The Eureka Moment - 4

As a child of a divorce, Sarang never truly felt loved. In spite of both his parents' efforts, little insecurities did always creep in. There were times when he had severe panic attacks. He even saw a shrink. Of course, that didn't really help much, but it was the best his parents could do. For the human mind is a very complex structure. Sometimes it can face mountain-loads of adversaries, whereas on the others, it takes the smallest of things to trigger it's downfall. Truly, the wounds of the mind are the hardest to heal.

Thus he grew up having quite a quiet childhood, with monthly appointments with the psychiatrist. All the while, on a quest to find 'love'.

His mother, Lata, was a sweet lady who worked as a nurse in a well-off private hospital. She was the one with Sarang's custody. She always told him that 'love' is when you care more about the other, than you did about yourself. This was almost always immediately followed by a "but your father cares about nothing but his own life". Thus, to Sarang, 'love' became a very difficult thing to have, as his father couldn't possess it, and if he couldn't, then who can? After all, "my daddy strongest", right?

Lata's ex-husband, Sarang's father, Mr. Gopen Patel was a hot commodity in Gujarat. His life could've been right out of a Bollywood movie, with the typical from "rags to riches" stuff. But not to let that undermine his hard work and achievements, as it is nowhere as easy in real life as it appears on the reel front.Unlike most around him, he didn’t have a Saree or jewelry business, his was an empire of transformers. He was a no nonsense man who didn’t really have the time for Sarang’s questions on love. “Love is a tool fools use to kid themselves”, is the best he could ever get out of him.

Sarang was used to watching his parents bicker over the slightests of things from a very young age. Sometimes he pretended that it wasn’t happening by indulging himself in television or the movies, the rest he tried to calm down his parents. But after each quarrel, each bigger and over a sillier reason than the previous, the three would always sit together peacefully watching the movies at home, eating popcorn from one huge bowl, tucked in under one big sheet. This was truly a cherished memory for him. He believed that had he been in JK Rowling’s wizarding world and been asked to conjure a patronus, this memory of his would’ve produced the strongest patronus in the world. It was that strong, happy and special a memory to him. But then, one fine day his parents dropped the missile on him- the news that they had decided to get separated. Poor little Sarang was just 12. He tried all he could, but who could change the mind of two determined adults? Children are much wiser in this aspect as adults, to their own folly, often make the worsts of decisions out of a misplaced case of ego. But then again, sometimes it’s better to just let go.

His schooling life was quiet and quite uneventful. He hardly opened up to anyone. He had massive trust issues. He saw all his friends’ parents, both of them coming to their Parent’s Days or to the Parent Teacher Conferences. This always made him sad. He saw all the kids around him being happy, jovial, indulging in relationships, etc. He for one could never get into one, as he was too paranoid that eventually everyone he liked would leave him. He saw many such cases of breakups of his batch mates as well, which further turned him against the prospect.

All this continued until once, at the age of 19, he was returning home from college, and he met with a serious car accident. His chauffeur collided his car against a truck. He was gravely injured and taken to the hospital immediately. Luckily he survived, although he wasn’t too thankful of that. But something happened which changed everything for him.

He was in the hospital for 7 days, and during this time, both his parents were at the hospital throughout. They spent whole days together in the hospital, by his side, not fighting even once. They were completely into their son’s welfare, they forgot all about their mutual differences. They left their work, their ego, their past and everything behind! They talked to him, fed him, made him laugh, saw to his injuries, made sure he took the right meds at the right time. All in all, they were a perfect little happy family. In that moment, he did truly feel ‘infinite’.

For once, he felt loved. He felt special. He forgot all the bitterness that he had developed inside of him. He forgot all the sad memories, and was just brought back to those happy memories with the popcorn, the sheet and the movies. What was an enigma to him suddenly became an answer to everything. It was kind of an epiphany where his quest finally seemed fulfilled.

He realized that maybe both his parents were right in their definitions of love. Yes, he truly saw his parents’ love. They overlooked their own personal issues for the sake of their son. It is indeed about caring more about someone else than oneself. Also, love is an abstract thing, doesn’t truly exist to the outside world. It is merely something fools use to make themselves feel better. But in that regard, all of us are fools! We all yearn for love, and we accept the love we think we deserve. Sarang thought throughout that he didn’t deserve any. Thus unknowingly, he blocked himself from all the love he could’ve possibly received. True love doesn’t need any form. It is just out there for you to grasp. Sometimes stuff doesn’t work out the way you want it to, but that doesn’t undermine the love that was there, the love that is there and this love which will always remain.

