'Fifty Years in the Global Village': Remembering Marshall McLuhan on His 100th Birthday

William F. Baker, August 4, 2011

Marshall McLuhan, the visionary media theorist who gave us the phrases "global village" and "the medium is the message," was born a century ago this month. I first came across his ideas while finishing up graduate school and working as a TV producer in the 1960s. At the time, McLuhan’s journey from obscure Canadian English professor to world famous sage was almost complete. To me, most of what he said sounded like nonsense, because I had not yet realized that he wasn’t offering description, but prophecy.

He was the first to tell IBM, for example, that they were not in the machine business, but the information business. Today, the term "information technology" is commonplace, but fifty years ago it was a revolutionary idea.

It is no exaggeration to say that McLuhan also predicted the internet. While other futurists declared that computers could lead to either utopia or Big Brother, McLuhan quietly anticipated Facebook and Twitter. Writing in 1967, thirteen years before the first Web site even went live, McLuhan got the trivial, distracting qualities of our digital life just right. He told us there would someday be "one big gossip column," powered by an "electronically computerized dossier bank," that would keep an uneraseable record of our tiniest actions. This would be the background noise against which our lives would play out.

McLuhan also saw that our participation in this collective gossip column would be voluntary. He claimed we would all become not the unwilling but rather the "unwitting workforce for social change." In McLuhan’s world, change does not announce itself or even arrive by ambush, but instead creeps up on us. After every advent in media technology, we wake up to an invisibly but fundamentally altered world.

How did McLuhan attain such foresight? Through "pattern recognition," yet another phrase we owe to him. As a way of thinking, it is an excellent tool for survival in a world of information overload. In pattern recognition, facts are less important than the patterns they reveal, and comprehension takes a back seat to intuition. It is a skill we have all had to learn just to keep pace in our jobs and our lives, though not everybody can apply it as widely and effortlessly as McLuhan did.

For a thinker of such wide sweep, it is no surprise that McLuhan’s scholarship has sometimes been called sloppy. One of his most famous books, The Gutenberg Galaxy, contains numerous factual errors, but still feels fresh fifty years after being published, something few academic works can claim. In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan documents the effects the printing press had on European civilization. He argues that books changed much more than just how people got their information. Unlike listening or talking, reading is done alone, and isolates what we see at the expense of all the other senses. The outcome of a conversation is determined by at least two people, while in a book thoughts are dictated by a single author. Printed books, McLuhan argued, became the first industrial commodity, and united peoples around standardized languages into large communities that came to be called nations. The mere fact of printed words on the page, regardless of what they said, created a whole different type of person. The medium, in other words, was the message.

The Gutenberg Galaxy also contains the first printed use of the phrase "global village," which has gone so deep into the language that it is hard to believe we know who said it first. But, as with Shakespeare, Marx, and Freud, McLuhan is one of those thinkers everybody quotes all the time without knowing it.

When used today, "global village" usually has positive connotations. As media and commerce make us more interconnected, the argument goes, the world shrinks into a peaceful, prosperous, global village. But McLuhan did not think of the global village as a happy place at all. He saw it as a place of terror, the home we would all have to move to when electronic media had finished re-tribalizing us.

Tribal society and digital society are similar for McLuhan because both are in a state of ceaseless change, where everybody is constantly affecting everybody else. In a re-tribalized society, the orderly thought patterns of reading and writing are eroded by the constant flow of new information, and a paralyzing uncertainty about the future remains behind. Tribal societies and digital societies also lack privacy. When the whole world moves in next door, everyone becomes everyone else’s nosy neighbor.

The last ten years conform painfully with McLuhan’s predictions. High hopes for globalization have given way to what seems now like permanent economic uncertainty. Privacy has become harder to manage in the age of social media, and may even seem old-fashioned to the rising generation. The War on Terror is still officially being waged, and is perhaps the most McLuhan-esque feature of the present. Since it began in 2001, the War on Terror has slowly become one of those assumptions behind every news story — part of the media environment that we step into every day, as McLuhan once famously said, "like a warm bath." The News of the World hacking scandal, with its terrible crime, invasion of privacy, global scope, and empowered popular outcry could be the perfect illustration of all of McLuhan’s ideas operating at once.

