Traditionally I have been a great fan of books. Because no kindle/nook/nexus can beat the feel of paper in your fingers. Perhaps it is my inherent trait of being a bookworm. Storybooks are fun, novels are awesome but I want to talk about my lost fascination for textbooks. During my bachelor’s, it was the one of the best experience to get the list of textbooks and catch the shared auto to the god forsaken town (Yes my friends, Silchar is a town, although it doesn’t seem much) and actually buy them. (Yes I bought the textbooks in an Engineering college and I am not ashamed to admit that). But a strange metamorphosis begins once the class starts-ironically I start to abhor the same textbooks that I bought so enthusiastically because they are now, well, textbooks-something that I was forced to read. And at the start of a new semester, with a new set of textbooks, my attention is diverted to the old ones, wondering if there was something interesting that I missed. Thus is the thin line between work and play, between time waste and time pass, between books and textbooks.
The only thing I really learnt from corporate India was to learn and forget technologies, be ready to adapt and most importantly, avoid RnD and try to resolve issues with the least effort. Thus, instead of getting into the intricacies of what a problem might be, just search for the problem (GOOGLE has changed the corporate world for sure, if it closes, I am sure most of the software companies would close down as well, and please don’t refute my argument by saying “We still have Bing”), look up for the solution and implement it, and if it doesn’t work, well, search again. I do wonder sometimes that the manuals that are so painstakingly made (I know, because unfortunately there was a time when I had to make some as well) are of what use to an average consumer? The strategy is to let some technically sound (read NERD) personnel read it, let him search for the problem in stackoverflow or roseindia or any of the good technical forums out there and provide the solution. Perhaps, he may even write up a gist of it in his blog which will come up in an internet search hit. Thus, you can see the abject difference-unlike a novel where the plot is not revealed in the back cover, only a gist of what you are supposed to expect, titillating the senses and creating an aura of mystery and suspense, these technical blogs and articles have made our life easier, at the cost of actually understanding the workings of a particular technology, creating a generation of technocrats who can probably command a mars-rover with the internet at hand but will also probably struggle while operating an electric iron, and killing off any interest in a standard textbook.
Now that I am back to academics, I still haven’t shaken off the habit of finding the easy way out. More productivity-less effort is the mantra. But with the prospect of starting with my thesis round the corner, I wonder if the same rules apply. As my project guide once said “Wikipedia is not research, reading papers is”, I have to get my fascination of these textbooks back if I am supposed to come up with something substantial. But that’s for later. For now I am blissfully oblivious to this fact. After all, it is said that knowledge is power, however the paradigms of power is shifting. It is no longer confined within the bounded covers of a book that you have to read from end to end, it is available with the right search phrase.
The only thing I really learnt from corporate India was to learn and forget technologies, be ready to adapt and most importantly, avoid RnD and try to resolve issues with the least effort. Thus, instead of getting into the intricacies of what a problem might be, just search for the problem (GOOGLE has changed the corporate world for sure, if it closes, I am sure most of the software companies would close down as well, and please don’t refute my argument by saying “We still have Bing”), look up for the solution and implement it, and if it doesn’t work, well, search again. I do wonder sometimes that the manuals that are so painstakingly made (I know, because unfortunately there was a time when I had to make some as well) are of what use to an average consumer? The strategy is to let some technically sound (read NERD) personnel read it, let him search for the problem in stackoverflow or roseindia or any of the good technical forums out there and provide the solution. Perhaps, he may even write up a gist of it in his blog which will come up in an internet search hit. Thus, you can see the abject difference-unlike a novel where the plot is not revealed in the back cover, only a gist of what you are supposed to expect, titillating the senses and creating an aura of mystery and suspense, these technical blogs and articles have made our life easier, at the cost of actually understanding the workings of a particular technology, creating a generation of technocrats who can probably command a mars-rover with the internet at hand but will also probably struggle while operating an electric iron, and killing off any interest in a standard textbook.
Now that I am back to academics, I still haven’t shaken off the habit of finding the easy way out. More productivity-less effort is the mantra. But with the prospect of starting with my thesis round the corner, I wonder if the same rules apply. As my project guide once said “Wikipedia is not research, reading papers is”, I have to get my fascination of these textbooks back if I am supposed to come up with something substantial. But that’s for later. For now I am blissfully oblivious to this fact. After all, it is said that knowledge is power, however the paradigms of power is shifting. It is no longer confined within the bounded covers of a book that you have to read from end to end, it is available with the right search phrase.