Hollywood Vs ITwood

Asoke K. Laha
President & MD, Interra IT

There are three or four categories of people who are hogging media glare. They are politicians, celebrities of entertainment industry, civil rights activists and a latest entry into this genre is IT entrepreneurs and top notch professionals. I belong to the last category and feel proud that we are in the reckoning-at least peers amongst us.

Who get maximum visibility these days?  I would say people connected with IT. I have my reasoning in place. Look at Bill Gates and his media exposure.  The 57 year old Seattle born boyish looking Bill Gates must have got more eye balls, across the world than the most media-savvy US President. He is a household name in most of the countries. Any erudite discussion becomes incomplete without a mention about the most titillating IT entrepreneur the world has even seen till date.  He has an asset base over US$ 61 billion as of today and is believed to have a most fertile brain power. He has been in the limelight since 1974, the year he had started his IT venture along with his lesser known buddy Paul Allen.

Late Steve Jobs was his contemporary and competitor. Steve proved that he is immortal. Even after his death, newspaper columns are replete with valuable contributions he has made to the IT world. The Apple Inc. ; founder chairman and CEO shares the birth year with Bill Gates and was a legend in his own right in spearheading the world  IT revolution. Like a meteorite, the innovator and thinker par excellence had as short terrestrial existence. But his inventions like ipod, iphone etc., will make him immortal.  His biography is being sold all over the world as hot cake. There are reasons for that. His life is dotted with highs and lows. Born to an academic couple, he was given for adoption. He got to know the whereabouts of his biological parents only at the age of 27. He wandered across India for his spiritual enlightenment and his biography is replete with stories of experimentation with spiritualism and drugs.   A film on him will be released by the year end. What is important is that part of the film was shot in India.

Sabeer Bhatia an Indian born IT prodigy and co-founder of Hotmail are relatively young. Born 1963 in India, he got himself transplanted to US for his university studies. MIT had chosen him as one among the top 100 innovators. But there are lesser known personalities, who have made big but are relatively unknown. One among them is VA Shiva Ayyadurai, who was born in 1963 in India and later became an American scientist. He is the innovator of electronic mail now known as email. Though his contributions are mired in some controversies, for right or wrong reasons, no one can underestimate his giveaway to the IT world. Undeniably, e-mail brought about a generational difference in the way people communicate 

Back home, we have an impressive array of movers and shakers in the IT field, such as Naryanamurthy, Azim Premji, Nandan Nilekini and the like. I always feel these illustrious and eminent people are mostly IT entrepreneurs, who have tapped the potentials of IT and created excellent business models that can generate employment and income to the people and proved to the people that IT is distance neutral and brain driven. I look forward to the next generation IT entrepreneurs from India, who would intensely innovate and commercialize their products and solutions. I am sure it will not remain as a wish list. It is going to happen in the next few years. India is gradually moving towards an eco-system that can create, nurture and blossom high octane IT entrepreneurs.

We started off trying to compare Hollywood stars with IT honchos and threw a poser as to who are more visible. I bet with IT honchos and I shall narrate my reasoning. First of all, Hollywood is replete with stories immortal actors and actresses, legendry directors and script writers. Elisabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Merlyn Munroe, Clint Eastwood etc had ruled the roost during their time. A film buff in India will swear by their local heroes like Amitabh Bachan or Rekha rather than eulogizing starlets of the western hemisphere. Or for that matter, how many of us are aware of best actors and actresses in Germany, China, Japan or closer home cine artists in Pakistan, China, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.   But Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are talked about, respected and even adored across the world despite language barriers, caste, creed or religion.

Art and culture are generally region or local specific. For instance, great works of Shakespeare or paintings of Leonardo De Vince, Pablo Picasso and the like will be remembered by any civilized world.  Their name and fame would last for ever. But IT honchos are different. Their brain power leaves its mark on every aspect of life. Solutions that they arrive at, complex issues they crack, algorithms they craft, models they create etc.,   have ramifications to every discipline. They are relevant to medicine, healthcare, education, art and culture, governance, banking, stock market and what have you.    

IT honchos remain in our thought as green as ever. This article is written on Microsoft word, collated some of the background information from the internet, transmitted to the magazine through the net and possibly printed using digital technology. That is the massive reach of the IT. It can trigger vast span of human activities ranging from birth to death.

Friends, I might ask which is important Hollywood or ITwood? Those who stand up and say both should realize that they have cast their votes for IT since that branch of science was not in the reckoning till a few years ago.