I am suddenly reminded by linked in that today naavi.org completed 17 years of existence. I was woken up to this reality by the congratulatory messages sent by some of my friends. 17 years has been a long time and changes have occurred in all aspects of life. Normally we say that the Internet world moves 4 times faster than the physical world and hence these 17 years are equivalent to nearly 68 years of development in the physical space.
It is interesting to place on record here some of my immediate thoughts on this long journey….
When I entered the Internet space, it was through my journalistic credentials. At that time I was writing a regular column in Indian Express as a finance specialists advising investors on “Investment for the week”. Besides this, I was a reasonably prolific writer in news papers with regular contributions of research on investment trends, public issue trends etc. By that time I had already been involved in the designing of websites for Corporation Bank, Sundaram Finance and several other clients of RKSWAMY/BBDO advertising. I was therefore tempted to host a website just to host my personal information. Naavi.com and Naavi.org were registered in this context. Over a period of time Naavi.com was lost to a cyber squatter due to a mistake of delay in renewal and Naavi.org continued.
What was initially a personal site of the undersigned then was turned into a Cyber law site with the draft of E Commerce Act 1998 being put up for public information and feedback. Since then with the pumping in of information and views on various developments, Naavi.org developed into a portal. There was an attempt to convert it into a bigger portal with sections on information security etc but finally, it was only practical to retain it as a personal blog.
After lot of persuasion from friends, the word press version was launched from 12.12.12 and the older model of the site was relegated to the background with a link from the home page.
Many of my friends may not be aware that the postings on the site include some serious work on Cricket ratings for World cup which is even more relevant during the IPL. It also had links to other personal interests such as elections in India though the central theme has been “Cyber Laws”. Moving with the times, there have been several Netizen issues that have been taken up with missionary zeal often resulting in brushing the authorities on the wrong side.
During these days, there have been many successes and perhaps as many failures and disappointments and frustrations. Often these have been put forth on the website such as when the Cyber Appellate Tribunal becoming defunct, the Bangalore Adjudicator shutting off further activity of adjudication etc. But after a brief period of disillusionment with the authorities, we have moved on with renewed hopes that one day things will be better.
In the meantime Modi came and created a new hope. Though this hope is also on the wane, the eternal optimist in me says that “some thing positive is around the corner”.
The good wishes of all my friends has renewed this eternal hope as I continue to search for something more encouraging than the present…..just around the next corner…Thank you…
Naavi
