious experiences.
You can use the SUCCES checklist to evaluate any idea for its stickiness.

There are numerous instances in our daily lives when we come across things which involve making ideas/messages stick. Think ad campaigns, campaigns asking for citizens to maintain cleanliness on roads,
parents telling kids about hazards of smoking, classroom teaching, board meetings and much more. If you think about it, the scope of application for the methods and concepts to make ideas stick is unbelievably large and it has huge potential for optimizing things and solving problems.

As an exercise you can try reverse engineering ideas/messages/ads/urban legends that you remember and see what makes them stick and try using those attributes to make your ideas stick.

Disclaimer: The post that follows is a personal take and is by no means against anyone or anything.

Microblogging has been one of most oft used and abused term in recent times by internet junkies and bloggers alike.

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. — wikipedia

Everything is fine till here but the trouble begins when people(including me till a while back) start using the term “microblogging” loosely and confuse it with life streaming, where people send updates about what they are doing and not doing etc to update their friends/followers/fans (referred to as friends going forward). This gets particularly messy when people start using a service to do both microblogging and lifestreaming leaving their friends to do the tedious job of finding relevant bits of information that’ll be useful/relevant for them. Also its difficult for the user and his/her friends to take note and keep track of important matter/content as the chances of it being lost in the huge flow of lifestreaming are pretty high.

The instinct to share details of one’s daily life is a basic/innate one and so is the instinct to be aware of what people that matter to you are upto. Couple this with the ability to easily broadcast/stream your life and you get a viral but not exactly useful combo. Most of the minute details of what one did today won’t be relevant to him/herself leave alone their friends. While I by no means am opposed to the idea of streaming one’s life I am saddened by the fact that there are very few people who understand this and microblog in this sense, and most stream their lives instead.

I would really love to see people start microblogging i.e writing micro posts (100-200) characters about their ideas/feelings/fantasies/stories/philosophy whatever and share it with their friends online with ease using IM’s, browser pluggins, SMS etc. You can do this with the service of your preference, the updates will be less no doubt because tiny updates of life stream like having lunch, watching tv, on phone etc are more frequent but for that moment and many to come these microposts will be more relevant and precious for you and for your friends.

Share a link to your microblog below if you are doing it already or starting now.