Just like every other son, daughter, mother, father, friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse or whatever. We are all entitled to love and to be loved. We all spend our lives in search of the much hyped- ‘true love’. Only we fail to see it. But eventually, even if it be for a very short while, we do have our “eureka moments”, where we finally find it. Only we must remember to grasp on to it with both hands, and cling to it forever. Just like little Sarang Patel. J

Samarth Ladia

The Eureka Moment - 5

The Aha!! Effect …..

Let’s start this a bit technically, so what’s a proper definition of the term “Eureka Moment”. Wikipedia defines it has … “Eureka" is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. That seems to be a very difficult one to get known to what actually Eureka moment mean. In simple words, it’s a flash of a moment when one feels that “I have found it…”

History states that, this word of first attributed to the famous ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka!" when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose—he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. Yeah that was the moment J quite funny!!

It’s actually a good word; everyone should use this word from time to time, to make you exciting while spilling it out!

Imagine sitting in an exam hall, seeing at the question paper and wondering what the solution is and in a flash you get a solution!!!!Feels so good, that’s an awesome Eureka Moment, for sure.

Know Isaac Newton? Yes the man who discovered Gravity. Actually, if you go through that incident again you’ll see it’s a heck of a Eureka!!! Let’s rewind this a bit.

Isaac Newton was a shy, quiet boy growing up on a farm in England 300 years ago. He was not a very good student and nobody cared about him. He was a guy who always kept on asking “Why? This, Why that?  & so on…. Until One day he was lazy sitting in a garden wondering how things will go … and then … An apple fell out of the tree - bonk! Ow!

Now for most people that would be the end of the story, but not for Isaac. Not for somebody who just couldn't stop asking why all the time. Why did the apple fall out of the tree? Does everything fall? What makes things fall? Can anything stop things from falling? Are the sun, moon, and stars falling? Why don't they ever hit the ground? and then he came up with the theory of Gravity!!!

It is one of the most famous anecdotes in the history of science but for us it’s just a brilliant example of Eureka Moment.

Eureka Moments have also been referred as Eureka Myth. Like, as we winded up that apple fall on Isaac’s head & he came up with theory of Gravity, seems a Eureka moment, but actually it’s a Eureka Myth because Isaac spent many years after it to actually come up with the concept of Gravity.

Although it is commonly thought that Charles Darwin came up with his theory of natural selection while on the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he only started to believe in evolution after he returned to England. Instead of being struck by a single "Eureka moment", the scientist spent two decades pondering his observations, finally presenting his controversial theory in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. Sofia Mitra-Thakur

Popular culture has its own views of the Aha! Effect. Although both are defined as that moment of insight that changes one's state of mind, its applications greatly differ. Where scientists have focused on understanding the mechanisms of insights as well as how and where Aha! Moments occur in the brain; Oprah Winfrey has taken this phenomenon and turned it into a popular and well-recognized state of mind. By focusing on the emotional and life changing occurrences an individual experiences, Oprah views the Aha! Effect as a sudden moment of realization, where an individual recognizes that they need to make a change or move forward in life. Oprah includes Aha! Moments in her monthly magazine, O: the Oprah Magazine, and commonly makes reference to these moments of insight on her television show, Oprah

Eureka moments feel like flashes of insight because they often come out a period when the mind isn’t focused on the problem, what psychologists call a period of incubation. Incubation is the stage where people briefly step back from their work. Many of the most productive creative people intentionally set a project aside and take a physical break from their work believing that this incubation stage is where ideas begin to come together below the threshold of the conscious mind. Some people juggle various projects at the same time under the belief that while their conscious mind is focusing on one project, the others are incubating in their unconscious. The insights that come after incubation are what feel like we’re tapping into the same idea-generating force that powered Newton and Archimedes.

After going through all the above stuff, what comes up that, Eureka Moments can be any simple things happening with you at any instant of time. The thing is that in this busy modern life no one has time to actually realize that which moment was Eureka.

Here are a few tips to get inspired to strike and find your Eureka moment.

