 I'd like to narrate a little story with respect to a particular kind of a new map that the new media seems to be creating. I mean, it's not a Google map, but it's a map nevertheless, a map of the mind. It's a map of self-hood. So the story is linked to a class I was taking in a very popular educational institution in Chennai, where I teach a course in arts and culture journalism. And for some reason in my first class, we began discussing theater in India and various theater personalities. And I kind of stumbled upon the name Kanailal, Heisenam Kanailal, one of India's leading theater personalities from Manipur. And taking a sort of an audit in the class, nobody seemed to have heard of Kanailal. So I extended that entire class into a lecture on Kanailal and his plays and what he does and the context in Manipur and the fact that he had been thrown out of National School of Drama within two months because of the conflict with Hindi language. And now he went on how there was a greatest contribution in SDD to Indian theater by throwing him out because he returned to infall to create some of the finest plays in India. And so it was a nice packed lecture and I patted myself on the back. Next day when I came for my second lecture, I was on some other trip, probably speaking on music or whatever. But within a few minutes, I saw three students in the front row looking into the laptop and edging each other, elbowing each other, laughing and giggling. So after two, three minutes, I said wait a minute, this is a joke here and I'd like to hear the joke. So they said no, no, no, nothing sir, nothing sir. So I said no, tell me something, something you're sharing, I'd like to hear this. And no, no, no, no, no. So eventually I persuaded them. So one girl stood up and said, you know, yesterday you were telling us about one Kanailal. So I said, yeah, one Kanailal, so what about it? So you were joking with us, no? So I said, yeah, I know I'm known to joke with the students but what makes you think so? So another guy got up and said, say you're pulling your leg. I said, I do that also in my class, but how did you get that idea? So he went on Google, he's not on Google. And I think that frames the problematic of this entire universe that we call the virtual universe of internet and all the other sites and all that. That you exist in it in a peculiar way, you exist in it sometimes on the edge, sometimes in the middle, but if you don't find space in it for some reason. And in this case, I think it was just a spelling mistake. They must have been looking for Kanailal instead and didn't talk about Kanailal. So that must have been the issue. But the point is it kind of frames for me this question of what I would call an act of citizenship. And I think I missed some of those references in the earlier presentations. And of course, we are calling this session democracies and mobs. I would be much happier if this had been titled technologies and mobs. Because I think democracies and mobs, it's kind of a risky political proposition. Are we saying that democracy generates democracy? Are we suggesting that democracy can happen only through mob activity? What are we suggesting here? I think that it's a bit problematic. I would be happier with framing what I have to say within the idea of technology and mobs. And the role that technology seems to have played historically in constructing this idea of the mob. So it's a simple question. Am I a mob? Are all of you sitting here a mob? At any point, this room becomes a mob. When does a mob happen? How does the mob emerge? When does a crowd become a mob? And so on. There are so many areas in which one can take this questioning. And I think one has to begin to locate this idea of the construction of the notion of a mob in the very production of a certain kind of technological process that began with, let's say, the setting up of Cartesian perspectivism and the creation of the self and the other. And most clearly enunciated in the late 19th century, early 20th century practice of the act of photography where the person behind the camera was a subject, the person in front of the camera is an object. And the citizen, you are the specimen. You are a type. You are a genus. And the entire process of almost 50 years of colonial photography trained us in this. It trained us to see this distinction between the self and the other. In fact, all Asian and African segments of societies were constructed as the other. And in fact, validated the selfhood of the European who found a certain validation to the personality, to the very body, to the color of the skin in the fact that here was a fearful other on the other side of these specimens we could photograph and present and museumize and so on. So it kind of began to create this distinction between what I would like to call the community and the mob, a point from where I think all these discourses need to begin. So the early technology of photography is one of the first industrial technologies after the printing press, the next big thing that's happening is the photograph. And it's already creating for us a very clear trope between power on one side and powerlessness on the other. Now this is also shaped into contemporary photojournalistic practice and I constantly give exercises on this. For example, I mean there's something all of us can do, take the press photographs of the last 10 days, 10 months, 10 years and of general photographs are appearing in the newspapers of some event on the streets. It could be for people protesting, it could be for price rise, it could be for petroleum hike, it could be for a girl being raped somewhere, it could be against any sort of issue, a public protest and studying that photograph with respect to the position of the photographer. And you will find 95% of the time, probably even 99% of the time, the photographer is always standing behind the police and the perspective of the viewer is framed from that position, that position of power, that position of a certain kind of a discourse. And this constructs already for us the trope of the mob because inevitably you will find the caption which says, the caption is never given by the photographer, the caption is always given in the desk by editors and sub editors and so on, the caption would read the police controlling a mob. No matter how justified, how legitimate, how democratic the action on the street was, the caption would inevitably read in this manner. So the idea of the mob is therefore the construction, the construction of a particular segment of people who are wanting to sort of express their dissatisfaction with the exercise of power at any given time. Now, so this brings us then to a more recent contemporary period, the last roughly 25 years, you want to call it last 30 years, where many of these things have now changed dramatically due to the coming in of the digital technology, due to the