Dheeraj Kalgutkar

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash We have long-established that Facebook, that big mammoth of an organization today knows more about us than we do ourselves. The feat has lost its vanity, it isn't cool anymore. It is not a fact that you clap to when a magician or card-reader reveals something about you that you yourself might have overlooked. You submit voluntarily to them, not so much to Facebook. Facebook today stores far greater information about you than the tidbits you provide to it yourself. And it uses that enormous information to decide what you like, what you might be interested in, what kind of deaths will disturb you more, what news you might be interested to read, what videos pick your interest, which political party you might vote to, are you a fence-sitter, essentially it knows you. You might be confused about what you wish to eat for dinner tonight but I bet Facebook if given a chance will tell you exactly what will interest you at the dinner table. Th...

As if gate-keeping was not bad enough, the big boys are planning to be our referees now Remember that ‘breaking news’ when we woke up to Edward Snowden claiming Osama Bin Laden Is “Alive And Well In The Bahamas”? Well, that was fake news. So is Donald Trump, President of The United States of America claiming “72% of refugees admitted into U.S. (2/3 -2/11) during COURT BREAKDOWN are from 7 countries: SYRIA, IRAQ, SOMALIA, IRAN, SUDAN, LIBYA & YEMEN.” Then there’s news about Russia sending Snowden to US as “gift” to Trump which Moscow has recently denied . These examples are but recent and sort of tip-of-the-iceberg of what is now a behemoth empire of fake and clickbait ‘news’ business. It’s everywhere. From Facebook which can be called the mine of it all to Google to any other service you use. This is not just confined to news about Snowden or Trump’s lies but there are massacres ‘happening’ where there are none to people getting elected for NASA when there’s ...

The world on Monday woke up to what could easily be called the news of our time. It was not another terror attack that shooks a certain part of the world cutting across borders or that news of economic meltdown which makes elite bite their nails, it was a leak bigger than that of Wikileaks that took world by storm. The sheer numbers are massive, more massive is their reach and the people they belong too. The leak unlike Wikileaks doesn’t revolve around United States anymore, it is engulfing the whole of world. It in a way unites the high and mighty in their dirty games. It strips the mask from the elite who boast repeatedly of integrity and other high terms. Panama Papers are but huge leak of confidential documents which reveal how the reach and powerful use tax havens to hide their taxes. At the heart of all this storm is a Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca with its 11.5 million confidential documents comprising detailed information about 214,000 offshore c...

It's small but not ignorable! “If Google doesn't find it, probably it don't exist at all!”, “May be you should google it” - We all have heard this at one time or another from people we know to the people we don't. One may call the former line as height of Google worship but nor can I nor could you deny the effect this one phenomenal search engine is having on our lives. From that new shopping place to that up-to-this-time unknown person you met in office to sweet purring cats to porns, it offers all that you could think of in an instant, literally. Now a days, it even feeds you with its search queries over your voice commands, yes just the command! Times have taken such a leap now that we check if our Internet connection is at place or not by entering Google.com in address bar. Don't we? Only the other day, I called my office technician over slow Internet connectivity and what do I tell him? “Check what is it with my machine, even Google is ...