The Big Brother is Watching You

Unforgettable lines from the hauntingly prophetic 1984 by Orwell?
Or reality?

Disclaimer: You are bound to brand as me a cynic. But i'll take the chance.

Look at the world around us. Technology has broadened the horizons. Distances have shrunk, communication has been revolutionised and on the face it seems George Orwell was a bit off the mark in his 1984. Look deeper and you see traces of 1984 materialising everywhere, most observably, in our (so-called) democratic societies.

Read an article recently. Excerpts from it:

Big Brother is not only watching you - now he's barking orders too. Britain's first 'talking' CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.

The system allows control room operators who spot any anti-social acts - from dropping litter to late-night brawls - to send out a verbal warning: 'We are watching you'.

Law-abiding shopper Karen Margery, 40, was shocked to hear the speakers spring into action as she walked past them.

Afterwards she said: 'It's quite scary to realise that your every move could be monitored - it really is like Big Brother"

Hehe. Must be funny to take orders from a machine. But thats besides the point.

So this is limited only to UK and what possible effect it can have on you? Sample this. What you search on say, google, can be used to make a profile of you. And in the near future , it will be. So if you, say, search for rockets, grenades or "how to build a nuclear reactor in your backyard" , it can be inferred that you are not exactly the biggest fan of Gandhi, and if you say search for Paris Hilton ,then, well ahem..

And all this without your knowing it. This indeed is true democracy.

The concept of newspeak in '1984' which is basically the use of false information and fear by state to keep the citizens suppressed, has been given a modern dimension by Bush and party with blatant lies and a conniving media ( Fox et al) in the past 5 years to commit crime in the name of war. I dont think i need to elaborate on Bush's dubious record or his Gunatanamo escapades but if you are more interested you can probably check this link out to understand newspeak in modern day context:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs48.html

And with more technology the use of GPS and other satellite technologies for spying on people in the name of security is never too far. Of course all this can be indeed for genuine use. Just like the pre-cogs of Minority report. But History begs to differ. Or to paraphrase it, History shares a linearly increasing relationship with Murphy's Laws.

So am i just another paranoid cynic? Is it too far fetched? Thats the best we can hope for.

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could igve you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…" -1984 - Orwell

P.S. I tend to be apolitical but couldnt help myself from this post. Orwell stirs up the cynic in me.

The Seeker

Grigori Perelman. A name not too familiar a few days ago. And a name unlikely to be synonymous with headline stories in this world of blatant 'celebritydom'. But some people are born to defy and be different. So who this guy and what did he really accomplish?

Grigori Perelman is a Russian mathematician who was recently conferred with the Field Medal in mathematics (Nobel of math) for his contributions towards solving Poincare conjecture. Now to quote straight from wikipedia :

"Grigori Perelman is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology .The Poincaré conjecture, proposed by French mathematician Henri Poincaré in 1904, is the most famous open problem in topology.

His early mathematical education occurred at the world-famous Leningrad Secondary School #239, a specialized school with advanced mathematics and physics programs. In 1982, as a member of the USSR team competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad, an international competition for high school students, he won a gold medal, achieving a perfect score.

In 1999, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the Millennium Prize Problems – a one million dollar prize for the proof of several conjectures, including the Poincaré conjecture. There is universal agreement that a successful proof would constitute a landmark event in the history of mathematics, fully comparable with the proof by Andrew Wiles of Fermat's Last Theorem, but possibly even more far-reaching.

In November 2002, Perelman posted to the arXiv the first of a series of eprints in which he claimed to have outlined a proof of the geometrization conjecture, a result that includes the Poincaré conjecture as a particular case."

So he's just another geek ... whats the big deal?

The Big Deal is:

1. He refused (yes , turned down) the Field Medal.
2. He posted his solution , for free, on the internet to be accessed by anyone.
3. He lives a totally ascetic life in Russia and shuns fame and money instead of basking in the glory (and money) which he could have had.

Now topology is , let's just say, esoteric math. Not only is his genius striking , but his ideas, principles and humility unbelievable, and in a way, anachronistic (or should i say alien to human nature itself?). What is it about genius and eccentricity? Is the pursuit of knowledge so seductive that a man forgets and shuns the worldly charms for this ascetic life? If Gregori Perelman is anything to go by, it is. For some people life is all about truth and knowing it whether it manifests itself in the form of Mathematics, Science, Music et al.

While for the rest of us mortals, its about chasing green papers which will ironically oulive us.

To these 'Seekers' , i bow.

"11:15, restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature." - Pi (1998)

The first one. Its always difficult. Its like myriad of ideas a second before and as soon as you get down to the task , zilch. So lets make this an introduction. My posts will be mostly ; random. Movies , books , philosophy , mathematics , mythology and armchair criticisms mostly.

Right now, i am just another brick in the wall. A bit more perceptive than the rest. Patterns interest me. So do colours, brevity (read optimum use of words), photographs, eyes, solitude, nature. I have a knack for losing pens and smiling inexplicably on full moon nights. I like getting drenched in the rain and walking through a bustling sea of unkown faces. I like tragedies. I like throwing stones at an angle of 45 degrees in lakes and seeing them bounce. When i was a kid i wanted to become an astronaut. Nice Try. I loved it when Saif gives a wicked smile in Omkara. Pure Evil. Or even Anthony Hopkins in 'The Silence of the Lambs'. I loved Ethan Hawke exult (in Gattaca)

"They've got you looking so hard for any flaw, that after a while, that's all that you see. For whatever it's worth, I'm here to tell you that it is possible. It is possible."

or Murray Abraham (Amadeus)

Salieri: "I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater, conferring on all who sat there, perfect absolution. God was singing through this little man to all the world, unstoppable, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar. "

I adore Calvin and Hobbes. Work of Art.

Now the point is : are all these thoughts random? Or is there a method to the madness in all these random juxtapositions. An Intention?

As Mr. Morrison once crooned

"Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we are born
Into this world we are thrown"

And by now you must have realised im hopelessly self indulgent.
Thank you.