by Amartya Ghosh on April 13, 2009
At last the D’Day came and the decision was taken. 13/04/2009. A new beginning for all the satyamites and Tech Mahindraites. Though from the morning the ball was on the court of L&T Infotech but lastly MBT(Tech Mahindra) manages to win the bid.A Rs.1751 Cr bid by the Mahindra management confirmed 31% stake for them. For the time being it would be in transition and Tech Mahindra would be treating as a Subsidiary like a special purpose vehicle unlit a Rs.2889 Cr deal fetches them a 51% share of the fraud drowned company. It’s basically done on da basis of Rs.58/share. Risks are still plying in the market regarding investors and clients who may or may not lap it up. So any decision made is being kept strictly confidential. Tech Mahindra governing body therefore are not keeping any liabilities on their side. Also no leverage is being entertained. The implied market capital for Satyam would be @Rs.5664Cr. Incidentally both Tech Mahindra(Rs.364.10, 13.31% high) and Satyam’s(Rs.49.35, 1.95% high) share prices showed some positive movement this morning. So it’s a new flag off and ours is to wait and watch. For the employees and the recruited students who are still awaiting their offer letters, it’s a new hope for a new future, keeping their fingers crossed.
by Nipon on August 17, 2008
Both my sister and I always failed to understand what really failed dad when it came to computers! Why can’t he remember how to print an email and why does he have to ask every time? How incorrigible – we never stopped yelling at dad! Not until a doc in my medical college who is like my friend, philosopher, guide and an immense help with clinics started learning computers from me. I was exasperated in the beginning to see in him the same fallible traits as my father. But then I knew for certain it’s the generation gap that is to be blamed.
I got my computer lessons since class 5 in school. (We were taught obscure things like LOGO and BASIC though which we found quite boring! Not that I bothered much for the computer paper was scoring anyway!) Then the desktop arrived home when I was still in my early teens and in no time I got hooked to it. So in a way it can be said I grew up with computers, internet, mobile phone, MP3 and the likes which makes me pretty much a digital native – a term coined by American futurist Mark Prensky.
The new breed of students fall into into this digital native category. A digital native is someone who has grown up with technology. Older adults, on the other hand, are digital immigrants. They have adapted to technology and still think in pre-digital ways. My father, for example, keeps a diary to jot down all his usernames and passwords to avoid forgetting. What my mother calls a digital camera is just a camera for me. I take it for granted and see nothing oh-so-digital about it.
In sharp contrast to our immigrant elders, we natives specialise in multi-tasking and absorb information quickly. Internet is a part of our daily life. We spend considerable time online to download MP3s and watch videos on youtube as much we do in searching for references on google! For us, Orkut and Facebook are useful and inexpensive tools to keep in touch with friends.
Digital natives
Like receiving information quickly from multiple media sources.
Like parallel processing and multi-tasking.
Like processing pictures, sounds and video before text.
Like random access to hyperlinked multimedia information.
Like to network with others.
Like to learn “just in time”.
Digital immigrants
Like slow and controlled release of information from limited sources.
Like singular processing and single or limited tasking.
Like processing text before pictures, sounds and video.
Like to receive information linearly, logically and sequentially.
Like to work independently.
Like to learn “just in case”.
However, it may be futile to categorise people into natives or immigrants. After all it is the so-called immigrants who conceived of all the geeky things we natives are surrounded with today and we have no right to assume authority of the tech world just because we use it. Not just that, not every one of our generation is comfortable with computers and not every older adult is shy of it. Take prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. He is a technocrat and uses the computer heavily. (Not long ago, Singh underwent a wrist surgery to get relief from carpal tunnel syndrome that he developed due to prolonged computer usage.) Closer home, I have seen some professors in my college who not only know how to operate a laptop and LCD projector in lectures but are also GPRS-savvy! On a similar note, many students of the current generation are still weary of reading a lot of text on the screen, that includes me too. I would always prefer a hard copy and guess what, I hate e-books! Drawing sharp margins of divide is, therefore, not easy. Nevertheless, there is no denying the fact that there is this new digital world order where elders feel quite awkward and out of place. Hopefully, the digital divide which seems to be a fallout of the rapid boom and proliferation of computer technology will fade away with time as the immigrants are trying their best to catch up with the changing times.
Mind telling us which side of the fence you fall? Post a comment and let us know whether you are a native or an immigrant!