Or how the Internet fosters innovation

by Waqar Shah

Our world has converged into an increasingly interconnected, heterogeneous community of people belonging to different cultures and ethnicities, speaking different languages, and getting ever greater opportunities to interact and communicate with each other.

The greater possibilities for interaction between cultures that were spurred in the twentieth century by advances in transport such as air travel were not available to people of ages bygone; the advances ininformation and communication technology achieved at the turn of this century were not available only a few decades earlier. The communications revolution of recent times is every bit as groundbreaking as the development of the modern transport systems preceding it, or even the Industrial Revolution.

Cultures that evolved over hundreds of years were suddenly exposed to new stimuli that were to affect them in unprecedented ways. Peoples that had led traditional lives in isolated communities were now confronted with new choices and new opportunities.

The transformations brought about were multilateral and symbiotic. While those living in developing countries suddenly had greater access to the latest information about the lifestyles and dynamics of theFirst World, getting in effect greater opportunities to improve their own lives, the inhabitants of the post-industrialized world had a chance to appreciate and benefit from the unique perspectives ofcultures that were often radically different from their own.

Even as cultural interactions have taken place with increased frequency since the dawn of the twentieth century, both their scaleand scope have changed dramatically with the advent of therevolutionary communication technologies of the post-modern age. While the transfer of technology across the world occurred at different paces throughout history, often with innovative outcomes like that of gunpowder introduced to Europe, or personal computers to India, in recent years the transfer of ideas has assumed a marked pace of its own. And although business at the speed of thought (asadvocated by Bill Gates) may yet be some way off, ideas todayliterally travel at the speed of light thanks to technologies such asthe Internet.

The diverse worldviews available to the average citizen of the UnitedStates in the first decade of the twenty first century, for example, would not have been possible only a few decades earlier. While thefascination with Eastern spirituality and Indian fads in the West maybe some of the most conspicuous, superficial aspects of this cross cultural exchange – more profound developments may be taking place in the collective consciousness of humanity. The human mind may be entering a new phase in its evolution, as mass-consciousness attempts to gather bits and pieces of the civilizational experience that nature has distributed to man across his world through the thousands of years of his development.

Ancient cultures around the world apparently tend to possess certain unique features, or core competences, so to speak, that give them an edge over other cultures in specific domains. Obvious examples ofsuch inimitable cultural features may be found in Indian spiritual and meditation techniques, Chinese martial arts, and Western technologyand organizational capabilities – all unique, civilizational skillsthat developed in isolation, but eventually led to the enrichment of mankind’s experience in totality. Sanskrit, a prosaic language especially suited to the expression of discrete ideas may havecontributed to India becoming a major software powerhouse, while lyrical Arabic may have made for some of the most beautiful Urdu poetry imaginable.

Today, when a Belgian man recommends Kimchi to his fellow Web-surfers in order to improve brain power, or when a Polynesian teenager advocates the use of the Noni fruit growing on his island to improve muscular endurance, human intellect may have finally come into itsown. Unique outlooks, perspectives, and specific cognitions that formed across the world as a result of centuries of human experience in isolation, may now have unprecedented opportunities to converge, restructure and even lead to the development of new forms ofknowledge.

Creativity may be a particular beneficiary of such extensive,transcending forms of communication. Such new sources of information may prove to be a boon to human ingenuity, as diverse ideas give rise to richer thought, opening up new horizons for the human mind as it learns to think with greater freedom.

New paradigms may now be created by the average mind that has access to information about whole new contexts, overriding old notions. For example, an inquisitive villager in Africa may use the Internet to discover that the hardy aloe vera plant that thrives in the deserts of Australia also provides a veritable storehouse of nutrients, a reliable potential food source for the starving people of drought-ridden Sudan. The perceptive human mind now has access to new solutions, creating whole new paradigms by simply linking existing bits of information – connecting existing contexts to create new ones.

