With technology going mainstream, the stories that are perhaps the most interesting are the ones that touch our everyday lives. There are thousands of such stories that have been reported around us. We have read the story of a man finding his mother and his childhood village using Google Earth. Or, stories of adopted girls who found their birth mothers online. Or, how a murderer got caught thanks to his digital footprint (selfie, in this instance).
At FactorDaily, we were choosy when it came to picking stories where technology was central in a real life incident. We gravitated more towards stories that were leaving broadbrush strokes on life around us. Here are a few that made us smile in smug satisfaction:
1. Imagine a 13-year-old girl in your neighbourhood (or, for the sake of shivers, in your home) disappearing without reason one morning. This is the story of Puujita, who went to school in northwest Bengaluru one morning and didn’t return.
2. Do you know how deep screen and internet addiction is rooted in India? Nearly 50 million Indians are estimated to be addicted to screens, the internet, gaming etc — that’s a lot more than the number of drug addicts or cardiac patients in the country.
The deadly addiction in your home that you are aware of — and comfortable with
3. How do you keep an idea alive when its main proponents have been killed in rapid succession? The Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samithi has been silently continuing the work of slain rationalists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, and M M Kalburgi.
4. Guess what videos connect with pre-teen, teenage girls in India? Clean, good fun. This story profiled three “vloggers” who are stars on YouTube.
Clean, good fun: Female Indian vloggers have found their identity in that cliché
5. In a country where customer service standards are known for the wrong reasons, Twitter is working with public services agencies and providers to evolve a quick response culture. It may not be a perfect fix but it’s working, as the experience of the Indian Railways, the police in some states, the ministry of external affairs, and others shows.
How Twitter is helping India reboot public services, publicly
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Lead visual: Nikhil Raj Disclosure: FactorDaily is owned by SourceCode Media, which counts Accel Partners, Blume Ventures and Vijay Shekhar Sharma among its investors. Accel Partners is an early investor in Flipkart. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder of Paytm. None of FactorDaily’s investors have any influence on its reporting about India’s technology and startup ecosystem.