Slow down

Slowing down to find whitespace in today’s fast paced, non-stop, all consuming world is easier said than done. That’s especially true now that mobile phones have found their way into every corner of the globe. Getting away, out of your normal routine and disconnected from the daily grind doesn’t just happen anymore; you’ve got to be purposeful about it. You've got to seek out quiet spaces.

Get outside the bubble

If you think about it, we live the bulk of our lives in a bubble, moving temporarily from one to the next. Each bubble personalized for our comfort and familiarity, by design. Home, car, office, car, home, repeat. By design, there’s nothing particularly stimulating about them, even if we build them to foster "creativity," they’re still stagnant, and as such, will only temporarily stimulate a new perspective.

Extend today’s observations into the future

This last step is perhaps where the magic happens, but note that the degree to which you succeed here is largely predicated upon your ability to 1. Slow down (create whitespace) and 2. View problems from a new perspective.The trick is to take a simple observation or trend and mentally extend it out in some fashion into the future.

I grew up thinking Eureka moments were, as if by divine intervention, supposed to simply appear.

I learned however that nothing could be farther from the truth, at least in my case. What some call "vision" is actually nothing more than taking the time to connect the dots? In fact, it’s entirely possible to manufacture eureka moments by creating the right circumstances, and by simply being open and thoughtful about what I was already observing every day.

So, let’s conclude this article.

Isaac discovered gravity, Archimedes discovered law of hydrostatics, Charles Darwin discovered theory of evaluation all these were initiated by a Eureka Moment.

And even your solution to a tough problem in “Math!!!” too was a Eureka Moment J

The point is that, some moments happen in flash and you just don’t get to know whether it’s a Eureka Moment or not. What you need is to follow the 3 tips given above, create & realize your Eureka Moments!!!!  So I’d like to wrap this out saying …

~~Eureka Moments Don't Just Happen, But They Can Be Created~~                                                          

                                                                                  

Prasad Pawaskar

The Eureka Moment - 6

Archimedes Coined the Term "Eureka!" in the Bath. During a subsequent trip to the public baths, he realized that the more his body sinks into the water, the more water is displaced--making the displaced water an exact measure of his volume. Because gold weighs more than silver, he reasons that a crown mixed with silver would have to be bulkier to reach the same weight as one composed only of gold; therefore it would displace more water than its pure gold counterpart. Realizing he has hit upon a solution, the young Greek Math whiz leaps out of the bath and rushes home naked crying "Eureka! Eureka!" Or, translated: "I've found it! I've found it!"

In layman terms, Eureka is an exclamation of triumph on discovering or solving something. What I feel is, Eureka moment is that moment which gives you happiness, a sense of joy, a sense of satisfaction.

You’re just flesh. Your soul animates you and the ones that surround you. As an optimist it is my responsibility to not have a boring life. To feel deeply. To listen to the stories of strangers. To try new things and go new places. To say yes. To question everything. To find beauty in the commonplace. And to fall in love. Over and over. Living almost an ordinary 19 years of my life, I fail to recognize the extraordinary (Eureka) moments. However, I did find happiness, a sense of joy& achievement in my everyday small moments (Not to mention, I would run around naked for such events).

Napoleon Hill has rightly said: “If you can't do great things, do small things in a great way.” Creativity and insight almost always involve an experience of acute pattern recognition: the Eureka moment in which we perceive the interconnection between disparate concepts or ideas to reveal something new. “I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all.” Completing a piano piece, discovering your own dance steps, solving a Sudoku puzzle, that sense of feeling when you reach the 32 mark in your paper, winning an ISTE event, completing a TV series and remembering all the dialogues while re-watching it, painting some abstract that turns out to be beautiful, finding out that resistor due to which your experiment failed again and again, completing a marathon, finding new moves in chess to defeat your dad although deep down you knew; he always wanted you to win, cracking your vivas in front of a nut-crack external, generating a smart witty reply when someone is upset with you! Achievement has no colour. However small it maybe, it is that exclamation of triumph that matters.

You get educated, you get degrees, you take a job or make one yourself, you earn, and you keep on earning money; for what? Happiness? Peace? Survival? Why don’t just earn a living instead of earning money? Why not find happiness in your small moments? Why struggle 24x7 for that one Eureka moment? Why do stuff you don’t want to do, for stuff you don’t need? Look wider, look at the bigger picture. I don’t have one single extraordinary Eureka moment that world will remember forever but I do hold thousands of small ordinary Eureka moment that are sufficient to make me happy in the long run. Grow some balls, take a risk, think different and live life the way you want to because ‘Nothing is Ordinary’.

