— Susan Sontag

and so easy to say

but sometimes

sometimes you just have to walk away

walk away”

— Walk away, Ben Harper ]]> http://www.sevenacross.com/2009/12/252/feed/ 0 http://www.sevenacross.com/2009/04/amazonfail/ http://www.sevenacross.com/2009/04/amazonfail/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:53:41 +0000 Sukrit http://sevenacross.com/?p=200 Continue reading →]]>

Twitter is great fun and I’ve been using it for a while now. Yet, until today I have not seen the way it can make people jump into action with such incredible speed. #Amazonfail appeared over my Twitter feed. For the folks who are not yet in the know of the matter it was recently discovered that Amazon.com was tampering with the ratings of any material they deemed as gay. There were a number of people in my circle of friends who set things rolling with a link to this piece by author Mark R Probst which describes how Amazon.com have been quietly removing the sales rankings from books with gay content. Writer Craig Seymour notes it happening to a book of his back in February. They claim this is done as part of their policy of removing sales ranking from anything deemed “adult” and is intended to help (ie: protect by blanking) customers who don’t want to see “adult” material turn up in their searches. A number of people I know are boycotting Amazon.com as a matter of principle.

I find it quite hard to believe that in this day and age a company of this size would do something like this. I thought censorship of this level was a thing of the past. Too bad for them I was about to place an order with them for my digital camera.

Yesterday I sat down to try and finish an article I had begun writing. The weather was perfect, my tummy full, and I had a fine cup of coffee sitting it front of me. My MacBook was open, and the path was clear for me to write. And then it struck. I suddenly realised that my chair was ever so slightly tilted to the left. That was the end of that journey. I ended up spending the next hour or so trying to figure out a way to fix the chair.

I began reading some productivity weblogs on beating procrastination. Though quite enlightening, they are all pretty superficial. The one thing that I’ve seen gets me going is an inspiring song, or something I read that motivates me. So I decided to try something totally new. I plugged in my iPod and put on the playlist I use for my workout at the gym. It’s packed with Kanye West, Tupac, and the likes. In the worst of cases, I think It will at least give me an hour’s worth of kick. Will settle for that now.

Nevertheless, the state of affairs in our democratic societies has gone back to pretty much where it was some fifty years ago, especially with regards to war, poverty and the environment – some might even claim that the overall situation has in fact worsened overall. I would not be one to dispute them. I think over all the state of governments across the world, and definitely closer home here in India is bad. The one hope I have is new media. I’m not sure what kind of impact social forms of media will have on the systems of governments, or if the government of India is even aware of social media. Yet, there is a sense that more and more people are aware of possibilities by reading, writing, and sharing thoughts on government using the social platforms. That gives me hope.

What is to be learned from this? Will we ever learn? Well, the first step is for all of us to go out there and exercise our franchise by voting for someone who you know will not will, so you can tell the whole world that you did not elect the idiot in power :)

I just hope that we don’t end up with demon-ocracy instead of democracy.