Book review: Hit Refresh

Can elephants dance? Satya Nadella, only the 3^rd CEO in Microsoft’s history certainly thinks so, as he narrates the story of how he is trying to inject new life into Microsoft’s soul.

Once nearly synonymous with personal computing, Microsoft lost its mojo in the last decade as mobile phones literally gatecrashed into our lives and became the primary channel to access everything from music to internet. Many had written off Microsoft at this stage, but Satya narrates how he is breathing new life into the company, changing attitudes and bringing in new paradigms.

Microsoft, is changing, and making the world an even better place for us

The book starts on a personal note as the author traces his origins from childhood in the small towns of India to his entry into Microsoft headquarters in Seattle in the early 1990s and his eventual rise to the top in 2014. The author is modest in often acknowledging the role of luck in his success, pointing out how he always found himself at the right place at the right time. Son of a civil servant, the author narrates his fascination for cricket and early leadership lessons he took from the game. There are stories from the ups & downs in his personal life, like meeting the love of his life, and the trying circumstances surrounding the birth of the first child. 

This is a book about transformation, one that is taking place within him and also within the company. What was the situation at Microsoft when Satya took over? What did he inherit? And what is it that he wants to change? Trying to bring about culture change in such a big organization is not easy, it is a painfully slow grind but the author’s efforts have slowly started showing results. There is now a renewed growth mindset. Several key events and decisions, such as the launch of Windows 10, learnings from the Nokia acquisition and corporate dispute with Samsung etc. are described, giving an insight into the author’s personality and working style. The author shows how his seemingly unconventional decisions to partner arch-rivals such as Apple or Google have paid off. Surprisingly, even in this dispassionate world of coding and corporate strategy, Empathy keeps repeating itself.

And thankfully, the book doesn’t end here!

In the latter sections, the author takes a deep dive into technologies of the future, and how Microsoft is “trying to imagine a better future for everyone”. It is this that I liked the most. The author writes about three things Microsoft is betting on – Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing. What are they? What can they do? And where are we – the human race - heading? These are topics not just for the geeks. The author shows how these technologies will become essential tools in everything we do – from education to medicine, or help us fight cancer or global warming. Going beyond pure computing, technologies of the future will not only help us see, hear and analyze, but also “make us feel”. Does this mean machines will eventually ‘take over’ - as some fear? Or will they only augment human capabilities to make this world an even better place for all of us? It is this ‘Human vs. Machines’ OR ‘Human + Machines’ debate that is currently the rage the world over, and the author assures us there is nothing to fear from the future.

In recent times, the growth of technology has also thrown up difficult issues surrounding privacy, security and free speech. The author discusses delicate issues such as privacy of user data and government surveillance, the dilemma between privacy vs. security, individual freedom and liberty vs. public safety. The author rues that laws always lag technological changes, causing friction between Regulation and the Corporation. The role of companies in modern society is also discussed.

As they say, ultimately the best way to predict the future is to invent it. And that is what Microsoft is doing. 

Do give this book a read – it did change my perception of Microsoft, and our future - for the better.

Book review: The Inevitable

What comes to your mind someone says ‘technologies of the future’? Think blockchain, driverless cars, Artificial Intelligence, 3-D printing, drones…. I recently happened to read “the Inevitable” by Kevin Kelly, a futurist and the Founding Editor of the Wired magazine. The sub-title of this book said “Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future”. This is a review of the same. A more concise review has been put up on the Amazon website.

When I picked up this book, I was expecting a deep dive – or at least a comprehensive introduction to technologies (not specifically the ones mentioned above but whatever else) the esteemed author thinks will come to shape our future. However, that was not to be.

The book revolves around what I may loosely call for want of a better term, the ‘Internet–AI–Cloud–Analytics complex’ and various things that are being achieved combining these. The “12 trends” that the author talks about are different manifestations of using the same: 

1. Becoming – a process of constantly changing, evolving, improving

2. Cognifying – How AI is being injected into everything around us 

3. Flowing – Everything is information, copied multiple times and flowing seamlessly around the world over the internet 

4. Screening – More and more screens will enter our lives – from digital books to VR goggles to living room and building walls etc. 

