Riding Bangalore 3.0
The air around a wedding hall is always pregnant with hopes of the marriage working out in the years to come. But, the wedding itself is an unabashed celebration. Of the wedding, institution of marriage itself, procreation, the catering community, the contractors, the band (bros.), etc. The good-natured citizens of this city were joining the congenial concrete-producing community in matrimony known to all as the Namma Metro. The grey Goliath donning a dirt-kissed red and silver shirt welcomed curious onlookers from the end of the Mahatma Gandhi Road. An hour after the first Namma Metro train had done the deed of cradling the ‘commoners’ to the wasteland of Byappanahalli, people along the metro tracks on the road below absently looked up every time it blew its horn. It truly was a royal wedding. The subjects were faithfully lining up to bless this auspicious occasion. Tightly-knotted barricades brought out the best of the subjects’ capabilities of walking in a straight line patiently. It also helped that none in the crowd were particularly of healthier disposition.
The ceremony had been officiated. Opulence dwarfed the otherwise-adorned sunset against clear skies. They, too, seemed to have come together to bless the union. The incessant booming of instructions by the police almost imitated the chants of priests. As we inched closer to the entrance of the doorway, the ornate floral mantapa stood on a rich red carpet. It looked unoccupied but appropriately out of place. A clump of bright yellow hands played various drums to welcome the eager well-wishers. There were no protests or naysayers in sight. The paupers of the transportation world, pedestrians, were treated with almost suspicious primacy as people tottered towards the staggering serpentine queue. Everybody was there to bless the royal union.
As with any wedding, almost nobody attended it singly. It was a great opportunity to revel in the riches of the powerful in the city and return home confident and content that the wealth they witnessed will never be theirs to be experienced or suffered. People travelled from far and wide to witness the wonderment and show. The sea of faces trickled to a rivulet at the security line, only to converge later at the only functional platform for upstream flows. In truest traditions of the city, there was a general appreciation for lack of options in movement, be it up the stairs, around the eerily spacious mid-level concourse, the escalators or the platform itself. Despite the uniform lack of imagination that the stations seemed to offer, they seemed disproportionately large where people seemed to linger the least.
Marigold petals and green fabric ran the heights of the highly-vulnerable dirty beige walls. People took great delight in plucking metro-coloured balloon-bouquets off the railings. The stations were bright and roomy, but conspicuously lacking in air. This changed, though, once the platforms were approached. The city twinkled with misty eyes back at us as the platform waited for the train to roll down the waving tracks. The train rolled its doors open and with an alarming thud, the seats filled up. As our train departed, another screeched to a halt on the adjoining platform and the deafening cheers propelled us into the ‘historic’ journey. The prospect of looking around at fellow travellers was marred by a unanimous wall of raised cellphones across the train. The prospect of peering through the glass doors was marred by the reflection of the eerily-glowing whiteness of the train’s insides. Three celestial voices announced the arrival of imminent destinations that people showed almost no regard for. The route probably has been etched into people’s mind with the ink newspapers have been devoting to the matter. The bits of the journey with straight alignments of the tracks offered the least pleasure for every turn provided for humoured displacement of the passengers, much alike those found in comedies from the 70’s. It seemed at its noisiest best in Indiranagar and as it slithered onto the Old Madras road. The spectral premises of the Byappanahalli terminal are a breathtaking sight on either ends for the views it affords people so easily comes ironically at a small cost today. It was a little disheartening to see the stations go ignored by the exiting eyes, albeit photographing friends diligently against every piece of printed material with a metro logo on it. This frenzied activity was equally vigorously interlaced with shrill disciplinary warnings from an army of uniformed and plain-clothes employees. These curious specimens were everywhere. They frisked you, guided you to the ticketing counter 30 meters away from the security point, helped you turn around and look towards the stairs/escalators, helped you scale them, move towards the next level where the platforms were, guide you towards them and help you figure the position of the opening train doors. And then, there were those whose sole job was to ensure people stood behind the yellow line so as to not tumble onto the tracks carrying the electricity to make the metro trains run. They had booming voices, whistles, lack of inhibition towards pushing, hitting, shoving, nudging and slipping in ‘much-needed’ profanity. People were fewer in number, but with the zeal of an army of shrieking gleeful children. Entering the platform seemed far easier than exiting it as it seemed to have blessed with an alarmingly single set of stairs-escalators-elevators.
