Be A Good
Citizen & Netizen (Digitarati)
By
DR T.H. CHOWDARY
Director: Center for Telecom Management and Studies
Fellow: Tata Consultancy Services
Chairman: Pragna Bharati (intellect India )
Former: Chairman & Managing Director
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited &
Information Technology Advisor,
Government of Andhra Pradesh
T: +91(40) 6667-1191(O) 2784-3121®
F: +91 (40) 6667-1111
hanuman.chowdary@tcs.com
Citizen & Netizen
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City dweller – Citizen
Net dweller/worker /user- Netizen
Duties beget Rights
One’s rights & liberties stop where others’
begin
• No word for rights in any Bharatiya Bhasa
• Our Constitution was amended to specify
duties Art- 51(A)
June 2014
Gentleman & CULTURE:
• Culture is the sum total of one’s being towards himself;
family; society and God
• To know something of everything and everything of
something
• Is obedience to unenforceable laws
• A gentleman so lives as to “add to the sum total of
happiness” in the society/world
• A gentleman/lady is one who never inflicts pain upon
others
• A gentleman does not do to others what he does not like
to be done to him.
June 2014
Education
• Education is different from but includes
literacy, history, facts, scholarship; skills….
• Education to enable man to realise the divine
potential
Aham Brahmaasmi
Luceat lux Vestra
• Culture is different from civilization
June 2014
Education: Modesty
• Vidyaa dadaati vinayam,
Vinayaat paatrata
Patratvaat dhanam,
Dhanaat dharmam
Dharmaat moksham
• Modesty – Episode I a city bus
June 2014
Education:
Dharma, Artha, Kaama, Moksha
• Dharmoh Rakshati Rakshitah - Gandhari;
• Nasr min Allah Fatah unqureeb
(Allah grants victory to those whose cause is just)
• Na Vittena tarpaneeyoh manushyah
(Katha- Man does not live by bread alone[Bible])
• Dharmaaviroddho bhuteshu Kamo asmi (Gita)
• Salvation - Freedom from the cycle of birth and death
• Artha & kaama are bound in /circumscribed by Dharma & Moksha
• Don’t negate: “ you are wrong…”, get around
• When guest came don’t sit in front of TVs
• Back off from disagreements/hostile discussion (Home, office, [public)
June 2014
Is Wealth Everything?
• Where is the life we having lost in living
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us further from God and nearer to the dust
– TS Eliot
• Na Vittena tarpaneeyo manushyah
• Man shall not live by bread alone. But by every word that
proceedeth out of the month of God - Mathew IV . 2-4
June 2014
Cultured Conduct
• Modesty, Vinaya
• Greeting, Poorvaabhashi. [Sumathi….]
• Not done in public [sneezing, yawning, spitting, blowing,
guffawing ….
• Queuing
• Not speaking on Cell-phone in lifts, waiting rooms, public
places. (Smoking is injurious to public health; even passive
smoking so is cell-phone talk in lifts, auditoria, Qs……)
June 2014
ఆవులింత, తుమ్ము, హాసింబమ, నిష్టీవ
నింబమ గమప్త వర్త నమ్మలు గాగ
జలుప్ువలయమనన ప్తి కొలువునన యెడల బా
హిర్మ్మల ైన గెలనికేగు మలగమట
( విరాటప్ర్విం: 1-137)
వెలది జూదింబమ పానింబమ వేట ప్లుకు
ప్రలలదింబమను దిండింబమ బర్ుసదనమ్మ
సొ మ్ము నిష్ప్రయోజనమ్మగా వమ్ము సేత
యనెడు సప్త వయసనమ్మల జనదు తగమల
(ఉదయ యగ: 2.44)
Telephoning:
• How to display number +91 (40) 2784-6137
• How to annunciate a number: eg: 22233556 double two, two
three; three five, five six
• Answer promptly
• Say: Namaskar! Bahuguna speaking
Or Namaskar! Sri Bahuguna’s Office
• If wanted party is not there, offer to take a message, caller’s
name, number, time of call, message; tell you would
inform……”
• will you call back or expect to be called.
