Machines of Distraction.
Striking a balance with social media during a lockdown.
He uses two phones but uninstalled Twitter. He considers himself a ‘voracious’ consumer of podcasts but is careful about staying too long on the grid. Oh, and he recently co-founded an AI company — a software-as-services outfit.
Isura Silva is my kind of tech guy. He’s certainly no technophobe, nor is he a cheerleader of everything that Silicon Valley burps up. His insights into why technology could do our bidding, and not control our lives is refreshing. But I wanted to not just pick his brain on how he got to this place — into AI — but to understand his entrepreneurial mindset; why he is so optimistic when everything seems to be crumbling around him.
Sri Lanka is in the middle of a COVID spike, and was in an extended lockdown when we spoke. He’s been working from home for the past 18 months, but seldom complains even though his strengths are working face-to-face, in the trenches, at a grassroots level. Against this backdrop, is a discussion of striking a middle ground between the ‘distraction…
