The more science fiction I read (and I don’t read anything else consciously, generally, when it comes to books), the more I ponder deeply about speciesism. You should Google or Wiki Speciesism if you don’t know what it means. In a nutshell, it is a prejudice similar to racism or sexism, but concerns humans as a species and their supposed… Read more →
The following dialog is from Season 4, Episode 8 of House of Cards: NSA agent 1: Can you walk us through how the filtering algorithms work? Aidan: We’ll take firearms, for instance. If we start with everyone who legally owns a gun, track geo-location patterns through their phones, we start to put together a portrait of where gun-owners live, eat,… Read more →
I updated my Nexus 6P to Android Nougat yesterday (I’m on Android Beta Program, so got the OTA immediately yesterday). Apart from the myriad smaller updates that dot the UX, the one thing that I was most pleased about was the voice control. I had earlier purchased Nexus 6 (Motorola’s) specifically for the voice control – see this blog post:… Read more →
I had good fun moderating this panel for Social Media Week, Bangalore 2016. It features, as panelists, Kiruba Shankar (of kiruba.com fame), Nandita Iyer (of Saffrontrail fame) and Nivedith Gajapathy (of Tech Travel Eat Repeat fame).
Originally published in Brand Equity, The Economic Times, July 20, 2016. Back in 2008, during the early days of social media—Twitter was just 2 years old and Facebook had opened its membership to anyone only in 2006—I recall suggesting to a marketing head of the Indian arm of an MNC that he should start blogging. He told me, “But Karthik,… Read more →
How long will it be before a big FMCG brand asks people to find virtual product packs floating at a busy railway station, to win them for real (sent to them via courier)? How long will it be before WWF creates a campaign to let extinct and endangered animals live again amidst humans, but in an augmented reality layer? How… Read more →
It was Taran Adarsh’s birthday yesterday. He received 175 birthday cards! Now, interestingly, I do not live in the same house as Taran. I don’t even work in the same office as Taran. But I do know he got 175 birthday cards. The whole world does. How, you ask? He got those wishes (equivalent of a birthday card in the… Read more →
