Category: Bus. Std. (ICE World) Column

My latest Business Standard column:

Indias Kumbh Mela takes places every twelve years. It sees the largest gathering of pilgrims in the world bathe in the Ganga to purify themselves. The four locations where it is celebrated are supposed to be the places where the gods spilt amrit the elixir of immortality.

Twelve years or so is also the cycle for computing breakthroughs. By my reckoning, the next major computing breakthrough is just around the corner. What will computings next Kumbh Mela usher in? On this hangs the fate of more than 500 million devotees, a billion aspirants, hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, and the future of todays tech giants.

Before we look ahead, let us take a peek into the past of computing and look at the previous computing Kumbh Melas. An understanding of the past is useful even as we peer into the future.

1945 saw the invention of the worlds first computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer). PBS.org has more: ENIAC, with its 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, and 6,000 manual switches, was a monument of engineering. The project was 200 percent over budget (total cost approximately $500,000). But it had achieved what it set out to do. A calculation like finding the cube root of 2589 to the 16th power could be done in a fraction of a second. In a whole second ENIAC could execute 5,000 additions, 357 multiplications, and 38 divisions. This was up to a thousand times faster than its predecessorsENIAC’s main drawback was that programming it was a nightmare. In that sense it was not a general use computer. To change its program meant essentially rewiring it, with punchcards and switches in wiring plugboards. It could take a team two days to reprogram the machine.
In the late 1950s, IBM switched from using vacuum tubes to using transistors. VisionEngineer.com writes: Vacuum tubes are large, expensive to produce, and often burn out after several hundred hours of use. As electronic systems grew in complexity, increasing amounts of time had to be spent just to ensure that all the vacuum tubes were in working order. Transistors, in comparison, rarely fail and are much cheaper to operate. In the same year, IBM also introduced Fortran (FORmula TRANslation), a programming language based on algebra, grammar and syntax rules, and which went on to become the most widely used computer languages for technical work. These twin breakthroughs made computers reliable and easily programmable.

In 1969, IBM changed the way it sold technology. It unbundled the components of hardware, software and services, and offered them for sale individually. This is what gave birth to an independent software industry. 1969 also saw the setting up of the Arpanet, which later grew to be the Internet. 1970 also saw the birth of the first general-purpose microprocessor the Intel 4004. Unix began its life around the same time, as did the programming language, C. 1970 was also the year when the theory of relational databases was introduced by Ted Codd at IBM. Taken together, these developments in semiconductors, software and networks laid the foundation for modern-day computing.

1981 saw the launch of the IBM Personal Computer. From the IBM archives: [It] was the smallest and — with a starting price of $1,565 — the lowest-priced IBM computer to date. The IBM PC brought together all of the most desirable features of a computer into one small machine. It offered 16 kilobytes of user memory (expandable to 256 kilobytes), one or two floppy disks and an optional color monitor. When designing the PC, IBM for the first time contracted the production of its components to outside companies. The processor chip came from Intel and the operating system, called DOS (Disk Operating System) came from a 32-person company called Microsoft. The rest, as they say, is history. IBMs decision to source the two key components from external suppliers led to the modularisation of the computer industry, and the emergence of Intel and Microsoft as its two superpowers. In 1982, Time magazine chose the personal computer as its Man of the Year.

The period of 1992-94 saw many key developments which have shaped our present. Microsoft launched Windows 3.1, which rapidly became the standard desktop interface for millions. Around the same time, Intel started shipping its Pentium systems. The duos dominance led to the coining of the phrase Wintel. SAP launched its enterprise software program, R/3, which established the client-server paradigm. The Internets commercialisation and proliferation got a major boost with the launch of Mosaic, a graphical web browser based on the HTTP and HTML standards, by Marc Andressen and his team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in the US.

Computing has come a long way since the development of the first computer in 1945. Even though innovation has happened in an almost-continuous manner, my observation is that every twelve years or so comes a paradigm shift which blows out the old, and rings in the new.

So, the next computing Kumbh Mela should happen sometime soon (or is already underway). What is it going to be? Microsofts Longhorn? Google as the supercomputer? Cellphones as always-on, always-connected computers? Utility computing? Wearable computers? Something unseen as of today…? We will take a look ahead in the next column.

My latest column in Business Standard:

I recently came across a report on search engines from 1999. Among the companies it discussed was Google. As I read it, I wondered if I (or anyone else) could have imagined then that five years later, this start-up would have so transformed the search space, build the worlds largest computing platform, and be getting ready to do an IPO that will create $25 billion of wealth for its founders, employees and investors.