So what does all this bode for the future of our world? Leadership,for one, is bound to see major developments. Those who have the foresight to forge links between hitherto unrelated contexts willcreate paradigms that will be dutifully followed by the rest of their communities. In our time, one way to define leadership would be to see it as the power to actually create new patterns of thought andbehavior – new ways of going about life.

This, then, may be the ultimate achievement of mankind – the end of evolution, as it were – to discover, extract, conserve, and utilize human genius as it occurs in its natural distribution across ourplanet. Diversity, in all its totality, is the equivalent of human genius – an aggregation of the individual pieces of thought as it developed over millennia, a collection of the countless cognitions that have occurred across the expanse of time. Genius, we may thus surmise, may not be the domain of any one individual, but the collective destiny of mankind.

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow,” said Woodrow Wilson. Suddenly, that may appear to be very true for an increasing number of individuals around the world.

On April Fools day, a Redditor half jokingly stated that Reddit could create the perfect prank by actually being up all day. Reddit’s recent bouts of downtime have given angst to many a social networker in no insignificant measure. Today, Reddit beat its own records by staying down for multiple hours.

The social networking website has experienced astounding growth after beating Digg at the bookmarking game. The growing traffic levels, however, were not matched by a corresponding growth in revenue. This led Conde Nast to introduce such marketing schemes as Reddit Gold, which did alleviate funding problems to some extent. Or so we thought.

But the latest incident of downtime only serves to underscore the urgent need for Reddit to invest in some serious server infrastructure.  Who knows? With potentially increasing traffic, Reddit may well be on its way to becoming the next Facebook! Maybe if they actually bought some more servers instead of whacking the aliens with a hammer, they might actually get somewhere. On the flip side, if Reddit keeps up its downtime woes, Digg might even see a comeback!

Pro Tip

If you want to experience the awesomeness of Reddit during what appears to be downtime, try visiting http://www.reddit.com through a proxy server such as Vtunnel or Ctunnel. You might just get lucky and get through!

(Like this story? Reddit it! [as if...])

Firefox 4 was extraordinarily well received by the Internet community, with people downloading Mozilla’s latest browser over 60 million times when this post was written. The browser brought a range of improvements, from faster software processing speed to an improved tabbed layout.

However, some aspects of the famed web browser have suffered rather needlessly. Chief amongst these (rather regressive) drawbacks is the lack of a status bar. This came as quite a surprise to many users (especially those in the developer community) who relied upon the excellent variety of Firefox toolbars available, and were used to seeing specific toolbar activity in the Firefox status bar. These people saw their toolbars virtually disappear overnight.

A toolbar can be artifically added to Firefox 4 through a plugin. The best plugin for adding a status bar to Firefox 4 is the Status 4 Evar plugin.

What started as an April Fool’s Day prank by search engine giant and Gmail provider Google has actually been realized by the University of Southern California Los Angeles. “Gmail Motion” was the name given to a fictional motion sensor activated Gmail interface “introduced” by Google on the first of April 2011.

An actual Gmail motion controller was put together by UCL’s ICT MxR labs using Microsoft Kinect. The resultant contraption, called Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving (SLOOW) could input and send emails just by body movements. The system is based upon a toolkit framework called FAAST (no we’re not making this up), which can be downloaded and used by anybody.

The Federal Communications Commission has announced that it is handing out free wireless routers to anyone who chooses to participate in an ISP Test. Called Test my ISP, the project is created in collaboration with Sam Knows, and is intended to help shape the future of the American broadband industry.

Behind the hype, whether the system will fare any better than the well known Speedtest.net is anyone’s guess. But what’s the harm in trying? You just might get a free wireless router.

Losing focus of your readership’s sentiments can spell doom for any social media website: just ask Digg. So why is Mashable now trying to push its luck? In a recent post about a supposedly mind altering video, a Mashable writer claimed that a video of a still lake with a woman jumping up and down in front of it would “destroy your mind”. We felt that the video was at best not even remotely interesting. Many others would call it garbage (just read the comments on the thread).

