reflections

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Prajavani, Dec 23, 2015

https://t.co/BMj5QN1ngs

ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ಗೆ ಬೆಳ್ಳಿ ಸಂಭ್ರಮ

ಟಿಮ್‌ ಬರ್ನರ್ಸ್‌ ಲೀ

ಪ್ರಪಂಚದಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆಯುವ ಯಾವುದೇ ಮಹಾನ್‌ ಕ್ರಾಂತಿಯ ಮೊದಲ ಹೆಜ್ಜೆ ತುಂಬಾ ಚಿಕ್ಕದಿರುತ್ತದೆ, ನಂತರ ಅದು ತ್ರಿವಿಕ್ರಮಾಕಾರವಾಗಿ ಬೆಳೆದಿರುತ್ತದೆ’ ಎಂಬ ಮಾತಿದೆ. World Wide Web ಅಥವಾ ವಿಶ್ವವ್ಯಾಪಿ ಜಾಲದ ಹುಟ್ಟು ಕೂಡ ಹೀಗೆಯೇ. 90ರ ದಶಕದಲ್ಲಿ ಇಂಗ್ಲೆಂಡ್‌ನ ಗಣಕ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಿ ತಿಮೊಥಿ ಜಾನ್‌ ಬರ್ನರ್ಸ್‌ ಲೀ (ಟಿಮ್‌ ಬರ್ನರ್ಸ್‌ ಲೀ) ಹೈಪರ್‌ ಟೆಕ್ಟ್ಸ್‌ ಟ್ರಾನ್ಸ್‌ಫರ್‌ ಪ್ರೋಟೊಕಾಲ್‌ (http) ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಜಾಗತಿಕ ಜಾಲ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆಯೊಂದನ್ನು (WWW) ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಪಡಿಸಿದಾಗ ಸ್ವತಃ ಅವರಿಗೇ ಇದು ನಾಳೆ ವಿಶ್ವವನ್ನೇ ಬದಲಿಸಬಲ್ಲಂತಹ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನವಾಗಲಿದೆ ಎಂಬುದರ ಸಣ್ಣ ಕಲ್ಪನೆಯೂ ಇರಲಿಲ್ಲ.

ಹೌದು. ವಿಶ್ವದ ಅಚ್ಚರಿಗಳನ್ನು ಬೆರಳ ತುದಿಗೆ ನಿಲುಕಿಸಿದ ಈ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನಕ್ಕೆ ಮೊನ್ನೆ ಅಂದರೆ 2015, ನವೆಂಬರ್‌ 12ರಂದು 25 ವರ್ಷ ತುಂಬಿತು. ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಎನ್ನುವುದು ಇಂದು ಬದುಕಿನ ಎಲ್ಲ ಆಯಾಮಗಳನ್ನು ಆವರಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಬಿಟ್ಟಿದೆ. ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ ಅನ್ನು (w3) ಮಾನವನ ಜ್ಞಾನದ ಭಂಡಾರ ಎಂದೇ ಬಣ್ಣಿಸಲಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಮತ್ತು ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ ಇವೆರಡು ಪದಗಳನ್ನು ಕೆಲವೊಮ್ಮೆ ಸಮನ್ವಯಗೊಳಿಸಲಾಗುತ್ತದೆಯಾದರೂ, ಎರಡರ ಅರ್ಥ ಒಂದೇ ಅಲ್ಲ.

ವಿಶ್ವವ್ಯಾಪಿ ಜಾಲವನ್ನು ಹೈಪರ್‌ಲಿಂಕ್‌ಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ಯುಆರ್‌ಎಲ್‌ಗಳಿಂದ ಸಂಪರ್ಕಿಸಲಾಗಿರುತ್ತದೆ. ಈ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದಿಂದಾಗಿಯೇ ನಾವು ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ನಲ್ಲಿ ಏನೇ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಹುಡುಕಿದರೂ ಕ್ಷಣಾರ್ಧದಲ್ಲಿ ಆ ವಿಷಯಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಸಾವಿರಾರು ಕೊಂಡಿಗಳು ತೆರೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದು. ಬರ್ನಸ್‌ ಲೀ ಅವರ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ ಮಹತ್ವ ಪಡೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದು ಇಲ್ಲಿಯೇ. 60ರ ದಶಕದಲ್ಲೇ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆ ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಗೊಂಡಿದ್ದರೂ ಅದನ್ನು ಒಂದು ಸಣ್ಣ ಕ್ಲಿಕ್‌ನಲ್ಲಿ ಜನಸಾಮಾನ್ಯನ ಬೆರಳುಗಳಿಗೆ ವರ್ಗಾಯಿಸಿದ ಹೆಗ್ಗಳಿಕೆ ಲೀ ಅವರದ್ದು.

ಬರ್ನಸ್‌ ಲೀ, ಈ ಮಹತ್ವದ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗೆ ಮುನ್ನುಡಿ ಬರೆಯುವಾಗ ಜಿನಿವಾದಲ್ಲಿರುವ ಯೂರೋಪ್‌ ಪರಮಾಣು ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ ಕೇಂದ್ರದಲ್ಲಿ (ಸಿಇಆರ್‌ಎನ್‌) ಭೌತವಿಜ್ಞಾನಿಯಾಗಿದ್ದರು. ಆ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆಯುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ಹಲವು ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳ ದತ್ತಾಂಶ, ಆಕರ ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳು, ಸಂಶೋಧಕರ ಹೆಸರು ಸೇರಿದಂತೆ ಬೃಹತ್‌ ಮಾಹಿತಿಯನ್ನು ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥಿತವಾಗಿ ಸಂಗ್ರಹಿಸಿಡಲು ಮತ್ತು ಸುಲಭವಾಗಿ ಸಿಗುವಂತೆ ಮಾಡಲು ಹೈಪರ್‌ ಟೆಕ್ಟ್‌ (Hyper Text–http) ಎಂಬ ಯೋಜನೆ ಸಿದ್ಧಪಡಿಸಲು ಮುಂದಾದರು.

ಇದನ್ನು ವಿವರಿಸಿ ತಮ್ಮ ಮೇಲಧಿಕಾರಿಗಳಿಗೆ ಅವರು ಇ–ಮೇಲ್‌ (http://goo.gl/ooiNn) ಮಾಡಿದರು. ‘ಸಿಇಆರ್‌ಎನ್‌’ ಸರ್ವರ್‌ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಂಡೇ ಇದನ್ನು ಎರಡು ಹಂತಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಜಾರಿಗೆ ತರಬಹುದು. ಮೊದಲ ಹಂತದಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ಎಲ್ಲ ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳನ್ನು ಈಗಿರುವ ಹಾರ್ಡ್‌ವೇರ್ ಮತ್ತು ಸಾಫ್ಟ್‌ವೇರ್‌ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಂಡು ಬ್ರೌಸರ್‌ ಮೂಲಕ ಪರ್ಸನಲ್‌ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ಗಿಂತ ಪ್ರಬಲವಾದ ವರ್ಕ್‌ಸ್ಟೇಷನ್‌ನಲ್ಲಿ ಪಡೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳುವಂತೆ ಮಾಡುವುದು, ಎರಡನೆಯದಾಗಿ ಬಳಕೆದಾರನಿಗೆ ಈ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಭಂಡಾರದಲ್ಲಿ ಹೊಸ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸಲು ಮತ್ತು ಲಭ್ಯವಿರುವ ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಲೋಪವಿದ್ದರೆ ಪರಿಷ್ಕರಿಸಲು ಅವಕಾಶ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಡಲು ಹೊಸ ಪ್ರೊಗ್ರಾಂ ಒಂದನ್ನು ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಪಡಿಸುವುದು.

ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಯು ನಾಲ್ವರು ಸಾಫ್ಟ್‌ವೇರ್‌ ಎಂಜಿನಿಯರ್‌ ಮತ್ತು ಒಬ್ಬ ಪ್ರೊಗ್ರಾಮರ್‌ ನೆರವು ಕೊಟ್ಟರೆ ಇವೆರಡೂ ಯೋಜನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಕ್ರಮವಾಗಿ ಮೂರು ತಿಂಗಳ ಕಾಲಾವಧಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಜಾರಿಗೆ ತರುವುದಾಗಿ ಲೀ ವಿವರಿಸಿದ್ದರು. ಮುಂದಿನ ದಿನಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಈ ನಿಟ್ಟಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಅವರು ನಡೆಸಿದ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನ ಕ್ರಾಂತಿಗೆ ಮುನ್ನುಡಿ ಬರೆದವು. ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ ಎನ್ನುವ ವಿಶ್ವವ್ಯಾಪಿ ಜಾಲದ ಉಗಮದ ಮೊದಲ ಹೆಜ್ಜೆ ಅದಾಗಿತ್ತು.

ಸದ್ಯಕ್ಕೆ ಭಾರತದಲ್ಲಿನ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಬಳಕೆದಾರರ ಸಂಖ್ಯೆಯು ಅಮೆರಿಕವನ್ನು ಹಿಂದಿಕ್ಕುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಪರ್ಸನಲ್‌ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌, ಲ್ಯಾಪ್‌ಟಾಪ್‌ ಅಥವಾ ಸ್ಮಾರ್ಟ್‌ಫೋನ್‌ ಹೀಗೆ ಒಂದಿಲ್ಲೊಂದು ಗ್ಯಾಡ್ಜೆಟ್‌ಗಳ ಮೂಲಕ ನಾವೂ ಈ ವಿಶ್ವಜಾಲದ ಭಾಗಗಳಾಗಿದ್ದೇವೆ. ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಎಂಬ ಬೃಹತ್‌ ಗ್ರಂಥಾಲಯ ಜನರ ಬೆರಳ ತುದಿಗೆ ದೊರೆತಿದೆ. ಪ್ರಪಂಚದ ಒಂದು ತುದಿಯಲ್ಲಿದ್ದವರನ್ನು ಇನ್ನೊಂದು ತುದಿಯಲ್ಲಿದ್ದವರ ಜತೆ ಕ್ಷಣಾರ್ಧದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಂಪರ್ಕಿಸುವ, ಯಾವುದೇ ಸ್ವರೂಪದ (ಪಠ್ಯ, ಚಿತ್ರ, ಧ್ವನಿ, ದೃಶ್ಯ) ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳನ್ನು ಆ ಕ್ಷಣವೇ ಹುಡುಕಿಕೊಡುವ, ತತ್‌ಕ್ಷಣದ, ಅಗ್ಗದ ಸಂವಹನ ಮಾಧ್ಯಮವಾಗಿಯೂ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಪ್ರವರ್ಧಮಾನಕ್ಕೆ ಬಂದಿದೆ.

ನಮ್ಮ ಬ್ಯಾಂಕಿಂಗ್‌ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆ, ಷೇರು ಮಾರುಕಟ್ಟೆ, ಕೃಷಿ ಉತ್ಪನ್ನ ವಹಿವಾಟು ಹೀಗೆ ಪ್ರತಿಯೊಂದೂ ವ್ಯವಹಾರ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಆಧರಿಸಿ ನಡೆಯುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಭಾರತದಂತಹ ದೇಶಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಸ್ಮಾರ್ಟ್‌ಫೋನ್‌ ಮಾರಾಟದಲ್ಲಿ ಕಂಡುಬರುತ್ತಿರುವ ತೀವ್ರಗತಿಯ ಏರಿಕೆಯು ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಹರಿವಿನ ವ್ಯಾಪ್ತಿಯನ್ನು ವಿಸ್ತರಿಸಿದೆ. ಅದರಲ್ಲೂ ಮೊಬೈಲ್‌ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಜನಪ್ರಿಯತೆಯಿಂದಾಗಿ ಪ್ರತಿ ತಿಂಗಳು ದಶಲಕ್ಷ ಸಂಖ್ಯೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಸ್ಮಾರ್ಟ್‌ಫೋನ್‌ಗಳು ಮಾರಾಟವಾಗುತ್ತಿವೆ. ಪರ್ಸನಲ್‌ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ ಮತ್ತು ಲ್ಯಾಪ್‌ಟಾಪ್‌ ಮಾರಾಟದಲ್ಲೂ ಗಣನೀಯ ಏರಿಕೆ ಕಂಡುಬರುತ್ತಿವೆ.

ನಮ್ಮ ಹಿರಿಯರು ಹೇಳುವಂತೆ ‘ಪ್ರತಿಯೊಂದು ಬೃಹತ್‌ ಆಲದ ಮರವೂ ಅತ್ಯಂತ ಸಾಧಾರಣ ಹುಟ್ಟಿನ ಮೂಲವನ್ನು ಹೊಂದಿರುತ್ತದೆ’ ಎನ್ನುವಂತೆ, ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ನ ಉಗಮ ಕೂಡ ತೀರಾ ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯವಾದದ್ದು. ಲೀ ಬಿತ್ತಿದ ಈ ವಿಶ್ವವ್ಯಾಪಿ ಜಾಲದ ಬೀಜಗಳು ಇಂದು ಹೆಮ್ಮರವಾಗಿ ಬೆಳೆದು ನಿಂತಿದೆ. ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಇತಿಹಾಸವನ್ನು ಒಮ್ಮೆ ತೆರೆದು ನೋಡಿದರೂ ಸಾಕು ನಮಗೆ ಲೀ ಅವರ ಕೊಡುಗೆಯ ಮಹತ್ವ ಅರ್ಥವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ನ ಮೂಲ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ ಇವರಲ್ಲದಿರಬಹುದು. ಆದರೆ, ಅದರ ಬಳಕೆಯನ್ನು ಸಾರ್ವತ್ರಿಕಗೊಳಿಸಿದ ಕೀರ್ತಿ ಅವರಿಗೇ ಸಲ್ಲಬೇಕು.

ಅಮೆರಿಕದ ರಕ್ಷಣಾ ಇಲಾಖೆಗೆ ಸೇರಿದ ಅಡ್ವಾನ್ಸ್ಡ್‌ ರೀಸರ್ಚ್‌ ಪ್ರಾಜೆಕ್ಟ್ಸ್‌ ಏಜೆನ್ಸಿ (ARPA) 60ರ ದಶಕದಿಂದಲೇ ಗಣಕ ವಿಜ್ಞಾನಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳಿಗೆ ಹಣಕಾಸಿನ ನೆರವು ನೀಡುತ್ತಾ ಬಂದಿದೆ. ‘ಅರ್ಪಾ’ದಲ್ಲಿದ್ದ ಜೆ.ಸಿ.ಆರ್‌. ಲಿಕ್ಲಿಡರ್‌ ಅಮೆರಿಕದಲ್ಲಿನ ಹಲವು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾಲಗಳ ಸಹಯೋಗದಲ್ಲಿ ಇಂತಹ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಉತ್ತೇಜಿಸಲು ಮುಂದಾಳತ್ವ ವಹಿಸಿದರು. ಹೆಚ್ಚೂ ಕಡಿಮೆ ಒಂದೇ ವಿಷಯದ ಮೇಲೆ ಹಲವು ಸಂಶೋಧನಾ ತಂಡಗಳು ಅಧ್ಯಯನ ನಡೆಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದರೂ ಸುಲಭವಾಗಿ ಪರಸ್ಪರ ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳನ್ನು ವಿನಿಮಯ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು, ದತ್ತಾಂಶಗಳನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಸಮರ್ಪಕವಾದ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆ ಇರಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಹೀಗೆ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ನಿಂದ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ಗೆ ಕಡತಗಳನ್ನು ರವಾನಿಸಬಹುದಾದ ಸಾಧ್ಯತೆಗಳ ಕುರಿತು ನಡೆದ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳ ಫಲವಾಗಿ ಹುಟ್ಟಿಕೊಂಡದ್ದೇ ಅರ್ಪಾನೆಟ್‌.