The metro operating family seemed much alike a host wedding family that often oscillated between hospitality and indignation over the stupor of their guests. Customer care booths flanked the concourse that greeted one upon entering the station with practically no capacity with which to function except gesture towards the ticket counter for every conceivable problem one encountered. The entry/exit gates posed their peculiar problems, but perhaps not at the scale of those encountered on the Delhi metro even today. Far more people seemed aware of the systems involved in making a metro journey happen. Conversations about the Delhi metro were also quite commonly heard amongst the riders. A large number of people travelled the metro line but their motivations were a little less obviously discernable, as the incidence of lingering, peering and questioning was less than impressive.
The metro feeder service was very visible in the line’s vicinity, although the dreams of zipping out into the lacklustre fabric of the city remained elusive. Metro stations were operating like gated townships, where the mess of the city (read traffic) was slapping acutely against its gleaming walls. The currents of people spilling onto the roads regardless of the station needed to shrink dramatically to walk along the mountainous footpaths. Elephantine beads of light rolled jagged on the freshly-tarred roads. After a flight of fancy, it seemed I was back in Bangalore again. Coming back home from a wedding is always discomforting, for the joy and radiance is stripped bare of what really comes to be the life one leads. And the life that the metro will lead seems far from approaching the city as it apathetically waits. Of course, until the next wedding comes along.
Bangalore Security Map
Consider this question: What does ‘security’ mean?
In any discussion on ‘how secure we are’, the police assure us that the force is well-equipped to deal with any situation. The talking heads elaborate on how prepared we are in tackling terror attacks and natural disasters. And TV screens flood with images of uniformed personnel performing mock drills with sirens blaring in the background. In all such ongoing debates on security, it is understood to have what can be termed a ‘hard’ definition.
But security has other layers too, which these debates fail to capture — these are the ‘softer’ definitions of security. Consider the nervousness of a lone woman walking along an unlit street at night or a pedestrian’s dilemma in crossing a six-lane road – these are not seen as matters concerning ‘security’. But these perceptions of security need to be articulated too. If not, the debate, which will eventually determine policies shaping our society and the spaces it functions in, will end up losing these nuances.
Toward framing a nuanced definition of security, we wish to understand what security means to you, as a citizen of this city. To do so, we start making a ‘Bangalore Security Map’ that reflects how citizens of the city perceive security and insecurity.
We want to know where in the city you feel insecure and why so. If you feel insecure at a certain part of the city (at a certain time, perhaps), please share with us what could have made you feel safer. Not all senses of insecurity are place-specific, not all of them can be pinned to a certain location in the map. In such cases, please feel free to pin them where the name of the city (‘Bangalore’) is shown (or maybe the neighbourhood you are familiar with) on the map.
Take your time to explore what others have said about the city. Feel free to comment on submission(s) by others, by posting a report next to theirs. Please inform others about the project.
And thanks a lot for taking part in this initiative.
For the map-hackers and data-wizards out there, do remember that we will keep publishing all submitted information in a .csv format once every two months. Please use the published data to create maps and other visualisations, and share it with us and other participants in this initiative.
All personal and contact information submitted will be treated as private, and under no circumstances shared with anyone. All other information will be public and published on the website.
About the project:
The project was conceived in an ‘Urban Security’ workshop conducted by MOD in March 2011; and is a joint initiative of MOD and NGIL, CSTEP. Through the use of a map, the workshop intended to expand the notion of security and incorporate various securities and insecurities that are a part of everyday life. In the process expand the notion of a secure city. The Bangalore Security Map can be found here. You can follow the twitter feed of submissions @scurtymap_bnglr.
