Aswath Weblog

We Are All Bulls

This entry uses the poem The Bull by Ralph Hodgson. I learnt this poem in my high school and has influenced my over time. The lessons apply to all of us most of the time. It applies to VoIP players as well, as I argue in here. By the way, my daughter helped me to locate the link. Even though both of us used the same tool, Google, she beat me while I was only struggling. Another instance of The Bull.

Some six years back, I was in a meeting with one of the central figures of SIP. He was talking about the upcoming revolution facilitated by intelligence at the end points and this marvel of a protocol called SIP. Since I was (still am) smarting from a decade old wounds inflicted during ISDN days, I wanted to caution him. He will have none of it. Indeed he derisively welcomed me to the capitalistic world. (Forget that I probably have lived in that world longer than his conscious life time.) So I remembered The Bull:

With his mother gaunt and lean
In the valley warm and green,
Full of baby wonderment,
Blinking out of silly eyes
At a hundred mysteries

Of course in due time H.323 and MGCP were eclipsed and SIP reigned. Just as in The Bull.

... he came to sultan power,
And they owned him master-horn,
Chiefest bull of all among
Bulls and cows a thousand strong.

And in all the tramping herd
Not a bull that barred his way,
Not a cow that said him nay,
Not a bull or cow that erred
In the furnace of his look
Dared a second, worse rebuke

But in what looks like a very short time, SIP has been declared to be dead. So we are left but only

Pity him, this dupe of dream,
Leader of the herd again
Only in his daft old brain,
Once again the bull supreme
And bull enough to bear the part
Only in his tameless heart.

And it is being replaced by another young bull, the “iPod of VoIP”, Skype.

And so it goes…

Posted by aswath at April 22, 2005 11:39 AM