5. Accessing – Access will become more important than possession or ownership 

6. Sharing – Open source software, social media collaboration, aggregator sites, crowd funding etc.

7. Filtering – Since there is an abundance of everything (information age), it will all need to be filtered 

8. Remixing – Mixing multiple elements of different media to create new things, findability, rewindability etc. 

9. Interacting – VR, and one step beyond it to Augmented Reality (AR) 

10. Tracking – From intelligent devices tracking our body to “lifestreaming”, “lifelogging” etc. End of privacy. 

11. Questioning – the most unlikely things will happen and we will need to constantly keep questioning 

12. Beginning – the changes which are on our way are so mindboggling that we are beginning anew

These one liners do not do full justice to the depth to which the author has gone, but I wanted to give a glimpse of what really the author means by technology “trends” and how they differ from technologies or specific technology developments. 

Indeed what the Google-Facebook-Netflix-Amazons of the world are doing is quite remarkable. But beyond a point, the 12 trends appear to be a regurgitation of the same underlying technological capability. The book keeps coming back to the same names again and again, at times making it difficult to distinguish one chapter from another. 

To be sure, there is nothing wrong in what the author has written, but this is not what I was expecting. On the whole, a bit of a disappointment.

The Aadhaar Card and our "Identity" crisis

Archana works for an organization that has recently introduced a new device to track employee attendance. At the time of entry and exit, members of the staff press their fingers against a biometric sensor installed in the office. The sensor matches the fingerprints with those in its database, identifies the employee and marks them present. But there is a problem. Female employees have learnt the hard way that on days when they have mehendi on their fingers – a very common occurrence in India, especially during festivals and family events like weddings – the sensor fails to recognize the employee, marking them absent.

Professor Chari is a retired professor who spends his time doing research and freelance journalism. He is a regular visitor at the local Public Library, which has a large collection of rare books that help him in his research. The University has recently ‘upgraded’ its systems, and introduced a biometric reader that scans the borrower’s fingerprints when membership is granted. However, there is a problem. The biometric reader fails to ‘read’ the Professor’s fingerprints, making it impossible for him to enrol. The Librarian says this is a very common occurrence with senior citizens, for which he has no solution.

These two incidents (names changed, stories true) that I came across recently drove me to attend an event organized by Moneylife Foundation earlier this year, on the recently introduced “Aadhaar” card by the Government of India. The event was addressed by Col (retd.) Mathew Thomas, a former missile scientist cum civic activist, and Mr. Jude D’Souza, a forensic expert. At the event, Mr. D’souza gave a demonstration of how fingerprints can be faked, and claimed even Iris scans can be easily tampered with. Col Thomas, in his speech, came down heavily on the Aadhaar project and explained how the project is being pushed ahead despite its lack of Parliamentary sanction, extraordinary high cost and innumerable flaws in conception, execution and  implementation. 

Since then, I have tracked the Aadhaar project closely. The critics of Aadhaar are many, and its flaws are there for all to see - the project has no Parliamentary sanction, its cost benefit analysis has not been done, it uses questionable methods to collect its data, the accountability for breach of data secrecy is vague and unidentified, the card itself is unnecessary and adds no value, and it exposes citizens to a grave risk of identity theft. (Read this, this or this) The card is being mischievously linked to government schemes like subsidy payments, for which simpler solutions such as Electronic Transfers (e.g. RBI's ECS) already exist. It's marketing campaign makes the deceptive claim of being “every citizen’s right”, creating a perception of value and benefit. One can understand a right to vote, a right to free speech, or even a right to subsidies and scholarships (if eligible). But a "right" to an identity card is a laughable statement! And yet, the citizen’s have lapped up the card, as if there was no tomorrow (around 38 crore enrolled at the time of writing!). I am amazed at this craving for another “identity” proof, without giving a second thought to what constitutes an "identity", and why identity cards exist. So let us ponder over it...

Aadhaar - A "right" to get a card that tells you who you are!

My dictionary defines Identity as “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is”. A person’s name and face, appearance and physical features give him his identity. His character, reputation, image give him his identity. His achievements, his work, his thoughts and actions – all give him his identity. "Cogito ergo sum”, Rene Descartes famously said in the 17^th Century. I think, therefore I am. That gives me my identity. People would still have their identities even if there were no identity cards.

Identity Cards exist not because people need identities, but because organizations need to identify people they want to deal with. The Election Commission issues an Identity Card, because it needs to identify voters who are authorised to vote. National governments issue passports because they need to identify people who enter and exit their country. A school or college issues an Identity card because it needs to identify students who have been granted admission. Why the UIDAI needs to identify anybody is beyond my understanding. It is probably the only organization in the world whose sole purpose is to issue Identity Cards!

Going far beyond its blatant illegality and reckless implementation, the Aadhaar project raises serious issues of citizen’s freedom, liberty and privacy that are little understood by a majority of Indians. The government exists for the sole purpose of ensuring law & order, defending the country from external aggression and providing a dispute resolution framework. People are unaware that nobody – not even the government – needs to know more about its citizens than what is necessary. For example, the Motor Vehicles Department seeks information about a person’s age, physical fitness & blood group in its ‘normal’ course of business. The Income Tax Authority does not ask for your physical fitness and blood group, but may seek information about income and assets, because that is in its normal course of functions. The Election Commission seeks information about age & residential address, but not income & assets! But the UIDAI wants to know everything about everybody, and for no specific purpose! 

It should be noted that opposition to Aadhaar is not opposition to technology. From Stone Age to this day, mankind has progressed only because of advancements in technology. The benefits of technology in areas such as bank computerization or railway reservation systems have been there for all to see. In recent times, government departments like the Income Tax or Passport Offices have computerized their operations, bringing immense improvement in the quality of their service delivery. However, Aadhaar seeks to create an integrated database that will hold everything from a person’s name and date of birth, to fingerprints and iris scans, and address to bank account numbers. It  would expose citizens to a grave risk of identity theft, and is a blatant encroachment on the citizen’s right to privacy and liberty. It would grant immense power to anybody who lays his hands on this data, and would be open to misuse (see this, esp. the last para). This includes unscrupulous employees from the related offices, data collection agencies, people with political power, and by consequence their relatives, associates, business partners or anyone else who is interested in obtaining this data for a consideration. 

The UIDAI claims the data is encrypted at the point of collection. But we know that adding a layer of encryption does little to deter a determined hacker. Everything from bank websites to email accounts, defence networks to even nuclear establishments have been hacked. No wonder UIDAI doesn’t even reveal whether the country’s top politicians own an Aadhaar Card!

To me, Aadhaar is nothing but part of a grand scheme to create a Surveillance State. Its other elements includes the Central Monitoring System (CMS), the National Population Register (NPR), the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), countless CCTVs at every nook and corner of the country, and every other instrument of state oppression that is used to track every step a citizen takes. Much of this is often justified on the grounds of 'national security' – in other words, the government’s own administrative failure of securing our borders and making the country safe. Governments exist to serve its people, not to control them. Unfortunately, schemes such as these do not face popular resistance, because a majority of the people feel they have nothing to hide. But once such an infrastructure is created, it can be misused to intimidate and subjugate people, and create a regime of oppression and injustice.

No wonder the government is desperate to give you an Aadhaar card. Why are you desperate to take it?

Future of Banking - Part II

In the previous article (click here), we saw some of the trends that are sweeping across the world of banking technology today. These changes will revolutionize the way we bank in future. We continue from where we left off, covering new developments, this time mainly in Corporate Banking.

7. Remote Deposit Capture: In the U.S., banks now supply a scanner which their business customers use to scan the cheques they receive. The images are then uploaded to a bank portal, from where the image is directly sent to the clearing house for clearing. 

Individual customers can photograph a cheque they have received using their Smartphone, and automatically upload the image through an app to the bank’s portal, which sends it online for clearing. No need to go to the bank to deposit the cheque at all! This development is specific to the U.S., since a special Act ensures legal validity of the cheque thus deposited electronically.

8. The end of L/C: Letters of Credit have been at the heart of world trade for decades, but they would soon be history. ICC (International Chamber of Commerce, the body which regulates world trade) is in the process of giving recognition to a new instrument called the Bank Payment Obligation (BPO) which will one day replace the L/C. The BPO can be exchanged between banks via XML messages and incorporated into an automated STP (Straight Through Processing) environment, causing substantial cost reduction and bringing operational efficiency.

9. Automation of Supply Chain Finance: Soon, Corporate buyers will receive quotations, select suppliers, place orders, receive bills and make payments directly through their bank’s portal. Sellers can bid for tenders, accept orders and raise invoices online, through their bank's portal, without handling any paper. This is much more than simply scanning a physical invoice or any other commercial document – the system will generate its own serial number, have digital signature etc and be a legally binding document without any physical existence. Further more; the Bank’s Core systems will be integrated with the Corporate ERP systems, making communication between the two entirely automated.

Automation of the Supply Chain will save billions of dollars across the world and prevent millions of trees from being cut. The BPO, and Supply Chain Automation taken together will completely revolutionize the way corporate financing is done by banks in the world today.

10. eBAM (Electronic Bank Account Management): Can you imagine how many bank accounts a large corporation such as McDonald’s or General Electric might have? Could be in thousands. Managing so many bank accounts – opening, closing, keeping the list of signatories and their operating mandates updated, efficiently utilizing the funds lying around in them, sending instructions of various types to the banks and following up with them is a mammoth task. eBAM, a product launched by SWIFT allows a company to open accounts, add or remove signatories and close accounts online without any manual intervention. Since transactions (i.e. sending and receiving money) have already moved online, once Banks perform the mandatory KYC (Know Your Customer) exercise and establish a relationship, a Corporate customer can open accounts, operate them and close accounts when the purpose is over, all by itself, without any manual intervention by the bank 

To conclude, Banking will look very different from the way it looks today. Plastic cards and cheque books will cease to exist, you will not need to know what your account number is. Mobile phone based payment systems will make physical currency become redundant, and offices will become truly paperless!

Apple’s iPhone is hardly four years old, but in such a short span of time it has turned the world of mobile telephony upside down. Developments which are at a conception stage will become mainstream tomorrow, and that day is not far away!

Future of Banking: Top trends that will drive the change

It is too clichéd to use the term “change is the only constant”, but nowhere is this truer than in the field of technology. In this 2-part article, I bring to you some recent technological developments in the field of banking that will change the way we do our banking forever: 

1. Biometric ATMs: If my fingerprint or iris scan is enough to identify me, do I need a plastic card? A bank in Turkey has rolled out 2400 biometric ATMs across the country. Japan already has a huge network of such ATMs operational, all of them based on the “finger vein” technology of Hitachi. Under this technology, rays of light pass through your fingers and capture pattern of the veins. The pattern is image processed using a special algorithm and digital data is generated. Pattern readers installed at ATMs read customer’s vein pattern and by comparing it with what is already present with the bank, a customer is identified. Hitachi claims finger vein technology is more reliable than using fingerprints, since the veins are inside the body and hence completely tamperproof. 

And if ATMs can have vein readers, will POS Terminals (those ubiquitous swipe machines where they swipe your credit card) be far behind? Plastic cards may soon be history. 

