Archived Authors on Web 2.0

by

Chris Henderson

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World:

Aldous Huxley wrote The Brave New World in 1932 and looked back at it in his essay The Brave New World Revisited in 1958. Those years are way back in the realms of the prehistoric if one considers the instant by instant history that defines Web 2.0.
Even the futuristic devices in his tale fortelling the future remain quaintly analogue. Well, he was after all not a science fiction writer but social commentator who set this tale in the days to come.

In the 1932 classic, which has visions of a consumerist and robotic society, he comes closer to the world of today than many would give him credit for, in spite of the absence of the digital.

While in no way is this article suggesting that he foretold the world to be with stunning accuracy, there are certain approximations which, nonetheless, are striking.

The entire premise of the Brave New World, a futuristic world in which human beings go through their lives in a celebration of youth, entertainment and hedonistic sexual gratification, hinges on an enormous initiative of manufactured consent. Brainwashed from birth and across generations, they have come to accept the consumerist culture as an axiomatic truth while questions raised about this way of life is not only discouraged, but also considered freakishly antisocial.

However, the most interesting feature that strikes me is the concept of hypnopaedia. Consumerist and other acceptable dictums repeated over and over from infancy, for years while the individual sleeps, ultimately results in a human being who is one of his group, a team player, someone who knows what is the accepted right and wrong. In other words, a  model citizen leading a model life.

While the trailing paedia in the coinage points to delicious parallels in the connected world, it is the concept of numbing the idle brain with a series of external agents that seems to be more than prophetic, especially so in the world of Hollywood, You Tube, Corporations and Uncle Sam.

Some of the slogans that are used in the hypnopaedic treatment almost echo the current world.

“Stability, Identity, Community.”

“Old clothes are beastly. We always throw away old.”

“I do love flying, I do love flying.”

“Hug me till you drug me.”

“A gram (of hallucinogen) is better than a damn.”

An idle consumerist society, tuned in to entertainment readily available, addicted to sexual gratification, the common thrills of intoxicants, consumption and the ersatz, simulated adventure of travel.

iPod plugged to the the ears, surfing on the hand held smart phone, videos of Shakira and Lady Gaga on YouTube, a backpacking visit to Europe, and the hallucinogen of FaceBook.

You look at the Russian youth or the connected American junkie. It is a stable world with unique identity fostered by a socially networked community  – where human values and reading Shakespeare are indeed seen as the traits of a Savage. As was depicted in the masterwork by Huxley.

Stability, Identity, Community

Kurt Vonnegut : Cat’s Cradle

In Cat’s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut speaks, among other things, of Bokononism - a religion based on foma or harmless untruths, written in the form of calypsos.

While Bokononism is full of its own tantalisingly funny terminology, which may give one a vin-dit (a sudden shove towards Bokononism) or help one understand the connected world (busy busy busy busy - words Bokononists whisper upon witnessing an example of how interconnected everything is), the one word which gives a stunning description of current online activism and cause connected communities is granfalloon.

A granfalloon, defined by the Bonkomist lexicon, is a false karass.

A karass is a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will.

A granfalloon, in contrast to a karass, is another group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared purpose or identity, but whose mutual associations are meaningless.

Some of the examples that Vonnegut provides in his masterpiece are – the Communist Party, the Daughters of American Revolution, the General Electric Company or any nation anytime anywhere.

The last example is further stressed in the following passage - they had found a can of white paint, and on the front doors of the cab Frank had painted white stars, and on the roof he had painted the letters of a granfalloon: U.S.A.

To define a granfallon, Bokonon, the founder of Bokononism, uses the calypso “If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.”

One wonders what Bokonon or Vonnegut would have written or sung about the Web 2.0 slacktivists, whose idea of being connected to a cause is a series of  forwards, likes and retweets, with smileys, on issues of supposed unifying social issue. “Walk like an Egyptian :-)”, 13 Likes
Busy Busy Busy Busy has changed to Like Like Like Like

In Bokonomist terms, this is inviting pool-pah.

William Styron: Sophie’s Choice

Sophie Zawitowska, the Polish survivor of Auschwitz, overhears a group of young American students talking of their travails with psychoanalysis and their therapists.

It is 1947, the embers of the recent mindless mayhem still glow hot, sparks visible every time one ventures a tentative glance over the shoulder a wee bit back in time. The period is also one of growing fascination with psychoanalysis.

