Online Privacy

Moving to Firefox! (Ahoy Internet Safety!)

Over the past few years, since the surge in social media and online advertising, the Internet has experienced a formidable transformation in the way users have become easy targets only for accessing knowledge/information electronically. The Internet has irrevocably lost its fundamental characteristics as a democratic medium of expression and individuality not just for its utilization by the consumers (the users) but also for companies who are engaged in analytics and data mining in how they are using that personal information unbeknownst to the users. Speaking for myself, I began to feel an urge to monitor my online activities and decide not just the frequency but the amount of personally identifiable information that we willingly share electronically so moving into that direction I have made Firefox a part of my digital lifestyle since the second half of 2019.

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica & Personal Data

According to me, the last straw in this tragic saga came during the early part of 2018 when the lid over the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal was blown and the blatant misuse of personal data of some 50 million Facebook users as part of Cambridge Analytica’s political consulting work became clearer, including its influence on voters during President Trump’s 2016 campaign. As part of the fallout, Facebook suspended the company for violation of its terms of service but the damage had already been done 1. Gathering data on Facebook wasn’t reaping any real benefit in that Cambridge Analytica wasn’t able to fully capture the personality of every single voter, so they worked with researchers to develop “a 120-question survey that seeks to probe personality,” said Alexander Nix, the suspended CEO of Cambridge Analytica. “And we’ve rolled this out to literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people across America.” 2 The company asked all sorts of questions about the individual’s behaviour and personality and scored people on traits like openness, extroversion and agreeableness, that gets mixed together with polls, voter records and most importantly, online activity, to create personality models to talk to voters in order to persuade voters to vote in a certain pattern, for a certain candidate. If it wasn’t for this scandal, in particular, I would have never learned the critical nature of ‘online activities’ and the susceptibility of our human tendencies to undermine the role of data mining and creating personality traits by behind the ‘cloak’ to induce a certain kind of behaviour. Again, if it wasn’t for the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal the discussion around privacy and privacy laws and regulations would have lost its urgent need. But this isn’t going to stop the companies in their tracks and adopt stronger privacy regulations, the onus is on the individuals to nurture their individuality and yet not get lost in this new-age Internet labyrinth.

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Life Inside A Power Socket!

This walkthrough of a ‘secret’ room behind a power outlet is literally the most astonishing and cutest video I’ve come across this year. The level of detail crammed in such a narrow confined space is on a whole new level altogether. There’s an AirCon, a red clock signifying an evening time, a refrigerator with a microwave sitting on top, and a table with a PC (that’s actually a Mac) and leaving just enough space for a mouse to fit in. There’s even frame displaying a Diploma in Karate above the desk!

Besides, the desktop lamp there’s another computer right in the front as you enter the ‘room’ with some sort of a game in progress. This set up’s so cool! Who wants bigger desks with dual monitors when we can own two PCs and in such an innocuous place; trust me, it’s like going back into the 90s! The best part about this interior is the miniature Mac on the table with an OS9 splash screen, upon pursuing some information online I found it could either be a PowerMacintosh 4400 or a Macintosh II.

It totally baffles me as to how the pieces have been constructed with such pristine detail — the table, toys, the chair, the lamp, even the blinking light on the CPU (or is it an Internet router), and everything is skillfully assembled inside the narrow interiors, behind a power socket, but looking extremely comfy! In reality, not an inch to stretch your arms but still a decent example of efficient use of the location. Like a perfect world within a tiny world.

It’s a creation of a young Japanese artist called ‘Mozu’ who designs such handmade miniature splendours. This latest build is called ‘The Secret Base of Kubito’ and the time he spent to complete this masterpiece was 4 months! It’s a personal space / an office room together, and away from the glare of the outside world. It’s a truly magnificent work of art!

There’s Nothing Savoury At Shank’s

Shank's

I don’t review movies I haven’t enjoyed, especially the Marathi movies which I’m so fond of watching and which rarely disappoint me if I’m making the right choices. I made an exception for Shank’s (2017) because it was masqueraded as a movie on Marathi cuisine but the entire concept turned out to be the Ass in a Lion’s skin.

So it all started in a true documentary style, showcasing the gastronomic creation of a New-York based fine dining restaurant called ‘Shank’s’. In what I would call, a ‘Chef’s Table’ approach, the eatery is shown serving regular Marathi food — ‘Varan-Bhaat’, ‘Puran Poli’ et al presented lavishly in plates and called “Marathi fine-dining” cuisine. No doubt I was filled with pride! I could never imagine common Maharashtrian food settling in distant American plates as “fine-dining” cuisine. ‘Varan-Bhaat-Toop’, ‘Ukdiche Modak’, ‘Tival’, ‘Batatyachi Kachri’, ‘Kokum Kadhi’, ‘Sabudana Wada’, and several other appetizing fares (some of them Konkani) are part of my staple diet even today, and they continue to delight my soul without all that extravagant pretentiousness of “fine dining”. Who cares, but seeing them now being transformed into some uptown culinary delights made me think Marathi food had finally arrived on the global food scene and so much could be done to elevate the experience. So I was glued to the screen even more.