- Dev Sanghvi

MIT APP INVENTOR

When one thinks of Android application development, the thoughts that struck the mind are installing JDK, SDKs and Eclipse and so on. We can hardly think of developing our own app (without any use of template) of course, without the knowledge of JAVA unless we come across the MIT App Inventor. Yes, developing Android applications without even knowing any bit of JAVA

App Inventor for Android or commonly known as the MIT App Inventor is an open-source web application originally provided by Google, and now under maintenance of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was released publicly on December 15, 2010 and the team was led by Hal Abelson and Mark Friedman.

At a point where the traditional way of developing the apps through Eclipse or the Android Studio more recently may seem to be a hardcore techno- geek's job, developing the app on MIT AI seems nothing but just a game. There is no code involved physically; we just need to keep on connecting blocks similar to jigsaw puzzle and you are done with your app.

Once after visiting the website, we need to just login through our Gmail email address and get started. No installations, no downloads! Technically the procedure can be divided into two sections viz., designer and blocks.

Designer is the empty space where you can drag and drop the requirements of your app such as buttons, text fields, etc and invisible components such as sensors, clock, etc. On the blocks
screen, there are various blocks of every component selected. Apply the logic of your app and connect the blocks same as just in the jigsaw puzzle.

Here is small example of app which on clicking the button changes its colour to red.

Firstly, the button was dragged from the left side of the screen on the canvas. Then by switching onto the blocks screen, the logic was implemented as represented in the figure below.

Fig. 1: Designer Screen

Fig. 2: Blocks screen

While developing Android applications, testing is required after making the app or at times while developing to see whether we are going on a right path.  AI simplifies this work too. There are three
methods available for testing: downloading AI Emulator, connecting your smart phone (details of which are readily available on the website) and the most interesting and unique is their MIT AI Companion app.

One can choose this option in connect menu.

Fig. 3: MIT AI2 Companion App

 It generates a QR code which is to be scanned through the companion app and the output of your code gets displayed on the screen of your smart phone.

Fig. 4: QR Code connection

The tutorials, videos, source files available on their website make the use of App Inventor even easier and simple. MIT keeps on integrating with different organizations to conduct workshops and competitions using MIT App Inventor even at the schooling level. Various App summits, Monthly Best App competition, etc makes the learning competitive.

The MIT App Inventor facilitates easy learning and interesting app development for everyone ranging from novice beginners to the experts too. So, build your own app using this simple technology. Happy App-Making! J

Jayesh Ahuja

Web of Things

“How do you distinguish a WoT thing from a mere IoT thing?
Try talking client-side JavaScript to it, if it just stares at you like you used some kind of an unknown language then this isn’t a WoT thing…”

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an extension to the current Internet that enables connections and communication among physical objects and devices (see the September 2013 Computing Now theme for more on IoT and its role in ubiquitous sensing). Estimates suggest that there will be 50 billion devices and people connected and leveraging the vision and technology behind IoT by 2020. A related term that's currently somewhat in vogue is Internet of Everything (IoE), which recognizes the key role of people, or citizen sensing (such as through online social media), to complement the physical sensing implied by IoT.

The term Web of Things (WoT) goes beyond the focus on the Internet as the mode of exchanging data, instead bringing in all resources and interactions involving devices, data, and people on the Web. Correspondingly, it brings into focus a wide variety of challenges and opportunities while paving a way to a variety of exciting applications for individuals to industries.

WoT: Supercharging IoT and IoE

Sensors and devices collect data with a wide variety of types (such as temperature, light, sound, and video) and that are inherently diverse (data quality and validity can vary with different devices through time; data is often location- and time-dependent, and so on). WoT resources can be ubiquitous and are often constrained in terms of power, memory, processing, access, availability, attention, and communication capabilities. The resources' heterogeneity, ubiquity, and dynamic nature, coupled with the wide range of data, make discovering, accessing, processing, integrating, and interpreting the data on the Web a challenging task.