ಇದು ವಾಸ್ತವ. ಆದರೆ, ಮೊದಲ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ ನೆಟ್‌ವರ್ಕ್‌ ಬಳಕೆಯ ಸಾಧ್ಯತೆಯ ಹೊಳಹು ಹೊಳೆದದ್ದು ಅಮೆರಿಕ ಮತ್ತು ಹಿಂದಿನ ಸೋವಿಯತ್ ಒಕ್ಕೂಟದಲ್ಲಿ ಪರಮಾಣು ಯುದ್ಧದ ಸಿದ್ಧತೆಗಳು ನಡೆಯುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ಸಂದರ್ಭದಲ್ಲಿ. ಆದರೆ, ಇದು ಕೇಂದ್ರೀಕೃತ ನೆಟ್‌ವರ್ಕ್‌ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆಯಾದರೆ, ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ ಆಧಾರಿತ ಈ ನಿಯಂತ್ರಣ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆಯನ್ನು ಕ್ಷಿಪಣಿ ದಾಳಿ ಮೂಲಕ ನಾಶಪಡಿಸುವ ಸಾಧ್ಯತೆ ಇತ್ತು. ಹೀಗಾಗಿ ಕ್ಷಿಪಣಿ ದಾಳಿ ನಡೆದರೂ ಅದರಿಂದ ರಕ್ಷಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬಲ್ಲಂತಹ ವಿಕೇಂದ್ರೀಕೃತ ನೆಟ್‌ವರ್ಕ್‌ ಕಲ್ಪನೆ ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವವನ್ನು ರ್‍ಯಾಂಡ್‌ ಕಾರ್ಪೊರೇಷನ್‌ನ ಪೌಲ್‌ ಬಾರನ್‌ ಮುಂದಿಟ್ಟರು. ಆಗಿನ್ನೂ ಶತ್ರು ದೇಶದ ಮೇಲೆ ಎರಡು ಮೂರು ದೇಶಗಳು ಒಟ್ಟಾಗಿ ಸೇರಿಕೊಂಡು ಪರಸ್ಪರ ಸಹಕಾರದ ಮೇಲೆ ದಾಳಿ ನಡೆಸುವ ಕಲ್ಪನೆ ಸಾಕಾರಗೊಂಡಿರಲಿಲ್ಲ.

ಪ್ಯಾಕೆಟ್‌ ಸ್ವಿಚ್ಚಿಂಗ್‌ ಆಧರಿಸಿದ ಮೊದಲ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ ನೆಟ್‌ವರ್ಕ್‌ 1966 ಮತ್ತು 1972ರ ನಡುವೆ ಅಮೆರಿಕದಲ್ಲಿ ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಯಾಯಿತು. ಈ ಜಾಲದ ಮೂಲಕ ಒಂದು ನಿರ್ದಿಷ್ಟ ಬಳಕೆದಾರರ ಸಮೂಹ ಪರಸ್ಪರ ಕಡತಗಳನ್ನು ವಿನಿಮಯ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಯಿತು. ಇದರ ಬೆನ್ನಿಗೇ ಪರಸ್ಪರ ಟಿಪ್ಪಣಿಗಳನ್ನು ವಿನಿಮಯ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಇ–ಮೇಲ್‌ ಎನ್ನುವ ಎಲೆಕ್ಟ್ರಾನಿಕ್‌ ಮೇಲ್‌ ಬಳಕೆಗೆ ಬಂತು. 1967ರಿಂದ 1974ರವೆರೆಗೆ ‘ಎಂಐಟಿ’ನಲ್ಲಿ ಅರ್ಪಾನೆಟ್‌ ಯೋಜನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಕೆಲಸ ಮಾಡಿದ ಅಭಯ್‌ ಭೂಷಣ್‌, ಎಫ್‌ಟಿಪಿ ಅಥವಾ ಫೈಲ್‌ ಟ್ರಾನ್ಸ್‌ಫರ್‌ ಪ್ರೋಟೊಕಾಲ್‌ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಟಿಪ್ಪಣಿಯೊಂದನ್ನು ಸಿದ್ಧಪಡಿಸಿದರು. ಇದೇ ಎಫ್‌ಟಿಪಿಯೇ ಇ–ಮೇಲ್‌ನ ಉಗಮಕ್ಕೆ ಕಾರಣ. ಇ–ಮೇಲ್‌ನ ಮೂಲ ಸಂಶೋಧಕ ಎಂದು ಇವರನ್ನು ಗುರುತಿಸಲಾಗುತ್ತದೆ.

70ರ ದಶಕದಲ್ಲಿ ಅರ್ಪಾನೆಟ್‌ ಜನಪ್ರಿಯತೆ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿತು. ಪ್ರತಿಯೊಂದು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯ ಮತ್ತು ಸಂಶೋಧನಾ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳನ್ನು ಅರ್ಪಾನೆಟ್‌ ಜತೆ ಸಂಪರ್ಕಿಸಬೇಕು ಎನ್ನುವ ಮಾತುಗಳು ಕೇಳಿಬಂದವು. ಆದರೆ, ಅಂತರ್‌ ಸಂಪರ್ಕಿತ ಕಂಪ್ಯೂಟರ್‌ ಜಾಲಗಳ ಒಂದು ಜಾಗತಿಕ ವ್ಯವಸ್ಥೆ ಅರ್ಥಾತ್‌ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಪಡಿಸುವುದು ಹೇಗೆ ಎನ್ನುವ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಯೂ ಉದ್ಭವಿಸಿತು. ಟ್ರಾನ್ಸ್‌ಮಿಷನ್‌ ಕಂಟ್ರೋಲ್‌ ಪ್ರೋಟೊಕಾಲ್ ಅಥವಾ ಟಿಸಿಪಿ ಎಂದು ಕರೆಯುವ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಮೂಲಕ ರಾಬರ್ಟ್‌ ಖಾನ್ ಮತ್ತು ವಿಂಟನ್‌ ಕರ್ಫ್‌ ಇದಕ್ಕೆ ಪರಿಹಾರ ಕಂಡುಹಿಡಿದರು. ಇವರನ್ನು ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ನ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಕರ್ತರು ಎಂದು ಸ್ಮರಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲಾಗುತ್ತದೆ.

