Text-Me-Not

I would stop short of calling myself a gadget geek. I do, however, have a deep-rooted belief in Technology's game-changing abilities — at work and otherwise. This, coupled with a proclivity towards things new, often leads me to an early adopter posture toward techie products and concepts. One such acquaintance I made in the late 90s was text messaging. In fact, I evangelized its discreet convenience, referable memory, etc — compared to here-and-now voice calls to anyone who cared to listen (in context, it helped that it was free vs steeply priced airtime!), and remain an above-average user to this day.

I must add that I did not register in the first wave of DNC, even if sympathetic to the indignation on unwanted calls. My reasons were largely professional. At its root, the credo of open communication (read: taking calls from unknown numbers) was an occupational hazard. In reality, it was a goldmine of information - it helped me get bad news (the variety you want to know ASAP) promptly more than once, plus rudimentary competitive intelligence; not to forget insights best derived from listening to the occasional irate customer. All of this strengthened my resolve to stick it out amidst the onslaught of sundry telemarketers.

Unfortunately, it seems to be going from bad to worse. It is almost an incipient reality of modern life that text-messaged advertisements carpet-bomb your Inbox every day. Pesky calls too, after an initial decline, have reared their head again. The vanguard is clearly SMS though, and the biggest violator real estate firms and agents: I am subject to a dozen messages daily, in complete disregard of my tenuous pecuniary state! The bulk of these supposedly fantastic property deals are in assorted parts of Delhi NCR; but interspersed are offers from Jaipur's Tonk Road, plots in the Uttarakhand hills, down to faraway Mysore and back-of-beyond. It makes me wonder if only geographic bounds have been transcended or those of sanity too. Or perhaps it is my middle-class upbringing that limits me to imagine an investor class that takes realty, or similar sizeable, investment decisions based on an SMS exchange!

The uninvited texts wear other colours too. In fact, had it not been for the glaring segmentation error (maybe they score intention, not ability, as an explanation for ignoring my financial position) in real estate ads, or those ridiculous friendship helplines, I would have thought a grand design in peddling me travel packages, hairfall cure (ouch) or zero-effort fat-removal therapy (I even got one for a 10 yr US visa in 10 days for 10K from some random Churchgate agent last week). Frankly, if only less prolific, it would have been funny.

When viewed within a broader context, the apparent helplessness of the Indian consumer to overcome this mess only adds to the general scam-season discontent. True to form, an irresolute UPA-2 has shed hardly a tear for the revised-twice-yet-missed 31 Mar deadline. Strangely, their blundering ways have come to their rescue. With public attention on other more ignominious spectacles, they have actually been able slip by without saying almost anything.

Deadlines apart, given its declared intentions to snoop on all voice-data exchanges in the country (recall the BlackBerry tangle), the Government can hardly argue that policy formulation or erecting filter infrastructure are insurmountable asks. Likewise, allocating a special telemarketing code for landlines, or cracking down on rogue telecom companies that continue to sell bulk SMS deals should not be too tough to execute. Yet, the ongoing spectacle of DoT-TRAI ping-pong on the issue inspires little confidence in their appreciation for the task at hand or the seriousness of their commitment to it.

No one, of course, can fault the Government if it avers that implementing a foolproof DNC (or do-call) registry, including critical security pieces, is a complex exercise. I am just not sure why it should remain open-ended and a shifting goalpost (which sounds counter-intuitive in the context of technology). The nation needs a quantifiable plan. Or perhaps Mr Sibal needs to be text-blitzed to realise this...

Say Cheese!

There's something to be said for junior siblings who harbour grandmotherly ambitions — not only are their intentions unfailingly above-board, but they often provide you with eminently sensible advice. My younger sister, forever trying to overtake the years that separated our births (and not merely due to her head-start in child-rearing), gave me one such invaluable tip some moons ago. In sum and substance, her insight was to forsake still photography in favour of video when trying to capture intimate moments with my newborn.

The logic, as most parents will readily recognise, is simply this: perfect as the cherub may be, one can never quite manage to make them pose, camera at the ready in the manner one desires to capture; or be able to whip out the camera in time to catch the pose they already have. Consider, too, how consumed one is by an overarching desire to capture those magical moments for posterity or future viewing pleasure. As such, among general early parenting tutorials, this visual arts lesson is worth its weight in gold. (There is a school of thought that directly posits Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to be an offshoot of this inability of subject and equipment to align!) The handycam, video-enabled digicam, or (increasingly) the mobilephone camera in video mode, therefore, are God’s gift to parentkind. You point, click, and whirr — you're away!