About the Author

William F. Baker
William F. Baker, president emeritus of WNET, the country's largest PBS station, is Bernard L. Schwartz Professor and Journalist-in-Residence at Fordham University.

Marshall McLuhan Foresees The Global Village

http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_mcluhan.htm

Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964.

Marshall McLuhan's insights made the concept of a global village, interconnected by an electronic nervous system, part of our popular culture well before it actually happened.

Marshall McLuhan was the first person to popularize the concept of a global village and to consider its social effects. His insights were revolutionary at the time, and fundamentally changed how everyone has thought about media, technology, and communications ever since. McLuhan chose the insightful phrase "global village" to highlight his observation that an electronic nervous system (the media) was rapidly integrating the planet -- events in one part of the world could be experienced from other parts in real-time, which is what human experience was like when we lived in small villages.

While McLuhan popularized this concept, he was not the first to think about the unifying effects of communication technology. One of the earliest thinkers along this line was Nicolas Tesla, who in an interview with Colliers magazine in 1926 stated: "When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

McLuhan's second best known insight is summarized in the expression "the medium is the message", which means that the qualities of a medium have as much effect as the information it transmits. For example, reading a description of a scene in a newspaper has a very different effect on someone than hearing about it, or seeing a picture of it, or watching a black and white video, or watching a colour video. McLuhan was particularly fascinated by the medium of television, calling it a "cool" medium, noting its soporific effect on viewers. He took great satisfaction years later when medical studies showed that TV does in fact cause people to settle into passive brain wave patterns. One wonders what McLuhan would make of the Internet?

Like Norbert Wiener and J.C.R. Licklider, McLuhan made a study of the extrapolation of current trends in technology, and specialized in the effects on human communications. He generally felt that the developments he described would be positive, but particularly worried about the potential for very sophisticated, manipulative advertising.

McLuhan's ideas have permeated the way we in the global village think about technology and media to such an extent that we are generally no longer aware of the revolutionary effect his concepts had when they were first introduced. McLuhan made the idea of an integrated planetary nervous system a part of our popular culture, so that when the Internet finally arrived in the global village it seemed no less amazing, but still somehow in the natural order of things.

Resources. Two of McLuhan's best known books are The Gutenberg Galaxy, published in 1962, and Understanding Media, published in 1964. The following references provide more information about Marshall McLuhan the man and his work:

Marshall McLuhan's 'Global Village'

