Sunday Posts

Dear me Is this the slow march to the end of the world?  Joe Biden, the forgettable 46th, was right when he said that whatever happens in the next 2 to 3 years may shape the next 50 to 60 years. He may have meant different things, including the coming of Agentic AI, the convergence of biotech with it, ascendancy of Trump, the reconfiguration of geopolitics or a final destruction of the global monetary system of the post-war variety! Perhaps all of it, all at once!  History is usually invisible, buried deep in everyday life. Until such moments when we completely forget about it and our 'death instincts' get better of us, we don't get it to see it. But we see it then, in its terrible flourish! The only metaphor that I can think of is of a flash flood, which turns a gentle and friendly stream into a sudden death trap, carrying all before it, but then the force vanishes and the tranquility returns as if nothing ever happened. Those who know of such terrible possibilities live i...

Dear M Bitter cold - Arctic freeze has arrived in Britain! While Toronto is warmer, I am told. I would love to think that this is caused by climate change, but this is perhaps no such thing, just an English winter as it should be. This cold is, therefore, raising my hopes for a white Christmas. The last Christmas snowfall I remember was in 2010. That was a special Christmas season for me, which started with me getting pickpocketed in Covent Garden and ended with my brother passing away on the 3rd January! This also included a very special Christmas evening to remember forever. Yet it is the snow that came to my mind, first! This cold and the customary darkness are making me feel lazy too. I didn't do much today and fell asleep in the evening, which is unusual. It has been one of those years that tested me, and I can't wait for it to get over. And yet this psychology of imaginary ends and beginnings - what would really get over -  fascinates me. Why wait for the end of the year?...

Dear M Do you believe in dragons?  I know many people who doesn't. Because they are grown-ups, and it is not fashionable for grown-ups to think about dragons. But I would like to believe that they are real. At least as real as the things we believe in. For that matter, we call investors dragons in some countries - in Britain, start-ups go to the Dragons' Den - while the other countries have Sharks (India) or Tigers (Bangladesh) for that. The investors changing the world for better as real a story as my having a dragon which can fly me from one country to another, coming to my rescue when bad guys really corner me. You would say that is literally not possible. I would say - cliché but true - that literal is a metaphor. Language creates the world we live in, in our minds: That indeed the only world which matters to us, the only one we can ever know. In reality, there could be other worlds - one where dragons fly around, for example - but we live in our own literal bubbles, where ...

Dear Me, I write because there is nothing else I can do. Someone said that before, but I am not quoting - I am speaking for myself. I write not because I have something special to say. But I feel that I am inside an endless stream of words and ideas, and I live to explore them. Through me, then, they find expression. Perhaps that is imprecise and I don't have the right language to say what really happens. What I want to say - the Word exists. With or without me, it exists. I write them not because I want to, but they find me to become. So, I see writing not as a craft. Rather, I surrender to writing. I realised this when I started writing poetry. I wrote it once, when I was young and in love. I don't remember how I wrote it then. But much later in life, when another moment came, I wrote not to impress anyone, but because I couldn't do anything else. It was not to tell anything to anyone, but just to surrender myself to the feelings which took hold of me.  Reading those poem...

It is almost over and it is starting.  I am finishing 2024 wiser. This has been one of those pivotal years of my life, comparable only to 1993 when I started working or 2004 when I migrated to the UK and started my life again. In the sense that those two years taught me a lot and made me a different person: 2024 did that too. I am also wiser because my optimism is tempered. I have finally gotten rid of my youthful assumption that it is possible to change people or systems (in other words, I have now, finally, become old). I am not cynical - at least not yet - but far more conservative than I was. I know things change only very slowly, and only organically, and forcing the change, however desireable, is beyond the powers of human beings. We seem to think that we are at the centre of the universe, and therefore the changes are really brought about human action. I can wake up one morning and command the Sun to rise, and when it rises, can claim my supernatural powers, but ...

