self.machine

Very interesting article, and something that has appeared as a reference in “The ghost in the shell”.

Allow me to begin these considerations on the uncertainties of Europe’s political identity at the beginning of the 21st century by referring to celebrated formulations from another European writer who, although belonging to a previous generation and writing along quite different lines, nevertheless shared some of the same experiences, namely exile and antifascist intellectual commitment: I am thinking of Thomas Mann.As we all know, Mann’s attitude towards politics completely changed between the First World War and the period of the rise of Nazism leading to the Second World War.

http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/balibar1102.htm

Well due to one of my best friends i have got rather addicted to GITS or “The ghost in the shell”, an awesome japanese anime series. There is a concept or rather a case of the laughing man, and the basis for that is a JD Salinger short story of the same name. I take this post to link up to that story, hope you all have a great week ahead.

Soon the Laughing Man was regularly crossing the Chinese border into Paris, France, where he enjoyed flaunting his high but modest genius in the face of Marcel Dufarge, the internationally famous detective and witty consumptive. Dufarge and his daughter (an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite) became the Laughing Man’s bitterest enemies. Time and again, they tried leading the Laughing Man up the garden path. For sheer sport, the Laughing Man usually went halfway with them, then vanished, often leaving no even faintly credible indication of his escape method. Just now and then he posted an incisive little farewell note in the Paris sewerage system, and it was delivered promptly to Dufarge’s boot. The Dufarges spent an enormous amount of time sloshing around in the Paris sewers.

http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/laughingman.html

Proto has been taking place for sometime, but Jan 2009 is my first proto.in attendance and it was worth the trip to Bangalore. I went in with some expectations and yes, they were fulfilled. The highlights of the event is given below.

• Awesome talks – There was one talk by Bob Young(founder of redhat) which was simply awesome. There were others as well which were informative and fun sessions.
• Great audience – People from all walks of professional life, met a lawyer, a HR guy, a finance guy and so on … with so much variety one can only choose to get bored of such company.
• Neat theme / tshirt - The paper plane theme was awesome and in one session where Kiruba got everyone to throw airplanes onto the podium was especially lots of fun.
• Techies – Special mention to Sheryas , Aswin , Moyeen , Vijay who made it clear to me that B’lore + Chennai is still very much ahead on the super nerd density index. Clever engineers to hang out with is the least i can say about these guys.
• Startups – Last but not the least, a great bunch of startups were there promoting their stuff. It was cool to see some interesting revenue models and different ideas. Shotgun startup was one fun event to take part in (this deserves a complete post by itself).

All in all, I had a lot of fun. Thanks to Vijay and the proto team for making me a part of something awesome. Looking forward to making proto a bigger and better event going ahead.