by Benjamin Symes
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html

In the introduction to McLuhan's Understanding Media he writes: ‘Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned’ (1964: p.3). Like much of McLuhan's writing this statement is vast and poetic, with its strength of conviction making it quite persuasive. But if we are to be believers in this rhetoric we must have an understanding of what he means. The underlying concept of McLuhan's view of electr(on)ic technology is that it has become an extension of our senses, particularly those of sight and sound. The telephone and the radio become a long distance ear as the television and computer extend the eye by projecting further than our biological range of vision and hearing. But in what way does McLuhan suggest how this has happened? The basic precepts of his view are that the rapidity of communication through electric media echoes the speed of the senses. Through media such as the telephone, television and more recently the personal computer and the 'Internet', we are increasingly linked together across the globe and this has enabled us to connect with people at the other side of the world as quickly as it takes us to contact and converse with those who inhabit the same physical space (i.e the people that live in the same village). We can now hear and see events that take place thousands of miles away in a matter of seconds, often quicker than we hear of events in our own villages or even families, and McLuhan argues that it is the speed of these electronic media that allow us to act and react to global issues at the same speed as normal face to face verbal communication. The effect of this McLuhan suggests is a new ability to experience almost instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale, just as we can supposedly do in our physical situations. Consequently he concludes we are forced to become aware of responsibilty on a global level rather than concerning ourselves solely with our own smaller communities. He writes: ‘As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibilty to an intense degree’ (1964: p.5). Before I consider whether any justification lies in McLuhan's view I need to distinguish between two different meanings in the metaphor of the 'village'. In one sense the village represents simply the notion of a small space in which people can communicate quickly and know of every event that takes place. As he writes: ‘“Time” has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village... a simultaneous happening’ (1967: p.63). McLuhan is suggesting that through our 'extended senses' we experience events, as far away as the other side of the world, as if we were there in the same physical space. Watching the television premiere of the Gulf War and seeing the pilot's eye view of missiles reaching their targets, it would seem that McLuhan is right, but we do not experience the events around us solely through our ears and eyes. There is a large space between watching a war on the living room TV and watching a war on the living room floor. Our biological senses involve us in our situation whereas there is a sense of detachment in our 'extended senses' echoing the detachment of the afore-mentioned pilot. Through technology we bring the action closer to us, so the pilot can get a better shot, but it also enables us to stay at a safe physical distance, so our plane does not get shot down. Is there not a sense then that we are communicating through technologies that allow us to remain physically isolated? In a broader and more ideal sense the village represents community and the idea that we can all have a role in shaping our global society. Mcluhan writes:

We live mythically and integrally... In the electric age ,when our central nervous system is tecnologically extended to involve in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate... in the consequences of our every action. (1964: p.4)

The image is of 'one being' connected by an electric nervous system within which the actions of one part will affect the whole. This idea seems apparent in both the workings of the global economy and our increasing awareness of the fragile eco-system. With the moon- landing came the first definate image of the globe and captured its fertility and beauty against the dark void, suggesting perhaps that the whole was alive. James Lovelock, the author of Gaia, said that it seemed ‘to scream the presence of life’ and as television brought us those pictures it strengthens the idea of communications technology creating this sense of oneness and potential harmony. As McLuhan writes:

The aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electric technology...There is a deep faith to be found in this attitude-a faith that concerns the ultimate harmony of all being. (1964: p.5)

