Our capacity to feel, imagine and visualise led us to abstractions which allowed us to communicate with each other. Even the idea of consciousness is an abstraction of complex neural interactions. Over time, abstractions have made their way into many spheres of our lives. What lies next?
It was in Douglas Rushkoff’s Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus that I first became really aware of how much of an abstraction money is. Just to clarify what ‘abstraction’ is in this context, vegetables, meat, human labour etc all have clear, tangible value. Money is a transactional device with many advantages but it has […]
The books on the bookshelf. Each with a story to tell – when I bought them, where, and why. Some of them are gifts. There is a tangible sense of our history (theirs and mine) and collective mortality when I run my hand across their spines, and flip through their pages. Sometimes they also contain the stories […]
Yes. Quite liked the movie – Inception. Mostly because I found the concept (dream incubation, lucid dreaming) interesting and because it forced me to pay attention. Sometimes, movies like that can be refreshing. Of course, it helped that the visuals were very watchable too, and the last shot added to the charm. For those who […]
For some strange reason, I’ve read Pankaj Mishra’s books in reverse order..well, almost. I read The Romantics first, a long time before, and it remains a book I’m very attached to. Its a good book, but I’ve never figured out the exact reason for this strange bond, in spite of making a rare exception and […]