What is remarkable about Google is that it flourished right under the noses of its competitors without being acquired or crushed. The likes of Yahoo and Microsoft did not do anything until it was too late to prevent Google from getting where it is now. That is the incredulity of it all.

A Google happens once in many, many years. It is almost impossible to predict before hand that such a company will at some point of time in the future occupy a position of great power and influence over not just across its vertical but across the industry. Because, if we knew, we would do something about it. Competitors would seek to put roadblocks and hurdles, or failing that, try and possibly acquire it. Even otherwise helpful partners may think carefully if they realise they are going to help in building the next big behemoth. In other words, events and circumstances which lead to the creation of the once-in-a-lifetime companies are rare and almost unpredictable.

That is what makes Google a black swan.

Nassim Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and founder-chairman of Empirica LLC, a research laboratory and financial products trading house in New York, has this to say: A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that’s what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are.

In a paper entitled The Black Swan: Why Dont We Learn that We Dont Learn, Nassim elaborates on the black swan notion: The Black Swan is defined as a random event satisfying the following three properties: large impact, incomputable probabilities, and surprise effect. First, it carries upon its occurrence a disproportionately large impact. The impact being extremely large, no matter how low the associated probability, the expected effect (the impact times its probability), if quantified, would be significant. Second, its incidence has a small but incomputable probability based on information available prior to its incidence. Third, a vicious property of a Black Swan is its surprise effect: at a given time of observation there is no convincing element pointing to an increased likelihood of the event.

Think a little about what made Google thrive to get to the point where it has reached now. One, it had only one round of venture capital investment, giving the founders sufficient management control on the future direction of the company including the right to refuse takeover offers. Second, they focused on an area which others had given up on search. When Google started up, search was a forgotten area in the Internet backwaters. They not only made search work well, but also created a business model around it via the text ads. Third, they built up scale rapidly over the years. Their use of commoditised hardware and open-source software at the backend gave them the platform to keep costs low even as they layered their proprietary algorithms on top of the GoogleOS.

What Google has done is to build an alternative computing platform. This is becoming obvious as it starts our to roll out various services which go beyond just search a shopping service, social networking, a blogging platform, email with a difference (not to mention plenty of storage), and a local search/yellow pages engine. Rick Skrenta had this to say: Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It’s running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It’s looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application. While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.

Tim OReilly takes it further: In a brilliant Copernican stroke, [Googles] gmail turns everything on its head, rejecting the personal computer as the center of the computing universe, instead recognizing that applications revolve around the network as the planets revolve around the Sun. But Google and gmail go even further, making the network itself disappear into the universal virtual computer, the internet as operating system.

We have seen the emergence of a black swan before our very years in the past five years. Can the next black swan in the technology space come from India? In an interview with The New Yorker, Nassim Taleb quotes Scottish philosopher David Hume: “No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.” Just because something has not happened before does not mean it is never going to happen in the future. It is for Indian entrepreneurs to prove Hume and Taleb right by envisioning a future very different from today and building it out. Ill be watching for a black swan in 2010.

[I would like to thank Chetan Parikh of CapitalIdeasOnline for introducing me to Nassim Talebs concept of black swans.]

My Business Standard column:

One of the most important documents for India’s digital future has barely been discussed in the media. What happens to the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recommendations on broadband and internet (available at http://www.trai.gov.in) will have far-reaching implications for each of us in our personal and business lives, and we aren’t even engaged in the debate.

First questions. What broadband? Why broadband? How broadband? Broadband connectivity, as defined in the TRAI report, is always-on connectivity of 256 Kbps or higher. While one can argue about the connection speed, that is a big leap from what is advertised today (64-128 Kbps).

Broadband is the endgame for the computer, communications and consumer electronics industries. Besides making Internet access faster, broadband can make possible a wide variety of applications. For example, video-conferencing can connect far-flung offices and also enable distance education, telemedicine can bring medical attention to remote areas, video-on-demand can time-shift entertainment to suit our convenience, voice-over-IP can bring telephony costs down even further, multi-player online gaming can now become a reality, and enterprises can access business applications centrally.

The two most common modes of broadband access are xDSL and cable. DSL works on regular telephone lines, and is the most popular way to deliver broadband. Cable companies can also provide broadband by virtue of the fact that they too have a wired connection coming into homes and enterprises. Other possibilities for providing broadband are via satellite and through wireless technologies.

The problem in India, as we have all experienced, is connectivity. TRAI has estimated that bandwidth in India costs 1,200 times more than South Korea, which is the most wired nation today. The end result is few in India have experienced the world of broadband.