It was all attributed to the success of a passionate Maharashtrian chef called ‘Shashank Joshi’, raised in a lower middle-class family, an intelligent guy and an IIT dropout (therefore, “intelligent”) from India, who visited France to learn culinary art from a renowned French chef running his own restaurant. Soon Shashank decides to settle in the US of A with his pretty French wife Pauline — the daughter of his mentor & chef, and he starts his restaurant business called ‘Shank’s’, it’s immediately trashed by food critics. After much deliberations he introduces an innovative fine dining experience with Maharashtrian cuisine. His inspiration for Marathi food? None other than his late grandmother from whom he picked the cooking skills while growing up in a Maharashtrian neighbourhood.

The story depicts a humble Maharashtrian guy who is inspired by his grandma’s culinary skills and transforms Maharashtrian food into a fine-dining experience. The biggest flaw with the movie is that it shouldn’t have been masquerading as a biographical documentary with interviews, reviews, customer comments, etc. when the entire act was fiction.

The supposed movie/documentary features interviews with food critics, including Shashank’s cousin and his wife Pauline who swear by his passion for food, his hard work, and his single-minded focus on serving the best dishes on the menu. During this 1 hour 12 min tiresome show we are taken through his childhood memories through some sketches depicting his memories, more interviews and some more sketches, then some doodles of Maharashtrian food (sort of a hierarchical menu), and ending with more sketches. Finally when it all concluded my delight turned into disgust within no time. To my bewilderment, I learned that there’s no restaurant called ‘Shank’s’ in NYC, there’s no fine-dining chef in existence called ‘Shashank Joshi’ and even his so-called French wife Pauline was a figment of someone’s fantasies, and so obviously the innovative Maharashtrian fine-dining culinary cuisine only existed in my imagination for that entire hour. In short, the whole thing was an act and it was faked. Period.

I wonder what the makers of the movie were smoking when they conceptualized in making this into a movie. Because on one hand, I was so proud to finally see Maharashtrian menu getting its due respect and fame as a ’fine dining’ affair outside its traditional roots. On the other hand, it was hard for me to believe that everything I saw and felt as a proud Indian was a big hoax being sugar-coated and fed to me. Though I wonder if this could have been made into a real documentary, such as, representing Maharashtrian traditional food with a proposed ‘fine dining’ approach, plain and simple, without resorting to cheating the audiences and making a farce of the concept with inept actors. Beyond that, watch Shank’s only and only if you’re really in a mood to fool yourself and waste an hour of your precious life. Hit the ‘skip’ button. There’s nothing worth relishing here.

Design Thinking

‘Patient-Centred’ Experience And Digital Transformation Technologies

Summary

The message coming from every keynote, panel discussion, article or research study is clear that digital transformation is not just imperative for all enterprises but it will permanently alter consumer interactions with their products and services.1 Digital transformation is the application of digital technologies such as mobile data analytics and smart embedded devices to reinvent customer relations and business processes. Worldwide spending on digital transformation related technologies and services is expected to approach $2 trillion by 2022, according to IDC. 2 Hence, the healthcare industry as well, has to transform its processes to respond to the new realities of digital technologies in an increasingly competitive world by continuing to invest in digital technology. But at the same time, there’s a need to reshape patient-care operations in this dynamic environment. Amid the intricacies of digital sophistication, the clamour to put customer services and customer expectations at the centre of all digital and service interactions has grown stronger than ever before. Adopting a customer-centric mindset in unifying products and services through human-insights, and not through digital transformation, is an important piece in the customer experience endeavour.

In the wake of digital transformation, businesses are overlooking consumer behaviour favouring instant gratification through technology hoping customer loyalty and dollars will follow, but they’re missing a fundamental point. Instead of depending upon digital transformation as a means for delivering an exceptional experience they should be focussing on customer needs through gathering & relating human-insights to actual needs. It is therefore important for businesses to build a customer experience strategy that looks at finding insights instead of merely depending upon digital transformation for analytics — the better experience customers have, the more repeat and positive reviews they’ll receive while simultaneously reducing customer complaints and frustrations. 3

In this context, what should be the strategy for the healthcare industry to drive digital transformation from a ‘user-first’ standpoint? What measures must healthcare businesses need to adopt for catering to patient needs & expectations? What parts of their business strategy must need to change for encouraging a positive change & enhancing the quality of healthcare services with technology? Most importantly, could technology alone be adequate in solving human-centred problems? These and many more such conclusions around an overall healthcare optimization planning could be explored by applying relevant phases of the ‘patient-centred design model’.

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