2. The "Pingit": You can now send money to anyone using only his mobile number, no need to know the account number! A common database, operated by a central body such as a Clearing House, will hold a “mapping” of the customer’s phone number to the account number. A simple mobile phone app will allow users to transfer money from their bank accounts to another just by entering the recipient’s phone number or selecting the name from address book. Payment instruction will be routed to this common database which will identify the account number to be credited. This development will substantially reduce the need to carry cash, even more than what the advent plastic cards did. (“Pingit” here is actually the brand name of such a service launched by Barclays in the U.K, others may launch it with a different name).

3. The e-Wallet: A “digital” wallet, stores all the data about your credit cards, prepaid cards etc digitally, which you can access online or through your mobile phone. When you shop, you just tap the phone on the wallet “reader” installed with the merchant and the transaction is authenticated automatically. The communication between your phone and the merchant’s reader happens over an electro magnetic field (somewhat akin to Bluetooth). 

To use the e-wallet online, once you have selected the items you want to buy and move to the payment options, just sign-in into your e-wallet account and the transaction is completed instantly using credit card data mapped within the wallet. Digital wallets are considered safer than leather wallets and credit cards, which can be stolen and misused. Banks will soon stop issuing physical cards completely, since only the data on the card is required, not the physical card itself. If the same data can be stored on your mobile phone, do you need a plastic card?

4. The Social Networking bank: Last year, Facebook got 15% of its $ 3.7 billion revenues from Payments business. It has already got ‘money transmitter’ licenses in 15 U.S. states, and is applying for more. This way, it is directly competing with Banks and money transfer companies like Western Union in the remittance business. In India, ICICI Bank allows customers to perform transactions like checking your account balance, generate statement and order cheque books through Facebook. Social Networking sites will give serious competition to Banks for certain types of services in the future, as it will not be necessary to visit the bank website to operate your account!

5. The end of Cheque Book: Europe has already done away with cheque books. Even in the rest of the world, cheque book usage is declining. And with the payment revolution brought about by the mobile phone hitting the banking world like a Tsunami, cheque books will soon be a thing of the past.

6. Bank Account portability: Regulators have been talking about Account Number Portability (“change your bank without changing your account number”) for a long time, but it is difficult to introduce and expensive to implement. Thankfully, with the cheque books gone, account numbers will die too! Or atleast, the way we see them today.   

A central body, such as a Clearing House will hold the “mapping” of a customer’s old account number to the new account number, and any mandate to debit or credit the old account (such as direct debit / credits, ECS mandates, RTGS, NEFT transfers, standing instructions and all sort of Electronic Fund Transfers whichever way they are done) will be automatically routed to the new account. Changing your bank will then become completely hassle free, reducing bank account to a commodity.

(To be continued…….)

How to tap a mobile phone

We have been hearing a lot about phone tapping these days. But ever wondered how to tap a mobile phone? You might be forgiven for thinking it’s a complicated technical operation, but it’s quite simple really.

When the security agencies want to tap someone’s phone, they simply get another SIM for the same number (as the target person's number) issued from the service provider and insert it into a phone. Now, every time the target phone rings, this phone will also ring and they can simply pick up the phone and listen. The phone should be kept on mute mode; else even the slightest sound will let the target know someone is listening. Or the phone can be connected to a computer to record the conversations and listened to later. Even the SMSes sent to the target number can be received this way. The security agencies and the mobile phone companies use this method all the time, officially or unofficially, to tap phones of suspects such as politicians, industrialists, criminals etc. (what’s the difference, by the way?)

If one has access to the target person’s (such as the spouse or teenage daughter) mobile, the task is even easier. A variety of phone tapping software are available easily on the net, such as this one. Many of these software require installation on the target person’s mobile phone, and then activation from another (your own) phone. You can then easily listen to what’s happening.

Note that tapping phones this way without the knowledge of the other person is not legal, of course. So remember that you are doing it on your own risk. But then, when you want to, a polite “may I tap your phone from tomorrow?” is unlikely to be of much help.