It’s January 2012 and you’ve just gotten your new Android 3.0-based phone. You’re going on a road trip so you start up the newly-released Foursquare. Gone are the checkins of 2010. Now you tell it where you’re going. This time we’re headed to Harrah’s at Stateline, Nevada. But this is no Foursquare you’ve ever seen before. They’ve finally integrated Waze, Tungle.me, and Yelp information into it. So, let’s discover more of what happens on our trip.

As we pull out of my driveway in Half Moon Bay we cross a geofence that sends alerts to the various systems that I’ve connected to Foursquare. Tungle.me knows I’m meeting Mike Arrington for dinner at Harrah’s. He gets an alert on his mobile phone that I’m on my way and Glympse sends him the ability to watch my progress so he’ll know if I’ll be on time. Plancast lets me know that four friends are attending the Black Eyed Peas concert at Harrah’s tonight. I see that Siri is offering to find me tickets, so I ask it to find me some tickets under $400 each…

… When we arrive at Harrah’s, we cross another geofence which lets Arrington know we’re here. It also checks us into Foursquare, and tells us: “there are 29 other people we know about, including three of your friends.” Then Siri (which received a message from our geofence) chimes in with: “are you still having dinner with Mike Arrington at 8 p.m. at Friday’s Station Steak & Seafood Grill?” I answer: “yes.” That goes away, but on screen is a Yelp review about that restaurant and I realize that the attire is dressy and I only have jeans and t-shirts. So, I ask Siri: “are there any other four-star restaurants like Friday’s Station nearby?” It answers with a list from Yelp and then it starts showing places that still have spots left for us this evening by querying OpenTable’s APIs. Siri then tells me it has found two seats for tonight’s show at Harrah’s outdoor arena, and asks if it should buy them from Stubhub?

Read the whole thing.  It’s fascinating.  And, the best part is that most of the technology Scoble talks about is already here!  It’s just not talking to each other, yet.

A lethal plume of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas escaped from a storage tank at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984 in the central Indian city of Bhopal.

Government figures put the death toll at 3,500 within the first three days but independent data by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 for the same period.  The ICMR has said that up to 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure.

Union Carbide settled all liabilities related to the accident, including cleaning up the site, with a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989 after years of wrangling about the amount… The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), an umbrella group of survivors’ organisations, says most survivors received 25,000 rupees (500 dollars) to fund a lifetime of hospital visits.

Yesterday, after a 25-year-long wait, the final verdict was out.

A quarter of a century after the worst industrial disaster in history, a Bhopal district court sentenced seven people, including businessleader Keshub Mahindra, for two years in jail under sections of Indian law usually applied to road mishaps.

The Monday verdict didn’t mention Warren Anderson, the Union Carbide global chief during the disaster. Anderson, who was arrested in Bhopal in 1984, was freed on bail on assurance that he will return. Four years later, the CBI chargesheet named him, and in 1989, the chief judicial magistrate of Bhopal issued a non-bailable warrant for his arrest for repeatedly ignoring summons. In 1992, Anderson was declared a fugitive by the Indian courts.

The Indo-Asian News Service reports:

The United States has ruled out reopening any new inquiry against Union Carbide after Bhopal court’s verdict in the 1984 Bhopal gas leak that killed more than 15,000 people, hoping it would bring closure to the probe into the tragedy.

“Obviously this was one of the greatest industrial tragedies and industrial accidents in human history,” US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake told reporters on Monday.  “But I don’t expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure,” he said…

Pritish Nandy seemed to hit the nail on the head when he tweeted:

We have simply stopped respecting the lives of the unknown any more. No number of deaths interest us, unless the dead are famous.

Bhopal will no longer be remembered for the crime: 6 lakh lives destroyed. It will be remembered for the injustice meted out 25 years later.

Today, I am ashamed to call myself an Indian.

Someone wise once remarked, “There is only one question – How to love this world?”