ವಿಂಟನ್ ಸರ್ಫ಼್ ಜೊತೆ ಶಿವಾನಂದ ಕಣವಿ

ಈ ಕಾಲದಲ್ಲೇ ಅಂದರೆ 1971ರಲ್ಲಿ ಐಐಟಿ ಮುಂಬೈನ ಯೋಗನ್‌ ದಲಾಲ್‌ ಎಂಬ ಸ್ನಾತಕಪೂರ್ವ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿ, ಎಂಎಸ್‌ ಮತ್ತು ಪಿಎಚ್‌.ಡಿ ಅಧ್ಯಯನಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಸ್ಟ್ಯಾನ್‌ಫೋರ್ಡ್‌ ಸೇರಿದರು. 1974ರಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಂಟನ್‌ ಕರ್ಫ್‌, ಯೋಗನ್‌ ದಲಾಲ್‌ ಮತ್ತು ಕಾರ್ಲ್‌ ಸನ್‌ಶೈರ್‌ ಸೇರಿಕೊಂಡು ಸುಧಾರಿತ ಟಿಸಿಪಿ ಮತ್ತು ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಪ್ರೋಟೊಕಾಲ್‌ಗೆ (ಐಪಿ) ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಕೆಲವು ಮಾನದಂಡಗಳನ್ನು ನಿಗದಿಪಡಿಪಡಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಇವರು ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾಪಿದ ಅಂಶವೇ ನಂತರ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ಗೆ ಮಾನದಂಡವಾಯಿತು.

ಇಷ್ಟೆಲ್ಲಾ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗಳು ನಡೆದರೂ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಅನ್ನು ಸಂಪೂರ್ಣವಾಗಿ ಬದಲಿಸಿದ್ದು 90ರ ದಶಕದಲ್ಲಿ ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಗೊಂಡ ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ ಮತ್ತು ಬ್ರೌಸರ್‌ ಎಂಬ ಸಣ್ಣ ಪ್ರೋಗ್ರಾಂ. ಭಾರತೀಯರು ಈ ಹೈಪರ್‌ಲಿಂಕ್‌ ಕಲ್ಪನೆಯನ್ನು ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಅರ್ಥಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬಲ್ಲರು. ಯಾಕೆಂದರೆ ಮಹಾಭಾರತ, ರಾಮಾಯಣ, ಕಥಾಸರಿತ್ಸಾಗರ, ಪಂಚತಂತ್ರ, ವಿಕ್ರಮ ಮತ್ತು ಬೇತಾಳ ಮತ್ತಿತರ ಕಥೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಹೇಗೆ ನೂರಾರು ಉಪಕಥೆಗಳು ಇರುತ್ತವೆಯೋ, ಹೈಪರ್‌ ಲಿಂಕಿಂಗ್‌ ಕೂಡ ಹೀಗೆಯೇ. ಅಂದರೆ ಎಚ್‌ಟಿಪಿಪಿ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ನೆರವಿನಿಂದ ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ನಲ್ಲಿ ಜೇಡರ ಬಲೆಯಂತೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಬೆಸೆದುಕೊಂಡಿರುತ್ತದೆ. ಒಂದು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಹುಡುಕಿದರೆ ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ಸಂಬಂಧಿಸಿದ ಸಾವಿರಾರು ಪೂರಕ ಮಾಹಿತಿಗಳ ಕೊಂಡಿಗಳು ತೆರೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತವೆ.

ಅಸಲಿಗೆ ಟಿಮ್‌ ಬರ್ನಸ್‌ ಲೀ ‘ಸಿಇಆರ್‌ಎನ್‌’ನಲ್ಲಿ ಕಡತಗಳನ್ನು ವಿದ್ಯುನ್ಮಾನವಾಗಿ ಪರಸ್ಪರ ಸಂಪರ್ಕಕ್ಕೆ ತರಲು ಇರುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಯನ್ನು ನಿವಾರಿಸಲು ಈ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ ಕೈಗೊಂಡರು. ಹೈಪರ್‌ಲಿಂಕ್ಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ ಅಭಿವೃದ್ಧಿಪಡಿಸುವ ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವವನ್ನು ವಿವರಿಸಿ ಅವರು ಮೇಲಧಿಕಾರಿಗಳಿಗೆ ಬರೆದ ಮನವಿಗೆ ‘ಮಾಹಿತಿ ನಿರ್ವಹಣೆ: ಒಂದು ಪ್ರಸ್ತಾವ’ ಎಂದು ಕರೆದಿದ್ದರು. ಲೀ ಅವರ ಮನವಿಗೆ ಅವರ ಮೇಲಧಿಕಾರಿ ಯಾಕಾಗಬಾರದು? ಎಂಬ ಜನಪ್ರಿಯ ಉತ್ತರ ನೀಡಿದ್ದರೆ ಅವರ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ ‘ಸಿಇಆರ್‌ಎನ್‌’ಗೆ ಮಾತ್ರ ಸೀಮಿತಗೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತಿತ್ತೇನೋ?

ಆದರೆ, ಅವರ ಮೇಲಧಿಕಾರಿಗಳು ಇದಕ್ಕೆ ಪೂರಕವಾಗಿ ಸ್ಪಂದಿಸಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಪರಿಣಾಮ, ಲೀ ತಮ್ಮ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಯನ್ನು ಜನರೆದುರು ತೆರೆದಿಟ್ಟರು. ಈ ಅನಂತ ಸಾಧ್ಯತೆಯನ್ನು ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ ಸಮುದಾಯ ಬಹುಬೇಗ ಗ್ರಹಿಸಿಕೊಂಡಿತು. ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್‌ ವೆಬ್‌ ಎಂಬ ಅನಂತ ಸಾಧ್ಯತೆ ಅನಾವರಣಗೊಂಡಿತು.

ಟಿಮ್‌ ತಮ್ಮ ಸಂಶೋಧನೆಗೆ ಒಂದು ನಯಾಪೈಸೆ ಸಂಭಾವನೆಯನ್ನೂ ಪಡೆಯಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಹಕ್ಕುಸ್ವಾಮ್ಯ ಪಡೆದುಕೊಳ್ಳಲೂ ನಿರಾಕರಿಸಿದರು. ಈಗಲೂ ಅವರು ಇಂಟರ್‌ನೆಟ್‌ನ ಮುಂದಿನ ತಲೆಮಾರಿನ ಸಾಧ್ಯತೆಗಳ ಕುರಿತು ಸಂಶೋಧನೆ ನಡೆಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ. 1994ರಲ್ಲಿ ಅವರಿಗೆ ಅಮೆರಿಕದ ಎಂಐಟಿಯಿಂದ ಕರೆ ಬಂತು. ವಿಶ್ವವ್ಯಾಪಿ ಜಾಲವನ್ನು ನಿಯಂತ್ರಿಸುವ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಯೊಂದು ಅಸ್ತಿತ್ವಕ್ಕೆ ಬಂತು. ಹೌದು ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್‌ ವೈಡ್ ವೆಬ್ ಕನ್ಸೋರ್ಟಿಯಂನ (W3C) ಅಧ್ಯಕ್ಷರಾಗಿ ಅವರು ಈಗಲೂ ಸಮಾಜಕ್ಕೆ ನಿಸ್ವಾರ್ಥ ಸೇವೆ ಸಲ್ಲಿಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

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Friday, November 13, 2015

The birth of Web

Oh what a tangled web we weave.....

http://www.rediff.com/news/column/how-the-internet-was-born-25-years-ago/20151113.htm

November 12 marks 25 years of the beginning of the World Wide Web. Shivanand Kanavi gives us the story of how it all began

"Great Cloud. Please help me. I am away from my beloved and miss her very much. Please go to the city called Alaka where my beloved lives in our moonlit house”

—From Meghadoot (messenger cloud) of Kalidasa,Sanskrit poet, playwright, fourth century AD

Twenty five years ago on Nov 12, 2015, Particle Physicist Tim Berners Lee, working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) at Geneva submitted a note to his bosses on Hyper Text (http) and thus started a chain of events that led to the information revolution of the World Wide Web (see http://www.w3.org/Proposal.html for a copy of Tim Berners Lee's note).