But whoa, you still have to lug the equipment along; test your hand-eye coordination; and of course keep one hand otherwise engaged, and not in petting one’s progeny or restraining them from mischief! Last month, however, going through some internal communication on digital trends and practices, my attention was drawn to a brand new product. Looxcie, as this device is called, is a camera crossed with a Bluetooth handsfree audio earset. Perched on your ear, Looxcie’s camera records all you see, all the time — and if you spot something worth capturing (or sharing online in our post-FB quasi-voyeuristic times) you click a button — to save, edit, or instantly upload the immediate 30-sec clip to your favourite social networking site.

Now you may be justified in calling this premature, but my argument is that the Looxcie represents a new level in the evolutionary relationship between humans and machines. Like many digital products, it fundamentally makes technology seamless by reducing disruption in your daily life and habit during its use. We thus take a step closer to the body itself becoming our computing interface.

There is a catch, of course — and it is surely not the device’s five-hour storage limit. As our real and virtual worlds collide, the Looxcie as an accessory for the self is sure to find many takers. Yet, not all of us may be equally comfortable playing Dante to its Beatrice — lest Divine Tragedies result.

Numb and Number: UID

Well into the 21st century, the first impression for anyone walking into a government office in India is likely an image of a deluge of paper, embodying its creaky infrastructure. A proliferation of overflowing cupboards, dusty files stacked wall to wall, cobweb-tangled piles kissing the roof, and reigning over every spit-stained corner; it is an ugly and telling sight. The obvious — a grim tale of bureaucratic sloth suggestive of callow indifference, busy adding to the karguzari paper mountain day by day. Equally, a sense of wonder how, in its midst and despite it, the business of governance carries on in our vast, parched lands.

Times are a-changing, though. Via some central initiative but mostly local effort, the Government is waking up to technology and convergence. While paperless is still a far cry, Indian officialdom is taking gradual, diffident steps to improve information management and productivity. This is only natural. Services, and specifically IT, offered a way out in a country beset by inadequate physical infrastructure. In tandem with corruption and lopsided left-leaning policy, these bottlenecks had leashed us to a stubbornly sluggish growth and economic has-been status. New Age technology enabled the emergence of a confident, vibrant India that is generously glimpsed today. Thus, it is only fitting that it provides the vehicle for our governance transformation, light in a pen-pushing, paper-gorging Black Hole where citizenry feared to tread.

Obviously, this goes much beyond paper. Of vital significance are technology's game-changing capabilities in delivery of governance benefits. Indeed, the Government has put no less than 27 mission-critical projects to this task. UID, or Aadhaar as it is now named, is arguably the most important of these: the core of our national e-enablement effort. The idea is simple - a unique identifier to serve as primary key driving the massive information repository that governance for a billion-plus populace entails. Naturally, the superstructure can only be as good as its edifice. And the UID ask is humongous — plan and execute a 12-digit numerical tag for a mindboggling 600 million records, including associated biometric and personal data. All this over the next 4 years, while staying true to the goals of building a robust and efficient system. If successful, this identifier and pathbreaking database of biometric permanent numbers and personal statistics would enable policy analytics and monitoring at an unprecedented scale. Frankly, it is nearly impossible to envision the full governance impact of the result. Yet, broadly speaking, its incisive segmentation and targeting ability would be a dream in terms of faster rollout, easier tracking, and better audit.

Of course, the picture is not all hunky-dory. The enormity of the exercise is perhaps equalled only by its complexity. For instance, potential private use is a double-edged sword. While it does wonders for, say, a financial services company for verification, marketing analytics, and the like, the risk in unfettered online access to personal information can be immense, especially for a terrorism-frontline state. To this extent, UID is much more than a technological challenge or design complexity. Imagine concurrent needs across multilevel security and ease of accessibility in a citizenry with varying levels of computer proficiency (safely assumed low on average). Then there are connectivity concerns (Mukeshbhai's opportunity can be Nilekani's bugbear). Revert to traditional paper census methods or a paper-hub-digital-spoke model and you open up data compromise risks in L1 implementation itself. Power can play spoilsport too — solar panels had to be used to fill gaps during proof-of-concept — and bear in mind that a Karnataka does not an India make. We cannot be blind to the bureaucracy's internal change resistance either — some of the flock do love a good drought, as we unfortunately know only too well! And so on.

Yet, the RTI experience shows that political will at the top goes a long way in overcoming what seems prima facie insurmountable. Similar commitment must be mobilised to tackle the issue of data privacy protection for citizens in post-UID India. Not only is this a checks-and-balances need, it is high time the GOI realised that potential for misuse in a nation with lax, ill-defined laws is not restricted to its Internal Security agencies alone. Take this train of thought forward, and one would love to see proactive public debate around Aadhaar's design and other postulates or concerns — beyond the self-congratulatory, world-hunger-solution posturing that has come by till date. Short of this, it will be another gamechanger that flattered to deceive!