It is with this idealistic view that McLuhan has gained prominence again amidst the emergence of the 'Internet', a medium that seems to promote the idea of an integrated global community. One of the major claims for the 'Internet' lies in the belief that it has the potential to break down centralized power, and help form a community that lives on a more integrated basis, with more shared responsibilty. This is the sense of McLuhan's 'interdependence', as he writes: ‘Electric technology... would seem to render individualism obsolete and... corporate interdependence mandatory’ (1962: p.1). Is McLuhan suggesting that this web of communications technology spun itself catching individualism unawares? Is is not because of our individual differences that we communicate and look for community? Perhaps it is we as individuals who are looking for more inclusive ways of communicating and using these technologies to do so. Bell surely must have had some dream for what he wished his telephone to be. It seems we are often striving for some feeling of unity. Looking back through other cultures and religions there has long been a sense of all connectedness between people and nature in both a spiritual and material way, with Buddhists believing in the oneness of everything, and Native Americans believing that if you take from the earth you must give something back. In this context the earth seen from space was not a new symbol but more a confirmation of some feeling that already existed. Perhaps, in western civilization, it was the circumnavigation of the world that first planted the seeds of a global community, for a flat world has margins whereas the model of a globe suggests that there are no edges and that we are all connected by its very geometry. There is a sense then that we have always wanted the world to be a global village and that McLuhan is working within this ideal of community himself. Mondo 2000 says of McLuhan: ‘Reading McLuhan is like reading Shakespeare - you keep stumbling on phrases that you thought were cliches, only this guy made them up’ (1992: p.166). It could be argued that far from making it up, McLuhan is simply naming an already present concept. By writing about a global village he is creating a greater awareness of that concept and this in turn stengthens the ideal in people's minds. It seems that it is the ideal that is the 'message' and McLuhan's statements that are the 'massage'. As he wishes: 'The electronic age' has sealed 'the entire human family into a single global tribe’ (1962: p.8). But if we disentangle ourselves from the way that McLuhan would like to see the world, it seems likely that the world was circumnavigated with a more imperial purpose in mind. Technology is still used today to help us understand our environment and in doing so makes us more able to predict it and control it. Just as the discoverers of the new world brought back their own accounts, the media through which we hear of events and the way in which we hear and see them is mediated by those who run the corporations that pay for these technologies. We see that which is considered 'important' for us to see, and these decisions are often far from in our hands. McLuhan writes: ‘Today,electronics and automation make mandatory that everybody adjust to the vast global environment as if it were his little home town’ (1968: p.11). But 'little home towns' still have sheriffs who 'don't want no strangers in town' and there is a sense that the technology that is used to connect people together is also used to exclude people who are seen as not being able to give anything to the community or who perhaps do not share the 'right' values (i.e. those of the greater community). If the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one, and this carries with it a reflection of the 'Big Brother' society. Again the claims of many of those that use the 'Internet' are that as information becomes freely accessible we break down centralized power and mediation. However, information is not simply a package to be collected and shown on screen, for we all interpret the information relative to our individual experience. In order for communications technology to build an all inclusive global village surely everyone has to want to live in that village. People will only communicate what they wish to communicate and governments are hardly likely to do a 'Top Secret World Wide Web Home Page'. We are only able to access certain sites on the net which are placed there for us to see and there are only as many sites as there are people with computers. This leaves much of the developing world outside the village walls. McLuhan seems to assume that the entire population of the globe is plugged in to communications technology to the same extent. That we can hear of any single event at any time we choose. Indeed it is increasingly difficult not to hear of world events, for even if, as individuals we choose not to turn on the television or answer the phone, we are informed by others who do, but we cannot yet connect with anyone we wish anywhere in the world. Perhaps we are laying the foundations of the global village and eventually everybody may be connected through an inclusive web, but even if we were all connected and aware of our interdependence would not mean we could all instantly get to know each other and solve our problems. We have trouble enough living together harmoniosly in cities and as humans there is a sense that we can only know a limited number of people well - in The Human Animal Desmond Morris suggests the number as around 150 - and so although our personal tribe of friend may be spread across the globe, how can we possibly feel a strong sense of community with all the millions of us on this earth? Besides can we have as intimate a relationship with people through a telephone line? I personally do not believe we can. McLuhan writes: ‘The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village’ (1962: p.31) His 'image' is a reflection of the way he interprets the world and wants it to be, and in a 'post-modern' sense, it could be argued that his view is thus justifiable as we all see the world through our own eyes based on our own values and beliefs. There is some truth in what he says in the sense of a greater awareness of global responsibility and his belief in closer analysis into the effects of these media, but he falls in his sweeping generalisations about the nature of mankind. Perhaps my essay should be entitled 'Understanding McLuhan: the Generalisations of Man.' It is easy to see why McLuhan was popular in the counter culture of the sixties and is again today amidst the computer revolution, for his ideas encompass a an ideal that has perhaps always been with us. Is there not a possibility that if we place too much importance in achieving an idealistic unified global village, we perhaps risk losing a sense of our physical humanity and our identity and thus forget why we are communicating at all. I do not believe that we are anywhere near a global village in the sense of an integrated community and I'm not certain that as humans we could ever reach it. To achieve it we would have much communicating to do, and by that time we may had made the first tentative contact with extra-terrestrial life and so begin the long journey towards a 'universal hamlet'. 26th May 1995

References

McLuhan, M.(1964): Understanding Media. New York: Mentor
McLuhan, M.(1962): The Gutenberg Galaxy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
McLuhan, M. and Q. Fiore (1967): The Medium is the Massage. New York: Bantam
McLuhan, M. and Q. Fiore(1968): War and Peace in the Global Village. New York: Bantam
Morris, D.( ) The Human Animal
Rucker, R v.b. et al. (Eds.). (1992) Mondo 2000. New York: HarperCollins