Sophie speaks to the narrator, twenty two year old Stingo , summing up the superficial sadness of the smug students while lolling on the Coney Island beach. In doing so she uses a wonderful expression, so  appropriate even sixty four years later in analysing of the legions of online FaceBook slacktivists.

“Unearned Unhappiness,” she says.

And through the magic of Styron’s storytelling, we are convinced that she knows what she is talking about. 

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Chris Henderson is a fictitious character who appears in Arunabha Sengupta's The Best Seller.  He is an aspiring author and lives in Pasadena, California

Kiosk - The Book Shop

	The Best Seller by Arunabha Sengupta Sengupta has developed a finely tempered blade of a book which takes artful slices at several pretentious elements of modern life. Rated 5 stars by ForeWord Clarion Book Reviews The story of a struggling author who lands up in Amsterdam, hunting for an agent or publisher to at least take a look at his manuscripts. As he prepares his synopses, SASE and sets of first three chapters, he works as a Ghost Blogger, tai chi instructor, an investigative journalist specialising in sting operations, and finally a messiah for the financial crisis by packaging together ancient Indian philosophy and the raunchier Woody Allen films.  A roller coaster ride from psychoanalytic sessions in the sin city's Red Light District to author evenings in Pasadena, California - it is a unique journey.  Among Amazon’s top selling books in select categories
	Roman Lipi by K. Kasturi Are you planning a visit to India as a tourist? Do you know that there are eleven major languages spoken there, each within a well defined geographical area ? Are you a member of the Indian diaspora in the West? Most probably your son and daughter might have lost touch with the language you left behind in India. You are eager for them to keep in touch but where is the help?  The answer to the above mentioned problems is this book The author has devised a unique Romanized script common to all the major Indian languages. With the help of this e-book you can manage to express yourself in a rudimentary way in any Indian language
	Big Apple 2 Bites: a novel of Love, 9/11 and Aikido  – Arunabha Sengupta "The novel is racy and the language is simple. The writer brings to the reader the scents and smells of America. The writer's exuberant prose regarding Aikido made me think of learning it too." ~ The Sunday Tribune. "The novelist deals with great sensitivity with the issues of 9/11, the loss of jobs ... disillusion with the corporate environment. There is a lot of enjoyable humour. The entire book is written in the second person, adding a touch of freshness to the narrative." ~ The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. "The only English novel from India to deal with the 9/11." ~ Geetha-Ganpathi Dore in Post Colonial Indian Novel in English The novel deals with topics of weight and importance with an irreverence that is almost mocking, while dissecting the society and laying it bare, tipping more than its share of sacred cows ...
	Perfectly Untraditional - Sweta Vikram Srivastava Perfectly Untraditional unravels unconventional and untold tales of families, friendships, love, loyalty, relationships, and tradition." A powerful, riveting, perfectly unique exploration of the tangle of relationships that is the modern Indian family.”
	Conflict and Other Stories – Shubham Gupta These short stories are a meticulous reflection on life and a subtle expression of the intricacies that it presents every moment with resounding ease and regularity. The effervescent style and the unexpected twists are what the author calls 'blinds,’ which extract new meanings from what we generally miss out in keeping with our hectic chores. They delve in love, relationships,  plain-storytelling, and in life, a life in which not everything is good, not everything bad. Plainly put, a life that just goes on and on..

Featured Release: Perfectly Untraditional by Sweta Srivastava Vikram

"New York City-based writer, Shaili Kapoor, is shocked to find out about her mother, Meena Kapoor’s death. 
Meena had drowned herself in Pashan Lake in Shaili’s hometown Pune, in India. When she was younger, Shaili and her mother would often spend time at the lake, without the knowledge of her father, Suresh Kapoor and younger sister, Tanisha. Shaili is devastated; apart from her childhood friend Supriya, her mother was the only connection she had with India or her past over the past fifteen years. Even as a young adult, Shaili had estranged relations with her old-fashioned, alcoholic father, but when he found out about Shaili’s divorce and about the new love in her life, he was livid. Both he and Tanisha ostracized her. But Shaili was always astonished at how accepting her mother was of her decision.

