I am back. Yeah that is not the best of starting lines one can give when he write after more than 3 months. Blogging for me has been more like a fashion statement i guess, when it was in fashion i too was blogging big time. You can see that from the number of posts have constantly come down over the last 12 months.
This blog comes at a time when i have almost given up on bangalore traffic and also on my company policies that dont allow working from home. It is quite surprizing that the dudes who make the best cars in the world, dont want their folks to work from home. Yeah!! we are paranoid about the confidentiality of our data.
However, when i think about this i find it quite shocking. About 20 years back, when i used to go to school, there where still sparrows at the window sill, the First rain was interesting because of the warm smell of water on dust would entice your senses to the extent that you would want to eat it, when the air we breathed had still a the measure of oxygen that it was supposed to have, when going to office was boring but not a near death experience, when we happily used to carry waterbottles and fill water from every other station where the train stopped during a journey without worrying about weather we would live after drinking such water, When going to see Ramayan in neighbours house was not embarassing, when Bisleri was the only bottled water which no one cared about, when Goldspot & Tinka were famous, when kids read more than just textbooks and in India libraries where more than wine shops, when letter to the editiors where written in paper and posted by walking till the post box; at that time there was very little data that was flowing around us, as compared to today.
Today there is data flowing everywhere, my computer is speaking to thousands of other computers spread all over the globle, at the same time it is talking to my phone wirelessly which is also taking to another phone via Bluetooth. Messages are flying all around me at Gigahertz frequency and going from my mobile phone to phones & Towers via Satellites that are thousands of kilometers above the earths surface. My pc is also talking to my LCD TV which is getting data via a Dish antenna placed on the top of my roof and picking up high-definition video from some other transponder the same satellite maybe. Btw, the satellite itself is getting commands from somewhere in Hassan ( small town in Karnataka).
Data is there everywhere and even then we have long queues in banks, hospitals and stores because the data is still not accesible fast enough....I have to stay in front of the ATM machine looking like an idiot till it decides that i am the genuine ( My brother who is seeing down my back says i look like an idiot otherwise too!!), I have to stay till the credit card machine gets the authentication...Well, the point is that data is playing a very strong role in our lives and everything about this data needs to be taken care of. Unfortuately, technology is not so simple like how my father used to keep all the bills, contact numbers and addresses in a separate file under lock and key.
It is quite evident that all the data that is flowing around in the air, in the wires and everywhere else can have a significant damaging impact if they get into the wrong hands. I guess it is time we step back and think, can we do something to put this whole network in order and ensure that we still know that when i send a letter ...oops email...I know that it goes to the right person, with no other person able to get this information.
....Food for thought!!
