The Credit Crisis and Darwin's theory..

For all those who are still wondering what went wrong in the US and the difference between CDO and CDS, here is another simpler, layman's version of the credit crisis. 

So, what are the key take aways from the credit crisis:

• Human beings are motivated by short term gains and greed. And it is very difficult to turn us into good citizens, all in one day. 
• We might try to act and do good for some times in the near future because of the impact credit crisis has created in our lives. But I think eventually greed will win over our mind (and heart) again-which means as long as money exists recession will occur again. Let us accept recession and recovery as a part of nature. 

I am surprised how Darwin's theory can be used to explain this credit crisis. He aptly called it as "survival of the fittest". And it is true everywhere - be it explaining human evolution or life or credit crisis.

Our fast paced "so called" life

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theatre in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Google, Carbon and Global Warming :)

To me Google is tech God. I would be among those "firsts" to try any product with Google brand name on it. I have two versions of GTalk installed in my laptop – one normal version and another lab version (which has that invisible mode plus some other interesting features). With that disclaimer, I will now get into the crux of the issue I wanted to discuss. 

Of late Google has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. People have started nicking the company  “Google, the Evil”. And Sunday Times created a furor recently that prompted Google to issue an unofficial reply through its official blog! The paper reported a study by Harvard University Physics Prof. Alex Wissner-Gross on the environmental impact we (Yes. We Googlers!) make by using Google as our search engine. His report suggested that making a couple of “Google” searches are just as bad for the environment as making a cup of tea or coffee. He says that the energy needed to power Google’s servers and storage, combined with connecting to and running our laptops and other search devices, created about 7 grams of Carbon-dioxide emissions per search. Means the carbon emissions from two Google searches does pollute the environment the same way boiling a kettle of tea does. But considering the number of Google users worldwide and considering that we google for “everything”, Google’s impact on the environment is harsh, the study claims.

Let us guesstimate some numbers. Say, I perform about 40 searches a day; that’s 15,000 Google searches per year (sounds scary when you put it like that). My annual carbon footprint through Google would be 105kg of CO2 (0.15 tons).

I fail to understand how a great brain like Prof. Alex Gross concluded that Google’s impact on the environment is harsh,  without considering the opportunity cost of that particular search. Let us consider that we want to find a a book and we make two Google searches to find that book. As per Professor Gross, this generates 7 grams of Carbon which impacts the environment. Now let us consider Google (or any other search engine for that reason) doesn’t exist. What would have been our alternative – nothing but buy the book. In comes our environmental impact we created due to cutting down the trees to make the paper, chemicals we use to bleach the paper and the sludge we leave out polluting the environment. I am sure that the impact would be much bigger than downloading the book through a “Google search “.

Let us not blame Google for everything. I strongly feel that Google is now in the same position Microsoft was 15 years ago – being envied by everyone who are jealous of its stunning growth and are able to stop the Google juggernaut. While I agree that Information Technology sector would account for 2-3% of the total carbon emissions, we also need to consider the positive impact the sector has created to our lives. It has improved our lives faster than we would have thought of. So, instead of playing the blame game we should join forces to create equipments and devices that stores energy efficiently there by reducing the impact on the environment.