Tim Berners Lee

Today we have over 150 million users of Internet already in India and the number is growing by leaps as SmartPhones are selling by the millions every month. The Internet has become a massive labyrinthine library, where one can search for and obtain information in seconds. It has also evolved into an instant, inexpensive communication medium where one can send email text and even images, sounds and videos, to a receiver, girdling the globe.

There are billions of documents in the Internet, on millions of computers known as Internet servers, all interconnected by a tangled web of cables, optic fibres and wireless links. We can be part of the Net through our own PC, laptop, SmartPhone, using a wired or a wireless connection to an Internet Service Provider.

Like Jack’s beanstalk, the Net is growing at a tremendous speed.

However, one thing we learn from ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ is that every giant magical tree has humble origins. The beans, in the case of Internet, were sown as far back as the sixties. To understand the significance of Lee's contribution, one should briefly look at the history of the Internet.

It all started with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the US Department of Defence. ARPA was funding advanced computer science research from the early ’60s. J.C.R Licklider, who was then working in ARPA, took the initiative in encouraging several academic groups in the US to work on interactive computing and time-sharing.

Bob Taylor (Photos: Palashranjan Bhaumick)

One glitch, however, was that these different groups could not communicate their programmes or data or even ideas with each other easily. The situation was so bad that Taylor had three different terminals in his office in the Pentagon connected to three different computers that were being used for time -sharing experiments at MIT, UCLA and Stanford Research Institute. Thus started an experiment in enabling computers to exchange files among themselves. Bob Taylor played a crucial role in Information Processing Technology Office of ARPA in creating this network, which was later named Arpanet. “We wanted to create a network to support the formation of a community of shared interests among computer scientists and that was the origin of the Arpanet”, says Taylor.

It is a fact, however, that the first computer network to be proposed theoretically was for military purposes. It was to decentralize nuclear missile command and control. The idea was not to have centralized, computer-based command facilities, which could be destroyed in a missile attack. In order to survive a missile attack and retain what was known, during the US-Soviet Cold War, as ‘Second Strike Capability’, Paul Baran of Rand Corporation had proposed the idea of a distributed network. In those mad days of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), it seemed logical.

Baran elaborated his ideas to the military in an eleven-volume report ‘Distributed Communications System’ during 1962-64. This report was available to civilian research groups as well. However, no civilian network was built based on it. Baran even worked out the details of a packet switched network, though he used a clumsy name, ‘Distributed Adaptive Message Block Switching’. Donald Davies, in the UK, independently discovered the same a little later and called it packet switching.

Networking pioneers like Paul Baran, Bob Taylor, Larry Roberts, Frank Heart,Vinton Cerf, Steve Crocker, Bob Metcalfe, Len Kleinrock, Bob Kahn and others have recalled, in several interviews, the struggle they had to go through to convince AT&T, the US telephone monopoly of those days.

AT&T did not believe packet switching would work, and that, if it ever did, it would become a competing network and kill their business! This battle between data communication and incumbent telephone companies is still not over. As voice communication adopts packet technology, as in Voice Over Internet, the old phone companies all over the world are barely conceding to packet switching, kicking and crying.

Using ARPA funds, the first computer network based on packet switching was built in the US between 1966 and 1972. A whole community of users came into being at over a dozen sites, and started exchanging files. Soon they also developed a system to exchange notes and they called it ‘e-mail’ (an abbreviation for electronic mail). Abhay Bhushan, who worked in the Arpanet project from 1967 to 1974 was then at MIT and wrote the note on FTP or File Transfer Protocol, the basis of email. In those days, several theoretical and practical problems were sorted out through RFCs, which stood for Request For Comments –a message sent to all Arpanet users. Any researcher in a dozen ARPA sites could pose a problem or post a solution through such RFCs. Thus, an informal, non-hierarchical culture developed among these original Netizens. “Those were heady days when so many things were done for the first time without much ado,” recalls Abhay Bhushan.

Abhay Bhushan

An email program that immediately became popular due to its simplicity was sendmsg, written by Ray Tomlinson, a young engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), a Boston-based company, which was the prime contractor for building the Arpanet. His email programs have obviously been superseded in the last thirty years by others. But one thing that has survived is the @ sign to denote the computer address of a sender. Tomlinson was looking for a symbol to separate the receiver’s user name and the address of his host computer. When he looked at his Teletype, he saw a few punctuation marks available and chose @ since it had the connotation of ‘at’ among accountants, and did not occur in software programs in some other connotation.

A ‘communication protocol’ is a favourite word of networking engineers just as ‘algorithm’ is a favourite of computer scientists. Leaving the technical details aside, a protocol is actually a step-by-step approach to enable two computers “talk to each other” i.e. exchange data. We use protocols all the time in human communication, so we don’t notice it, but if two strangers met, then how would they start to converse? They would start by introducing themselves, finding a common language, agreeing on a level of communication—formal, informal, professional, personal, polite, polemical and so on, before exchanging information.

As Arpanet rose in popularity in the 70s, a clamour started from every university and research institution to be connected to Arpanet. Everybody wanted to be part of this new community of shared interests. However, not everyone in a Local Area Network could be given a separate Arpanet connection, so one needed to connect entire LANs to Arpanet. Here again there was a diversity of networks and protocols. So how would you build a network of networks (also called the Internet)? Largely, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf solved this problem by developing TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and hence they are justly called the inventors of the Internet.

Meanwhile, in 1971, an undergraduate student at IIT Bombay, Yogen Dalal, was frustrated by the interminable wait to get his programs executed by the old Russian computer. Thanks to encouragement from a faculty member, J R Isaac, who was then head of the computer centre, Dalal started a BTech project on building a remote terminal for the mainframe. “Like all undergraduate projects, this also did not work,” laughs Dalal, recalling those days. But when he went to Stanford for his MS and PhD and saw cutting-edge work being done in networking by Cerf & Co., he naturally got drawn into it.

Vinton Cerf with the author

As a result, Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and another graduate student, Carl Sunshine, wrote the first paper setting forth the standards for an improved version of TCP/IP, in 1974, which became the standard for the Internet. “Yogen did some fundamental work on TCP/IP. I remember, during 1974, when we were trying to sort out various problems of the protocol, we would come to some conclusions at the end of the day and Yogen would go home and come back in the morning with counter examples. He was always blowing up our ideas to make this work,” recalls Cerf.

“They were the most exciting years of my life,” says Yogen Dalal, who after a successful career at Xerox PARC and Apple, is a respected venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Recently he was listed as among the top fifty venture capitalists in the world.

Yogen Dalal

Two things changed the Internet, one was the development of the World Wide Web and the other was a small program called the Browser that allowed you to navigate in this web and read the web pages.

The web is made up of host computers connected to the Internet containing a program called a Web Server. The Web Server is a piece of computer software that can respond to a browser’s request for a page and deliver the page to the Web browser through the Internet. You can think of a Web server as an apartment complex with each apartment housing someone’s Web page. In order to store your page in the complex, you need to pay rent on the space. Pages that live in this complex can be displayed to and viewed by anyone all over the world. The host computer is your landlord and your rent is called your hosting charge. Every day, there are millions of Web servers delivering pages to the browsers of tens of millions of people through the network we call the Internet.

The host computers connected to the Net, called Internet servers, are given a certain address. The partitions within the server hosting separate documents belonging to different owners are called Websites. Each website in turn is also given an address—Universal Resource Locator (URL). These addresses are assigned by an independent agency. It acts in a manner similar to that of the registrar of newspapers and periodicals or the registrar of trademarks, who allow you to use a unique name for your publication or product if others are not using it.

When you type in the address or URL of a website in the space for the address in your browser, the program sends packets requesting to see the website. The welcome page of the website is called the home page. The home page carries an index of other pages, which are part of the same website and residing in the same server. When you click with your mouse on one of them, the browser recognises your desire to see the new document and sends a request to the new address, based on the hyperlink. Thus, the browser helps you navigate the Web or surf the information waves of the Web—which is also called Cyberspace, to differentiate from real navigation in real space.

The web pages carry composing or formatting instructions in a computer language known as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). The browser reads these instructions or tags when it displays the web page on your screen. It is important to note that the page, on the Internet, does not actually look the way it does on your screen. It is a text file with embedded HTML tags giving instructions like ‘this line should be bold’, ‘that line should be in italics’, ‘this heading should be in this colour and font,’ ‘here you should place a particular picture’ and so on. When you ask for that page, the browser brings it from the Internet web servers and displays it according to the coded instructions. A web browser is a computer program in your computer that has a communication function and a display function. When you ask it to go to an Internet address and get a particular page, it will send a message through the Internet to that server and get the file and then, interpreting the coded HTML instructions in that page, compose the page and display it to you.

An important feature of the web pages is that they carry hyperlinks. Such text (with embedded hyperlinks) is called Hyper Text, which is basically text within text. For example, in the above paragraphs, there are words like ‘HTML’, ‘World Wide Web’ and ‘Browser’. Now if these words are hyperlinked and you want to know more about them, then I need not give the information right here, but provide a link to a separate document to explain each of these words. So, only if you want to know more about them, would you go that deep.

In case you do want to know more about the Web and you click on it, then a new document that appears might explain what the Web is and how it was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a particle physicist, when he was at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research at Geneva. Now if you wanted to know more about Tim Berners-Lee or CERN then you could click on those words with your mouse and a small program would hyperlink the words to other documents containing details about Lee or CERN and so on.

Thus, starting with one page, you might ‘crawl’ to different documents in different servers over the Net depending on where the hyperlinks are pointing. This crawling and connectedness of documents through hyperlinks seems like a spider crawling over its web and there lies the origin of the term ‘World Wide Web.’

For a literary person, the hyperlinked text looks similar to what writers call non-linear text. A linear text has a plot and a beginning, a middle and an end. It has a certain chronology and structure. But a nonlinear text need not have a beginning, middle and an end in the normal sense. It need not be chronological. It can have flashbacks and flash-forwards and so on.

If you were familiar with Indian epics then you would understand hyperlinked text right away. After all, Mahabharat, Ramayana, Kathasaritsagar, Panchatantra, Vikram and Betal’s stories have nonlinearities built into them. Every story has a sub-story. Sometimes there are storytellers as characters within stories, who then tell other stories, and so on. At times you can lose the thread because, unlike Hyper Text and hyperlinks—where the reader can exercise his choice to follow a hyperlink or not—the sub-stories in our epics drag you there anyway!

Earlier, you could get only text documents on the Net. With HTML pages, one could now get text with pictures or animations or even some music clips or video clips and so on. The documents on the Net became so much livelier, while the hyperlinks embedded within the page took you to different servers—host computers on the Internet acting as repositories of documents.

It is as if you open one book in a library and it offers you the chance to browse through the whole library of books, CDs and videos! By the way, the reference to the Web as a magical library is not fortuitous. This idea of a hyperlinked electronic library was essentially visualised in the 1940s by Vannevar Bush at MIT, which he had called Memex.

Incidentally, Tim Berners-Lee was actually trying to solve the problem of documentation and knowledge management in CERN. He was grappling with the problem of how to create a database of knowledge so that the experience of the past could be distilled in a complex organisation. It would also allow different groups in a large organisation to share their knowledge resources. That is why his proposal to his boss to create a hyperlinked web of knowledge within CERN, written in 1989-90, was called: ‘Information Management: A Proposal’. Luckily, his boss is supposed to have written two famous words, “Why not?” on his proposal. Lee saw that the concept could be generalised to the Internet. The Internet community quickly grasped it, and we saw the birth of the Internet as we know it today. A new era had begun.

Lee himself developed a program, that looked like a word processor and had hyperlinks as underlined words. He called it a browser. The browser had two functions: a communication function which used Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to communicate with servers, and a presentation function. As more and more servers capable of using HTTP were set up, the Web grew.

Soon more browsers started appearing. The one written by a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Marc Andreessen, became very popular for its high quality and free downloading. It was called Mosaic. Soon, Andreessen left the university, teamed up with Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics, and floated a new company called Netscape Communications. Its Netscape Navigator created a storm and the company started the Internet mania on the stock market when it went public, attracting billions of dollars in valuation even though it was not making any profit!

Meanwhile, Tim Berners-Lee did not make a cent from his path breaking work since he refused to patent it. He continues to look at the development of the next generation of the Internet as a non-profit service to society and heads a research group, W3C, at MIT, which has become a standards-setting consortium for the Web.

Hollywood beauty Hedy Lamarr and CDMA

Hollywood Beauty and CDMA

Shivanand Kanavi

www.rediff.com/movies/special/the-hollywood-star-and-cdma/20151109.htm

Today is Hollywood actor Hedy Lamarr's 101st birthday. It is being celebrated not only by movie fans but Telecom engineers all over the world. In fact Google celebrated with its own Doodle today.

Though gorgeous and glamorous, she was not a bimbo. Hedy Lamarr hit headlines as an actress with a nude swimming scene in her Czech film Ecstasy(1933). Later she was married to a rich pro-Nazi arms merchant, Fritz Mandl. To Mandl she was a trophy wife, whom he took along to many parties and dinners, to mingle with the high and mighty in politics, military and arms trade of Europe. Little did he suspect that beneath the beautiful exterior lay a sharp brain with an aptitude for technology. Hedy was able to pick up quite a bit of the technical shop-talk of the men around the table.

When the war began, Hedy, a staunch anti-Nazi escaped to London. There she convinced Louis Mayer of MGM studios to sign her up. Mayer, having heard of her reputation after Ecstacy, advised her to change her name from Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler to 'Hedy Lamarr' and to act in "wholesome family movies", which she promptly agreed to.

As the war progressed and US entered it after Pearl Harbour, Hedy informed the US government that she was privy to considerable amount of Axis war technology and she wanted to help. The Defence Department had little faith in her claims and advised her to sell war bonds. Hedy, however was unrelenting. She, along with her friend George Antheil, an avant garde composer and musician, patented their 'secret communication system' (1941) and gave the patent rights free to the US military. The patent discussed a design to provide jamming free radio guidance systems for submarine launched torpedoes based on the frequency hopping spread spectrum technique. It consisted of two identical punched paper rolls. One roll, which was located in the submarine, changed the transmission frequency as it was rotated and the other embedded in the torpedo aided the receiver in hopping to the appropriate frequency. The enemy jammer would be thus left perennially guessing the guiding frequency.

The idea though ingenious was too cumbersome as it involved mechanical systems and was hence not applied by the US Navy. However, in the late 1950s as electronic computers appeared on the scene, the US Navy revived its interest in Hedy's ideas. Subsequently, with the development of microchips and digital communication, very advanced secure communication systems have been developed for military purposes using spread spectrum techniques. In the telecom revolution of the 1990s, these techniques have been used to develop civilian applications in cellular phones, wireless in local loop, Personal Communication Systems and so on. The unlikely inventor showed that if you have a sharp brain even party hopping could lead to frequency hopping!

Spread Spectrum
Instead of using one fixed frequency, what if the transmitter keeps jumping from one to another in a random fashion? Then by the time the "enemy", who wants to snoop in, or who wants to jam the transmission, finds the frequency with a high-speed scanner, the frequency would have changed. As long as the hopping does not have a pattern that can be detected and the receiver knows the exact sequence of hopping then both snooping and jamming would be impossible. Thus a user does not use a channel but many users can use a band as long as their sequences do not dash. This technique is called frequency hopping spread spectrum. Hedy's idea belonged to this set.

Spread Spectrum technology assures a high level of security and privacy in any wireless communication. It has come into the limelight in the past decade and especially in the past five years, after a US company, Qualcomm, demonstrated its successful application for cellular phones. Since SS technology can be used for secure communications, which cannot be jammed or snooped into, the US military has done extensive research and development on it since the 1960s and 1970s. Ironically, this hi-tech, and revolutionary concept in radio communication was patented by a Hollywood diva, Hedy Lamarr, nearly 70 years ago.

(Author Shivanand Kanavi, a former VP of TCS, is the author of "Sand to Silicon: The amazing story of digital technology")

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

M M Kalburgi: Tribute in Ghadar Jari Hai

Tribute in Ghadar Jari Hai

Prof M M Kalburgi--A Researcher Par Excellence

http://www.ghadar.in/gjh_html/?q=content/avishrant-anveshaka-prof-m-m-kalburgi-tireless-researcher

Shivanand Kanavi

On the morning of Aug 30, 2015, the town of Dharwad, a major educational and cultural centre of Karnataka was shocked out of its contented and cultured life, when one of its leading lights Prof M M Kalburgi, a renowned researcher into Kannada culture and a prolific writer was shot down at his residence. The tragic loss has shocked the entire literary world of Karnataka and thousands of Prof Kalburgi's admirers and students. Speculation is rife on who might have ordered a gangland Mafiosi style hit on a 77 year old writer.

The funeral was held near Karnatak University Campus, according to Lingayat burial traditions, not too far from the lecture halls where he once taught thousands of students for over three decades on the nuances of Kavirajamarga the 9th century Kannada classic on poetics or the correct way to read and interpret the works of Adikavi Pampa the great 10th century Jain Kannada poet or the radicalism in 12th Century Vachana literature of Basavanna and other Lingayat Sharanas of Karnataka.

Since then there have been a large number of demonstrations by thousands of students, literary figures, writers and democratic supporters not only all over Karnataka but also outside: in Delhi, Varnasi, Tiruvanthapuram etc.

Dharwad unlike other cities, does not count its IT billionaires or the Real Estate Rajas but it does proudly reel off the names of its Jnan Peeth and Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award winners; poets, novelists, playwrights, researchers and of course an incessant stream of top notch Hindustani musicians. Hence the shocked town and the rest of Karnataka hope that the supari style killers who came into his home acting as students-- perhaps knowing that it was always an open house to researchers-- and shot him in the head, in cold blood at close quarters, and those who hired them, would be caught soon by police investigators.

A very large demonstration and rally was held in Dharwad on Sept 14, where writers came from all over Karnataka and thousands gathered to condemn the murder and questioned the tardiness in catching the killers.

I was not his student in a formal sense but my parents being his neighbours and close friends afforded me an ease of entry into his warm friendship, whenever I visited Dharwad. He gladly shared his vast knowledge, his concerns and his flashes of new insights into the radicalism of 12th century Sharana Sahitya, which was our common ground. Every time I met him he would wave with great enthusiasm a bunch of new books that he had either written or edited. His energy was infectious. He was also an indefatigable organiser and motivator, who cajoled others into his numerous projects.

He was prolific. His six volumes of research papers; Marga I-VI with over 750 research papers and over 120 works including dozens of volumes of Vachana literature that were edited by him stand testimony to it. After a brilliant teaching career in Karnatak University Dharwad he became the Vice Chancellor of Kannada University at Hampi, where he once again showed his organising abilities. Post retirement he continued to write and edit profusely.

His recent output in the past five years alone is mind boggling. He edited and published the complete literary and journalistic works of Basavaraj Kattimani, a progressive writer from Belagavi (formerly Belgaum). He also edited and published several volumes of the great early 20th century researcher, F G Halakatti from Vijayapur (formerly Bijapur). He made a great gift to medieval historians by getting 12 volumes of world history written in Persian by a scribe in the 18th century Adilshahi court of Vijayapur (Bijapur), translated and published in Kannada.

He was now engaged in editing and publishing a volume of over 2500 selected vachana poems to be published in 20 different languages. His long introduction to the collection is a learned commentary on the essence of Lingayat sharana movement. He supervised and guided the translators in different languages by conducting several workshops for them all over India to convey the nuances of ancient Kannada (Halegannada), of which he was a master. As a result, in 2012, Kannada; Sanskrit; English; Urdu; Bengali; Hindi; Marathi; Telugu; Punjabi; Tamil editions were published by Basava Samiti.

A week before his heinous assassination he assured me that the remaining 10 language editions in Dogri, Maithili, Assami, Bodo, Gujarati, Malayalam, Konkani, Nepali, Odiya, Santhali, Kashmiri and Sindhi are also in the final stages and would be published in the last quarter of 2015. Translations into Mandarin, Japanese, French and Spanish were also on the cards.

He then pointed to me a heap of corrected proofs of over 20,000 vachanas in Kannada, which would be published in two slim volumes in literally Bible style with similar paper.

And all this after "retirement" !

I joked with him that the name plate outside his house was a mistake. It said Vishrant Kulapati (Retired Vice Chancellor) and it should have read Avishrant (tireless) Kulapati instead !

His researches and speculations were bold and were often iconoclastic. He was a great admirer of Basavanna the 12th century sharana and founder of Lingayatism. The radicalism of Basavanna and his sharana colleagues inspired Prof Kalburgi to take on all those who claimed to be leaders and moral guides of Lingayats today but who would not stand the test of Basavanna's radicalism.

The 12th century sharana movement with Basavanna as the spearhead founded Lingayatism and in short stood for: complete dignity of labour; dismantling of caste discrimination; gender discrimination; temple worship and all meaningless rituals. It also gave a prominent egalitarian social twist for the first time to the older experiential Bhakti movement that had primarily advocated paths to individual spiritual salvation. It was not only inclusive towards all castes and communities but also put forward an egalitarian economic and social philosophy and not renunciation of the world for other worldly goals.

In today's India very few would of course stand Basavanna's test. This led Prof Kalburgi to not only take on casteist and conservative forces in general but also some powerful conservatives among Lingayats.

Conservatives found him polarising and some researchers disagreed with his speculations while admiring his scholarship but he posited that culture studies and historians have to perforce join the dots, speculate, interpret, interpolate, extrapolate and take leaps to make progress even if some of them later turn out to be wrong.

He would relish pursuing a new idea or an insight to bold conclusions. In our recent meet as usual he started sounding me out on a new idea which had struck him, "the barometer of radicalism and openness of any reform movement, even in a religious form, is the participation of women". He pointed out that the 12th Century Lingayat Sharana movement in Karnataka had over 35 women poets who freely expressed their thoughts in hundreds of Vachanas but their number dwindled soon after and a rare woman vachanakara showed up in the last 9 centuries.

He posited that once a movement becomes accepted by the state power and perhaps becomes an established religion, its radicalism dwindles too and women are once again consigned to a lower status. We discussed similar trends in Vedic culture, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. Later I came to know that one of the unfinished manuscripts left by him is an essay on the same topic.

