Teach For India Mindmap

Here's a Mindmap I've started!

Mobile-to-mobile calls: the ultimate future of mobile telephony?

Our modern-day cell phones are more limited than walkie-talkies made over 40 yrs ago! Don't believe that? read on..
Consider these situations and locations: Bhuj in the Gujarat earthquake, regions around south Asia after the december-04 tsunami, Mumbai and rural maharashtra in the 2005 floods. There were people trapped & in need of food, medical attention at out-of-sight locations in all these situations, many of them had working cell-phones with them, but most couldn't call for help as the nearest cell phone towers were knocked out, there was no network coverage. Now, imagine this: what if all these people had, instead of the latest cell phones, a 30-yr-old walkie-talkie, ? This may not have all the hi-fi features, but at least you could contact anyone receiving the same frequency in a very wide area, with minimal battery power used! To be able to contact a far-away rescue team, giving them the exact location and number of survivors, could have really saved several lives. But how is it, that today's modern cell phones, with all their advanced technology, can't get you out of such a life-or-death situation when a 40 yr-old relic could have?

This is an unfortunate result of some bad telecom planning.. in the interest of keeping constant revenues, telecom infrastucture makes you completely dependent on the network and subsequently on a small bunch of fallible communication towers. Now, every cell phone out there surely has the basic technology required to communicate with other radio devices some kms away. Imagine this: in the event of a disaster, if people's cell phones could communicate with each other instead of depending on a network and relay messages effectively to the rescue teams. Even if there was only one working cell phone at every 1 km distance, relaying messages could mean connectivity with the most remote of areas! The potential benefits in times of crisis are so vast that you'd think why this hasn't been already applied, after all it would be the natural next step in communications after the walkie-talkie.

Unfortunately, with a business climate worldwide wanting to earn revenue on telecom, the phone-to-phone idea was given a silent burial. It's perfect capitalistic sense: by shackling the phones in the most complex of protocols, authorisation and authentication, the mobile communication towers would be the point of passing and hence of revenue. Imagine a normal everyday situation: two people sitting in adjoining buildings, just a wall apart, and they can't contact each other because the network coverage is low. Wouldn't it be much simpler if the two cell phones could just search for and communicate with each other? Thankfully some companies are waking up to the glaring hole in common sense.. read this news article from bbc.co.uk:

Mobile system promises free calls

As expected there's stiff opposition, without any foresight towards the above mentioned problems whatsoever, from service providers who know that with the revival of such basic techniques for communication, their revenues will surely dwindle. Just as well.. it's already ridiculous that we pay so much for services in an industry that's almost wholly automated! The service providers are literally reaping a harvest from their high revenues for sms's.. a service that's charged pretty disproportionate to its actual cost of operation. And since there's few employees, the major wealth goes to the few owners instead of the local populace. A capitalist's dream indeed!

Right now they're actually fighting tooth and nail for regulations (read: shackles) against VOIP which basically lets one make almost free phone calls anywhere using the internet, and popular free peer-to-peer applications like skype. Let's hope they don't win over the general interests of the people. I believe the next communication revolution is going to include the inevitable fall of revenues of major service providers with the proliferation of unit-to-unit communication. With the technology for effective peer-to-peer mobile communication ready, let's hope we get to see truly free phone calls in a few years!

NASA going the wrong way: let's not follow them

I found this article in an online student journalism magazine from Boston : "SciTini". Here's the link:

NASA's Moon Shot is a Blank

If you read this post then make sure your read the article too.
It illustrates a very evident phenomenon seen in govt administrations all over the world nowadays: they seem to be dumbing down more than ever. Facts are being replaced by rhetoric, and detailed explanations are giving way to bulleted lists and points.

This is turning out as a serious crisis for NASA, whose decisions ought to be based more on scientific pursuit than rhetoric. Now, several of their critical scientific study projects are being shelved and the resources being diverted to simpler, though admittedly more 'exciting' projects like the manned mars mission. The devil, as always, lies in the details.
here's a quote from the link above:

Six earth science programs are set to be sacrificed this year: Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), Atmospheric Soundings from Geostationary Orbit (ASGO), Ocean Vector Winds (OVW), Landsat Data Continuity Bridge Mission, Glory, and the Wide Swatch Ocean Altimeter, measuring precipitation, temperature and water vapor, wind speed and direction near the ocean’s surface, land cover, solar irradiance, and sea level height, respectively. Together these missions would paint a highly detailed and in-depth look at many factors related to climate change that would be invaluable not only to climate science but to humanity at large.

Projects that would contribute so much to the common man right now are being sacrificed for less serious ones. The reason why not many people are getting alarmed is because now, more often than before we tend to skip the details. Someone who has no idea about any complex, scientific unmanned missions (and doesn't want to) will naturally choose the more expensive but simpler, more 'manly' (for want of a better word) manned mission. The problem is, that someone is sitting in the chair that controls the funding!

With this series of events being witnessed at NASA which was once probably the most technically advanced organization in the world, i hope the space agencies elsewhere in europe, india, china, japan will learn and avoid the same follies. The 'race' to put a man on the moon and other planets will right now not do anything to predict the next big climate disaster. One manned mission can be replaced by many more unmanned projects, for the same financial & technical resources. And right now the world needs these projects more.

We desperately need much more intensive study of world climate on an enormous scale. It's ridiculous that even today an old man looking up at the sky can make the same weather prediction as our best met department's. And even after watching the horror of disaster movies like Deep Impact, it's a joke that humanity has yet to devise a credible defense strategy against any earth-threatening asteroid. Today we still wouldn't be able to fend off 6 out of 10 wayward and dangerous space bodies, for the simple reason that we haven't cared to chart all the moving objects in the solar system as of yet. It's not like we don't have the telescopes.. It's like standing blindfolded with a gun in your hand - you have the capability to destroy the threat but it's all useless since you don't know where it's coming from.

I hope that in coming years, instead of following the american bandwagon, the other space agencies in the world do more to address these more pressing issues. Today we have the technology and capability to unmask almost all the unpredictable things that affect us, and remove or minimize their effects on the citizenry. If only we don't let rhetoric and pride take precedence over common sense.