About MOD:
MOD is an interdisciplinary collective, with a visual bend of mind, for urban action and research. We are based in Bangalore and Berlin. We believe that to change anything, first it must be made observable, or understandable. We are interested in making cities observable.
Summary of book release event on Indian foreign policy by Dr. David Malone, head of IDRC
This is a summary of the presentation of Dr. David Malone’s book Does the Elephant Dance?, with an introduction by Ramachandran Guha. A well attended event held at the Bangalore Intl Centre, the event began with Drs. Malone and Guha opening up a wrapped copy of the book. Guha compared Malone to Walter Crocker, an Australian diplomat in Delhi who wrote an insightful book on Nehru, but noted that while Crocker was caustic, Malone was gentle and kindly, but that both shared a combination of detachment but fondess for India. Guha then read a few of his favorite sentences from the book, which included comments about how Indian diplomats often play to impress the gallery more than achieve desired diplomatic outcomes, that India suffers from an underutilization of its soft power, and that “its institutional capacities don’t match its ambitions”. He closed by noting that this was a work by a “great scholar but also a sympathizer”.
Malone began by noting that he wanted to draw on Indian sources, as so many books written by non-Indians use only other western sources (and, he included, so do many Indian produced books as well). He argued that in order to understand foreign policy today, one must understand the history from which a country’s positions evolve. He talked about re-reading Nehru and being surprised to find the portrayal of India as a fundamentally Asian country (and power) , a view that has been lost for a while and is only now returning. He contrasted his view of the Raj with Guha’s, who he said was more charitable, as he views it as a project of British economic exploitation that succeeded brilliantly for the British while utterly impoverishing India. He did note that there were a few positive things left behind by the Brits, but not nearly enough to compensate for the period that saw the Indian contribution to global GDP (as estimated by Maddison) decrease from somewhere between 17 and 22% to 2% of global output.
Turning to foreign policy, he talked about how a great deal of politics revolve around internal security threats, and India was no exception. He said that he decided not to have a separate chapter on Pakistan but include it is a general regional chapter, but that he did devote a chapter to China, which will be the most important relationship by far for India into the next century. He stated that China and India “are fated to cooperate as well as compete” with each other as the two largest powers in Asia. He mentioned how the demographic profile of a young population can be a boon or a bomb depending on how it is educated, and that much of the discussion about whether China or India would be the largest was ill advised, as there is nothing certain about the future. With respect to another major relationship, he addressed how the US and India have such difficult relations in part because they are so alike, and how both partners as well as the world are better off now that relations have improved. He mentioned that while the US thought it was getting an ally, it is more appropriate to think that it got a friend that will pursue joint objectives when interests align, but pursue its separate and different interests at times as well. With respect to West Asia, he pointed out that India – like China – pursues bilateral relationships successfully, and this is no mean feat in such a complicated region.
Malone characterized the long interventions in multilateral for a like the United Nations in the 1950s as existential cries when the future (and even existence) of India was uncertain, contrasting today’s confidence and engagement on the global scene, with India looking both to see what it can get as well as contribute.
He noted that the IDRC has an active global Think Tank Initiative that funds 9 think tanks in India, and mentioned that in Bangalore the two funded entities are CSTEP and the PAC.
A lively question and answer session followed. The first question was asked by Dr. Rao, a former head of NCAER and now at ISEC, and before the question was asked he mentioned that NCAER is another of the think tank initiative institutions in India, but that ISEC had applied but not been selected. Questions ranged from the role of energy, to India’s role in Afghanistan, to Canada’s links with India, to India’s chance at getting a seat on an expanded Security Council. Malone answered that energy is key, that India plays an important and balancing role in Afghanistan, that Canada has a large NRI population, and that its policy on getting a seat might be better served through IBSA than the current strategy of aligning with Japan, Germany and Brazil. He doesn’t think that developed countries need more representation – plus the Chinese will never support Japan – but noted that IBSA’s representation of the largest democracies on each of their respective continents would be a powerful calling card, if the 5 permanent members ever decide that they need to expand. There were more questions left to be answered when time ran out. I had my hand up, but was not called on, and there were many others like me.