Update : 16 June 2010

Amar Hingorani, an advocate in the Supreme Court of India, posts a shocking and brilliant editorial in the Hindustan Times in which he informs us that: “The law empowering the Indian government to represent Bhopal’s gas victims was unconstitutional. In effect, two guilty parties negotiated with each other.”

See Also : Union Carbide’s official statement

For starters, this May I’d scheduled time-off from work to address not one but two trips out of town. 

The first was to celebrate our 10th anniversary, the details of which would forever remain between us and the friendly people of the charming resort we’d booked our stay in.  I returned from that holiday, only to depart the following day for a photo-tour in the Lion Sanctuary of Gir! 

A friend and I had been talking about doing a photo-tour for a while, and were able to sync our calendars for this one.  I’d planned the thing weeks in advance by reading up all I could lay my hands on. 

It was to be the baddest, hottest time of the year for Sassan Gir, with temperatures soaring upto 45 deg C… it would also be the best time to spot the lions, as the heat would make them go in search of water more often. 

We’d booked ourselves in a Jungle Lodge (surrounded on all sides by the forest!) after reading about it on travel sites, and it turned out to be even more charming and exciting than the reviews had mentioned.  The food was great, the people were friendly, the safari trips were well-organized, and we were able to shoot quite a bit of wildlife through the lenses of our respective cameras, even picking up some info on wildlife habitats along the way.

This was my first open-jeep safari, and it was an experience unlike any other!  While some of the lion sightings were so far away that you could hardly spot them without a telescopic lens, we also had a few “encounters” merely 10 feet away from our vehicle. 

Words cannot adequately explain the thrill of being in lion-land, a few steps away from the magnificent cat, in an open-jeep, with nothing in your hands except a camera.

Of course, as the safari guides kept reminding us, going to Gir is more than about “spotting lions”.  On our multiple runs through the sanctuary we saw countless deer and peacocks, and a host of other animals and birds, trying to capture as much as possible with our equipment.  On our way back, we also made a brief stop at the town of Junagadh, to shoot the fantastic Indo-Islamic architecture of the city, and were more than rewarded for the hours we spent in the sun.

I was hooked for Life, and will be sure to return to many more wildlife trips in the years to come…

Pictures on my photoblog, here : http://bit.ly/girtrip

You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by” absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury…

You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled…

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.

As we go through Life, we often find that it is not what we planned it would be. And yet, we must go on.  And, make our peace with it.  Perhaps even thrive in what it has to offer!

Once again, I implore you to “read this speech” in its entirety. It’s well worth the effort.

Circumstances can cause you to question who you are… A boss writes you a stinging performance review… A reader leaves a bitter comment on your blog post… A vocal audience member questions your authority in the middle of your presentation… 

And you go from You, The Champion of the World to… You, less than.

When you fall into this deep pit of treachery and despair, you need something to pull you out. An image, a word, a note. It helps when this object reflects both the love you have for yourself as well as the love someone has for you.

Like a picture of you through your parent’s eyes… Or a note from an impassioned reader who loved the piece that you loved to write… Or a rock from a beach that was so beautiful you could swear that the sand was kissing your feet.  

You, less than, is a lie… Remember who you are.

Remember who you are?

World 2.0 is about realizing and deeply internalizing that we (especially westerners) have gone beyond day-to-day survival, that we have crossed this finish line.  (Close your eyes, take a deep breath, slowly exhale… and read that line again).  Seriously, take a second to really feel this and realize it.  Yes, you worry about your finances or getting a bigger house… but you’re not concerned about having enough food for the winter or dying of malaria.  Appreciate this moment that all of our ancestors collectively achieved.  It is amazing.

World 2.0 is about appreciating this moment, and then turning around for the first time to look back at the millions of people still running the race…  It is about looking inside and asking the hard questions about what we see, what we have created, and what we have left behind.

