Studies in Media

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 con...

Blame it on Sam Pitroda We have all become isolated, independent units, hiding behind the cool, smooth glass surface of our monitors and mobile phones. We are connected to the society only when these devices are connected to a network. Otherwise, we are alone, lost in our own world, concerned with only the self, becoming narcissists. We are prone to exposing our thoughts, feelings, life events, loves, hates, and joys online, on social media sites. We measure our quality of living on how many 'likes' our Facebook status acquires, or how many 'hits' our websites get.We are exposing ourselves to the extreme, to the point of obscenity. We find ecstasy in communication. This is what Jean Baudrillard and other philosophers say. Neil Postman also says that we have become 'technophiles' and overdependent on technology to point of thinking that our day cannot start without reading whats on WhatsApp or other social media. Robin Jefferey call us the 'mobile nation...

Social Media When Facebook was launched in 2004, I had started teaching in the Department Communication and Journalism, at the University of Mumbai. I remember my first lecture. I was afraid that I would embarrass myself. I had never faced a bunch of 20 youngsters together in my life. But I suppose the lecture went off well, because the then Head of the Department, Dr. Sanjay Ranade, did ask me to continue! My students and I used to communicate with each other using Yahoo Groups, and Orkut. Remember Orkut? I am sure at least some of you do. It was fun, being on Orkut, creating groups, and interacting with so many friends. I know my students used to gossip a lot about the faculty. It was a lot of fun, and the first social media that we really used, apart from the Yahoo Groups, usually for exchange of notes and announcements. We were not used to blogging much. I did start a few blogs, but was never really consistent till I have started writing everyday on this blog for the last 2 ...

This is in continuation with my earlier post on new and emerging media technologies. New and emerging technologies have changed the way we consume and produce content. The technology has become advanced, cheaper and accesible to us, the common public. This has to be looked at from several angles.   I bought my first computer in 1992 for Rs.35000/-. Many will be surprised by the configuration. It was a 40386 processor, meaning it had a processing power of 386 MHz, much lesser than many mobile phones available today. The computer had a whopping 120MB (Yes, no typo here. Its MB and not GB) and 4 MB of RAM! On that computer I could easily use CorelDraw and PageMaker for my DTP work. It was the best PC in the neighbourhood.   I also remember making my first video using a PC with a 533 MHz processor and 512 MB RAM. I can vouch for the fact that the video can hold its own against any video I have made recently. The only real difference is that it took very long to render the video...