If I had been asked to comment, I would have noted:
–that Indians and Americans are so much alike, including looking inward rather than outward because of such large and diverse economies; both liking to talk more than listen; and both being able to handle silly politics because of the size of their endowments and economies;
–that IBSA is indeed the entity to watch for the future, unless its current expansion to BASIC (including China) derails and replaces it;
–that it was odd to me in the answer to what Canada has to offer, he mentioned NAFTA, and then the bilateral with the US that goes beyond Nafta in terms of giving folks that locate in Canada unfettered access to the US market; and finally,
–in order for the elephant to dance, it needs to show up at the dance with its dancing shoes. In Washington, at least, the embassy is woefully unstaffed to represent India’s interests in the range of activities there. Does he see any chance that India will expand the number of foreign service officers so that it can show up at the parties around the world?
History and Philosophy of Science – My notes on the first discussion
Starting this month, we began a series of classes in CSTEP on the History and Philosophy of Science, and plan to have one such discussion every month. We were given the first three chapters of the book “Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science” by Peter Godfrey-Smith and were asked to discuss our questions and opinions in the class. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Below are my notes from the first discussion.
The discussions revolved around three questions
- What is ‘Science’? Can it described apart from the methodology that it uses?
- What is the role of Objectivity in Science? Does interpretation make observation false?
- What makes Science different from other kinds of investigation?
Godfrey-Smith, in the first three chapters, talks about
- The history of science and the importance of Scientific Revolution
- The “three pieces of the answer” to the question of how science works: Empiricism, Mathematics and Social structure.
- Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism and the problems faced by logical positivists and empiricists
- Induction and confirmation of a scientific theory
First off, I think it is necessary to write what my views were about the philosophy of science while reading the three chapters from Godfrey-Smith’s book. My initial opinion was that Science is a process of investigation of “stuff”. All investigations are scientific. The investigations should be carried out using an accepted method, they should be based on questions that don’t relate to just physics, chemistry, biology or other traditionally accepted “sciences” and the results must be presented in a “language” that is agnostic of the person who reads it. What I mean by the last part is that regardless of who reads/sees/learns/listens to the results, the result should be communicable without any loss of information and with complete objectivity. Here is where I ran into trouble and my mind went into overdrive both while reading and during the discussion.
Some things about my views of Science really troubled me and the same questions that the author mentions in the book started popping up. What are “stuff”? Are all investigations scientific? What “topics” can be considered science? What do I mean by language? Is complete objectivity possible? (The author also points out that the term “objective” itself might not be complete objective. It might mean “absence of bias” or it could be used to express claims about “whether the existence of something is independent of our minds”). Then I ran into an even more basic question, which Vinay also had during the discussion: Why are we asking the question “What is Science” at all? It is, after all, a word humans invented and gave constraints to. And if we were to answer it, should we find an answer to it using the scientific method; or should we define scientific method first, for which we need to define science!
Another problem was that of empiricism and past experience. How can we be sure to base our result on something that happened in the past? As Godfrey-Smith points out, even if past experiences have helped provide good answers to many problems, that was still in the past! How can we be sure that the future results will be close to or based on our past experiences? How do we call something a “fact”? If we were to think empiricism as the only way science works, then isn’t teaching science at schools against empiricism as the kids need to learn science by experience alone? This, however, was answered by Sub. Learning at school falls under the Social Structure of Science, where we learn from the experiences and knowledge of others.