new changes that have happened in practices of most of these forms and its reception, its circulation, its distribution, its consumption. Albert Camus had written in 1948 that the 17th century was the century of mathematics. The 18th century of physical sciences, the 19th century he said was a century of biology. The 20th century he said Camus is a century of fear and of course it's today come to rest kind of a precariously on the idea of mutually assured destruction. I mean that's where we are all at now. The sense of anxiety that for example Ravi had spoken about earlier. So that's a palpable thing, you live in an environment of anxiety. It's also brought along with it a construction of a particular kind of a political process which deals with the idea of a mass. So mass mobilization, mass protest, mass expression, etc. have become part and parcel of a certain kind of a contemporary political geography. And I think along with this you also have a economics of the mass and I think much of the proliferation of the new media is linked to this mass economics. And the mass economics is in a very, very interesting way predicated upon also a larger economy of fear and the economy of fear of the mob, fear of the other, fear of the terrorist and so on. We kind of push ourselves in every possible way towards a security state and that has become the economic and political framework within which this whole articulation seems to happen. Now what have been the role of technology in this? Technology has probably contributed to a tremendous acceleration, some kind of a turbo acceleration of capitalism. It has contributed to a much, much faster and wider circulation and fiercer circulation of capital and almost sucking out of all regional and local capitals into metropolitan capital and so on and so forth. The greatest contributor in the articulation of politics today is the idea of speed. It is speed that seems to determine economic and political practice and laterally therefore and obviously in a more consummate way cultural practice. So the speed of light of the ubiquitous media means the power of the media to move and thrall masses. And you see this in all mass forms of both cultural production and production in the entertainment sphere which creates a sense of mass mesmerism and this happens often without too much criticism and we may imagine this as a democratic choice. You may imagine this as a self-will but I think technology manages to bludgeon a particular kind of a cultural framework within which one just gets sucked into this mesmeric framework. Now and this breakneck speed then also begins to contribute to a frequent panic attack in the masses associated with the deep depression marked by the routine of, masked by the routines of everyday life and this panic attack we keep hearing about. The last couple of months have been particularly strongly the panic attack. We don't know what the legitimacy for that was. Was it a genuine panic? Was it a manufactured panic? Was it a panic that was generated through new technology? Was it a panic that was coming from across the borders? Is it a state strategy to control the media? We don't know. It's a very interesting nebulous sphere within which this panic is generating but it also shows us the operation of this fear syndrome, this economy of fear that generates and kind of escalates to the power of X, the possibility of converting what was probably a democratic space into a space of control. This is marked also by the earlier phase of what I would call the dominance of the cathode screen, the constant exposure of the cathode screen, the television, which seems to create a condition of retinal detachment, tantamount to a shut eye. The more you see, the more you don't seem to see. The more or the less you are being shown, in fact, despite the idea of more channels, more hours, television hours, more cables and so on, eventually, if again makes an audit of what is going on, it seems that you are seeing less and less of the world. The more eyeballs the visual media grab, the less we seem to see. Representative democracy is then threatened by the very broadcasting tools that were to shape the standardized democracy of public opinion as a prelude to landing us in the synchronized democracy of public emotion. This very interesting shift from public opinion to public emotion and the manipulation of that, the milking of that emotion seems to be the framework within which democratic practice, state-controlled democratic practice or what is known as state-permitted democratic practice takes us to. Now, it is some sort of an accelerated cathode reality, which revels in an endless frontal procession of repeat disasters, even as it earns its TRPs from showing close-ups of the aeropolitics of mass exterminations by remote-controlled devices. Now, there is almost like Amagad mass terrorism that is celebrated on television screens. TV has almost replaced combat sport and itself battles with the apathy of TV viewers who expect the unexpected alone to wait them out of their lethargy, out of the attention deficit that is replaced in earlier form of vigilant viewing. So, the TV era can be categorized as the age of the reclining man. This morning, both Kavita Sharma and later Lawrence spoke about, Kavita said you do not have to get up from your bed nowadays, you can just lull in bed and only watch your television. Lawrence talked about lying and watching alone and enjoying a particular kind of a cultural scenario. Now, for me, I think it is a demonstration of a kind of some kind of a universal bed-ridden invalidity. It is like a complete supplanting of what could be called cultural engagement into a tremendous new form of passivity. So, it seems to me that the main issue that is emerging in the syndrome of the mass media and particularly with the new electronic media is that people are preoccupied with how to make oneself visible. I think that seems to be the core of this and it is obviously a result of a democratic deficit. It is obviously very clear that the people's forms of government are not delivering people the space to see themselves, to observe themselves, to be participant and therefore this tremendous need to be visible in some space or the other. This need for self-representation is what seems to be driving new developments in media and technology. It might be a trifle, and here I would like to add this note of caution that it might be a trifle perverted to per say dub this as democratic. There is a danger in this. Is this democratic practice? I mean we heard a lot of numbers. You know so many million people watching this particular YouTube, so many people, million people say 120 people having connectivity in India, net connectivity and so on. I mean one can say that there are 400 million people in India with a boat. Does the number alone make a difference? Is the boat alone enough? It becomes a