• Caller: Identify yourself
• Right number; wrong person or wrong number
June 2014
Deportment:
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No right to be ugly
No need to be beautiful, assumed airs
Modesty in dress, speech
Stand on both legs (no donkeying)
Do not lean against walls, doors
Do not press lift button again and again
Speak softly (loudness), clearly, not fast
(Churchill to his colleague)
June 2014
Hearing - Listening
My Lords, My Lords, If I may say so with out offence to the
Noble Earl, the leader of the house, he speaks so much
more than he listens that I cannot help feeling, he
sometimes does not hear what he says’s
-Lord Swinton about Lord Longford
• Listen: Not merely hear, repeat, take notes, get right,
convey that you care and act.
• Midnight call - a tale of grievancea letter of admiration
June 2014
Looking…….
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Looking, seeing, noticing, observing
Looking at TV while with guests and eating
Use filters against porn sites
Dress [Jeans, tights…….] Eswara Chandra
Vidyaa Sagar
• Shoes (socks), not chappals, slippers
• Driving – [No horn, keep to your lane, Headlights,….Cross-roads…]
June 2014
Cell Hell
• Walking & talking – dangerous like drunkdriving
• Cell talk in lifts, queues, corridors, waiting
rooms, buses, trains, airplanes -disgusting
• We make gestures when we speak;
public performance is ugly, vulgar.
• Pushing keys while not at purposeful work
• Tranquility lost
• Do Praanayaama instead
June 2014
Culture Cultivation
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Literature
Memorising, reciting (Vaakshuddhi)
Personal library
Family Life-dining table as “Class-room”
How to be a guest
How to ‘meet’ – not w/o appointment
Calling back/Return Calls
Writing a diary
Home(not mere dormitory)
Family bonding
Dining Table- A Class Room (what They don’t teach at the
Harvard Business School)
June 2014
Culture Cultivation (Contd)
• To-Do Note-Book – Review
• Memorise names – most sweetest is one’s own name
• Never ask “can you recall my name?” “Do you remember
me?”
• Use “aap”, “Sir”, “Meeru”
• Visiting elders, teachers – never with empty hands
• Best gifts – Good books, flowers…..
• Gratefulness – Thanks
• Forget the good deed; Regret inability (Chittaranjan Das
episode)
• Greatest gifts parents can give to children- Time
June 2014
Vision
• One man with conviction is the majority
• Life’s battles are often won not by those who
are strong but by those who think they can.
• Hannibal marched elephants across the Alps
into Itally. Conquered it [30,000 against
150,000]
– Churchill’s tribute to Britain’s airmen Battle of
Britain
• “Never in the history of human conflict was
so much owed by so many to so few”
June 2014
Vision (contd…)
• We will make electricity so cheap that only the
rich can afford to burn candles.
-Thomas Alva Edison
• Cities, countries and continents will be
connected and people will talk to one another
from anywhere, anytime, to anyone…….
-Alexander Graham Bell
June 2014
Vision (Contd)
• We will make telephony cheaper than a postcard - Dhirubhai Ambani
• (1978) Ghar Ghar Mein Radio
Gaon Gaon Mein Telephone
• (1997) Hath Hath Mein Telephone;
Gaon Gaon Mein Internet
- Dr T.H.Chowdary
June 2014
Wealth accumulates ….Men decay….
Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay,
Prices and lords may flourish or fade,
A breath can make them as a breath has made,
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride
When once destroyed can never be supplied
- Goldsmith in Deserted village.
‘I want an India where the peasants are not beguiled or
intimidated into giving up their lands for Mr. Nehru to
build castles in thin air through co-operative farming…”
--Rajaji June 2014
Books for Reading
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Shantiparva in Mahabharata
Sundara Kanda (Ramayana) – Hanuman to Sita
Gita Rahasya by Lokamanya Tilak
Bharthrihari’s Subhashitas
Sumathi & Vemana Satakas
Rama Charita Manas – Tulasi Das
Krishnavatara- K M Munshi
Mahabharata- Rajaji
Ramayana – Rajaji
Upanishads- Rajaji
Our Culture- Rajaji
June 2014
Netizens - Beware
• Don’t send messages views by SMS/e-mal to any and all.
• Has the recipient nothing better than answer /respond to
them
• SPAM
• Don’t use quaint spellings like U for you Ur for your 2 for to 4
for four and so on.