An exchange of notes and a huge learning

An exchange of notes and a huge learning

by TSK. Raman

A friend of my released a book last month. I bought it read it and posted my review. Later he sent me a link of another review that I read and wrote to my freind: "Thanks for sending this link to me. I read the review. The review I wrote in fact is earlier than his, but mine looks an abridged version or is like a summary of what he too has said therein. His has been very detailed and mighty elaborate. Best wishes once again .... I Pray you have more tha a million hits on your FB and an equal number buying your book. I ended te mail this way ... Am reminded of a quote from: Anne Frank (1929–1945), Dutch diarist "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. "

So quick that he is he wrote back ...and that is why I have been hounding you all these years :-(

(Background: My friend who has been seriously backing my written skills, has been pushing [ punching would be a better word], me to think of writing a book We've had several discussions on that subject in the past, but I didn't move forward. Thoughts of it kept lingering in my mind always, and does continue even now. Haven't moved one inch forward, reasons were and are many. It's clear that I have the ability, it's just what to write and to whom that holds me back.)

I replied back: "Am feeling delighted and flattered that too coming from a future million FB hits and million copy author."

He replied back: "...but that is not enough dear, and you know it!"

That triggered this long response from me:

In a foreign land, one man feels hurt that he is thrown out of the train despite having a valid ticket for travel. Takes it to heart, vows to retaliate, starts from where it all happened, enrolls them in his mission, returns back home, decides to rally the people of a diverse nation living mainly in its villages.

Moved by this sacrifice and the spirit of a half-naked fakir, several educated youth throughout the country join him in this struggle, knowing fully well the hardships that have to encounter.

Spread all over the country were some educated people who volunteered to support the cause whole heartedly, irrespective of the consequences. They pledged not only their support but were willing to also die for that cause. These people went around villages, heard people's stories, told their stories, established a credible link with them, instilled belief in all and gained their trust. Barring a few most people committed themselves unconditionally by trusting the men who were leading them because right there in the front was one man with self belief and self confidence willing to give his life to achieve what he had set out to. After years and years of struggle with the help of people the nation got emancipated from slavery and a new nation is born.

65 years hence that nation has grown in size and stature but is sick - morally and economically. We now boast of 100 crores of people - with several noteworthy achievements and several worthy people with about 35-40% of them have a university education. A nation that stands on its own legs can defend itself fairly well from any external aggression, stands crippled. The left is weak, the rights is weak, the centre is weak the head is weak, but still we manage to move from one day to another as though nothing happened. Quite a few are happy that we have built nice homes, have a good family a good educated spouse, well educated decent children well settled either in this country or abroad. Regular mobile phone chats, FB, Twitter, emails are enough to keep them under the illusion - 'all is well.' Sadly this is the middle class, supposedly the most influential but absolutely spineless not able to rally around to hound a few hundred corrupt politicians and a few thousand beauracrats, to redeem a nation that has been surrendered to a set of bandits. Chaltha hai attitude, I scratch your back you my back is the mantra of the day. The ones in the schools and colleges - majority of them live in a different world altogether - school, college, computer games, mobile games, mobile calls, FB, Twitter, cars, races, IPL, DID, SaReGaMaPa etc. Parents are happy as long as they get marks scores, get into the best courses in the best colleges IIT/IIM, BITS or go abroad, get a plum job, live well, eat well, sleep well, get established, get married, stay together for a few years raise a child, divorce, remarry, live in, stay in, divorce, and the cycle goes on. This is the 'India' I see, and I am charging myself to see what can I do. My mind is full with this and is seeking to erupt like a volcano. I see this all around me. Am slightly scared to speak the truth for who knows I'll be done in by a guy who gets paid Rs. 500/- ( a supari on my name for that day because I opened my mind and spoke the truth). I need some more time to align my thoughts as to what do I want to say and to whom. I say this because 'I think, and I know that I think,' am trying to make others think too am about building a base. The process is slow, but I am sure it is taking shape. I know I will make it, not some day, soon.

