Wired:

More than 30,000 employees at Indian call centers, among whom Radhika becomes Ruth and Satish becomes Steve, are told to adopt American names and say they are calling from a U.S. city in order to put their American customers at ease.

Their training includes a smattering of U.S. history and geography, along with speech therapy so that they will sound “American.” Some call centers are adorned with American flags to give a cultural feel to the place.

Along the way, these employees are exposed to a way of life that can come into direct conflict with their conservative values and, sometimes, their sanity.

Comments Off

Thomas Friedman in the NYT: countries that are globalizing sensibly but steadily are also the ones that are becoming politically more open, with more opportunities for their people, and with a young generation more interested in joining the world system than blowing it up.

Comments Off

Italy’s Miss Yawn 2002: Italians are just plain tired of the girl-next-door, which they like to call “acqua e sapone” (soap and water look) and apparently want more sex, spice and suspense in their misses.

Comments Off

Peterme: Abnormal American. `See, I lead a fairly simple life. I rent an apartment. I don’t own a car. I don’t make extravagant purchases on a bunch of different credit cards. And because of this, “the computer” doesn’t know what to make of me.’

Comments Off

JRobb: Subtext: it’s the networks of people that support you and keep you whole after you get old that matter.

Comments Off

Now that the X-Files have closed, there’s an opportunity here for desi Chris Carters to get into the act — lots of inspiration here. Anyone remember the monkey man sightings in Delhi last year?

Comments Off

USS Clueless:

Indeed, a finely tuned bullshit detector is a survival trait in the information age. When we are inundated with data, much of which seems contradictory and much of which is intended to persuade or deceive us, we need to learn how to reject that which has a high probability of being invalid, and to that end we begin to understand what kinds of messages or ways in which they are delivered tend to suggest that the messenger is less than honest. Those of us who have grown up in information-rich societies have learned this skill over time, although to differing degrees. This is a real problem for those using these media, such as advertisers, to try to influence us in ways which are to their advantage but not necessarily to ours, and as our access to information grows, the effectiveness of advertising has declined. We’re just not that easy to convince. Indeed, it’s not all that easy to even get our attention any more to even deliver the message, let alone to have the message convince us and change our behavior. That’s why there’s a long term trend for advertising to become more strident, more intrusive, more obnoxious, and more emphatic; it shows that the advertisers are growing desperate. Ironically, those very characteristics in turn decrease the effectiveness of their message because they more strongly set off our collective bullshit detectors. (Advertising is falling prey to the tragedy of the commons.)

Comments Off

Slashpost:

Reminds me of a time back in ‘94 when I went to a Pink Floyd concert. As per usual, people like to sing along with the songs. To dying day, I’ll never forget the sound of 30,000 people droning in unison: “We don’t need no thought control”.

Comments Off

Check out this Slashdot thread for a great example of why Slashdot is more than just another web discussion group for nerds :-).

Comments Off

Mangle. I’ve been looking for this feature for quite some time. www.google.com/random would have been much cooler, though.

Comments Off