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Showing posts with the label mediastudies

I give you what you want!

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I give you what you want, and I don't have the time, nor the inclination (pun intended) to think about what you, the society needs. Like, I think you should also start thinking, instead of blaming me, the media, for all the unhappy, sad, evil, and all the wrongdoings in the society. Instead of brainlessly switching on channels and watching programs which insult, degrade, make fun of other people, and supposedly encourage superstition, maybe you should just go out, take a walk (pun intended again). You think I should have some social responsibility, which I do agree. And I do give you programs that are beneficial to the society. But I have so many people working with me. You think all people who work for me should go hungry to bed? They don't deserve increments? They don't have family responsibilities and ambitions? Well, you are wrong. Being socially responsible cannot come at a cost of my family and my ambitions. Like, I am the media. I am a business. I am here to

Beautiful and Ugly - A Matter of Perception?

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How does the mind receive and analyse information from a visual? It is a complex process involving the left and right hemispheres of the brain, together synchronising the logical and emotional intelligence, at the same time, involving learning through genetic evolution, and adding to it experiential learning. I came across a Facebook update which described how some primary school textbooks, the meaning of beautiful and ugly were represented. Check the picture.... (Source: Unknown) How many readers agree to this? No, don't give me an intelligent, sociologically relevant, politically correct answer. Truth is, we have all learnt the meaning of beautiful and ugly from this, or some other picture, or have been pointed out a beautiful woman and an ugly one during our childhood and in our college days. In the early stages of childhood, from birth to 3 years, the human brain is extremely vulnerable to external influences. A violent childhood, a traumatic experience, or visuals suc

Radiance of flowers + liquor = Love?

शोखियों में घोला जाये फूलों का शबाब उस में फिर मिलाई जाये थोड़ीसी शराब होगा यूँ नशा जो तैय्यार वो प्यार है Mix the radiance of flowers. Then add a small measure of liquor. The state of giddy stupor That you get from all the above Is what we call love. For a full and a beautiful translation of the whole song, you must visit   http://songtranslationsbyme.blogspot.in/2011/08/shokhiyon-mein-ghola-jaye-translated.html  by Shivani Mohan. Amazing translations of all those beautiful songs we are fond of) These are the lyrics of a song from the Hindi film, Prem Pujari. But then we know that love is not so simple as that, isn't it? But why am I talking about love? Well, if love could have a formula, why not films? Just suppose there was a formula like H2 + O = H2O everyone would make a hit film. No one would be worried about giving a flop and losing a lot of money. This is exactly what a guest, a complete system's man, said the other day in my office. He was completely conv

From Consumers to Producers - The Indian Story - Part 3 - Storage Devices

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I used to do a lot of graphic designing and make films for various corporates. One day, I went to show the first cut of a film that I had made for an organization. I went with the film to the concerned brand manager, and when he asked me for a CD, and I said I didn't have one, he thought I was joking. I put my hand in the pocket and brought out my brand new pen-drive and said, that his film was in it. Most people in the office thought I had gone crazy, or I had probably hit my head on something. I made him pull out his computer and put the pen-drive in the USB port, and viola! We had the film copied on to his PC in a few minutes! They did not even know the USB port. Of course it was entirely new to everyone including me at that time. But more about pen-drives later. When we speak of storage devices, the first thing we think of is the hard disk drive or the HDD. As I said in my first post in this series, my first PC had a hard disk of a whopping 120 MB and the second one 1.2 GB.

From Consumers to Producers - The Indian Story - Part 1

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I call myself a successful digital immigrant. Marc Prensky defined Digital Natives as the ones who have been born with digital technology, digital devices, for whom the digital devices is not a new phenomenon, today's young population. Digital Immigrants are those who saw digital technology developing and evolving and adapted to the digital world - people like me! I have been very lucky to have been not only a witness, but a participant in the evolution of the digital age. In this series, I am going to share the story(s) of how several technologies evolved over the last 35 years in India and across the world, slowly but surely turning us, passive consumers of media content, into active producers. How technology - both hardware and software, and skill-sets developed over the years, especially in India, and how it has affected the way we communicate, and hence the way we live and go about our lives. My students (at least the one's who have attended my New Media lectures) mig

Karlo Duniya Mutthi Mein - Part 3

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The Internet was launched in India in 1995. Interestingly, India's mobile services were also launched in the same year. When I got my first mobile phone in 1997, it was a heavy walkie-talkie like machine, which, had to be held in the hand, for the fear of tearing away my pocket.! The outgoing call rate, when I got my mobile was about Rs.12 outgoing and Rs.6 incoming! We had a second-to-second billing plan too. It used to be very funny, with people making as short a call as possible to avoid hefty phone bills. I remember, I had a client who would ask me if I was calling from my mobile, and if I answered yes, would immediately cut the line and call be back from his landline. It was convenient to own a mobile, and it was also a status symbol, but it was damned expensive. In 2003, Reliance launched its CDMA technology based mobile services, after laying out 80000 kms. of fibre cables across the length and breadth of the country. Everywhere you went, you could see the Reliance work