Sunday, 4 November 2012

Sujavna 2:45


It is 11am on Nov 4 2012.
It encourages me a lot to know that there are hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings across the world who continue to exercise their faculties to innovate and improvise on solutions that impact their individual livelihoods, and I am also inspired to realize that there are people like Peter Neumann, who in his eightieth year continues to think laterally on possible innovations that will make computers and computer networks resiliently adaptive in terms of security. I recently read a report on how this pioneer in applied mathematics and computing is leading teams that are asking questions such as “How do you kill the computer to save it?”
Innovation requires bold experimentation, and even the most successful of innovators fumble and fail in some of their experiments. I was reminded about this simple home-truth yesterday when I attended a fusion music concert by India’s well-acclaimed Santoor (an Indian string instrument) exponent Rahul Sharma who attempted to fuse his music with South African saxophonist Buddy Wells and Carnatic music Kanjira (a percussion instrument) exponent SelvaGanesh. The experiment can at best be described as “not a disaster”. But music lovers would clearly have realized the potential for such a fusion of instruments by noticing what was wrong in the choice of the compositions! And therein, I realized, lies the beauty of experimentation – it gives an enormous opportunity to learn and improve and perfect!
Wishing you all a great week ahead.

No comments: