Confused of Calcutta

BLOGSPOT/www.confusedofcalcutta.com:JP Rangaswami is a former economist and financial journalist who was born and spent half his life in the Indian city of Calcutta.

Currently he's based in London as the chief information officer for BT Global Services - not bad for a man who describes himself as "an accidental technologist for a quarter of a century or so".

Confused of Calcutta is his personal blog rather than a BT-endorsed publication. For those who are interested in such things, Rangaswami has links on the site to the article he wrote for the fifth anniversary of London investment house Ariadne Capital, which he says provided "the kernel for this blog".

It's an essay entitled Building Society for the 21st Century in which he outlines his views on how the internet is empowering individual consumers and breaking down institutional power. No surprise then that elsewhere on his blog, he admits to being "a retarded hippie at heart".

Rangaswami's blog is ostensibly about information but rather than the usual concerns of chief information officers, he likes to apply personal experience and tease out where current trends could be leading. So that means a post about unlimited choices inspired by how his friends replied to the question "what's your favourite song?" or one where a Wikipedia article on songs about London gets him musing about the concept of crowd-sourcing.

Although a prodigious blogger who manages at least one post a day Rangaswami prefers longer posts where he makes connections and draws out consequences that other commentators may have overlooked. He's also been posting a series on "Facebook and the enterprise", which finds a middle ground between the fans and the knockers.

Rangaswami occasionally references his experience of coming to England as an outsider and the perspective it gave him on things that others considered mundane.

Preserving that outsider's view has ensured the relevance of his blog.