“Just because you have passion, VCs aren’t obligated to give money” – Vaidyanathan, CEO, Classle

“It is a wonderful time to take smart risks and solve great problems”, Vaidyanathan, CEO, Classle, shared the mood of the entrepreneurial zeitgeist which embodies Bangalore, India’s answer to the Silicon Valley. He chronicled his entrepreneurial journey, sharing his cherished dream to bring social transformation through education and learning. 

My takeaway from Keynote Speech by Dr. Werner, CTO, Amazon at the Cloud Conclave 2011

Entrepreneurs and Cloud enthusiasts at Cloud Conclave 2011 had every reason to be at Cloud Nine. The Lord of all things distributed had arrived to address them.  Dr.Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, began his key note address amidst an excited audience who gave him a welcome worthy of a rockstar. “We are still trying to behave like a startup”, Dr. Werner quipped, as he reflected on the iconic journey of Amazon Web Services ever since he joined in 2005.  

He narrated Animoto’s Cloud journey, the super-awesome video production website which makes creating and editing videos a breeze and shared insights from its stupendous success. He vividly recollected its peak EC2 instance usage after the Facebook App was launched, letting the customers post their videos in their profiles. In no time, the website began serving 50,000 customers in an hour, with the help of 5000 servers. This wouldn’t have been possible without the Cloud. He also attributed Zynga’s success story to the incredible infrastructure provided by the Cloud.

Global Consciousness Project

An extraordinary experiment has been going on for the last thirteen years in Princeton University. It is called Global Consciousness Project.  It has placed 70 special devices (nodes) in computers across the world. The device is a small gadget which measures the vibrations of a single atom. In measuring its vibrations, it converts it into pulses. Random pulses are generated from the vibrations of single atom. Done across 70 countries in the world, the computers record these random pulses coming from single atom, gather them  and send them over to Princeton where 65 streams of random pulses are combined and you get one gigantic, random fluctuation. Computers then measure their randomness. Is it more random or less random? It plots a graph which measures how random these pulses are. The graph fluctuates, less random, more random, and suddenly the graph goes up, because all the randomness in all these atoms is becoming less and less, and suddenly the atoms are synchronizing and connected with with each other.

Whenever an event in the world which connected human beings intensely occurred, the randomness of these atoms became less and the graphs arose. When the tsunami hit the Bay Bengal during 2004, thousands of people died. But the graph didnt change. Fifteen minutes later, when the news of the tsunami spread, people began to think about it and feel in their hearts, the pain, suffering, the graph started growing up. As the people connected, the graph measured the connection. As the connection gradually spread out and dissipated,  the graph also came down. 

7 Secrets of Vishnu - Fractal Mythology

There has always been something unconvincing about the mythological stories we heard in the laps of our elders. We were told that these stories were parables which taught us essential values, reliable maps devised by our ancestors to help us navigate through the journey of our lives. However, we never took them seriously, as our messy, complicated lives didn't fit with moral stories of good winning over the bad.

With his brilliant research and lucid writing, Devdutt Pattanaik, in his latest book on the 7 secrets of Vishnu, debunks our naive understanding of mythology. As he writes in an article elsewhere, mythology isn't prescriptive, but reflective, helping us shape our view of life. He further attributes it to "the poor english translations of Hindu Mythology in the 18th century" which reduced the beguiling beauty of these stories into monochrome stories of good triumphing over the evil.

As I began unraveling the secrets of Vishnu, I realized that Devdutt, with his insightful work is not just a mythologist, but a mathematician of the higher-order, showing us the complex patterns behind the rich symbols of our folklore.  As he begins the book, he sets out his objective to discover "explicit patterns" that are implicit in the stories, symbols and rituals".

Meditations on Science

This post is an edited transcript of a lecture delivered by Shrradhalu Ranade, a scientist, educationist and scholar, at a conference on the Inner Dimensions of Climate Change. You can also read the first part of this lecture, where he introspects on Climate Change here.

There are two profound questions which go at the heart of everything. The first question is, Who are you? Who am I? The second question is, Why am I here? 

Modern science took birth in Europe at the time when there was struggle between religion and science. Religion had already declined into darkness and as Science rose and revolted against the darkness of nature, it threw out everything which were part of the religion, including higher, deeper, mystical experiences and truths. And the form of science which emerged was a hard, materialist, limiting, reductionist science which said, "This alone is true. Everything else is imagination, delusion and madness. "

Science told us that this was useful. It was useful because it meant starting from scratch, the journey of knowledge and awakening. Today, this tag of usefulness has become a huge barrier, preventing science from going further. 

Meditations on Climate Change

During my recent conference on Inner Dimensions of Climate Change, organized by The Global Peace Initiatives of Women, I had the wonderful opportunity to spend time with Sraddhalu Ranade from the Aurobindo Ashram. He is a scientist, educationist and scholar. 

In my frequent travels across the country, once in a blue moon, I come across few super-awesome souls whose presence draws you magnetically, whose words of wisdom come out with such a clarity that it opens up a fount of creative energy from within.

It was an ineffable experience interacting with him as he shared his wonderful insights on a plethora of topics ranging from Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Evolution, Climate Change, Food Crisis and lots more. Here is the edited transcript of his inaugural address to the  delegates.

In the theme that we have set ourselves for exploration, Inner Dimensions of Climate Change, we are looking at a large perspective. So many issues are involved. It is useful to not get carried away by the details of the issue, but rather go down into the essence of the conflict and then find the solution. And the essence is not in the form of the problem, but in its deeper psychological roots. You cannot solve the problem unless you have addressed its root cause, which is not in its form. When we enter the domain of the psychological causes, we also turn inward. We realize that there is something in the way we think, the way we feel, which impacts the experiences that we have, subjectively; but also  impacts the outcome of our efforts, objectively.