A rich cyber component of WoT includes Web-resident data, knowledge (in Wikipedia or Linked Open Data, for example), information exchanged over social media (such as sites in which patients share health-related information), and user-submitted physical world observations and measurements. Integrating physical, cyber, and social resources enables the development of physical-cyber-social (PCS) applications and services that can incorporate situation- and context-awareness into the decision-making mechanisms, and can create smart data out of big data by harnessing volume, variety, velocity and veracity to create actionable information. Examples of such applications range from personalized health, fitness, and well-being to energy and an increasingly wide variety of business and industrial activities.

Anand Bhagwani

Leaps of Change

A dim slow world, way back in time, 

One with no rules, under natures regime,
Man walked the soil bare and brave,
Of all the wonders of nature an ignorant slave.

As the gentle breeze of wisdom blew,
Man observed and imbibed what to do.
He made a world,
Of crude tools and flint stones,
And weapons made of sticks and bones,
Of primitive discoveries, fire and caves
He made his life out of what nature gave.

Then there blew gales if progress,
Of constant change; a civilized fest!
By perspiration and sometimes chance,
He unraveled nature's mysteries
And the world advanced.

With these leaps of change,
He outran Time,
And leaped so far and high
That he spread his wings way beyond his sky!
Yet now he dreams all the more he can,
And wishes to be a 'better' man
Coz' on the way he realized that
He'd just ignored,
All the wreck he'd caused on nature's shores.

He looks forward now to build
A peaceful world, free of guilt
One that he can bear,
On the pillars of justice and friendly care,
While the tempest of development persists....

Arundhathi Swami

The Commendable Vicissitude

As defined in the Farlex dictionary, ‘Vicissitude’ is the term for regular change or succession from one thing to another.

Each one of us is born on this planet with an intended purpose. This purpose may be obscure but each one of us, from all the small insects to the mighty blue whales, all of us are important! But when we look at our indispensable past, we all would realize that our evolution was from single celled species. Yes that's the frantic fact of our life. This process is slow but continuous. There's no proof required for the plausible nature. So why did we evolved into complex and most dominant species on this planet? Well this change is by default and we can't stop it. Imagine ourselves as some sticky layer with just cells! Yes we were the same millions and millions of years ago.
This vicissitudes can be classified as two, first being the mutation one and the second one is what we called transformation.

Well even a change from one generation to other can also be considered as a vicissitude move of humans. But these changes are sometimes not accepted. We have moved from black and white television sets to curved LEDs, from bits to pita-bytes, from meeting in person to poking etc. etc. These technologies are supposed to curate but instead they act as vicars. This is a different topic altogether, what I want to highlight here is that sometimes changes are good and sometimes they are bad. An example of this can be WWI and WWII, I mean the devastation caused in the second one was but obvious greater than the first one. But at the same time the advancement in the medical field have led to miracles. Well there are numerous such examples. 

There's no single person involved in any of these but we all contribute to this change in one way or the other. So we don't invent anything bad, our intention may be good, but it’s our next generation, our mystified future responsible for its use. Even the fiction series of X-Men depicted the same.

Our choice defines us and not our fate.

So we cannot stop ourselves from being evolved but we can choose our future. May our choices don't be indignation to anyone. Just larking in the present is diabolically harming the future. Try to be pragmatist and stay away from being fiend.

Sanket Agarwal

BEING SUPERHUMAN...

Super is a derivative of the word “superlative” which denotes the extra-ordinary.

What exactly do we, as humans, find extra-ordinary when we have the power to transform every thought into a tangible reality?

We wished to fly, so we made an aeroplane.

We wished to swim across oceans, as undetectable as a fish, we made submarines.

We wished to travel into the celestial world and we propelled Armstrong onto the moon!

So then what is it that has enabled us to achieve what we once thought was impossible? The answer is very simple. We live with it every minute of the day. Technology.

Technology’s what enables us to achieve the superlative and it is what will help us to create an altogether superior lifestyle that mankind has barely even been able to dream of before now.

It is man’s inherent nature to improve. We are always looking for ways to make ourselves better than we were, trying to correct our faults and compensate for our disabilities. It is this primal need for correction and betterment that drives us to expand our horizons and innovate our imagination.

As a rule, we have been obsessed forever with that which we can’t do. And often these desires are the driving force behind our creations.

Consider this: Color blindness is a fairly common condition. It isn't a detrimental disease but is surely inconvenient. Neil Harbisson was however, inconsolably inconvenienced, and he decided to right the wrong that wasn't his. He augmented his inability to see and distinguish colors by using a camera that captured light, identified its frequency and converted its frequency into audio signals thus effectively enabling him to HEAR colors. This process enabled him to distinguish more than three hundred colors and their varying shades-far better than the average human’s range. In his words, “all painters for me are now composers”.

