Chronicles of Nikhil Baliga

 Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Situations are almost always more complex than they appear at the outset. Unless we dive deep to fully understand it, we are most likely going to err in our judgements " Social media has resulted in the democratisation of media. Before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, we had to consume what was fed to us, and it was nearly impossible for our voices to be shared and to check the pulse of the nation. We consumed information from newspapers and news channels, and they could project information in any manner they wished. Social media has largely remedied the situation. At the same time, this has come with its own share of issues. The handy mobile devices are prompting people to blurt things out as soon as thoughts form in our minds without due consideration. And this is also resulting in several simplistic thoughts being put out. One would be wise to remember that situations are always complex with multiple factors playing their roles, and it is n...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " I know what you did last summer... And thus can predict what you will do this summer. " In the popular TV series "Person of Interest", a genius software programmer writes an incredible piece of software that penetrates all networked devices, accesses data, compiles it to create profiles, connections and predict future events. The series shows the ease with which hackers can penetrate our handheld devices like cellphones and laptops to access even the camera and microphone. Considering the rate at which Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are advancing, the story is not necessarily far-fetched. There is an old saying that talks about the business models of free software service providers like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and others - If you are not paying for it, you are the payment. In other words, the data that you are supplying is substantial enough. If you think hard about it, the amount of data that you h...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: " Generalisation is wrong - unless you are building a machine learning model. " An incident prompted me to write this post. I happened to read this article  where two cars met with an accident on Marathahalli bridge. One of the drivers inspected his vehicle to check if there were any damages and proceeded to drive away. Suddenly, the driver of a water tanker (completely unrelated to the accident) held him and started beating him. This driver, who was not involved in the accident, was agitated that a North Indian driver was creating a traffic jam in Bangalore. At the outset, one might be keen to dismiss this incident as the actions of one lunatic is inconsequential. However, I started reading the comments and was astounded by what I saw. There was a barrage of comments from two groups - North Indians and South Indians. There were some South Indians who were asking the " Northies " to return to their home states. The " Northies ...

Swami Gulagulaananda quoted Animal Farm : " All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others " In the month of January, 2015, there was an attack on the offices of the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people died. This sparked an international outrage with people everywhere saying ' Je suis Charlie ' (I am Charlie) to show solidarity with the families of the dead as well as the rattled survivors. The cowardly attack was executed by fanatics and is definitely condemnable and deplorable. People on Facebook protested by putting the French flag overlay on their profile pictures. I saw my Facebook feed filled with strong words against attacking freedom of expression, some sharing cartoons of how a pen is mightier and expressed outrage in the strongest of terms. A couple of days ago, there was a deadly attack in Somalia in which 500 people died. There has been no outrage, nobody on Facebook putting up Somalian flag overlays and ...

Swami Gulagulaananda said: “ I wonder how many things, among the ones that we say out loud vehemently, we truly believe in " A couple of days ago, a pro-Kannada activist group smeared paint over all Hindi sign-boards of all Bangalore Metro stations. They also insisted that Hindi messages should be eliminated from the Metro Trains. As of now, the announcements in Bangalore Metro trains are in three languages - Kannada, English and Hindi. Why do they have a problem with Hindi? The pro-Kannada supporters don’t hate Hindi - They oppose the choice of Hindi. They question “ Why Hindi specifically? Why not Telugu or Tamil? ” They feel that Hindi is being thrust on the locals. It would make sense, perhaps, if the Hindi population is large enough to warrant Hindi. However, it appears that the Telugu and Tamil populations outnumber the Hindi populace in Bangalore by a significant number. Ah, but isn’t Hindi the national language of India? It turns out that India has no official national lan...