My friend wrote back immediately

"Thanks for ventilating yourself my friend and I feel honored to be given that privilege for I empathize with each and every thought and concern you have expressed.

You are aware that I have chosen to live my life almost like a sanyasi.. being in this world.. doing my bit.. enjoying myself.. yet not under any illusion that I am destined to "change" the world. I am a firm believer in the theory of chaos and fully realize that the world will continue to run the way it does with or without me.

Having internalized this to myself my options are to continue to stand on the sidelines and keep burning with the unfairness of it all or else enjoy myself in doing whatever arrests my passion and allow the world to take note of me or ignore me... I am clear with the Geeta funda of whatever is mine.. will be mine.. whatever is not.. cannot be given to me.

So in a nutshell while stray thoughts like yours also plague me at times but I choose to continue my own "prukriti" and live by my rules within the confines of the larger world."

It was as you can see a hard hitting response and it brought me to senses and I replied back, " I am deeply touched by your reply and by your thoughts. Am with you, it's just that feelings like this get aroused, and wants to let itself out. I am also under no illusion and am also sure that I am not destined to 'change the world.' I too am on the same path, though I might not ever claim that I could be anywhere near you, however, I am slowly breaking away from the shackles. Every word here lights my soul. I'm much more at ease now than I was about thirty minutes ago. I'll do what I like within playing my game my way within the rules of the game, and enjoy myself.

My friend replied back again: "Way to Go!"

I responded this way, "I, Thank God every morning, as I rise up from the bed, that I have something to do which I do, because I like what I do. I always try to do my best, because it will breed in me a hundred thoughts and virtues which the idle will never know. I know, I don't have to stir the ocean or move mountains to make a difference. When I accept responsibility to improve life in my own family, workplace, my neighborhood or where ever, I know that I change the world by that much.

Seems we are living in times of achievement and accomplishments, and that's what is raging the storm within all of us to be competitive. We have forgotten that we are all running our own races, and that we ought not to compete with any other living or non-living beings. Yet we do, however we need to just remember no matter where we start, if we work hard and if we think positively and if we dream dreams and if we have good character, we can lift the status of ourselves, our family, our friends and everyone around us. This doesn't mean that our object in life is to become rich or famous. Just do the best we can with ourselves. Believe that Almighty has put that into us and we are going to do the best we can with ourselves. Achievement or accomplishments mean to be what, by the grace of God, each of us can be.

My friend replied back " The 'gyaan' is all there Sir! All you need to do now is start putting it into practice NOW! "

What he said was absolutely true, the lesson dawned on me and am more blissful that I was earlier in the day. I am beginning to realize one truth, and that is read the news paper, see what's happening, but do not let it activate you for nothing, Stay informed, do not get consumed.

QUALITIES THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS

QUALITIES THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS

by TSK. Raman

West Indies becoming the T-20 World Cup 2012 Champions prompted me to this. It was an awesome team effort which was well orchestrated by an unassuming and sincere Darren Samy, the Captain of this talented West Indies side. Captaining a side with Chris Gayle, Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, all menacing super stars who can win a match purely on their performance on their day. Add to that a modest, unassuming, less speaking Sunil Naraine, the mystery spinner, and Fidel Edwards, the sling action unpredictable quick bowler, in the side, is not an easy task at all.

Assuming charge at the helm two years ago, when cricket in the 'Calypso Isles' was in an absolute disarray, stung with problems from all sides, and he personally being criticized as a 'nothing' player. This man who carries his heart on his sleeve, put his hand up and committed every single day from then on to the cause of improving the stature of the side in the world arena.

Winning this title in Colombo yesterday, just puts West Indies back in the lime light once again. They are undisputedly the best side at least as far as T-20 is concerned.

Going forward, how they will stay together and work their way back to glory in the other extended formats of the game ODI's and Test Matches is to be seen.

The fans of the game of cricket world over wish them well, as they are people born for entertainment, people who are passionate about the sport as much as they are fond of their dance, music and their 'spirited concoctions.'

What was noticeable is a burning Desire to win. It is vastly believed that a burning desire is the starting point of all accomplishments. It's also know n as "carrying fire in one's belly." Just like a small fire cannot give much heat, a weak desire cannot produce great results.

All of them work hard each showing intensity of Commitment. Vince Lombardi's quote, "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor," sums up all that is to be said in this context.

For the first time one could see the Responsibility each one held. West Indians from time immemorial have been people who played this sport with great flair and flamboyance. They are absolute stroke makers and usually get their runs pretty quickly. It doesn't matter to them as to what the situation of the game is they'll play their strokes. They will not know how to defend for them attack is the only form of defense they know, so they will attack, attack, attack, from the word go. The approach is the same be it when they go out to bat or bowl. For a change they were different last evening. They showed more maturity and understanding that they left everyone dumb founded. They started of unusually slow, but ended up pretty well with a modest total to defend. Responsible people accept and learn from their mistakes.

They put in a lot of Hard Work: Andrew Carnegie said, "The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%." That was evident in the way the played.

Leading them from the front Darren Samy showed a lot of Character which got rubbed into all of the others in the team as well. George Washington said, "I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most valuable of all titles, the character of an honest man." The interview after the game just before the prize distribution Darren Samy showed all of this trait.

Darren Samy often talks about Positive Believing: Positive believing is an attitude of confidence that comes with preparation.

He urged each of them to Give more than they get and he was a god example himself : Winners put in 100% and then some more.

They displayed ample Persistence : Through out the tournament they were consistent and persistent. Accepted they were lucky when they played their tied match with New Zealand, and then coming to winning the same match in the "super over's," and that too in great style. architect of that win was Marlon Samuels, who was the man of the match in the final yesterday. Calvin Coolidge rightly said, " Nothing will take the place of persistence. Talent will not : Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent . Genius will not : Unrewarded genius is a proverb. Education will not: The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. "

They take Pride of performance: They danced as soon as the last wicket fell, and they were dancing and dancing all the way even through the prize distribution ceremony. This quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. sum's it up, "If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Dareen Samy implored his team mates to Be Willing to Be learners. The best teachers will not give you something to drink, they will make you thirsty. They will put you on a path to seek answers.

If all this is put together is it surprising that the Calypso Kings won the title. They were billed to win the tournament, even before the tournament began. By winning this the jolly go lucky bunch of cricketers from the isles of the Atlantic lived up to the expectations of the officials their countrymen and the cricket fans all over the world. Congrats to all the the West Indian and their ardent supporters.

I was on a long distance call, with a friend of mine dating back to the mid-70’-80’s. He was thrilled at the reconnection and was sharing memories of our times together. Among several things we shared, he reminded me about the humorous things I used to say and that used to be the stand out most of the times we gathered as friends. I reflected back for a moment and said, yes, I was once one, and now for a while I seem to have forgotten that. Anyway going back to what my friend of yester years said and also believing that I still have that streak in me, I decided I’ll pen this just for fun.

Read this and please let me know why you haven’t enjoyed it.

So Much Ado About Nothing...
by TSK. Raman

Are people are hard or hearing these days, at least that's the impression I get and that has nothing to do with the latest technologies. They just want to hold the centre stage and speak about themselves. They are the 'I' specialists. Very self-centred. Most conversations are centered around themselves and just themselves. For a change they will bring in their family – spouse, son, daughter, etc., when they speak. They hardly think. There is no time even to think if they are thinking. There is no defined process to define this process. In the midst of this chaos, I'm trying to find a thought, and that's a lot of hard work you see, this is what it must be like being an archaeologist. ‘Archaeologists’ uncover the unknown and diplomats cover the known. I'm neither, am therefore not sure if what I am going to say in unknown to the known, or known to the unknown.

