(am now on the 60 day project 😀 – enjoyed the 30 day project too much to give up)

 

Been hearing an audio book – The Information: A History,  A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick. Essentially been my car listening when i get stuck in traffic for ever. It has come fairly handy this monsoon.

It is not a quick listen. There are many times I have had to playback a chapter to fully understand the beauty and complexity of the ideas that Gleick talks about. I have finished hearing three chapters so far… each has opened up a different way of seeing things. I suppose that is what a good book is supposed to do.

In every generation, every century, every period in history – people have complained about an information overload. I wonder what the most accomplished person from 500 years ago would do – if he (and it was most likely a he) was dumped in today’s world. Firstly, its likely they won’t understand a word of what we say. The chapter I heard today was on the evolution of the English language. Words used then are most likely not used now. And if they are, they possibly mean something quite different. And, secondly they would have possibly hidden under a bed to escape the information bombardment – akin to a person from a remote village dropped in the middle of fast moving traffic near a cross roads. (can’t be Mumbai, traffic doesn’t move fast here.)

The book weaves together disparate strands – history, social anthropology, information sciences, the way of thinking about scientific concepts and makes it accessible to the reader/listener. There was this brilliant bit I heard today  about Galileo discovering sun spots. Till the words used to describe the Sun were pure and pristine. Galileo comes to a realisation that language itself has to undergo a transformation in order to cope with the advances in science. The entire portion on the origins of the first dictionary – which contained some 2500 words – was fantastic.

If you like this kind of general esoteric reading, I would recommend this book to you . with a warning. It would need to be read/heard many times to put together the ideas the author is presenting through very disparate strands. I had great fun hearing the anthroplogy bits – about the ‘tom tom’ drums’ – and understood that the first time around. When it came to the information sciences or lexicography – the story was different – i had to hear it multiple times to understand. And, that is the beauty of the book – information is not one dimensional. it is impossible, at least for me,  to know about all dimensions. ‘words are defined by other words’ the book says… information i guess, is linked to other information.

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SK and I had a great interaction on a lovely story with JKD.

The next stage is a first draft screenplay …

Need to  have more of these interactions in my life. Yesterday, had a great interaction with the HoD of BMM at KC college & before that the HoD at Sophia…

In recent times, my best interactions have been on twitter. on a variety of topics 😀 now it is time to bring that into real life…the physical world.

I wonder why it is easier to have conversations with random strangers on a social networking platform – that it is with people in real life. Is it that the virtual space takes away the fear of being laughed at? or you can’t see the people laughing at you? 😀 would make for an interesting study…

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Heard a brilliant recording of a very young, and a very hot, Bhimsen Joshi. Raga Puriya Dhanashree

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Took pictures too – but the battery is dead. being charged.