Thus technology is instrumental in embellishing the capabilities of us humans. Even our superheroes are privy to this fact.

Think Iron man and his suit. Despite being a playboy, billionaire and philanthropist he is still just a human. His suit, though fictional, gives him the superhuman edge.

Think batman and his bat-mobile that has millions of boys, men, girls and women swooning over it. It’s a cutting edge piece of fictional technology that’s well on its way to becoming a reality.

The primary section of science and technology today, which deals with conferring superhuman capabilities to us, is something rudimentary known as wearable technology. 

Wearable technology covers a wide gamut of devices ranging from digital watches to robotic limbs. It is a boon for the handicapped as they can replace virtually any limb with the help of robotics. We may have heard of lizards growing back their tails, well we now have something to tell them in return! Craig Hutto suffered a shark attack that led to the amputation of his left leg from above the knee. He now uses a mechanical prosthesis that has replaced his non-existent muscles. This mechanical leg is able to emulate 90% of the functions of his natural limb.

Apart from helping the disabled, wearable technology enhances the already present capabilities of man given them a surreal revamp. An excellent example is the EXOCORTEX.

EXOCORTEX- it’s a part of the mind-functional technologies that includes concepts of BCI and MIND UPLOADING.

BCI is brain computer interfacing which is practically the exchange of information between our mind and a computer albeit with no medium of exchange- direct transmission. Synthesis of data collected from our physical senses can be performed directly within the computer.

MIND UPLOADING is another mind-boggling concept that allows us to upload our conscience (which is the sum total of our mind and memory) into a computer. That way our conscience lives on forever!

EXOCORTEX provides us with the over-all sharpening of mind. It will well and truly enable us to work at computer-speeds with just as accurate results within our mind space. It will effectively eliminate any need of calculators or other computing devices. It basically provides super-intelligence as our super-power!

Somewhere people are already working on these concepts and are converting them into reality. It is not far away when we can say “it’s all in the mind” and mean it quite literally!

As far as the ‘’cool’’ spectrum of superhuman is concerned, we have the HUMAN UNIVERSAL LOAD CARRIER (HULC) that enables an average human being to carry around 200 pounds, quite nonchalantly! Speaking of super-strength, the Japanese have their own- hybrid assistive limb (HAL) that is currently being employed for medical purposes but has basically the same functions of the HULC.

Also one must have noticed, our superheroes have an unnaturally accurate and immaculate immune system. The good news is, now we can get one too. Nano-medicines or medicines on a molecular scale size are being tested to treat diseases like lung cancer. Inhaled through an aerosol, these particles get deposited near the diseased area and are then super heated thus killing the cancerous cells. Speculative use of this branch involves the use of nanobots- self-replicating machines that are utilized to specifically target the diseased area and treat it. Looks like we are on the right path to creating age proof bodies!

Moore’s law suggests that we should avail of these types of technology by 2045. Incredibly within our lifetime we will be able to witness this conversion from human to superhuman.

The trans-humanist movement comprises of one such sect of people who strongly believe that we must allow technology to invade the natural course of life and do away with the moral obligations of such tampering. Who’s to stop us if we want to become super-human after all?

Well, it just depends on us. Human or superhuman, as long as we have our hearts in the right place (the metaphorical ones), we can hope to survive this stage of evolution as well with our planet in tow. Till then, peace out!

Arundhathi Swami

SUCCESS, DROP BY DROP!!!

“Failures are the pillars

Success is the byproduct

Dreams and hopes, the rejuvenating fillers

Coupled with a global moral conduct! “

An age-old adage holds that winners never quit and quitters never win!  But, history keeps on retelling that whosoever called it quits had envisioned the whole world to a new discovery. Right from Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin to the near recent Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg , we could embark on to an unending list of people who adopted that unconventional path to finally taste success buds.  So, yes, winners never quit but quitters can win a lot more!

