blog@Yantrajaal

Print on demand is a publishing process that allows an author to publish a book in paperback and then have a very small number of copies -- even a single copy, if necessary -- printed whenever required at a price point that is comparable to traditional offset printing. I had first come across this technology when I had published, The Road to pSingularity , and had explained this new publishing paradigm in a post in 2007 . The trouble then was that these print-on-demand publishers were based in the US and the price of the book was comparable to a US retail price which is quite high for us in India. Moreover the shipping cost was very often more than the cost of the book. Thus the whole process was not quite economically viable. However the arrival of of print-on-demand vendors in India have altered the economics dramatically. Recently, I had the pleasure of publishing the first volume of the VGSOM Management Monograph Series through Pothi and the results were very satisfying. A...

The Doors of Perception is an iconic book by Aldous Huxley where, while exploring  the hallucinogenic properties of certain shrubs and herbs, he came to the unusual conclusion that any cognitive sentient has instant and automatic access to all possible knowledge in the universe. However the neural faculties that are expected to process this information and render them useful in a socio-cognitive context are in danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of data -- as occassionally evident in what we refer to as 'madness' -- and so are protected and isolated from the same by the mind that works as a gate or valve that reduces the quantum of information that the brain is eventually exposed to. This mind or gate or valve is what Huxley refers to as the Doors of Perception : that can be opened wider by the use of mental techniques ( Yoga ?) or the use of hallucinogenic drugs -- to reveal a greater amount of "significance" or meaning to the sterile ream...

Affordability and Quality Students located in remote and economically backward regions of the world are in critical need of good education and yet they are precisely the ones who cannot afford it. Since direct aid is both inefficient and inadequate , Shikshajaal:21 blends cutting edge technology and modern management techniques to  address this challenging goal. Shikshajaal:21 believes that educational services at the K12 level cannot be delivered through fully automated channels because kids would not have the interest or the ability to learn on their own. Human teachers, empowered with tools and technology, are essential. However, competent and motivated teachers are rare in the regions of the world that we wish to target. So the model  uses technology as a “force multiplier” that enables a large number of ordinary people – teaching assistants –  to deliver high quality education to a dispersed student population. The components of the Shikshajaal:21 architectu...