Dr. Amar Bose @ Techfest

This year's Techfest at IITB featured a lecture series that included (among other luminaries) a lecture by Dr. Amar Bose. The lecture was held on Saturday 21st January at 08:00 a.m. Indian time.

Since I was keen to attend this lecture, I had to rush to attend the lecture. Nevertheless, I reached 10 minutes ahead of 08:00 a.m. and took my seat. It was only then that I realized that the lecture was not a "live" one, but a kind of "video conference" with Bose being seated in the U.S.A.

The lecture began on schedule and except for a discontinuation ("line drop") after half-an-hour into the lecture, it proceeded quite smoothly and went on for about 1hr and 45 minutes.

Dr. Bose began with a question to the co-ordinator (on the IITB side) as to what he must talk about. Finally, after asking about the composition of the audience, he said he would speak first about education (since the audience mostly comprised off under grad and post grad students).

Some key points from the lecture:

• Dr. Bose was primarily a professor and mathematics seemed to be his core, but he got interested into acoustics because of a shoddy music system that he had obtained.

• He stressed that quality education was very important. Also important is the way in which education is being imparted.

• He pointed out that some of his research took place over a span of 25 years. In response to a question as to whether such long-term research made sense in today's past-paced world, he said that such research woud not be possible in a public company (because of the pressure of the stake holders). This was one reason for making Bose Corporation a private company.

• One of the reasons why he formed a separate company instead of continuing research at MIT, where he claimed to have a lot of freedom, was because of the lack of time and lack of long term people. Most people (students) in a university stay for a period of 2 to 4 years and hence, continuity of these people in the research project could not be guaranteed.

• He emphasized that Bose Corp does research only in areas that would result in a technology that common people (laymen) could understand being superior without getting into the technical details. As per his example, the new shock absorber technology from Bose Corp would make even one's mom feel that the car ride in such a car is much superior.

• Parents shape their children's character and influence them more than they think.

• According to Dr. Bose, one should work in a company where one feels like going to every day and not for the money. (Never choose a company by the money they offer!).

• He disappointed a few people in the audience when he stated that he was a core techie with no business skills or interest. He even went on to say that the salaries of everyone (including himself) at Bose Corp. are decided by a third-party (outside agency) purely based on that person's achievements in the past year.

• In response to a question on his biggest blunder, he said that he would rate the design and manufacture of a few pieces of a "spherical" loudspeaker that would occupy the corners of a room. The design of the technology was as per the acoustic theory, but when it came to selling these pieces, they realized that very few American homes had corners free of furniture. That meant that the speakers would have to be kept elsewhere and that was not what the speakers were designed for.

• Dr. Bose came close to talking about spirituality when he recalled an incident where he talked to a swami from the Ramakrishna mission. It seemed that he and his family had known the swami for some time and when Dr. Bose visited India, he made it a point to visit the swami. It was then that he asked the swami about the difference in the spiritual and academic sessions. According to Dr. Bose, academics and scientific research relied heavily on proofs, whereas the swami could not offer any proofs of the spiritual theories.
  
  The swami asked him to recall any of his "discoveries" and patented technologies and asked him whether those came about by methodological proofs or was it just a flash in the mind. Indeed, Dr. Bose admitted that all of his patents came about without proofs. It was only later that he worked backward to prove the theory.
  
  His key point was that irrational thoughts are usually at the forefront in leading to newer discoveries and ideas.