While there is a lot of talk about building out India’s infrastructure in terms of its roads, ports and airports, we also need to act rapidly to build out our digital infrastructure. From education to healthcare, and entertainment to ecommerce, the world of broadband can also lay the foundation for booting up the domestic IT industry and help improve productivity across India’s industrial sector.

This is the context of the TRAI recommendations. TRAI has sought to address 11 hurdles that hinder broadband growth in India: price, access to the customer (lack of access to the incumbents copper for DSL, low quality of cable TV infrastructure and lack of organisation, high costs for DTH and VSAT, policies preventing wireless solutions from spreading, clearances for right of way), costs of backhaul networks (lack of effective competition in the within city networks, high costs of international bandwidth, ineffective implementation of National Internet Exchange of India), fiscal policies (high taxes and duties, and lack of incentives for faster growth), and content and applications (lack of locally relevant content and absence of change agent to drive growth).

TRAI hopes that the implementation of its recommendations will boost the Internet subscriber from last year’s 4 million to 40 million by 2010, along with a hundred-fold increase in the broadband user base to 20 million.

One of the most important recommendations of TRAI is that of local loop unbundling. In simple words, it means that the incumbent telcos (BSNL and MTNL) need to open up access on their last mile to others for an appropriate fee. This way, others do not need to replicate what is an expensive last-mile infrastructure. While the concept is sound, this is a non-trivial decision for the government-owned telcos. The interests of a few are likely to supercede those of many.

What India needs is a complete unshackling of all regulation to ensure that every Indian household and enterprise has access to affordable broadband by 2010. We need to think 5-10x the estimates of TRAI. To make that happen, we need to think disruptively. India needs to become a hotbed for next-generation wireless and other technologies which can deliver broadband to homes and enterprises rapidly. It does not matter if others have done it or not. We need to lead the way. Just like South Korea did a few years ago.

Let us set a goal of providing a whole solution of hardware (access device), software, broadband connectivity and tech support for Rs 700 per user per month. Of this, broadband access (512 Kbps or higher) should cost no more than Rs 250 per month. Now, let us work backwards and figure out what we need to make this happen. If we can imagine 100 million users in five years, this is a market of Rs 30,000 crore per annum for broadband service providers to fight over. The world of commPuting as a utility would have arrived. For once, let us hope TRAI is wrong with their estimates.

My latest column in Business Standard:

A recent cover story entitled The Digital Village in the Asian edition of Business Week (June 28, 2004) showcased how technology is helping India fight poverty. The magazine said in an editorial: A fascinating technology revolution is underway in India. No, were not just talking about [Indias] success in software and outsourcing work. Rather, it involves an explosion of projects that are making creative use of technology to deliver basic goods and services to Indias 700 million poor, most of which live in isolated villagesBy promoting local innovation and entrepreneurialism, the tech-for-the-masses movement could not only stimulate economic development in the countryside but also help find the key to turning the worlds poor into the next major source of global growth.

Rural India is just one of the segments in India that can be transformed by entrepreneurship and innovation. There is a lot about India that needs to change right from the way we deliver education to hundreds of millions of children to how we can automate millions of businesses to how we can find information about what is happening in our neighbourhood. Indias digital infrastructure needs to be built in a hurry to make up for the lost time. Many technology revolutions are being compressed in the space of a few years creating an amazing array of opportunities for entrepreneurs, provided they are willing to look at the market within.

One of the primary challenges that we face is making computing a utility, by bringing down the cost of usage to that of a cellphone. We need to provide access to a connected computer accessible to every family, employee and student in India. How can we do it?

To start thinking about possible solutions, there are four challenges that need to be addressed simultaneously. Think of them as the ADAM of computing affordability, desirability, accessibility and manageability.

Affordability: The existing solution, created by and for people with very high incomes, is too costly for most people in developing countries. While hardware costs have dramatically and monotonically declined over time, software has become more expensive to own and manage. Consequently, the total cost of ownership of computing solutions is still very high. (Piracy is a commonly used workaround when it comes to software. But most have to take the non-consumption route when even the pirated software plus the hardware costs exceed their budgets.)

Desirability: The utility of computers derives primarily from the services that it provides users. Even if the total package of hardware and software was affordable, people will not buy unless the services they derived from the computer were relevant to their lives. Furthermore, while the utility of computers is a necessary condition for their widespread adoption, it is not sufficient. People have to be knowledgeable about the utility of computing.

Accessibility: Given the low per capita incomes of developing countries, only a relatively small fraction of the population can afford to own even low-cost computers. Yet a significant number of people who cannot afford to own computers can still derive benefits from having access to computing services and be able and willing to pay for these.