Then comes the question of considering all investigations as scientific. If we were to apply Godel’s incompleteness theorem (of which I know very little) here, it would mean that using the elements of the system, we cannot prove if or not there exists any investigation that is non-scientific. So how can we conclude that all investigations are scientific? Then comes the question of subjectivity. How subjective can the proofs to an investigation be? For instance, in one particular Environmental Science question paper, one question was “Holes in the ozone layer cause Skin cancer. True or False?”. Is it possible to find Boolean answers to such questions with absolute proof? What all can be considered as Sciences and to what extent can the answer to this question be subjective? Can Art be considered a Science? (Aditi pointed out here that many people don’t consider art a Science probably because of the significant difference in the end goals of Art and the other things traditionally considered Science. Art is for recreation while traditional sciences are mostly not). Language was another big question mark. When we talk about a “common language” for Science do we mean a commonly spoken/written language like English or a common tone of writing/speaking about Science in any language or both?
One of the biggest discussions we had was that of “a theory for everything”. Again, if we go by Godel’s incompleteness theorem, we cannot prove the non-existence of a lot of things using just the elements of the system available to us. So how can we define “everything” and how can we find a theory for it?
The induction and confirmation of scientific theories were not discussed during this session. The next session is scheduled for June 1 and will be about “Normal Science” and Thomas Kuhn’s works. More on this after the next discussion!
Design! Public Conclave: A Report and Reflections
Our contributor today is Faisal Syed, a researcher at the Next Generation Infrastructures Lab at CSTEP.
This conclave was held to deliberate on how Design thinking can be introduced in the field of governance at Taj Vivanta in Delhi on 16th March 2011. Organizations ranging from Architects, urban planners to media people, artists and designers came together to share their experience in design governance and to find and articulate in a common vocabulary their way of design thinking for governance. A few from the government and Planning commission especially from the Innovation Council and Planning Commission were also part of the Conclave.
Design thinking denotes an approach to problem-solving, with three distinct aspects. First, users are studiously followed and analysed employing ethnographic tools. Human needs, attitudes, preferences, challenges, their context and the immediate environment are documented using multimedia technology. These in-depth observations generate insights into the heart of a given problem. Based on these, design thinkers collaborate and brainstorm to conceive a set of possible solutions. Prototypes of these solutions are created, tested and validated to arrive at a final solution.
The process relies on creativity, empathy, rationality and intuitive reasoning for its success— skills that are often missing and sometimes contrary to the analytical decision-making processes, which dominate most organizations. Design thinking’s most famous advocate is consumer products multinational Procter and Gamble Co., which has an in-house programme called Design Works to help managers identify consumer needs. Recently, some government bodies in parts of the world have also embraced these techniques to spur public sector innovation.
Arun Maira, member of the Planning Commission and conclave panellist, concurred. “If you want to change the system, you can’t take the risk that in the process of innovation it will stop performing its function. How does one introduce innovation in a function that provides essential services?” he asked. The challenge lies in defining the innovation process itself, Maira said, arguing further that the government should induce innovative environment and ecosystems, but refrain from becoming an innovator itself.
In the morning session participants spoke about their concept of design and its usage in governance. The post-lunch session was a workshop where people were divided into different groups which tried to design a governance product. The group I was part of looked at how electricity theft can be curtailed using social and technological products. One of the solutions we came up was to introduce technology which will make it impossible for anyone to steal from the electricity polls and cables. Making electricity theft a social stigma by running a community level campaign for it etc. Giving a visible star to be set up on the front of the house to those people who pay their electricity bills on time or making a god’s image on the electricity meter to make people not tamper it!. Fun it was 
Comments from the Author:
While one realises the importance of re-looking at the whole governance process, especially with reports now that the problem with India is not lack of resources or funds for development but the wastage of non-use of them. The governance process is the locus of all development initiatives that are aimed at common man especially the deprived sections of the society.
