Atiya Fyzee, Shibli, and Iqbal: English as a Social Butterfly

Taking an ‘analogical’ approach to the issue, this study reads the saga of Atiya Fyzee’s relationship with Shibli Nomani and Allama Iqbal as a plausible allegory of the transforming cultural relationship of the Muslims of the subcontinent with English (in what this term comes to mean as a language, as a discipline of studies, and as a synecdoche of Western culture). The history of this cultural interaction since the British colonization I have divided into three broad phases: the initial, the middle, and the present. The initial phase I earlier dealt with by exploiting Sheikh Muhammad Ikram’s analogy, later employed by Nasir Abbas Nayyar, that Shibli’s attitude towards English was the same as his attitude towards his step-mother at home. English, in other words, was a stepmother for Shibli, and for the generations represented through his figure in this early phase of cultural interaction of the Muslims of the subcontinent with the language. The present paper focuses on how one can analogically read in the personal histories of the representative figures of this culture the stories of how in the subcontinent the larger cultural reception of English gradually changed from being treated as a ‘step-mother’(and hence forging with her a relationship of cultural exchange) to being treated as a ‘social butterfly’ or a ‘social sweetheart’, as a symbol of liberal humanist high culture, and how such terms of cultural engagement with English were unacceptable to both Shibli and Iqbal. The paper closes on how even this image of English as high culture gradually dissolved with the cultural disintegration wrought by an ever-increasing and relentless consumerist culture in the postcolonial times.

Usability and profitability: an interconnected theory

With the advent of technology and its integration into the users lives as an integral part of it, the questions have shifted from `acceptance or rejection' to how `useful or not technology might be. From its first appearance more than a century back (Villar 2013) we can clearly deduce that many methods used in the field of usability have their roots back in the earlier fields of ergonomics, human factors, architecture and even psychology. Some of these fields have roots thatgo back to the beginning of life when the ancients adopted methods that would make their lives easier overtime. Unintentionally usability has become that one field which adopts concept from an extremely varied group of disciplines. (Flowers 2014, Percy 2008, Villar 2013) The main aim of this research is to provide an up-to-date, well-researched resource of past and current references to highlight the literature that shows how usability has altered designs, lifestyles and in the end businesses. This survey paper presents a comprehensive concept-centric review of usability from when its concept was initiated and where it might be going in the future. According to the research over 70 publications have been selected and classified into various categories such as (i) understanding user, (ii) aesthetics, (iii) design and (iv) context and how all these four elements help define usability in terms of profitability. Despite the research and efforts in this particular field there are still many areas of potential research and application that haven't been explored and provide a vast scope for study. (Ardito et al. 2009, Kim, Lin, and Sung 2013)