Light Within

This article appeared in monthly Techno Biz

The future lies in mud architecture. Though this sweeping statement may sound prehistoric, but it is very relevant to modern times. Building living spaces with mud is a tradition dating as back as the start of civilization. Some excellent examples from the Great Mosque - the world’s largest mud building and UNESCO’s World Heritage site – to the oldest surviving mud specimens found in the Harappa, Pakistan, show the continuous use of mud buildings.

Having grown up in mud house myself (before I moved to urban center), mud buildings have a special place rooted deep in to my cultural consciousness and this personal bond encourages a more intimate relationship between me and the mud as the material transformed from formlessness to form. Hence my interest in mud architecture and how I see its future in Pakistan.

Homepage is a new genre brought into existence by the Internet. Everyone who uses a connected computer has a homepage. Some users keep having the same homepage that came when they bought a computer? Some others pick new ones: blank or showing their main interest on the Internet.

Homepage, also called as a default page, "is the main page or the first page of a Website that a browser opens with, or where the browser will return if the Home button on the Navigation toolbar is pressed." A good homepage should attract, and hold the attention of the visitors and direct them to content within the rest of the site. Webmasters and designers obviously go a long way in their endeavors that users make their sites' Homepages their own, apart from tweaking them for the search engines. Most Websites have options like this: 'Make us your home page, click here to make us your home page, click to make this as a default page. But that is not enough particularly with savvy and choosy users.

The Internet is a shorter route to many things: learning, obtaining information, conducting business, making decisions, socializing, or spending leisure time. Researchers are trying to find the Internet's impacts on life and offline. The celebration of Internet Free Day or 20-year net veteran Steve Cisler's expedition to put himself "in other people's shoes who are not online" are some cases in point.

The Internet is not only changing our outlook on life and work but is also going to change the male-female ratio in the workforce, giving the female population more choices. But what do female work choices have to do with geeking? Plenty!

First, let us see the origin of the term geek and establish why geek girls are not geek boys. Tom Ziegler researched the origin and changing usage of the term geek and quoted this in the geek.com feature, "It appears that "geek" outstrips "nerd" by almost 400 years! Seems Mr. Alexander Barclay back in England wrote the following in 1570: He is a fool, a sotte, and a geek also which choseth ... the worst [way] and most of ieoperdie [jeopardy]. Why, old Willy used it in Twelfth Night, Scene I, as Malvolio says to Olivia: Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd, kept in a dark house, visited by the Priest, And made the most notorious gecke and gull That e're invention play'd on?

The word geek is derived from geck or gek or geke. In its original meaning, "geek referred to a foolish, inept, or clumsy, single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept or a carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken." As per MS Word 2000 UK Dictionary geek is a synonym of nerd, weed and bore. Eric Raymond describes "computer geek" as "one who eats (computer) bugs for a living." But that was in the past.