While, design thinking can be one of the ways in which the existing government system can be revitalised we need to probe into what are the problems which are actually responsible for the non-functioning of the present governance system. While the robust method might be useful, what has to be looked into primarily is that why has governance failed even after bringing in private companies to its service like Tata Consultancy Services for the issuing of passports, and in the electricity production and distribution.
The design approach as applied till know with the North Delhi Electricity Board one of the clients of Centre for Knowledge Societies present at the conclave showed how they have been able to solve a almost 95 percent of electricity theft by using the design method. They did a detailed survey of why do people steal electricity to how do they do it. They have developed tools and instruments which has actually made it possible for them to curb almost 95% of theft. Now they are working towards the 5% percent which is mainly by Jhuggi Jhopri (illegal huts, mostly lower class migrant settlements in urban areas). May be an appropriate question for the government in this case would be why do people steal and how should the government provide them with electricity? Now this is a question which the government has been grappling with, the question is to see why have they failed?!
To assume that better technology will bring better governance is to make a less-educated assumption. The whole question of technology as an instrument for development has to be kept in mind. Introduction of heavy and complicated technology for the rural masses who can hardly read and write will do more harm than good. One of the reasons for introduction of technology in governance is to collect and assess all the information from a central nodal point. What hasn’t been thought out well, I think, is that does the state really need to have all that detailed information of the people as much as it is collecting? There is a general perception that the more information we have the more it is helpful for governance purposes, without out any argument, scientific or empirical, to support this. This is one of the questions the UID scheme is also being subjected to. Rather than just pushing for private-public partnership if there is more clarity to model the existing governance structures to accept a new method of governance would be more helpful. To rubbish of the existing governance structures as just inept and inefficient would not take us to the path of good governance.
One of the issues with the group which gathered at the conclave is that all of them come from various backgrounds, academics, corporate to fashion designers, as Tile Von Dam of MOD Institute pointed out at the workshop, there seems to be lack of awareness of mutual differences on the concept and practice of design their respective fields and perspective bring. There is a collective desire to promote design thinking without much clarity about and of differences they have. Nonetheless, since this is going to be a long term engagement and conversation one would expect these differences of position and perspective will be talked about.
While one realises the importance of re-looking at the whole governance process, especially with reports now that the problem with India is not lack of resources or funds for development but the wastage of non-use of them. The governance process is the locus of all development initiatives that are aimed at common man especially the deprived sections of the society.
While, design thinking can be one of the ways in which the existing government system can be revitalised we need to probe into what are the problems which are actually responsible for the non-functioning of the present governance system. While the robust method might be useful, what has to be looked into primarily is that why has governance failed even after bringing in private companies to its service like Tata Consultancy Services for the issuing of passports, and in the electricity production and distribution.
The design approach as applied till know with the North Delhi Electricity Board one of the clients of Centre for Knowledge Societies present at the conclave showed how they have been able to solve a almost 95 percent of electricity theft by using the design method. They did a detailed survey of why do people steal electricity to how do they do it. They have developed tools and instruments which has actually made it possible for them to curb almost 95% of theft. Now they are working towards the 5% percent which is mainly by Jhuggi Jhopri (illegal huts, mostly lower class migrant settlements in urban areas). May be an appropriate question for the government in this case would be why do people steal and how should the government provide them with electricity? Now this is a question which the government has been grappling with, the question is to see why have they failed?!
To assume that better technology will bring better governance is to make a less-educated assumption. The whole question of technology as an instrument for development has to be kept in mind. Introduction of heavy and complicated technology for the rural masses who can hardly read and write will do more harm than good. One of the reasons for introduction of technology in governance is to collect and assess all the information from a central nodal point. What hasn’t been thought out well, I think, is that does the state really need to have all that detailed information of the people as much as it is collecting? There is a general perception that the more information we have the more it is helpful for governance purposes, without out any argument, scientific or empirical, to support this. This is one of the questions the UID scheme is also being subjected to. Rather than just pushing for private-public partnership if there is more clarity to model the existing governance structures to accept a new method of governance would be more helpful. To rubbish of the existing governance structures as just inept and inefficient would not take us to the path of good governance.
