When Binary Meets Bengali – Crossing the Cultural
Divide in Building
Global Technology
With technology making major strides into every conceivable office, neighborhood, home, and even right into our pockets , it has united the entire world more effectively than what the greatest of medieval conquerors would’ve hoped for. The binary digits have become the new age alphabets for creating a rich universal language, which can enable the Bedouins ‘sync’ with the Backstreet boys.
But the development of such technological wonderlands, require the interaction amongst its citizens, as almost every product now is produced with contributions from global partners. All the key ingredients for making a killer product must now utilize the best of global talents – capital from the west , management skills from north, labour from east
produce goods which are marketed to the south ! In such circumstances, interactions amongst the various members become a crucial success factor for the product. That’s where elements such as culture, race, language and religion
begin to influence in its own subtle ways, a more “human” face to the mindless machine.
My paper would focus on this specific area, and talk about some interesting real life cases from actual technology projects/
products where people had to tackle the cultural divide in their attempt to mass produce a “Universal
product” . More amusing would be the case, where such “one size fit all” products begin to be interpreted in different ways by different folks. With my own personal experiences from developing software applications as a member of globally-distributed culturally-diverse teams, I would also be presenting some “gotchas” and “bloopers” to avoid, for the generation-X technology managers.