Social media aficianados will have seen many such “blow your  mind” videos on sites like Reddit and Digg; whether all those videos can actually withstand the scrutiny of the average Joe is really something else.

Apparently throwing caution to the wind, it now seems that Mashable is trying to produce content for the sake of content, meaning be damned. In some quarters, such content is also known as “blog spam”. Is anyone hearing?

The Android Developer Ecosystem has announced that in-app purchases will soon be enabled for the Android platform. Android has already cemented its position as the the overarching mobile platform in the world, its growth driven by low cost and open source nature. With the in-app sale functionality enabled, Android could likely give rise to a whole new mobile economy.

Developers the world over will now be able to sell intellectual (or even tangible) serivices within their applications, giving rise to new possibilities and changing lives the world over. Mobile devices will give emerging businesses new opportunities to showcase their wares.

Catalogs of in-app products, replete with pricing information,  can now be created in the Developer Console. Although testing is available this week, the full functionality won’t be released until the week starting on the 28th of March 2011.

While using Google’s Chrome browser to access Mozilla’s website and download Firefox 4, we encountered a smug little message on the lower left hand corner of our screen:

This type of file can harm your computer. Are you sure that you want to download Firefox Setup 4.0.exe?

Well, what a way to dissuade people from downloading your competitor’s web browser! There’s a lot of talk of net neutrality and how ISPs could possibly restrict access to competiting service providers, but what about web browsers? Should there be increased “browser neutrality” too?

Surely Google Chrome should know better than to insinuate that a respected and widely used browser could possibly be malware? Or is it just the latest shot in the unrelenting browser wars!

Android revolutionized the mobile application development industry by providing a free and easy to use development framework. You too can build an Android app on your computer – it is definitely easier(not to mention cheaper) than building an iPhone app! Try it now to see how easy it is.

Step 1. Get JDK

Installing the Java Development Kit is a prerequisite to developing applications for Android platform. Getting just the Java Runtime Environment is not enough; you need to get the JDK. Java Development Kit standard should be sufficient for your development platform. You first need to select your operating system before downloading and installing the JDK.

Step 2. Get Eclipse

Download the Eclipse development environment. The preferred version is Eclipse Classic. You can unpack it to your desktop or to a preferred folder. You don’t need to install Eclipse as it runs by an executable file. You do, however, need to set the workspace path to save your work to.

Step 3. Get the Android SDK

Download and install the Android SDK. Google’s dedicated Software Development Kit for the Android mobile operating system makes development much easier by creating a Java framework that you can use. After you install the SDK, make sure you download all the updates just to play it safe.

Step 4. Get the Android ADT Plug-in for Eclipse

Before you can use Eclipse effectively, you need to install the proper plugin for Android. This will effectively link the Android SDK to Eclipse.

You can’t just grab the plugin off a URL. To get the ADT plugin, you will need to do a bit of tinkering with the Eclipse environment. Launch Eclipse, then go to Help>Install new software. Then click on the “Add” button.

This will take you to a screen where you can specify the download path for the Android Plug-in.

Now you need to input the path from where the Plugin will be downloaded and installed into Eclipse. This path is http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
Press OK. Eclipse will now download and install the list of Android Plugin components.

Step 5. Configuring the ADT Plugin

Within Eclipse, you now need to specify the Android SDK path (the one you installed the Android SDK into in Step 3).
Go to Window > Preferences > Android and then Browse to the relevent SDK location.

And Voila! You have just configured your first Android Development environment. Wasn’t that easy?

Firefox 4 is set to be released tommorrow. The latest version of Mozilla’s highly acclaimed open source web browser, Firefox 4 will be eagerly anticipated by developers and consumers alike.

JavaScript will now run up to three times as fast, along with faster core processing bringing Firefox up to par with the likes of Internet Explorer 9 and Google Chrome.