question that we need to ask. And finally, let's say the fearful aspect here is what happened, if you have to discuss this with an analogy, is what happened in Gujarat in 2002, where as you know that every small village today has, if not an internet parlor, it certainly has a radiographer or more than one who record the local weddings and events and moon dance ceremony and all that is recorded, because people love to have copies of this. And it's like I said, it's an attempt to become visible through this kind of imagistic retention. In Gujarat, we know for a fact that during at the height of the riots, many, many local videographers, either voluntarily or through arm twisting, were commanded to video record some of the worst probations of violence that were happening. And as the video camera came, the perpetrators posed in front of the camera in particular ways. Just like that infamous recording of the girl being molested in Gujarati outside the pub, you know the camera person is directing the crowd, turn her this way, turn her that way and so on and so forth. Anyway, this happened, literally hundreds of videos were recorded like this. The riots were over, investigations began, cases happened. Now it's 10 years down the line, luckily just yesterday, judgments have been pronounced on some people. But even after 10 years, even after culprits have been named and punished, the copies of these videos are still circulating in video libraries in Gujarat. And imagine the scenario where after I had this work, I go to my friendly neighborhood video librarian, I pick out that particular video on so and so day in 2002, that particular thing, take it home and God forbid sit and watch it with my family and my children and everybody. But this is the situation. There is an enabling factor here, there is a so-called democratic enabling here. But there is also a massively disabling issue here, a massively problematic issue for democratic practice. And I think one needs to be little cautious about jumping in a mindless way to discuss technology as if it were independent of power. I think all technology is embedded in a certain kind of practice of power and we need to, so I think acknowledge it and sort of work with it a little more cautiously. Another example I have is a quotation. We are everywhere you look, all the time and everywhere in the world. This is a sentence from an advertisement. We are everywhere you look, all the time and everywhere in the world. This advertisement line is for a particular company called Corbis. Those who are in the media will recognize the word immediately. Corbis is one of the world's biggest photo agencies, image agencies. It is no longer even a photo agency, image agency owned by Bill Gates. Since 1989 Bill Gates has owned it. When they began they had apparently 19,000, I am sorry 19 million images in the stock. Today they have 120 million images in the stock. Bill Gates's aim to start this was stated in to monopolize the photographic image. This was stated in the main aim of the corporation to monopolize the photographic image. So it is very interesting that on the one hand there is a supposed opening out of space but the moment the space seems to deliver back some goods you also have the sharks coming in and controlling that space. So it illustrates the large scale panic that has beset representation in the era of scopic expansion. So to me terrorism is primarily a war of images and the bio-digital picture has emerged as a technical frontier of image production and circulation. 2001 to 2004 was a period marked by unforgettable and traumatic pictures from the blasting of the Twin Towers to the torture in Abu Ghraib prison. A new virulent life was afforded to these pictures through the internet and other digital media. It became biomorphic as it cloned itself and circulated with incredible rapidity sometimes reversing their meanings and almost setting up a trauma industry. And to me this is also a word that one needs to pay some attention to the idea of cloning. I think all those things on the net have this amazing ability to clone and become, you know, keep mutating, keep mutating over which there is no control. It's a kind of a self-willed mutation that seems to happen. And the question there would be that does mass culture therefore promote democracy or does it promote majority journalism? Is the gap between the high culture and the popular culture has it turned fuzzy through new technology or has it got exaggerated? Has it got even more sharpened? So I think one needs to look at this issue in a slightly more broader framework and I'd like to conclude by another small story I want to narrate. It's an example of the same issue, this issue of the technology contributing to a kind of a mass hysteria. I don't think mass hysteria can be the basis for any kind of democratic mobilization. The story relates to my very first day in a newspaper office in Chennai where the Indian Express, where I was given a news report to edit which was a survey done in the general hospital in Madras, one of India's biggest hospitals. The blood bank of the hospital was finding an amazing fluctuation in donations to blood. And they were finding that on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday there was hardly any blood donations and suddenly Wednesday, Thursday, Friday it would go up, Friday it would peak and again drop to zero on Saturday, Sunday, etc. So they asked the Madras School of Social Work to set up a survey team and they did one month of survey and talked to the people in the queue and they came to this very interesting reading. People were standing in the queue on a few on Wednesday, little more on Thursday, a huge number, the graph just hit the ceiling on Friday to donate a point of blood and collect the Rs.5 compensation they got for it in order to see the new film release of MGR, MGR films. And it will be a story, I remember giving the title to this movies are in their blood but then it also tells you something that people who are not able to find money to feed themselves are actually donating blood to be able to see a movie and it also therefore, the viscerality of it, the sheer physical engagement with the movie culture therefore also led to the tremendous bonding the audience had with the fans, audience had with the hero, the superstar and the fact that very soon you would know from being a film star to a political superstar and you know have a completely unchecked reign for 11 long years. So, the point is this kind of hysteria is a part and parcel of a certain kind of a technology right from the beginning because technology is unidirectional and it is always controlled and it is always in the service of a particular kind of a super state and therefore, I would have some problems in seeing this phenomena entirely as democratic. I think it needs to be taken with some pinch if not a sack of salt. Thank you.