Reflections on Modern Society - Volume IV

Description

For twenty years, Vijay Srinivasan has published essays nearly every weekend — from Singapore, briefly from Mumbai, and back again — writing on subjects as different as geopolitics, mortality, corporate life, and where the best coffee in the world actually comes from.

Most of that writing has found its way into the earlier volumes of this series, organised by theme: ageing and work, the shifting world order, faith and belief. This fourth volume asks a different question of the same twenty years and more than 2,350 essays — not what they were about, but what was genuinely new in the writing itself: a fresh angle rarely taken elsewhere, an idea turned into an original device, a private experience made universal.

Seventy-one essays met that bar — from a 2007 satire built on formal queueing theory, to a 2008 essay coining the word "discomgoogolation" for internet-withdrawal anxiety years before FOMO entered common use, to a 2026 experiment testing his own archive against four different AI models to see what, if anything, still read as original.

There are no chapters here, and no themes to sort by — only a single ordering principle. The most inventive essays open the book; the most familiar close it. What remains, in between, is twenty years of a mind occasionally getting somewhere no one else had.

About the Author

Vijay Srinivasan is a startup founder, business executive, writer,
and lifelong observer of human behaviour, society, technology, and public affairs.
Over the course of a long corporate career spanning multiple countries, industries,
and leadership roles, he developed a deep interest in the forces that shape
individuals, organisations, societies, and civilizations. Alongside his professional
work, he cultivated a passion for writing as a means of exploring ideas,
questioning assumptions, and making sense of a rapidly changing world.
Since 2005, he has maintained a personal blog, publishing essays almost every
weekend on a wide range of subjects including philosophy, public policy,
technology, travel, management, religion, and human development. What began
as a personal pastime gradually evolved into a substantial body of work
comprising more than 2,300 essays and reflections as on date.
This book represents a carefully curated selection from that larger collection.
While the subjects are diverse, they are connected by a common thread: a
curiosity about the human condition and a desire to understand how people,
societies, ideas, and technology interact to shape the future of civilization.
Vijay continues to write regularly on his blog, viewing writing not merely as a
form of expression, but as a process of learning, reflection, and discovery.

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