• Simple & cost free to forward copies of documents to several (
CC: means carbon copy) – that is wholesale dumping: Avoid it
• Don’t use computer for simple additions, multiplications,
divisions …
Don’t outsource memory
• Don’t allow children to become computer addicts
June 2014
E-mail loading
• Don’t return full copy of message with the
recipients reply. It is a killer if the message is
long ( and the channel thin)
• Worst digital habit, gratuitous copy (cc) to
any/ every one.
• E-mail impacts life-style –spoiling
Sundays/holidays; night & rest & sleep. E-mail
sparingly to preserve rest & holiday
June 2014
E-mail over-load
• At Intel: loss due to unnecessary e-mails ( 7 hrs at
week in 1996 and unnecessary interruption)
• 1996 Reuters Survey of 1300 mgrs worldwide, 2/3rd
associated information overload with loss of job
satisfaction and tension with colleagues - 42%
attributed ill health to this stress
• Information workers receive 50/200 mails/day of
which one third are unnecessary processing them
2h/week
• Information workers interrupted once in 3 mnts –
Brain can’t multi-task atJunethis
rate
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Astavadhani/Satavadhani
• Creative thinking requires long stretches of
uninterrupted time
• Plan driven no more-interrupt-driven
• (Cellphone, land-phone, latest intruder, switch
between callers)
• Using information channels w/o reference to
behaviour outcomes …..may contribute to employee
burnout
• Zero e-mail Day
June 2014
The Net-Threat
• The more the multi-tasking , the more hampered is
our ability to think deeply and creatively
• Outsource memory - withers culture
• Web pages are viewed, NOT Read
• Allows us to know less
• US cell phone user sends /receives 400 tests/months
• 4 times than in y’06
• American teen ager S/R 2272 texts/m
• Worldwide 2T text messages per year
June 2014
Internet, Brain & Mind
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Incredible amount o f information
Instantaneous availability
Shallow knoweldge
Thinking suspended
Memory outsourced
Learning devalued screen(s) replace pages
Pressing (keys) replaces writing
Inattention to details
Depth gives way to shallowness
20 secs. of page-view instead of 180 secs. reading of a page
Brain’s storage and retrieval (search & present) capacity
diminished
June 2014
Viewing Replaces Reading
• A slow erosion of our humanness and our huanity
• Our brains become adept at forgetting an inept at
remembering
• Israeli company Click Tale data in Y 2008
Visitors to sites across the world
Time Visitor view a page
US/UK -21; India/ Aus -24 and 20; France – 25
• Time to read a page: 1 ½ to 2 mnts ; seeing a pageabout 20 Secs.
June 2014
Loss of Faculty for…
• After working with a word processor for long, I began to lose
my faculty for writing and editing in long hand”
- A writer/Author
• Working memories by processing a stream of distractions.
Result: contemplativeness strengths their ability to control
mind- TAPAS – identification with paramatma
• The easy way may not always be the best way, but easy way is
eth way computers an d search engines work
• A broadening of available in formation leads to a narrowing
of science and scholarship
• PH.Ds off the Internet; Doctorates
June 2014
Brain in vain
• Shift the burden of problem solving and
other mental labour away from user’s brain
into the microprocessor
• As we “externalise” problem solving and other
cognitive chores to computers, we reduce our
brain’s ability to build stable knowledge
structures –schemes
June 2014
Brain in drain
• Every tool imposes limitations even as it open possibilities
• Ability to translate thoughts into cursive writing
diminishes…tapping letters & watching letters appear as if by
magic onscreen!
• We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us
June 2014
Addiction
• China’s de-addiction centers
• Divorce cases in Delhi “My husband is
married to the Internet, NOT ME, any
longer”.
• You Tube , Web TV, HULU (streamed 1.9 bln
videos in Nov 2010 alone)
• To watch Web TV 250 devices are available
(-Nicholas Negroponte)
June 2014
Crime on the Net
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Invasion of privacy
Digital vandalism
software privacy
Data Thievery
Exfiltration
Ph.Ds off the Internet - plagiarism
Talaak, talaak, talaak !
Pornography
Fraud, terror-funding & actions
June 2014
Books to Read
• Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte
(Alfred A. Knopf; New York)
• Technology & Civilisation
• Interactive Media-Social Aspects
• Computer Networks- Social Aspects
June 2014
Dhanyawad:
Thank You
June 2014