Then, one of my favourite blogs – Mnmlist – posts a very cogent essay on Society, Reimagined (and includes a generous helping of solutions to the problem, too!) :

We’ve gotten fat, tired, sick, deep in debt, disconnected from our kids and other family members, divorced, separated from our neighbors. We’re polluting and causing global warming, all in the name of money and work and profits and buying. This seems broken, to me.

But what’s a better way of living? A society reimagined, built around people and a love for our environment and living and working and playing together, a love for being outside and playing and being active, a love for doing things and spending time with people rather than for buying things and working to support that buying habit.

And finally, a friend – Joy Dutta – posts about the “dumbing down of society” on his blog:

Look at the senseless media explosion and the priorities of news consumption by the masses. A celebrity scandal is perceived to be ten times more important than the serious geographical, social, political and economic issues we face today. Why ? Because the former is a no-brainer entertainment while the latter demands some maturity. It is all about popular culture now…

When I look at the kids here in the west it makes me sad. No genuine curiosity, no manners, no respect for elders. Despite free public schools, the abysmally low standard of curriculum and lack of discipline from parents are making them far from the generation we need in the future…

Once again, I get the feeling that the Universe is conspiring to tell me, and you, something… Which of these matches your world-view.  And, more importantly, what do you plan to do about it?

I still remember the end of my elementary years. My school days were from 6am – 6pm. After I got home it was a brief dinner and then I studied until I went to bed. Everyday. Winter and summer breaks were short, also burdened with homework. During the final preparation for the middle school entry exam, I studied so hard the corners of my text book pages became translucent…  The magnet middle school I applied for required a minimum of 247 points (out of 250). I scored 247.

Two months into the first semester in middle school I came to the U.S. to visit my mother. I ended up staying permanently. How could I not? School here was a cakewalk. Everyday was a vacation to me. I didn’t have to come to school at 6am to clean up the class room, there were janitors doing that. (Maybe they didn’t pass their middle school placement test, I used to think)…

There was no need to be in the top of the class. There were no entry exams to get in high school, not even to enter college. There were no relatives or family friends that I had to impress. I didn’t learn anything new in math until I was a junior in high school; I was coasting off what I had learned in China…. I was being complacent and I was totally OK with it.

Upto this point in time, Jin’s story may be very different from your’s.  But, as the years go by, the lines begin to merge…

… Then I got married and had kids. Life became comfortably routine. For a couple of years, I didn’t learn anything new at all. I felt even though my skills weren’t exactly up to date anymore, they were “adequate enough” to do my job. One thing about being complacent is that you give yourself excuses and sometimes you can even fool yourself. Deep down, I knew I had enough free time to learn new things if I didn’t watch TV or play games. I knew I wasn’t the only one who was being lazy. As one gets deeper into this thing called “life,” responsibilities creep up, and the urge to learn new things gets dimmer.

That got me thinking.  I have observed this sense of “complacency” with countless friends and family members.  We grow up, we get busy with our lives, and before we realize, we get complacent.  As Jin pointed out, it’s so easy to make excuses and to fool yourself, to keep the illusion going.  But, deep down, we know it’s not the best we can do.

That computer whiz who used to be the neighbourhood’s envy, that teenage girl who enjoyed creating art, that little boy who could break the telephone apart and put it back together… One by one, slowly and steadily, we stop doing the things we enjoyed the most… We stop learning… We stop living.

It’s easy to say that we live busy lives and are not able to spare time, but time is a function of interest. 

I have two hyper-active kids, an aged mother who doesn’t keep too well, a commute that stretches well over two hours and a fairly demanding work environment.  I still make the time to stay in touch with over a hundred XML feeds (courtesy Netvibes), author four different blogs and tweet 2-3 times a day.  And, like Jin, “Everyday, I learn something new on the web, via blogs, twitter, coworkers or readers like you.”

So, I’m not buying the argument that we don’t have time for the things that matter to us.  You can fight complacency.  And win.