Trump Rex!  Okay, I wrote I did not care, but I do. In a different way!  I don't think I should still be concerned who Americans vote as their President. There is no such thing as the 'free world'. If there ever was an iron curtain, it was over a long time ago.  However, even if I haven't voted for Trump, I can't ignore that a large number of people in a very educated and technologically advanced country did. I am also painfully aware that someone like me could have written a similar sentence back in 1932, and perhaps many of them, like me, decided that it didn't really matter. The least I could do is to try and understand why such things happen. To be clear, I don't see these things as strange. There are a number of reasons why such things happen. After all, there is a cognitive bias named after Warren Harding (see ' Warren Harding error '). I have been labouring on Will Durant's Story of Civilisation since the beginning of 2024 (and have now re...

I am not following the US election news. It seems Facebook knows this. I have seen very few news items about the trends, and even posts by people I am connected to have vanished from my timeline. I am sure there are plenty of people following it and talking about it. But the contrast that is most consequential to me is that with my former self. I would have obsessively followed it, and can still remember where I was in every election night since 1988. Every time, I thought it mattered. But this time, it is different. Of course, it matters a lot to the world. There are two major wars underway right now. The next US President would have significant impact on what happens next. These wars can spill out to become global conflicts, or in the least, the world may settle more rigidly into two different camps - and the choice the American voters make today is significant from that standpoint. My liberal friends may be quite disappointed if Trump wins.  My indifference, however, comes from ...

I wrote this blog through my 20 year stay in Britain, some years more diligently than others.  No one, including myself, would ever look at the archives perhaps, but if one did, one theme would stand out: Restart!  For the first 10 years of my career, spent in India and then in other countries in Asia, I followed a straight path: Working in companies, growing into more senior role, within the training sector. It was somewhat regular life. I had KPIs and month-ends, appraisals, holiday forms and salary raises, which I worried about.  However, I left all that and came to Britain in 2004. I came without a job - therefore, it was a proper restart! I assumed that my experience within the IT Training sector would get me a similar or a better job, but the IT training industry was very different in the UK and my skill sets did not travel well. I landed up managing accounts in an e-learning company, a role and an industry in which I had absolutely no prior experience.  Therea...

  Let’s start with a broad definition of education technology: When Jan Comenius was using vernacular medium and illustrations to teach a foreign language in the Seventeenth century (his Gate of the Tongue unlocked came out in 1631) , he was using the new technology of print and an educational idea (learning through illustrated textbooks) to create a new form of education.   However, such a definition of technology would also narrow down what we could call Education Technology (Edtech, as it is fashionably called). C ontemporary Edtech is a catch-all phrase for any technology used within the educational context. Duolingo, which employs an app to offer a new, gamified, approach to language learning , will be clubbed together with some boring classroom management software in the same   category. Instead, it makes more sense to define education technology to include such applications of scientific knowledge to further educational goals, rather than any piece of machinery or...

  Popular belief may hold that there is nothing better than getting out of the building and learn from doing things . Still, the cha otic, costly and unique nature of experience means that these may not translate into meaningful learning. The data bears it out: Though the employers give weight to relevant work experience, the correlation between work experience and work performance is at best tenuous. This is a serious limitation for all work-based learning models, including apprenticeships and co-operative education .   The key to learning from experience is a prepared mind. It is not enough to have the experience , but the person having the experience must be able to engage consciously in the activity . Always be learning should be the motto, and each action should be understood in its context. To construct a learning system that enables our learners to do this, we educate our learners through a learn-connect-lead cycle.   Learn-Connect-Lead   Learning is ...

  The limits of experiential learning     Guilty as charged , we evangelised experiential learning as the most appropriate education format to meet the demands of rapidly changing workplaces.   Dismayed by over-reliance on uninteresting lectures with hundreds of slides, we emphasised practical enga gement. Our point was that the solitary content consumption, whether from books or from videos, does not allow anyone to prepare for rapid shifts in technology or workplace practices. Instead, the lear ners need to work with other people, as most work today is done in teams, and they should solve real-life problems, as only by application are thin gs really learnt.   But there must be more than this if one is  to create a learning experience in the twenty-first century. That application is a better way of learning than reading textbooks is rather well known. No one denies that experiential learning works better in preparing for practical work. Rather, it ...