Between the time Shaili finds out about her mother’s death and reaches India for the last rites, she discovers a deep secret about the mother she worshipped and the father she grew up to loathe. Nothing is as it seems. Shaili knows the time has come for her to make peace with her father. Will Shaili find peace in knowing the mystique behind every occurence associated with Pashan Lake and the reason for her mother’s suicide? More importantly, will Shaili and her father ever accept each other’s personal choices? Perfectly Untraditional unravels unconventional and untold tales of families, friendships, love, loyalty, relationships, and tradition."

"A powerful, riveting, perfectly unique exploration of the tangle of relationships that is the modern Indian family.”

-Swati Kaushal, bestselling author of Piece of Cake and A Girl Like Me

 

Availability online:

To purchase the book in INDIA: http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfectly-untraditional-sweta-srivastava-vikram-book-8189738860

 

To purchase the book outside India: http://bookvistas.com/bookdetails.aspx?bookId=16153

To purchase the book outside India via Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=perfectly+untraditional&x=0&y=0

Sweta Srivastava Vikram (http://www.swetavikram.com/) is a two times Pushcart nominated-poet, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, educator, and blogger whose musings have translated into four chapbooks of poetry, two collaborative collections of poetry, a fiction novel, and a nonfiction book of prose and poems (upcoming in 2012). Her scribbles have also appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and online publications across six countries in three continents. Taj Mahal Review describes Sweta as "A poet with hauntingly beautiful talent." A graduate of Columbia University, she lives and writes in New York City and reads her work across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Sweta also teaches creative writing workshops.
Follow her: On Twitter (@ssvik) or Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Words.By.Sweta)

Common Indian Script

by

Chiranthan

It was the spring of 2006 and I was headed to China on my first work assignment outside Indian shores.

The excitement of travelling to a foreign country for the first time, the prospect of meeting and living among a different race of people and the eager anticipation of what lay ahead kept my spirits higher than ever before. But soon enough all my enthusiasm came crashing down, faster than the Boeing 767 jet in which I landed in the country. As I sat down at a restaurant in the Shanghai airport, the waitress (for the record - stunningly beautiful) brought me a menu card consisting of nothing but indecipherable little boxes and lines stroked all over, vaguely reminiscent of the outer cover of the "Dragon Noodles" packet I used to lovingly buy when I was back home. But this menu card didn’t evoke any of that fond nostalgia. Rather, it brought forth a gut wrenching feeling of isolation and vulnerability.

The waitress promptly returned to take my order and it is at that point that I realized for the first time how helpless I would be for the next few months. Try as I might, I was unable to communicate my need for a warm meal to her. Neither was she able to make me understand her lack of incentive in comprehending what was not an official language of the most populous nation in the world. Well, she had a point and I had to sheepishly settle for a glass of diet coke by pointing out to the logo of one of the most popular products of western commercialization that had permeated even through the Iron curtain. In the days that followed, I slowly recovered from the trauma of my high voltage cultural shock as I began rediscovering my abilities in miming and marveling at the technological wonder that Google translator had turned out to be.

When I look back at those days, I take comfort in noting that I am not the only one to have faced the trauma of a language radically different to what one is used to. I also reflect that one can be faced with this problem much closer to home than I had initially imagined. My work required me to frequent Bengaluru (I prefer Bangalore) which is in a neighboring state and just a few hours’ drive from my home. What I realized was that, a task as simple as taking the public transport to work became impossible simply because all signboards of the KSRTC public buses were written in the Kannada script. Merely looking at the squiggles and twirls of the bus-stop names was enough to send me dizzying into the trap of auto-rickshaw drivers ripping off what was easily more than half my daily allowance. It is not that the public transport system was in anyway inadequate or incapable of meeting basic needs, but my perception was tainted by the problem of not being user-friendly to ones not able to read the language. It is needless to say what horrors a foreign tourist would experience even in a modern and cosmopolitan city of India. Incredible India! Indeed.

Not restricted to public transport, other government offices and some private establishments also stick to their native script alone in all their communication and documentation and it becomes extremely difficult for non-natives to engage in basic transactions even if they do have the ability to speak the language haltingly. Think about the diversity and complexity of the country and one can figure how chaotic it would be for Indians to carry out unrestricted trade and social activities across the length and breadth of their own country. There are over 20 official languages spoken across states and union territories and among these, the written forms of these languages are vastly different from each other except for a few commonalities. Imagine the gargantuan task faced by a traveler trying to freely transact with people even from a neighboring state, or to simply move around the country without being flummoxed by sign boards.