Manageability: Computers require significant amounts of back-end support because of the complexity of the software. The cost and complexity of administration, support, and defense against spam, spyware and viruses act as significant deterrence to using them.

The present PC paradigm evolved 25 years ago in a world when networks barely existed. The PC, together with the Internet and cheap connectivity, has engineered the technology and productivity revolution in developed markets in the recent past. Spam, viruses, and spyware are increasing support costs, even as a saturated market for computers in the developed world is making technology companies look at emerging markets as the next big opportunity.

The issue is deeper than mere affordability; users in many of the developing countries have solved the software affordability issue by piracy. It is about building the computing ecosystem in these markets which brings utility and value of technology to daily life. The question then is: what is the new computing architecture that can leverage the availability of broadband communications networks and dramatically reduce the prices so that technology becomes more relevant, affordable, desirable, and accessible to the next generation of users?

To make computing a utility for emerging markets, there are many possibilities. Could the cellphone be the computer? Can we create an architecture around thin clients and server-centric computing? Can there be neighbourhood computing centres just like STD/ICO booths? Whatever be the solution, we need EVE to tackle ADAM a combination of Entrepreneurship, Venture capital and E(i)nnovation.

My latest column in Business Standard:

If there was one message which rang out loud and clear in the recent elections, it was that the poor of India want a better life. They voted for change dispensing with those in power. This was not so much about anti-incumbency as anti-incompetency. Even as India makes strides in some sectors, much of the country and its people remain frozen in time. They will have to make do with the promise of free electricity if the state governments ever get around to generating it. Bharat wants its own revolution one built around development and opportunities, not handouts and freebies.

So, let’s play a game of strategy. You are the Indian Chief Minister who has just won the local mandate. Success is defined as getting re-elected in five years time (let us assume there are no mid-term polls). How do you do it?

A look at the history books offers no relief. Eminent reform-minded brethren of yours like Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, SM Krishna in Karnataka all failed in the last round of the game which took place. Do you think reform or do you think populism? Do you think short-term or long-term? Do you think caste politics or computer policies? Do you think social development or infrastructure development?

As you think, let me give you my thoughts. The need of the hour in India is, very clearly, the transformation of rural India not between two generations, but between two elections. Agreed, this is not something which can be done overnight. But let us remember, that there is five year’s time that you have. The right steps taken in the beginning can make a big difference in that period. The problem in India has been that few are willing to think that far ahead as they caught up in day-to-day politics and month-by-month survival.

What you need to do is to create a platform for rural development. It is not about providing free food and electricity which will only sap the economy further, but about creating a framework in which peoples incomes increase to a point where they can pay for food and electricity. To use an old adage, Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.

Rural India needs affordable services from education to market access, from telecom to healthcare, from financial intermediation to entertainment. The key issue in rural India is the non-availability of the services at affordable prices. Linked to this is the lack of perceived opportunities in rural areas. These twin factors create a situation in which few want to do business in rural India. It also leads to the exodus of people from rural areas into urban slums, which stretch the resources in the cities and towns even further. In other words, rural India is caught in a trap that it seems difficult to get out of. Which meansare you doomed to lose the next elections?

No! There is an alternative and for that we have to turn to a model proposed by Atanu Dey and Vinod Khosla. This model, called Rural Infrastructure and Services Commons (RISC), holds the potential to transform rural India for a capital investment (not necessarily by the government) of no more than Rs 200 per person. The model recognises the fact that resources are limited, and we can get the maximum leverage by concentrating investment rather than by distributing it at uneconomical levels.

What Dey and Khosla propose is the creation of 5,000 rural hubs across India, each catering to a population of about 100,000 or about 100 villages, such that the hub is no more than a bicycle-commute distance away for people in the villages. These hubs are about 10,000 square foot in size, built at a cost of about Rs 2 crore each. They have state-of-the-art infrastructure including 24×7 electricity, broadband connectivity, security and sanitation.

This standardised infrastructure reduces the costs of operation for service providers in rural India. From the point of view of the rural populace, there is one place in which they can get multiple services services which were hitherto not available or too expensive. This also creates the platform for budding entrepreneurs to make rural supply and demand chains more efficient, much the same way as the programming interface of an operating system allows software developers to build higher-level constructs without worrying about the low-level plumbing.

