Envisioning the future student(Part 1 of 2)...

       Well this intrigues me. I just couldn't help but wonder how drastically would the student's life change in the coming generations. I don't claim that my psychic powers parallel that of Nostradamus, nor do I have a double-Ph.d degree in clairvoyancy. All I can do is merely speculate on some of the possibilities the future  has in store for the "student" like me.
       We could have the science-fiction view of the big-brained human having a proportionately smaller body endowed with extrasensory perception and biologically-powered chips implanted in the brain for telepathic abilities(will it promote cheating during exams??). Or we could have a more realistic view on which I would be expressing my ideas. I see the social networking scene, to be embedded deeply in our lifestyle which would be less cluttered, and be more dynamic and automated, which will filter the content actually required to ensure maximum value to the individual student preferences. The university or the school infrastructure of which the student is a part of will be an active community linked to each student's life via his social network profile consisting of GPS info, address, calendars activities. It would become mandatory for students to electronically record the relevant details of the day-to-day life as required by the institution to monitor and ensure that each student gets the type of attention he needs. All this is possible with a new Global social networking platform which is integrated with various web-services(Google + ?anyone read the New Google Policy?)
        Also in the future we would have an extreme demand for specialized people in certain fields. So it may be possible that the unified primary, secondary and high-school architecture present worldwide now gets split into different branches like "The School Of Computers", or "The School Of Automobiles". The students would be mentally-conditioned from childhood, or at least until they are 10 or so till they gain their basic life-foundation, to think in the way their chosen field requires them to think. Indeed this would eliminate the need to study bullshit we don't really give a damn about in school. You may be asking yourselves, is it healthy to have such a system? Wouldn't we become too narrow-minded? Now let me ask you. Is the current education system really that great? How many times have you felt out-of-place studying about something you don't care about? NO I don't need to know who is the third wife of Akbar, I don't need to know whether God exists or not(humanities), I don't give a crap about what happens when you mix chemical "abc" with "xyz". It is a different thing to be informed about the world, I have the internet, newspapers, media but why the hell should I know about something which does not coincide with my life goals and aspirations?
        How can I forget virtual classrooms? No, I am not talking about video-conferencing, I am talking about the real deal, an ACTUAL virtual classroom. Excited? Imagine the possibilities. Imagine a scenario, where the students are away for the summer vacations, professor wants to take a class. Put on the "virtual gear", relax on the couch, find yourself in the classroom and voila!! There you are, right in the classroom, interacting with your friends, cracking jokes, asking doubts face-to face. By extension there can be virtual devices in the virtual worlds. That would be REVOLUTIONARY, GAME-CHANGING. Imagine operating the various devices in the particle-physics laboratory without actually touching them, and if your somehow able to link these actions to the real world, these changes we made in the virtual world could be carried on the to the real world! Add Deus Ex style augmented reality into the picture and you have a perfect neat little package! Maybe I am taking things too far(or not?).
         Lets end the first part of my vision of the "future student" with a hope that we do not get consumed by technology but consume technology healthily in a balanced way. The next part will be all about the role of technology in the "future student's" life. Stay hooked :)

Gay-humor?

        My first blog post. A rather unconventional way of starting out a blog intended for a wide variety of audiences, but I just couldn't resist letting out my thoughts on this particular controversial topic. And for all the purists out there, to clear your confusion, here gay refers to homosexual, not gay as in happy, lame or dorky.
        Back to the question. My first insight into humor pertaining to gay-ism was probably when one of my friends pushed me away when I approached him to give a friendly hug. Well this could have been for a number of reasons, had he not mentioned that the hugging "was gay". I never really understood as a child why someone would be compelled to term this affectionate, benign action as a subset of the set of activities performed by only gays. But now it seems a bit clear to me, that the urge to make a gay joke is inherently linked with a medley of reasons like peer-acceptance, sounding cool  and the culture of television, music and movies to which we are exposed, which make statements like "that's so gay" sound okay.
        Well, If you were to crack a practical gay joke on me, my first thought would be: Is this guy insecure of his own sexuality? If you were a teen I probably wouldn't doubt you with the question because of the simple reason that you probably were following the same pathetic trend that your friends do. But if you were post-18, then I seriously would expect a certain level of maturity from you and my doubt would be valid. Gay-humor maybe okay if done occasionally in a frivolous manner(Gay-right activists would probably kill me for this) but if gay-humor is the forte of your comedy, I feel sorry for you.
         Dostana. Good film, many would say, it truly was an art which openly and blatantly cracked jokes on the gay community without sounding offensive. Karan Johar says it is a clean comedy and all in good fun, What do you think? The intent might have been good, to show the gay-related issues in a positive way but the trailer of Dostana and the whole movie made it clear to me that homosexuality was nothing more than a joke in the film. But why do we care? We all ended up laughing and enjoying...more importantly laughing on gays and enjoying the rude, abrasive humor portrayed in the film. Is this trend turning for the worse? Little to early to say that. But give me five more films like Dostana in a span of three years and my answer would be a yes.
          A perfect example to show the serious implications and ramifications of this continuing trend would be the Nazi-Jews situation. The Nazi's did not start off directly by rounding of Jews in concentration camps and exterminating them, they accomplished this with an incremental strategy. The Nazi's first started out acting superior and making the Jewish race feel inferior, leading the people to believe it was fine to discriminate the Jews through a systematic devaluation process, which included propaganda, fliers, movies and images depicting the Jews as rats(the implication being that they were to be exterminated like the rodents infesting your home). It is not about being funny, and taking things lightly, it is about giving respect to the GLBT community and not setting the stage for jokes on gays to be an acceptable part of the culture because it would, by extension, imply that intolerance for gay people would be the norm. And thus bullying would follow.
           You still may not be convinced with my argument, so I urge you to google "gay bully suicide" and see how many results you get. To close off on a lighter note this is a harmless gay joke one of my friends forwarded to me:

What will 2 gay men tell each other when they see a really hot girl? 

. 

. 

. 
Yaar ladki aisi hai to bhai kaisa hoga?