“For those who could not make it to the finish line, started up with a new beginning”

Today, as youngsters we don’t pay much heed to our studies because nowadays the general mass mentality is such that if you act cool, do scrape things, you are smart. However, one who can unscramble the problems with all his wits and knowledge is the real ‘cool’ genius. The most fascinating thing these days is ONE BIG IDEA, and a correct strategy to implement it. These successful dropouts had the same notion to reach to acme and do well for the society. Rightly quoted by Sir Winston Churchill,“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Truly, failures are the stepping stones to success. Not that it is being propagated to stop studying, drop out from your learning institute and win success! We are just proclaiming that people who left midway are not losers but they did so to comeback and camouflage in a renewed, evolved and a worthwhile facet.

“Heights by great men, reached and kept,

Were not attained by sudden flight

For they while their companions slept,

Kept toiling upwards in the night!”

These drop-outs were those drops of ocean that would have desiccated the ocean itself in their absence! There would have been no science today if Sir Albert Einstein wouldn’t have changed his life’s track towards his will. Abraham Lincoln became a self-educated lawyer before him abolishing slavery, strengthening the federal government and modernizing the economy as the U.S. President in 1861. Edison dropped out at 12 to enlighten the world with his bulb while Walt Disney abandoned schooling at 12 and eventually leaped onto the renowned Walt Disney Company that entertains people of all ages till date.  Henry Ford did not even attend college to establish one of the world’s largest automobile companies. Billionaire Michael Dell dropped out of the University of Texas at just 19. Instead of studying biology, he spent most of his time in his dorm room, building computers and selling them through local newspapers. By the end of freshman year, he was raking in over $80,000 a month, so he dropped out of college to start the company that eventually became Dell computers. Rightly said, “Discouragement is often the last key that opens the bunch of success”

Russell Simmons, George Clooney, Woody Allen, Tom Hanks, James Cameron, John Mackey, Sandra Bullock and John Mackey all followed the trait to emerge as successful billionaires in their own genres.

“Patience and perseverance can overcome mountains”.

Let’s also concrete this fact with some surveyed figures. Some of the world's most famous and richest billionaires are college dropouts. The combined net worth of these dropouts is USD 246 billion. This list is not exhaustive. The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is approximately triple that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if one removes Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $66.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion. According to a recent report from Cambridge-based Forrester Research, 20% of America's millionaires never attended college. This one from the king and spider’s tale surely follows:

“ ‘Tis a lesson you should heed,

Try, try again

Till at last you succeed,

Try, try again!”

Sir George Bernard Shaw rightly puts in, “The golden rule is that there is no golden rule-No shortcuts to success!” But, definitely there’s always that one path that breaks you from your comfortable zone and retorts you on this unusual and unconventional track driven by your idea and creativity, if not for that shortcut!  We Indians are no way behind. Azim Premji, Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Micky Jagtiani, SubhashChandra Goel and P.N.C. Menon all made it big after successfully crossing the crossroads.  Besides, those who have kept the whole world’s eyeballs rolling including everyone from Aamir Khan, Mahesh Bhatt, Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Katrina Kaif, Kajol, Karisma Kapoor, Sridevi, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan all top this list.  In words of Shakespeare, all this is “hoping against hope”. For achieving success in life, one has to strive and struggle like a busy bee not caring about the pitfalls and predicaments. We must learn how to surmount all the odds and evens in life and come out successful. After all, “Fruits of success grow only on the branches of hard work.”   So, let’s skim through some of such inspiring success stories.

William Henry Bill Gates III, the pioneer of Microsoft, dropped out of the Harvard University to emerge as the top American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor and of course the world’s richest person then in 2007 and again in April 2014. Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. Gates dropped out of Harvard at this time. Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself until very recently when he stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.  It is not for nothing that he quotes,

“Its fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

Let’s march on to one another person who recent untimely death shattered the globe- Steven Paul, more renowned as Steve Jobs. His adoptive father Paul Jobs and taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands  in the family garage, demonstrating to his son how to take apart and rebuild electronics such as radios and televisions. As a result, he became interested in and developed a hobby of technical tinkering.   Jobs’ youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. At Monta Loma Elementary school in Mountain View, he frequently played pranks on others. Though school officials recommended that he skip two grades on account of his test scores, his parents elected for him only to skip one grade. Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Reed was an expensive college which Paul and Clara could ill afford. Jobs dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy. He continued auditing classes at Reed while sleeping on the floor in friends' dorm rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."  Jobs founded NeXT Inc. in 1985 after his resignation. He also worked as the joint director at Pixar and Disney in the interim to generate a horde of successful films. In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT bringing Jobs back to the company he co-founded. He was formally named interim chief executive in September only to gift Mac OS X, iMax, iPod, iPhone. In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, but remained with the company as chairman of its board. A man of marvels, Steve Jobs, quoted,

“Because the people are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do!”