Honestly, whose got the time to teach anyone how to 'fish' in today's world. You want to live you've got do anything or everything for your fish. Doesn’t that sound a little ‘fishy.’

I like nothing free, except things nature gave me.

There is an old saying the best things in life are free - mothers for instance, the air that we breathe, but how many realize this, as everyone is in a desperate hurry running after more and more and doing airy-fairy things. How else would you describe the mad-rush or people driving on the roads (sorry – no one drives, at least not in a place like Hyderabad, they just fill the gaps, in front of them).

Everyone around wants to 'win' everything, and no one know which race they are in. In the midst of this desperation and cacophony, I am still trying to be happy participating in life. Doing something I feel good, the way I think best possible. I expected to be farther down life's road by now, but I just skidded off the learning curve, because I did not have that aim in life that most seem to have, and now I have just enough ammunition to see my days through. Every action has an overreaction these days, so the best thing to do would be is to be a‘Director,’ of non-action.

The really scary part of middle age is you know you're going to grow out of it. I didn't much care about it then and now I don't care a bit about my age, you see I don’t dye my hair, neither do I stop it from falling. I'm not getting old I'm becoming a classic. In me still resides a 'kid' but not the one who would love to go to school. I didn’t enjoy schooling even as a kid, so there is no way I’ll enjoy it now, for workplaces have taken the shape of schools, tasks, performance, appraisal’s, increments, pink-slips etc. It’s now I realized going to school and that too to the class isn't going to make me a 'classic,' I turned to become one and I don’t know how. It may be because I learnt more when I got out of school and on the road to life. Anyway for me it’s ‘vintage’ stuff.

As a kid, I was pretty light meaning fleet footed, and skinny to the extent that if someone saw me from the side, I was invisible. That apart I really loved playing, among which I enjoyed flying kites as it soars into the sky and I felt as if I was flying with it. I remember people telling me to be careful as the weight of the kite and the lift it gets with the wind, might lift me along with it. Nothing like that happened because I used a rope which bound me to a pole, to keep me secure and bound to the ground. I had a competitor around me there too and that was a mischievous cow which our neighbor milkman always tied to the pole, because he had no other place to tie it. This kept me on my toes always, a slight lapse of concentration would mean a knock, a bump on my backside by the cow. Poor skinny cow it had to take it’s anger out on someone you see. And I was not keen on becoming it’s victim. This lesson helps me even to this day. Whenever I feel I am involved in something I can see a lot of bulls around me, who are mentally tied down, and are physically 'milked' out of energy, and I refuse being cowed down. That’s the secret my ‘energy.’

Now that I am a senior citizen, while flying kites people say I've leased it for a walk, I enjoy it even more if it is downhill, I'm then para-gliding. Whatever be it, I enjoy myself, I get to run, fly, and walk, all of which adds to keep me fit.

So that's it Just live your life to the fullest...　

Moral:Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it's understood.

Age Gracefully

Age is really a funny thing indeed. Every moment that ticks away, makes you a little more older, perhaps wiser too.  It creeps on to you rather steathily, and evn you may not realize that it has, for it's all a part of the process, which even you may not notice. It's those around you who discern the subtle changes and one fine day they'll announce the verdict - you are too old for this or you are not young enough for that. But those who do that do not realize that it is someone else's live on which they  make their decision and pronounce the future too. They do not even for a moment sit down to think "who are we to decide the right time for anyone's retirement, and who are we to dictate any course of future action?"

Age is something no one can escape. We all need to prepare ourselves slowly but surely - mentally, physically to accept the changes that take place and learn to adapt to changing times. We need to pursue activities that engages the mind and allows that much space to make contributions whenever wanted.

It's a lot simpler to say than doing it. But just hang on and show value.