One of the issues with the group which gathered at the conclave is that all of them come from various backgrounds, academics, corporate to fashion designers, as Tile Von Dam of MOD Institute pointed out at the workshop, there seems to be lack of awareness of mutual differences on the concept and practice of design their respective fields and perspective bring. There is a collective desire to promote design thinking without much clarity about and of differences they have. Nonetheless, since this is going to be a long term engagement and conversation one would expect these differences of position and perspective will be talked about.
Urban Journal Series
Excerpt from the Urban Journal Series
We often hear about how India, like the rest of the globe, is rapidly urbanizing. If about a third of Indians live in cities today, that’s likely to rise to 40% in the next two decades—or about 600 million people—according to a McKinsey Study last year.
Anyone who has lived in an Indian city recently knows what that looks like—a sense of sheer, pulsing numbers and astonishingly rapid physical changes, accompanied by the frequent sight (and sound) of bulldozers. I’ve often heard residents of the city I live in—New Delhi—who have in recent years traveled to western cities, marvel at how static those metropolises sometimes feel in comparison, with whole streets exactly the same, to the shop, as they were years ago. On their return home, just weeks later, they say they find parts of their own city unrecognisable.
But where is the writing to accompany the transformation Indian cities are going through?
A link to the series http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/tag/urban-journal/
From the lab’s mailing list (16th to the 23rd of April)…
A first, in the series of weekly updates of interesting links from our mailing list,
- http://www.bangalaero.com – sent in by Sujaya.
- http://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/sustainable-cities-oxymoron-or-the-shape-of-the-future/ – a paper on sustainable cities sent in by Aditi.
- http://www.amyahlstrom.com/ – a contemporary urban quilter sent in by Bharath.
- https://hapticlab.com/index.php?/maps/digital-a-la-carte/ – Soft-Maps are quilted maps of cities and neighbourhoods sent in by Gabe.
- http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-17/bangalore/29137890_1_slum-population-slum-dwellers-urban-poverty – “Every third Bangalorean lives in sub-human slums” sent in by Vinay.
- http://gambit.mit.edu/ – a lab setup by MIT in Singapore for research in digital games sent in by Harsha.
- http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/335-khata-documents-faq – some frequently asked questions about properties in Bangalore sent in by Vinay.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17tokyo.html?_r=1&hp – a politically impaired Japan’s preparedness in the wake of a disaster sent in by Tejas.
- http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all – on the slipperiness of empiricism sent in by Nivi.
- http://www.daytum.com/ – a way to collect and categorize data sent in by Sruthi.
- http://janchipchase.com/content/presentations-and-downloads/the-mobile-frontier/ – a presentation on the use of mobile money services in Afghanistan sent in by Gabe.
- http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/interview-with-roland-ries-cyclist-senator-and-mayor-of-strasbourg/ – sent in by Tejas.
- http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/sustainable-farming/ – on sustainable farming for the future sent in by Robin.
More on the way in the near future, bear with these manual posts until one of us figures out a way to collect the links sent to our mailing list and post it either weekly or daily here.
Bruno Latour, Think Like a State
Gender Beliefs Funnel Women Away from Science and Engineering
http://www.stanford.edu/group/knowledgebase/cgi-bin/2011/02/25/gender-beliefs-funnel-women-away-from-science-and-engineering/
Gaming for Water Resources on ScienceSim
This demo features a research project from ScienceSim called “Water Wars.” This project explores the use of 3D computers games in environmental policymaking, allowing members of a community to help simulate water management issues to provide insight into better policy. (note: Tad Hirsch, the guy in the video, was instrumental in developing TxtMob, a mobile tool for community coordination used most famously during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in the US by protesters seeking autonomous means of organization and communication).
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