Says Atanu Dey: Fundamentally, the specific market failure that RISC addresses is that of coordination failure. RISC is designed to coordinate the activities of a host of entitiescommercial, governmental, NGOs. It synchronises investment decisions so as to reduce risk. It essentially acts as a catalyst that starts off a virtuous cycle of introducing efficient modern technology to improve productivity that increases incomes and thus the ability of users to pay for the services, and so on. It creates a mechanism that reduces transaction costs and therefore improves the functions of markets.

The total investment of about Rs 10,000 crores is very little money in the Indian context today. The multiplier effect that it can have on rural India is dramatic. More importantly, it will get you elected. We all win, right?

You can download the paper via a link from the Deeshaa website.

My latest column in Business Standard:

The business of selling software in India is a tough one. For one, there is a small installed base of computers about 10 million, in contrast with 75 million wired and mobile telephone connections and 55 million cable television households. In addition, only a minority of the users pay for software the rest are fine with just making illegal copies and using it.

Software production, like other digital products, has a high fixed cost but a low marginal cost. For the most part, it is easy to copy. While the large enterprises need customisation and therefore have to pay for the software they use, the small- and medium-sized enterprises can use standardised solutions to start with. The consumer market does not see the benefits of paying for something that takes a few minutes to duplicate.

India is a market where 90% of population has to do with non-consumption of software. Of the remaining, 90% use pirated software. Legal software in India has only a 1% marketshare. So, even as India creates software for the world, our domestic market languishes. Little wonder then that we have few software success stories in the local market. Software is the oil of the information age there is no way India can build the next-generation digital infrastructure without it. If software companies and entrepreneurs do not feel they can make money from India, our growth will be hampered in the long-term.

Atanu Dey wrote recently on his weblog (http://www.deeshaa.org): As someone noted, people don’t want a quarter-inch drill — what they really want is a quarter-inch hole. So also, it is not that people want a personal computer — they want the services that a PC delivers. Owning a PC is not a great idea if there aren’t sufficient number of services one can obtain from one. Whether these services are available or not is not within the control of consumers of PCs. The conclusion therefore is that people will buy PCs only if it fits a larger ecology that is largely outside the control of any one single entity.

To build the ecology of computing and software in India, there are five issues which need to be addressed: availability, desirability, affordability, delivery and localisation.

First, computer deployment in India needs to increase not by 40% but many times that. India needs to build a base of 100 million computers across its small and large enterprises, governments, schools, colleges, homes, and rural hubs. This will provide the necessary base for developers to look at the market seriously. For this to happen, the total cost of ownership has to come down not just of the hardware, but also of support and maintenance. What is needed is a rethink of the computer architecture the availability of cheap silicon and storage and the coming world of cheap and plentiful bandwidth creates a platform to centralising computing and making thin and low-cost user devices. For every one new thick desktop, we could be deploying four times the number of thin access terminals.

Second, the value of software needs to be demonstrated. There is a need for better communication of what software can do both for our personal and for our work lives. Look at the computer ads that newspapers have there is barely a mention of what it can do. The focus is entirely on a gobbledygook of terms which describe the hardware. The experience of computers must be brought closer to people. This can be done through the creation of computing centres in every neighbourhood in India much like the way the STD/PCO booths brought the telecom experience to people.

Third, most software is priced in the Indian equivalent of US dollars. While this needs to change to more locally affordable levels, only clamouring for cheaper software without bringing in other elements is not enough. For example, by making available financing options for software as part of the complete computing solution, the entry costs can be significantly reduced allowing more users to start using it and see the benefits for themselves.

Fourth, there needs to be a change in how software is delivered. As broadband connections start proliferating, it will become possible for software to be delivered as a utility from centralised computing facilities. This utility approach to software will ensure that piracy is all but eliminated. A similar approach to gaming in China has created a large market with users paying on a usage basis. In addition, software needs to be part of a whole solution comprising hardware and maintenance.

Finally, there is a need for locally relevant solutions. Two approaches that need to be taken are to create content and software in local Indian languages, along with taking in the local context for business applications.

The software ecosystem needs to be built for businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive. It is not just about commercial or open-source software both are needed, just as we have the bicycles and the luxury cars. What users need is choice, and the current ones piracy or non-consumption are unhealthy for the industry and the country.

My latest column from Business Standard:

[Part 1 of the “Constructing the Memex” series]

In the past, the information available to us was limited by what we could remember, file on our own, ask others in a close circle, or access in a library. The Internet changed it all by making available a vast library of inter-linked digital information. Finding the information of value to us when we need it is still a challenge. In the beginning, we had Yahoos editorial selection of the best sites on the Web. Then, its editors updated site listings via incoming requests for additions as the web expanded. Next came the first generation of search engines which moved beyond the directory approach and crawled millions of pages, indexing the text on these pages.