I had promised myself back then, that I would return to it, as and when time permitted.  But Life, as we all know, is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.  Priorities at work would take up most of my time in the years to come. And soon, I found myself at the other end of the decade, wondering what happened to my plans of going back to school and teaching?!

As a young student myself, I remember that a handful of teachers had left an impression on my mind, in a span of a few hours of their delivery, that would last me a lifetime!  I could not help but think, if I could give even a little of that to the next generation of students, it would be well worth the journey…

So, in that spirit, I have once again embarked on an effort to engage with the young leaders of tomorrow.  For the moment, it has taken the form of guest lectures in select business schools, since my schedule still limits the time available at my disposal.

A month ago, I addressed a batch of about 65 students in their final year in NMIMS’ dual-degree MBA (Tech) course on the topic of “Change Management & Business Process Reengineering“.  Last week, I had the opportunity to return to SIMSR as an alumnus and guest faculty, to speak on “Six Sigma & Process Excellence” with a class of more than 120 eager beavers. 

Both topics required a fair bit of work to create a presentation that is appealing and informative.  And, keeping the students engaged has been an interesting challenge too.  But, if the feedback I have received via feedback forms, on email and on LinkedIn is any thing to go back, I seem to be doing something right…

Here was a man simply enjoying an evening at a 5-star property in South Mumbai, thinking about the extreme contrasts which most of us fail to notice as a part of our daily lives…

My biggest culture shock in India has not been the omnipresent abject poverty, or the constant deafening noise, or the thousands of people crammed together in the rickety commuter trains. Ironically, it has been the incredible wealth that sits right next to absurd poverty. More than half of Mumbai lives in slums, yet it is home to the richest collective of billionaires in the world – ahead of New York and London…

And yet, it seems to make sense to everyone but me. My middle-class Indian friends have reinforced this many times when they say: “Of course it’s normal that the rich and the poor live next to each other… The rich live here and require services, so the poor come in to fulfill that demand.” It doesn’t shock anyone that you could pay 22,000 rupees to get into a new year’s eve party, much more than the national yearly income. And no one seems to mind that the office I work in, which has air-conditioning, wireless internet, and biometric fingerprint security, sits literally across the street from hundreds of temporary workers and their families – we’re talking dozens of children per street block – who cook, eat, bathe and sleep on the dirty sidewalks every night.

In that sense, India is quite different from Africa, where the rich are merely middle-class, the poor and the rich are typically segregated, and the ultra-rich promptly shift their assets (and themselves) out of the country. Yes, as an expat in Africa, I certainly felt wealthy, privileged, or just plain lucky. But here, holding a glass of one of the most expensive champagnes in the world, surrounded by the cream of the crop of Indian society and looking down on more than six million human beings living in slums forty floors below, I can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of a sick joke that everyone, including myself, is somehow part of.

You gotta wonder if he has a point…

Two days ago, on the occassion of his third death anniversary, the wife and I went to a close friend’s house to honour his memory.  I’d seen death in the family many times before, but this would be a first for a friend. 

What do you do at such an event?  How do you honour someone’s memory after they’re gone?  Do you talk about them, recounting stories when they were around?  Do you share photographs with each other?  Do you build a website or setup a Facebook account in their memory?  Does it even matter?!

There would be more questions than there were answers… And there would be no right answers, in any case.

Then, I recalled that only a few months ago, I had returned from my aunt’s funeral and had started penning down some thoughts on this very subject.  She was the closest friend or relative my mom has known, and therefore, had come to occupy a significant place in our lives.  What I’d started writing then, would be completed today…

Photographs of times with your family and friends?
Those hideous shoes and your fashion sense?!
 
How naughty or responsible you were as a child
Your choice of carpet or how your kitchen was tiled

Maybe two kids and a loving spouse
Or how you just wouldn’t budge from that house

Your favourite icecream flavours or how you liked your tea
The recipes you willingly shared with every one and me

When it’s time to leave this Life unkind
Is that all that you manage to leave behind?