I was struck by his fresh thinking when he gave me a paper where he had pointed out that Basavanna and the Lingayat's clash with state power represented by the Kalachuri King Bijjala was perhaps not on the question of Sharanas' Right to Conscience and the right to organise based on their beliefs. He pointed out, Bijjala largely remained neutral in Sharanas' fight against orthodoxy and the caste system. However when Basavanna said that the treasury belonged to the people and not the King who was just a custodian of national wealth, then Bijjala felt threatened and undermined and hit back with violence on the Sharana movement. He quoted some vachanas to support his thesis. This was typical of his approach that some found iconoclastic while many found refreshing. We published excerpts of this paper in Ghadar Jari Hai. (see http://www.ghadar.in/gjh_html/?q=content/basavanna-and-royal-treasury)

I requested him many times to attempt a history of Lingayat movement; the setting in the 12th century when it was started by Basavanna; its later stultification and various ups and downs in the last 9 centuries. He would say with a twinkle in his eyes, "it would be too controversial".

While scholars did not disagree with his approach in principle and listened to him with interest, students lapped it up. Status quoists or those who feared his criticism however would adopt extra-academic methods like demonstrations and stone throwing outside his residence.

Shrill elements in the media would be all too happy at times to take his remarks out of context or even misquote him to create a controversy. For example a remark he had made about superstitions in a public meeting in Bengaluru which had been organised to discuss the draft Anti-superstition bill prepared by Karnataka Government last year, led to screaming headlines in some news papers leading to death threats and cowardly acts of vandalism at his residence.

But he carried on fearlessly and when I asked him last year about such threats he quoted me a vachana by Basavanna himself:

ನಾಳೆ ಬಪ್ಪುದು ನಮಗಿಂದೆ ಬರಲಿ,
ಇಂದು ಬಪ್ಪುದು ನಮಗೀಗಲೆ ಬರಲಿ,
ಇದಕಾರಂಜುವರು, ಇದಕಾರಳುಕುವರು
`ಜಾತಸ್ಯ ಮರಣಂ ಧ್ರುವಂ' ಎಂದುದಾಗಿ
ನಮ್ಮ ಕೂಡಲಸಂಗಮದೇವರು ಬರೆದ ಬರೆಹವ ತಪ್ಪಿಸುವಡೆ
ಹರಿಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾದಿಗಳಿಗಳವಲ್ಲ.

Let what could happen tomorrow come to us today,

Let what could happen today come to us here and now,

Who is afraid of this!

One that is born will also die

Neither Hari nor Brahma can override what my Koodala Sangama Deva has writ.

Perhaps a fitting epitaph for a tireless researcher. May he rest in peace.

Monday, August 31, 2015

Prof M M Kalburgi--A Tribute

Avishrant Anveshaka

Prof M M Kalburgi--A Tireless

Researcher

Prof M M Kalburgi at Dharwad Sahitya Sambhrama Jan 25, 2013

Today morning, (Aug 30, 2015) the town of Dharwad a major educational and cultural centre of Karnataka was shocked out of its contented and cultured life, when one of its leading lights Prof M M Kalburgi a renowned researcher into Kannada culture and prolific writer was shot down at his residence. The tragic loss has shocked the entire literary world of Karnataka and thousands of Prof Kalburgi's admirers and students. Speculation is rife on who might have ordered a gangland Mafiosi style hit on a 77 year old writer. The day was filled with shocked admirers and VIPs streaming to his residence, hospital and to the grounds of the famed Karnatak College, where he once studied and where now he was lying in state.

The funeral will be tomorrow noon in the grounds near Karnatak University Campus, according to Lingayat burial traditions, not too far from the lecture halls where he once taught thousands of students for over three decades on the nuances of Kavirajamarga the 9th century Kannada classic on poetics or the correct way to read and interpret the works of Adikavi Pampa the great 10th century Jain Kannada poet or the radicalism in 12th Century Vachana literature of Basavanna and other Lingayat Sharanas of Karnataka.

Dharwad unlike other cities, does not count its IT billionaires or the Real Estate Rajas but it does proudly reel off the names of its Gyan Peeth and Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award winners; poets, novelists, playwrights, researchers and of course an unending stream of top notch Hindustani musicians. Hence the shocked town and the rest of Karnataka hope that the supari style killers who came into his home acting as students-- perhaps knowing that it was always an open house to researchers-- and shot him in the head, in cold blood at close quarters, and those who hired them, would be caught soon by police investigators.

Prof M M Kalburgi a master of Halegannada (Ancient Kannada), explaining the nuances of Adikavi Pampa's poetry (10th C CE) at an intimate gathering in Dharwad

I was not his student in a formal sense but my parents being his neighbours and close friends afforded me an ease of entry into his warm friendship whenever I visited my Janmabhoomi Dharwad from my Karma Bhoomi, Mumbai. He gladly shared his vast knowledge, his concerns and his flashes of new insights into the radicalism of 12th century Sharana Sahitya, which was our common ground. Every time I met him he would wave with great enthusiasm a bunch of new books that he had either written or edited. His energy was infectious. He was equally an indefatigable organiser and motivator who cajoled others into his numerous projects.

He was prolific. His four volumes of research papers; Marga I-IV and literally dozens of volumes of Vachana literature that were edited, were part of his academic output during his teaching career. After a brilliant teaching career in Karnatak University Dharwad he became the Vice Chancellor of Kannada University at Hampi where he once again showed his organising abilities. Post retirement he continued to write and edit profusely.

His recent output in the past five years alone is mind boggling. He edited and published the complete literary and journalistic works of Basavaraj Kattimani, a progressive writer from Belagavi (formerly Belgaum). He also edited and published several volumes of the great early 20th century researcher, F G Halakatti from Vijayapur (formerly Bijapur). He also made a great gift to medieval historians by getting seven volumes of world history written in Persian by a scribe in the 18th century Adilshahi court of Vijayapur (Bijapur), translated and published in Kannada.

He was now engaged in editing a volume of over 2500 selected vachana poems to be published in 20 different languages. His long introduction to the volume is a classic commentary on the essence of Lingayat sharana movement. He supervised and guided the translators in different languages as well. As a result, in 2012 Kannada, Sanskrit, English, Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Punjabi, Tamil editions were published by Basava Samiti.

When I met him last week he assured me that the remaining 10 language editions in Dogri, Maithili, Assami, Bodo, Gujarati, Malayalam, Konkani, Nepali, Odiya, Santhali, Kashmiri and Sindhi are also in the final stage and would be published in the last quarter of this year. Translations into Mandarin, Japanese, French and Spanish were also on the cards.

He then pointed to me a heap of corrected proofs of over 20,000 vachanas in Kannada, which would be published in two slim volumes in literally Bible style with similar paper and asked me if I knew printing experts who could deliver a high quality product soon.

And all this after "retirement" ! I joked with him that the name plate outside his house was a mistake. It said Vishrant Kulapati (Retired Vice Chancellor) and it should have read Avishrant (tireless) Kulapati instead !

While scholars may not disagree with his approach in principle and listened to him with interest, students lapped it up. Status quoists or those who feared his criticism however would adopt extra-academic methods like demonstrations and stone throwing outside his residence.

Shrill elements in the media would be all too happy at times to take his remarks out of context or even misquote him to create a controversy. For example a remark he had made about superstitions in a public meeting in Bengaluru which had been organised to discuss the draft Anti-superstition bill prepared by Karnataka Government led to screaming headlines in one of the news papers leading to death threats and cowardly acts of vandalism at his residence last year.

But he carried on and when I asked him once about such threats he quoted me a vachana by Basavanna himself: