Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts

Sunday, December 22, 2024

The Art of Bitfulness. Keeping Calm In The Digital World (Book Review)

 

Image courtesy: The Financial Express

Keeping Calm in the Digital World: The Art of Bitfulness

In today’s hyper-connected digital landscape, the ability to maintain a balanced relationship with technology has become both a necessity and a challenge. With every beep, notification, and endless stream of information, our attention is fragmented, our time consumed, and our mindfulness traded for bytes and bytes of digital content. The need to reclaim our focus and redefine our relationship with technology is urgent.

Many books have explored this contemporary issue, but The Art of Bitfulness by Nandan Nilekani and Tanuj Bhojwani stands apart. Written by seasoned technologists, this book offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective. It is not anti-technology but “pro-you,” advocating for a mindful approach to digital engagement. True to its name, Bitfulness draws inspiration from mindfulness, presenting a minimalist, thoughtful approach to navigating the digital world.

Understanding the Problem

The book begins by dissecting the design of modern technology and its inherently addictive nature. As the authors point out, our relationship with technology often mirrors a toxic friendship: it indulges our vices and demands more than we can give. Steve Jobs once called the personal computer the “bicycle of the mind,” a tool meant to augment human thought. Today, however, our devices have evolved into extensions of our minds, amplifying not only our cognitive abilities but also our distractions.

The authors argue that instead of helping us focus, technology amplifies our minds’ tendency to wander. Our devices, originally designed to aid our thinking, have become gateways for businesses to extract attention and data, fostering a crisis that rivals the pressing issues of pandemics and climate change. This “third crisis”—how we go digital—threatens to create an imbalance of power in society, as monopolistic business models prioritize profit over public good.

The Individual’s Journey

In the second section of the book, the authors delve into strategies for individuals to regain control. They reference Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” to illustrate the importance of a quiet mind. A state of flow—where intention and attention align—is essential for meaningful engagement. Technology, however, often disrupts this state by design.

The authors propose the “Art of Bitfulness” as a way to restore balance. This involves:

  1. Mindfulness: Cultivating awareness of one’s state of mind, toxic behavioral patterns, and the attention-driven internet business model.
  2. Quieting the Mind: Engineering flow by reducing distractions, creating friction between context switches, and staying engaged in focused activities.
  3. Defining the Self: Separating online identities, dividing work and leisure, and recognizing emotions to maintain boundaries.

These strategies are not just theoretical. The authors share practical tips, such as using devices for clarity and reflection through self-notes, organizing documents for long-term memory storage, and splitting accounts into Creator, Curator, and Communicator modes to improve focus and attention.

Reimagining the Collective Future

The book’s third section challenges readers to rethink the architecture of the digital world. It critiques the winner-takes-all models of blitzscaling and aggregation, which concentrate power and wealth. Instead, the authors advocate for decentralized systems, drawing inspiration from Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision for blockchain and public-good services like Aadhaar and UPI in India.

They call for a collective effort to redesign the internet as a shared resource that belongs to everyone and no one simultaneously. This vision aligns with the internet’s original purpose: a platform for curious humans to share knowledge across oceans. The authors argue that now is the time to architect a future where the internet serves humanity’s collective interests rather than corporate greed.

A Call to Action

In its concluding pages, The Art of Bitfulness offers a powerful reminder: “The future is not inevitable; it is a blank page. We need to decide as a collective what we’re going to write on it.” The book’s optimistic vision for a reimagined digital future is both inspiring and urgent.

In 2005, Stanford held a big event to commemorate the birth of the internet. They revealed a plaque acknowledging not one creator, but about thirty people working in different teams at different universities. The plaque acknowledges that even that list of thirty is incomplete. It says, Ultimately, thousands if not tens to hundreds of thousands have contributed their expertise to the evolution of the internet. 

This is a heartening representation of what the internet was supposed to be. The internet was supposed to be a way for curious humans to share knowledge with each other, even if they are oceans apart. The internet, our social networks, and our marketplaces are too important to be controlled by anyone. They should belong, simultaneously, to all of us, and to none of us. Now is the time we architect that future." - the authors.

The internet has the potential to be a tool for empowerment, collaboration, and democratization. However, achieving this vision requires deliberate action from individuals and society. By adopting the principles of Bitfulness, we can reclaim our time, attention, and agency in the digital world. It is time to architect a future where technology serves as a trusted ally, not a toxic friend.

References:

How can you reclaim control over technology: In conversation with Nandan Nilekani and Tanuj Bhojwani https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIgAz8VLcLo




Sunday, April 30, 2023

Free Digital/Online Learning Resources for Students to Learn and Grow!

 

AI generated image (Bling.com)


Be it a formative assessment or a competitive exam, study materials are indispensable tools for a student’s preparations. At the same time, they contribute significantly to the student’s knowledge acquisition capabilities.


With the changing times, the medium of education and knowledge transfer has transformed immensely. Such that, digital teaching aids are currently being used extensively within and beyond the classroom to develop a better learner-centric ambience. Most importantly, the domino effect of technology being used for educational purposes was initiated quite inadvertently by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the world came to a halt, certain industries kept on with their endeavors during the pandemic, like the Education sector. As classroom teaching techniques transcended the concrete walls to be implemented in online video classes, there was a surge in demand for online tools and resources among students for better understanding of the lessons being taught in class. Thus, the need for building digital repositories was deemed necessary.

Although several organizations, private and governmental, have their own archives containing multimedia resources and study materials, we at No Herd Mentality decided to build our own repository that would benefit students to a great extent, from secondary to postgraduate level.


DIGITAL RESOURCES FOR SCHOOL STUDENTS:

  • Indian Culture - Digital District Repository: 
https://indianculture.gov.in/digital-district-repository

A wonderful way to introduce young students to the extensive cultural landscape of our country, the Digital District Repository is the best starting point for parents and educators to consider. The interactive web design allows the viewers to access the historical accounts and events of each state across the country on the basis of its famous personalities, traditional and cultural forms, hidden facts and gems, as well as major events that shaped the legacy of the state. The coalescence of IT and History to educate students about the national as well as regional cultures of India is indeed a phenomenal mode to make learning a fun experience among children of all ages.

  • National Digital Library of India:

The National Digital Library of India boasts of a huge array of study materials and resources for school students in classes X and XII (CBSE) to prepare for their board exams as well as various competitive exams such as GATE, JAM, IIT-JEE, NEET, UGC-NET, IBPS, RRB, SSC, and UPSC. It also features archives of scholarly works and journal publications to benefit students pursuing higher studies.


DIGITAL RESOURCES FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS - UNDERGRADUATE AND POST-GRADUATE LEVELS
  • Crash Course:

One of the most popular channels on YouTube, the Vlogbrothers (Hank and John Green) came up with the idea to kickstart a separate series of educational videos that would help students in the American Education system to understand the lessons being taught in class without the hassles of study notes and homework. Thus, Crash Course came into being as a YouTube channel in 2011. In the span of over 20 years, Crash Course has created more than 1.5k videos spanning across hundreds of subjects and study topics. Be it Literature, Psychology, Physics, Philosophy, Chemistry, Film Studies and whatnot, Crash Course covers almost every aspect of the syllabi taught at the school and college levels, excluding non-US content. You can click on the link above to access their web library.

  • TED Ed:

If Crash Course videos are too long for you to devote enough time, then you can always consider the bite-sized educational videos by TED. This series of animated videos (also available on YouTube) encompasses every major subject that is taught at the college level. However, what distinguishes TED Ed videos from other educational channels is that the former provide thought-provoking ways to viewers to look at a particular lesson or topic. Interestingly, TED Ed videos emphasize less on school test preparations and more on the need to educate students and viewers alike about the various phenomena that we see around ourselves. In short, TED Ed videos go beyond the textbook to help you read between the lines.

  • SWAYAM: 

One of the major initiatives taken up by the Indian Government in terms of making education accessible to all, SWAYAM consists of a huge array of courses and materials from the disciplines of STEM, Social Science, Commerce, as well as Humanities. Nine major coordinators provide these courses that have been designed by renowned scholars and educators from across the country. While these courses are offered for free on the website, students can choose to sit for a pen-paper exam or a CBT/Computer-Based Test to get a certification for the said course. These certificates do accentuate the candidate’s professional skills as well as academic qualifications, thus creating a good impression on the recruiters.

  • eGyanKosh: 

The courses offered on eGyanKosh are copyrighted by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Another popular digital academic repository, eGyanKosh provides course materials for different programs at the Bachelor’s degree, guiding students with the best quality resources so that they can ace the exams as well as learn about the contents of their respective programs in the long run. eGyanKosh also offers links to pre-recorded lectures, university publications, as well as self-learning materials so that students can strategize their knowledge acquisition methods accordingly.

That being said, this list of digital resources and study materials will be updated time and again with more innovative and useful academic websites and archives by us at No Herd Mentality. This way, students, parents, and educators as well can refer to these sources in the course of the learning phase, so that the students can not only understand the nitty-gritty of the lessons being taught in class, but also establish the right state of mind to frame their own ideas and opinions as independent individuals.



Apurba Ganguly (she/her) is an English Literature student, pursuing B.Ed (English). She has been eager to understand the intricacies of Memory Studies and Visual Narratives.