Day 34 - Prelude to Internet shutdowns in India; Surprise documented!
23 Mar 2017 100daysofwriting · india · internet · politics · technologyContent is needed. … The beast has to be fed
That excerpt is from On Air with AIB, the first off script segment in season 2. It’s completely true!
On the happy side, I am 78% through with Handmaid’s Tale! The story has spiraled completely off the charts. The backstory is finally pieced together now, and the present has taken center stage with some INCREDIBLE stuff happening. The commander’s character had a surprising amount of depth, and when they finally revealed (was it obvious?) that he was in one of the top positions because of which all these privileges were accorded to him, I was rather surprised that he was so different about something that he worked actively for. In fact, he even defends it at one point in time. As if he meant to say that the old times were not better but in fact worse than the present. Offred doesn’t buy it, I am sure of that, she’s so clever. Also, the daughter’s name hasn’t yet come up and the daughter is … Okay, that would be a spoiler. I don’t want to tag this. It’s fine, that’s a minor detail.
Instagram’s stories has this feature where once you post something to your story, you can actually see who all viewed your story! The last time I posted something, I didn’t notice that, but yesterday I did. It’s rather radical! (I wish it had the selfie-and-respond property that was there in the Beme app. Typing something in between a story was clunky, unnecessary and completely restrictive while watching a story.
An old song that was overshadowed by Hello when it released. It also happens to take some more space on the vlog. You should probably play that song, no matter if you have heard it before or not.
The other surprising thing that I saw / read / understood today was that Governments can shut down Internet for all the people in the whole country, or in specific parts of the country at will. Apparently, state governments in India often do this. This again was featured in the On Air with AIB season 2 episode “Broad Bandh”. I was surprised because I have never been in a place, somewhere in India where this happened. There were a lot of things that happened in Tamil Nadu in December 2016. A lot of it was rather sensitive and there were plenty of rumours making the rounds. I would have thought at the peak of all this activity, the government must ATLEAST have tried to get it done. I didn’t hear about it at all, so it is safe to assume that this measure wasn’t considered by the TN State Government.
That said, there have already been incidents in Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir. How they do it is an interesting networking problem. This Gigaom article has a great explanation about what it means to “shut down” the Internet and how countries typically do it. (Note that Satellite Internet survices should still work even if Broadband (wired) and Mobile networks don’t work. Maybe you should all get a satellite internet WiFi Router, my bet is that they are incredibly costly and extremely slow. (Is Slow Internet worse than no Internet?: I happen to disagree. Even if connectivity is slow, you can only go to TXT file websites and atleast read at length. (Also, Amazon purchases are synchronised over Wifi and those files are very very small. For reference, a 300 page book took about 1-1.4 MB of data to download everything for me to get started reading the book. (It’s the last part: the convenience of having your book and not having to 1. go to a store, explain everything to a myrid number of attendants, and them having to tell you that they have everything in the world BUT the 10 books that you are looking for. 2. Not having to wait for the book to be delivered somewhere in Rural India.
There are LOTS and LOTS of … I lost my train of thought. I am very very tired from today. Okay.
POST #34 is OVER