Boris Becker and me

It was in summer of 1985, I had just completed my M.Stat, and was following Wimbledon.

Out of the blue comes a 17 year old Boris Becker who goes on to win the cup as first unseeded player,  and bring glory to himself and his country.

I was 22 years then, and had absolutely no impact. It got me thinking – how amazing is a  human being. Boris would have worked really hard, must have had terrific willpower, tremendous skill set to courageously perform. He had  an extreme desire and achieved it. Just at the age of 17 years.

There are many more people like Boris, before and after 1985! but Boris I will never forget, for putting my life in perspective then and there.

proficient

Human beings can train themselves to do many activities.

They can become proficient enough to make a decent living by doing what they are most proficient about, and in many cases reach world-class in their fields.

As Malcolm Galdwell says in his book Outliers, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become world class in any field.  About 1,250 days (~ four years) of 8 hours/day of concentrated effort.

This is also true for academicians and scientists – most of the Nobel prize (or equivalent) winning scientists have toiled for long hours, spent lot of think time to make breakthroughs that brought in new understanding for human kind.

Can everyone do it – yes! but there is a big mountain to cross -

you need to work hard to work harder,

the harder you work the easier it gets!

Most people lose out on “working hard to work harder”, and cannot reach the next step!

But once you reach the next step -

Your field becomes your life!

Electric Eye, and more!

MIT researchers have come up with a microship that can be embedded within the eye to provide signals to brain. These signals can be interpreted by the brain to get visual comprehension of the surrounding.  The person wears spectacles that has a tiny camera which transmits signals to the microchip in the eye.

This is one of the 50 best innovations in 2009.

Check:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1934027,00.html

for more details.

Persona Profiling of Users

There has been tremendous motivation to figure out ‘persona’ of users of Internet through information gathered from the web. This information can be from their blogs, comments on other’s articles, home pages, purchase patterns, etc. One recent work has been discussed here.
Unless one is careful, one can reveal traits that can be exploited by others. On the other hand, knowing that such profiling is being done, one can create a ‘virtual aura’ that is beneficial to us.

Will Internet maintain Network Neurtality

Check out this article about how Corporates are going to stiffle Internet for general public and make huge profits. 

Also check Save The Internet site to fight for network neutrality.