|It's almost official now. The world has been cocacolised.

John Dvorak , writing on technology in the USA, commented that " It's almost as if the collective brain of the American public has been put into neutral ." That is just the tip of the iceberg.

Hype-mania is an international pandemic. Just look at the headlines. Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time. Crippled-spec Netbooks are outselling laptops. AR Rehman has a couple of Grammy Awards to match his double Oscars.

What are we to make of headlines exclaiming that Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further?

Avatar was a huge disappointment. The cutting-edge special effects experience quickly wore off, leaving the feeling of watching an interminable Discovery Channel documentary. The plot was ridden with every moth-eaten cliche in the book.

A far better movie experience, IMHO, was the reboot of the Star Trek film series. In the seventies the Star Trek TV series was broadcast by PTV and Jammu was near enough the LOC to receive a faint signal. An ingenious combination of an antenna with a bicycle rim enabled grainy though quite watchable B&W reception and we became avid Trekkies. I will be surprised if Avatar achieves that kind of longevity.

Is this our future?

Netbooks are low- powered devices with ridiculously small squint-inducing screens, cramped keyboards and missing CD/DVD drives. Tablet laptops that beat the pants off netbooks are available for similar amounts of money but everyone and their uncle are buying netbooks.

Lower standards and expectations are not only acceptable but fashionable too.

The enormously talented A R Rahman is accepting multiple Oscar and Grammy awards for the music of Jai Ho . I am sure that it takes quite an effort on his part to keep a straight face. Jai Ho is not his best work – not by a long shot.

The starkest example is that of Facebook. The social networking site has taken over the world with millions of users all over the globe. Here is the result:

Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login

Just go through the comments. Hundreds of people were trying to login to Facebook from a totally unrelated site called ReadWriteWeb and getting frustrated at their inability to do so despite the following message printed in bold letters:

Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services.

One commenter joked about removing these people from the gene pool. What about Twitter – and the millions of people who are tweeting inanities this very moment? Don’t even get me started on the selfie mania.

To their credit, till the sun set on their missionary/capitalist empire, the British insisted on excellence. The strategy of the modern neo-colonist unipower is quite the reverse – the imposition of dumbocracy in every nation on earth. The world could not be converted but it sure as hell has been cocacolized.

Update: The rules of Scrabble have been changed to allow the use of proper nouns like people's names, places, and company names or brands! Be sure to read the comments.

Final word : Dumbocracy has been enshrined as Trumpocracy. Do I need to say anything further? COVFEFE ZINDABAD!