Learning to Type a :-)

I didn't know that the digital smiley :-) was invented by a Professor! And it was done 25 years ago! (I thought it was invented more recently.) And it wasn't until recently either that I fully realized why using the computers could be so intimidating for those to whom these otherwise helpful machines were foreign.

My mom and dad, well in their 60s and 70s, were only recently learning to use the computer. While talking on the phone with them several days ago, my dad asked me why his typings were all wavy. Confused, I asked him what he meant. He started explaining that whenever he typed a word, it had a red wave under the word. He tried to get rid of it, but every time he wrote again, the red wave reappeared. Partly smiling to myself, I realized that the spell checking was not as natural as I thought it was.

Apparently while coaching both my parents, my sister said that using the mouse was also a strange experience for them. They didn't have the fine motor skill to click and double click, nor the intuitiveness to maneuver the mouse as an extension to a hand 'reaching' into the computer screen. Although I knew that using the computer required one to also learn the many languages and symbols unique within it, I didn't realize how daunting it could be :-)

Debating Outsourcing

Outsourcing. Flattener #5 in Thomas Friedman’s list of ten forces that flattened the world (2005), and how it changed India:

“There are currently about 245,000 Indians answering phones from all over the world or dialing out to solicit people for credit cards or cell phone bargains or overdue bills. These call center jobs are low-wage, low-prestige jobs in America, but when shifted to India they become high-wage, high-prestige jobs. …

[In India,] applicants who are hired at a call center is … [entered] in the training program, which they are paid to attend. It combines learning how to handle the specific processes for the company whose calls they will be taking or making, and attending something called “accent neutralization class.” These are day long sessions with a language teacher who prepares the new Indian hires to disguise their pronounced Indian accents when speaking English and replace them with American, Canadian, or British ones – depending on which part of the world they will be speaking with.” (pp. 24-26)

Great. Or is it?

Arundhati Roy doesn’t seem to think so. Here’s what her thoughts on the same subject, in “Algebra of Infinite Justice” (2002):

“… [in] a “Call Centre College” in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi … [one could see] how easily an ancient civilization can be humiliated and made to abase itself completely. … On duty they [the call center operator] have to change their given names. Sushma becomes Susie, Govind becomes Jerry, Advani becomes Andy. … Actually it’s worse: Sushma becomes Mary. Govind becomes David. Perhaps Advani becomes Ulysses.

Call Centre workers are paid exactly one-tenth of their counterparts abroad. From all accounts, Call Centres in India are billed to become a multi-million dollar industry. Imagine that – a multi-million dollar industry built on a bedrock of lies, false identities and racism.” (pp. 160-161)

One story. Two opposite ends.