Google, representing the second generation of search engines, used the information about links between pages as part of its PageRank technology, to come out with a superior way of searching. And yet, the problem of finding the right information in billions of web pages remains. Whether it is information in our personal or work life, there seems to be no end to the massive amount of information that we have to sift through. It is time to look at a new approach.

Imagine if we could bridge directories and search engines, making them much more customised based on our likes and the trails that we leave as we surf the Internet, and also taking into account all that we write in emails, blogs and elsewhere. This system would use our memory and knowledge as the starting point. We would start by outlining our interest areas – the topics that form the knowledge-sphere of our lives. This is akin to the directory of topics only much more personally relevant to us. For example, in my case the main categories of this list would be something like this: Affordable Computing, ICT for Development, Emerging Markets, Enterprise Software, Information Management, Small and Medium Enterprises, New Technologies and India.

Each topic needs to be drilled down further. What is needed is a hierarchy of topics, which helps in further defining our interests in greater detail. For example, my outline for Affordable Computing could look like this: Hardware (Thin Clients, Refurbished PCs, Set-Top Boxes, PDAs), Software (Terminal Services, Linux, Applications, Language Computing), and Communications (Ethernet, Wireless, Satellite, Broadband).

This hierarchy of topics serves as the basis for our interests. It gives a unique lens and context to the information that we browse on the Web, write in emails and receive as attachments. These topics will evolve as our interests change and as we come across experts who may have done a better job in building out a certain part of the information ecosystem.

This is an evolving information base built not by a centralised organization, but in a distributed manner by each of us. Each of us would have a microcosm of the information space, created and updated continuously by what we did. It would ensure that our ideas would have a context, that we would never forget something, and that we could leverage on similar work done by millions of others like us. This is the real two-way web linking not just documents, but people, ideas and information.

In the previous column, we discussed Vannevar Bushs vision of a memex (memory extender), which envisioned just such a machine that would allow us to deal with information overload by leveraging aspects of the human mind and its capability to deal with associations. The platform exists today to construct the memex built around millions of personal directories and welogs.

The weblog becomes a personal journal which allows us to store links and abstracts from articles we find of interest on the web, along with our own ruminations. A personal directory provides a table of contents, a glimpse into the way our mind catalogues information. Two existing XML-based standards would help share directories and syndicate the blog posts that we create OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) and RSS (Rich Site Summary).

In a sense, the memex is more about assimilation than aggregation, more value-added integration than scanning silos, more amplification than just presentation. The building blocks already exist in the form of the millions of blogs created by people like us. What is missing is the outline, a map of each of our minds. Once we start creating this in a distributed manner, we will see the emergent effects of a whole which is much bigger than the sum of the parts.

In the past few years, various technologies like weblogs, RSS, OPML, web services, Googles API, visualisation tools and social software, combined with a deeper understanding of the science of networks have laid the foundation for leveraging individual intellect to put together a information framework that is far beyond the capacity of any person or organisation. The time for constructing the Memex has now come.

My latest column from Business Standard:

In the past decade, the Internet has extended our world by making accessible a vast quantity of information that was unimaginable earlier in our lives. It started in the early days with bulletin boards and newsgroups, pooling together a collection of documents on a single server, and then the ease of hyperlinking combined with directories and search engines made the physical location of information irrelevant. If it was out there on the Internet, it could, in theory, be found.

For many of us, our first Internet website memories are probably linked to Yahoo. Navigating through its hierarchy of categories or doing a search helped us get to what we were looking for. Altavista and Excite started providing search within pages, allowing us to type a word or a phrase and know that there were tens of thousands of matching documents. Google then came along and refined the process to perfection by using its PageRank algorithm, giving us results very much relevant to what we were looking for. In effect, Google became our other memory.

In its efforts to provide uniformity and consistency, Google has become a mass-market search utility. But it is not good enough. What is missing is the context that each of us have this is embedded in the web we browse, the documents we chose to save (or email to ourselves), and the subject-matter experts we know (or would like to know).

To begin thinking more deeply about this, we need to go back in time and learn more about a person called Vannevar Bush.

According to Randall Packer and Ken Jordan [writing in their book Multimedia: From Wagner to Reality], Vannevar Bush rose to prominence during World War II as chief scientific advisor to Franklin Roosevelt and director of the governments Office of Scientific Research and Development, where he supervised the research that led to the creation of the atomic bomb and other military technologies. His contribution to the evolution of the computer ranges far and wide: from the invention in 1930 of the Differential Analyzer, one of the first automatic electronic computers.

In 1945, Bush published a paper As We May Think, outlining a prototypical hypermedia machine. He called this mythical machine as the Memex meaning a Memory Extender.

Adam Brates wrote in his book Technomanifestos: Visions from the Information Revolutionaries: Bushs immense administrative burden the daily strain of sorting, allocating, researching, analyzing, synthesizing, crosslinking, and filing spurred his idea for an invention that would perform this work for people. Bush popularized the idea that machines could solve the problem of information overload. Bush wondered whether all the sprigs of scientific wisdom, if not somehow preserved, would fall from the tree of knowledge. Information must somehow by connected to be relevant, lest it become forgotten. Knowledge accumulated and stored in massive filing cabinets under lock and key would languish. An idea developed today might not be relevant until some point in the future. What happens, though, if it is forgotten? Application of all new knowledge would require some means of keeping it available, accessible, and relevant.

Vannevar Bush wrote in his paper: [The human mind] operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature[Associative indexing is] the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex.

Vannevar Bush wrote his memex essay in 1945 before we had the computer, Internet, Web, Yahoo and Google. Even today, we struggle with information overload. The memex could be the solution, the silver bullet . So, the challenge before us is: can we leverage all the recent developments in technology to construct the memex?

There are two interesting recent developments that need to be connected together. Search engines like Google allow us to search billions of documents in a fraction of a second, while weblogs have made publishing very simple with the result that there are millions of people writing regular journals on the Web. Both are significant in their own right, as a combination they herald something much more profound in the information space.

(This will be continued in the next FutureTech column.)

My latest column in Business Standard:

Bookshops are temples for the mind. When I travel, I make it a point to visit the best bookstores that the city has to offer. Even in the Internet world, there is no greater pleasure than to serendipitiously find a book that answers many questions that the mind has been pondering on.

It was in one such temple in San Francisco that I came across a book entitled The Digital Hand: How Computers Changed the Work of American Manufacturing, Transportation, and Retail Industries. At that time, I was thinking about how to modernise India rapidly could we possibly learn from what the developed countries like the US have gone through, and accelerate the process in India.

The title of the book immediately appealed to me. Early, rapid and near-universal adoption of computers have long been one of the reasons for the technological lead of the US. So, to come across a book which traced the history of diffusion of one of the most important inventions of all-time was like discovering a hidden treasure.

The author, James Cortada, worked at IBM for three decades and had a ringside view of the computerisation of US industry. In the book, he focuses on how computing transformed the American economy in the second half of the last century.

The Digital Hand is a reference to Adam Smith’s invisible hand – the self-interest that guides the most efficient use of resources in a nation’s economy, with public welfare coming as a by-product. The computers is the modern-day digital equivalent an all-pervasive force that drives efficiencies in economies.

Why look at the past in a field that changes rapidly as information technology? Writes Cortada: Understanding historic patterns of adoption of digital technology gives us insight into how specific industries did, and continue to, operate because they are prisoners of existing applications and processes and, in most instances, of long-standing practices and attitudes. In other words, a study of the past can help us unravel the future.

This can be especially important in the Indian context as we seek to build our digital infrastructure. What the US did over fifty years, India needs to do in five. Every industry in India needs to absorb technology and rethink its processes if India has to accelerate on the fast-track of development.

The US corporations adopted new inventions sequentially mainframe, mini and personal computers, networks, wireless technologies and most recently, broadband networks. The American workers had time to adjust to each phase of technological innovation. Also, different industries computerised at different points of time.

In contrast, Indian industry has to focus on all-round and simultaneous adoption of new technologies in computing and communications. In the past, it has, by and large, been slow to deploy the new technologies hobbled in part by the high cost of technology and low cost of labour. This needs to change if India has to develop. India’s industrial units have to become globally competitive, so they can achieve the scale to produce cost-effectively for the domestic market. What we have to think is how, in the context of these digital innovations, can we live and work differently. India has the opportunity to leapfrog.

Consider radio frequency identification (RFID). RFID systems consist of smart tags and reader devices. The tags send out radio frequency signals, which can be picked up in a short range by readers. Unlike bar codes which can carry very limited information, smart tags can store and broadcast object-specific information, giving each item its own unique identify and history.

Think of RFIDs as the next wave in communications: we first had people talking to people (through language and publications), then we had people interacting with computers (through the Internet, HTML and HTTP), now we are seeing applications talk to other applications (through Web Services). The next leap will be objects talking to other objects.

RFID is just starting to get adopted in the US. Wal-mart has mandated its suppliers to use RFID by the end of this year. Imagine if Indian retail chains and stores do the same in India. This will have multiple implications: it will position Indian manufacturers as Wal-mart ready, it will make Indian supply chains efficient very quickly, and it will give the Indian software companies competing globally a domestic market to build their strengths in what is a rapidly emerging area.

The equivalent of RFID can be found across industries. Whether it is WiFi or WiMax wireless broadband networks, open-source software, mobility-aware applications or RSS-enabled content, new technologies abound in all sectors. India has the ability to lead and set the standards, rather than be a followed and a footnote on the pages of business and technology history books. The Indian economic miracle needs to move away from its dependency on the hand of God each monsoon. It’s time to wave our Digital Hand.

My Business Standard column:

During my recent visit to the US, I found myself standing on Sandhill Road at Menlo Park. Sandhill Road is at the heart of the worlds venture capital industry. Almost all the leading VCs have their offices there. It is one of three elements which make up the Silicon Valley ecosystem. A few miles away is Stanford University, whose mix of professors and students churn our start ups year after year. And then there is the famed Valley culture, which encourages and amplifies innovation and entrepreneurship. While it rewards success handsomely, it also does not look down on failure, seeing it as a milestone on the journey.

As I stood overlooking the freeway and the mountains in the distance from the Sandhill perch, my mind wandered to the eternal search that drives the innovation system. What is going to be the next big thing? Web services? Broadband wireless? Convergence?

There are two thoughts which struck me as I stood there. One, the epicentre of the next revolution is likely to be in the emerging markets of the world. Two, the driver for this revolution will be affordability rather than the next big technological advance. Let me explain.

In the developed markets of the world, the various technological waves came sequentially computers in the 1980s, local area networks in the late 1980s, client-server software in the early 1990s, the Internet in the mid and late 1990s, and wireless and broadband in the past few years. One of the key drivers was Moores Law, which states that processing power at fixed costs doubling every 18 months. As computers became cheaper thanks to falling prices of chips and peripherals, it created a positive feedback loop that drove adoption across various industries.

Now, the same mix of cheap processing power and high bandwidth is working its way across the developing markets. There is one important difference. In the developed countries like the US, the various phases of technological enhancements were sequential, giving consumers and businesses time to adopt and adapt. However, in the emerging markets like India, there are all happening simultaneously.

Consider whats happening in India. Cellphone adoption is increasing at over two million a month, leading to a user base of over 50 million by the end of 2004. Decreasing prices are driving computer adoption higher this year should see sales of over 3 million computers. Wireless data connectivity is available in hundreds of cities. Cable companies, telephone companies, power companies and Internet service providers are all working to provide high-speed connectivity to homes and businesses. So, in India, even as we benefit from falling prices, we are having to adjust to a world where the same ubiquitous envelope of computing and communications is rising around us.

This, according to me, is the Next Big Thing. As nations develop, an unprecedented opportunity exists to create solutions for the next billion users from countries like India, China, Brazil and Russia. The challenge for entrepreneurs is to catalyse and capitalise on the technology-led development process that these countries are going through.

Once again, consider India. Even as we get taken up with offshoring and outsourcing opportunities, we need to understand that a focus only on services will not transform India. (To put this in focus, less than 0.1 percent of Indians are involved in
IT related services are currently involved in providing software and other business process services to international organisations.) As India develops, agriculture needs to become more efficient, thus reducing the labour force involved in farming. This surplus has to be absorbed in production. This means that the production of non-manufactured goods (such as handicrafts) and manufactured goods will have to expand and become more efficient to be able to absorb the surplus labor from agriculture and provide higher incomes.

Affordable technology solutions can help in compressing time and speeding up the development process. Information and communication technologies can help in providing much-needed access to markets. India can benefit from the technologies developed to accelerate the education of its people and the modernisation of its industries. The challenge for entrepreneurs is to think on how to create solutions in this context for the twin engines of future growth – rural India and the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The developed markets of the world are like the countries of Europe in the fifteenth century. The developing countries like India and China are like America waiting to be discovered. Entrepreneurs are like the intrepid explorers who set forth from the Old World to discover new lands for conquest.

For the VCs on Sandhill Road, the emerging markets are a world separated by many a continent and ocean. Even as they ponder on the future, Indian entrepreneurs have the opportunity to shape history only if we begin to start looking at the market within. Rather than trying to only focus on providing services to the rest of the world, we need to start producing hard and soft goods for Indians to use and leverage. India, its IITs and other engineering institutions, and its entrepreneurs have the opportunity to create the platforms for the next markets.