Yes, these success stories are truly amazing and inspirational. So let’s just check this fantastic quote, “I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.” This was echoed in by Larry Ellison. He went ahead to say “When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.” So, was he also a drop-out and what is his success tale? This co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, was a bright but an inattentive student. He left the University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year, after not taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending a summer in northern California, Ellison attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he left it midway and he moved to northern California. Also in 1997, Ellison was made a director of Apple Computer after Steve Jobs returned to the company. Ellison resigned in 2002, saying "my schedule does not currently allow me to attend enough of the formal board meetings to warrant a role as a director". With the defeat of Informix and of Sybase, Oracle enjoyed years of industry dominance until the rise of Microsoft SQL Server. Eventually, Ellison is still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion. Indeed, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!”

Who doesn’t like tweeting or following blogs?  Apparently, we all are completely into it. So now it’s time to meet the man behind strangling everyone in this crazy circle-Evan Williams. Two of the internet's top ten websites have been created by Williams's companies: Blogger and Twitter. Williams grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska, where he assisted with crop irrigation in summers. He attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for a year-and-a-half, but eventually left to pursue his career. Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan co-founded Pyra Labs to make project management software. A note-taking feature spun off as Blogger, one of the first web applications for creating and managing weblogs.  Williams invented the term "blogger" and was instrumental in the popularization of the term "blog". Pyra survived the departure of Hourihan and other employees, and was eventually acquired by Google on February 13, 2003. Williams left Google in October 2004 to co-found Odeo, a podcasting company. In late 2006, Williams co-founded Obvious Corp. with Biz Stone. Among Obvious Corp.'s projects was Twitter, a popular, free social networking and micro-blogging service. Twitter itself was spun out into a new company in April 2007, with Williams as co-founder, board member, and investor. In October 2008, Williams became CEO of Twitter. Eventually, this college drop-out is worth $1.48 Billion (November 2013) and hence today, we cherish his quote, “My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I've always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism.”
                                                         

Last but not the least, we have grown up and so has our dear Facebook who is continuously stringed to the hearts of the multitude. So, we just cannot abstain from mentioning the man himself-Mark Zuckerberg. Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg launched Facebook from Harvard's dormitory rooms. The group then introduced Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California shortly afterwards. In 2007, at the age of 23, Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of Facebook's success. Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to complete his project and today after engulfing Twitter, this man is an asset worth US $25.3 billion (April 2014). This quote by Mark Zuckerberg now can be well referenced,

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

“Each morning sees a task begun,

Each evening sees it close

Something attempted, something done

Has earned a night’s repose!”

College isn't for everyone. But that doesn't mean you can't be a genius without it. Though graduates are proven more likely to be hired than someone without higher education, many of the technology companies we rely so heavily upon were started by dropouts. With the increasingly high cost of a college education, and a job market that appears anything but reassuring, there are plenty of reasons for young entrepreneurs to replace the expensive textbooks and cinder-block dorms for a business of their own. Of course, starting your own company doesn't come without its own heavy costs. Though we certainly don't discourage students from pursuing any form of education, it's hard to imagine a life without Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. Quite simply, great ideas don’t belong in one simple category. Innovators can be any age, come from any background, with any level of education. What they share in common isn’t a prestigious degree but a passion for innovation, a great idea, and the strength of purpose and business savvy to make people listen!

So, there we are. No, this is not the end but just a new beginning for all of us! Nonetheless, failures may hit you hard on your face, it’s you who decide how much to take it and move ahead! This focus on talent over pedigree is what helps one stand out and achieve!  It’s time we create that drop in ourselves defragmenting us to that path which is mobilized by our ideas, passion, dreams, technology, soul ,mind and lastly heart!

“Talent, creativity and wisdom,

With a great idea as the chief prop

In every accomplished system,

Ladder of success is never crowded at the top

When fear of failure is less than seldom

When perseverance knows no halting stop

Out of the world, in freedom,

Flows this excellence and SUCCESS-DROP BY DROP!”    ----- HAPPY SUCCESS TO ALL!

                                                                                                                        Meet Gidwani