The idea of multi-lingual communities living together under a common nationality is not unheard of but the sheer scale of such differences is rather unique to India and is unprecedented in any other society. A tri-lingual country such as Switzerland has managed the problem of multiple languages very well by having all signboards and public information displayed in all three languages with the dominant font designated to the chief language of the particular region. It is however much simpler, given all three languages share a common script. Compare this to the Indian scenario where you would end up having meter long sign boards to simply point out in 20 different languages and scripts where one can (or more importantly in case of India where one should not) relieve themselves. The cost that the government can incur to install digital LED signboards in railway stations that are capable of displaying multiple scripts will stop the project before initiation.

The solution of course does not lie in forcing a common language on the people, because language has its origin from the culture of a community and the two are closely interrelated. There are certain aspects of a culture that would be lost if translated into another language, thereby undermining India's pride of being tolerant and standing united in the face of diversity, allowing all cultures to flourish simultaneously. Profanity, among other more important features, can be best expressed only in one's own native language in order to have the best results. Thus the problem should be looked at more from a practical angle. Of being able to overcome the challenges posed by the differences in scripts, while still allowing languages to retain their individuality. Such a solution would primarily rely on identifying the common script connecting all these languages so that their vocabulary can be maintained unaltered.

According to K.Kasturi, an octogenarian and retired station director of the All India Radio, such a solution does exist.

In his long tenure with the All India Radio, he had worked in different locations across India. In his interactions with people from different states he has identified this problem of having so many different scripts to deal with even for simple inter-office communication and the difficulties that this poses. He suggests that when a student learns a language, the first step is usually to learn and memorize the written script. A large portion of the student's effort is directed towards this, often acting as a deterrent to people wanting to learn other languages for basic communication such as finding one's way around or buying groceries in the market. Not many have the time or patience to invest in learning an entirely new language from scratch just to satisfy a short term goal of visiting the region for carrying out business or leisure activity.

The answer, according to Kasturi, lies in the fact that among all the Indian languages there are some basic phonetics that are common and only a few that are unique to a particular language. He has scientifically studied these language sounds and has identified 58 basic phonetics, which when put together as a script, can seamlessly form the unifying platform that can be the basis for easily learning and communicating in any Indian language with only a little effort. He has based this scripting system on the widely used Latin alphabet with a very few additions for some phonetics that are unique to certain Indian languages. This ensures that even a foreigner can easily, with the help of a Latin-script based dictionary, be able to read signs and find his or her way around in this culturally diverse country that has so much to offer to the curious traveler or the enterprising businessman.

With the advent of the internet, the world has become more closely connected and information on practically anything is available at the click of a button. The idea of a common Latin script based alphabet for Indian languages opens up a wide array of possibilities. We can think of having much of traditional Indian knowledge freely available on the Internet, with minimum effort in customizing hardware or software for Indian scripts. This would be a boon to efforts of unrestricted commercial, cultural and social exchanges across the people of India and the rest of the world.

In his website  Kasturi describes the work he has done in deriving this common script in detail and even provides a model lesson for using the script with one of the Indian languages as example. Readers can also download the font face for free which is fully compatible with Unicode character sets and the standard US keyboard. This means that if the common script is universally adopted, it is already computer friendly and that no additional effort or cost is required for customizing existing infrastructure.

He has also published a handy-guide typically meant for an English savvy tourist to use this unified script to easily read and make basic conversations in any of the major Indian languages.

This handy ebook guide can be purchased at the following online book store - http://www.abook2read.com/authors/k-kasturi/roman-lipi-guide-book-and-conversation-in-indian-languages.html.
He hopes to popularize the adoption of the common written script and believes that when his idea gets widely adopted and gains acceptance among Indians as well as those abroad, it will bring about much benefit to the country in several ways. He can be contacted at his email address kkasturi24@gmail.com.

I definitely look forward to a day when one can travel to any part of the country and find his or her way around with ease not worrying about having trouble interacting with people of different states; when reading the menu at a restaurant would be as simple as keying into a palm-sized English keyboard based translator that will tell you exactly what is in store for you. Kasturi’s methodology for unifying Indian languages under a common script definitely seems to make these highly plausible and signals a new chapter in emerging India. One that is more united than ever before in spite of its diversities.

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Chiranthan is a talented photographer who has contributed his work to Scroll in earlier issues. He supposedly lives in Zurich, but if one looks away for a moment, he can be lost in any part of the Schengen zone.