Thang Nguyen 555

Abraham had faith, Ok, go ahead and kill your son.

Noah! Build the boat. Columbus? Sail it.

Boat People – Get on the boat: 50-50 chance.

Southern blacks had faith. OK, followed the Underground Railroad, went North. When Detroit bankrupted, Obama had to bail them out, since “what’s good for GM is good for the country” (it doesn’t hurt for a half-black President to honor his ancestry by making it – NorthEast – work. You could call this the Above-Ground Railroad).

We made boats and banks, machine and its moving parts. In turn, we, mankind, have to bail them out. So much for faith in the machine.

IBM machine failed me at my most critical juncture (not when Hitler was in need to make his killing machine work) the SAT exam , without passing it, I would be going to the front to fuel the “Vietnamization” process of the Vietnam War. It just jammed, and the examiners (today’s equivalent of Walmart cashier at self-check-out – intervene only when needed) had to grade those batches by hand.

We love machine, driving and flying machine. The machine, in turn, defines us: “he drives a BMW”, “she a Lexus”….

Used to be a Rolex, then a Rolodex, and finally a Robot (iRobot on the floor, humming like a puppy to keep ole lady of the house company).

If machine makes one happy, you would find my house full of it: washer/dryer, fridge that open sideways, outward like DeLorean’s car, out and up – as if they got wings (machine reverse evolution back to man, then bird), toaster and juicer, grinder and cutter etc..

Detroit used to rule. Now, it’s some cities in China and adjacent countries (The Age of AI – PBS Frontline 11/5/19). The whole Earth becomes a sweatshop, to produce and procure. Those who consumed, trash them. Those who need to scrape waste for a living, recycle.

Mad Max to the Max.

Henry Miller once wrote about Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night, about Molly, the whore in Detroit, and how Celine “makes the body of a whore triumph over the soul of the machine”. Today’s “Detroit” has moved on, to Dubai, to Singapore and “Mollys” have followed the trail of money elsewhere, but Detroit.

My sister woke up one morning in April 1975 and realized the painful truth: the big mighty US of A had finally abandoned its allies, as it often had off and on in the past in Asia (pivoting and Nixon’s Guam doctrine).

With 4 kids and a bag full of worthless currency (now she knows how Venezuelans feel – with a plane load of Russian currency), she held on to her youngest like our famous Hon Vong Phu, at the street corner, during curfew, waiting for the return of her husband – he was trying to find a way out of a hopeless situation by calling on his former boss, Bui Diem, at State.

The feeling of being helpless, abandoned and betrayed is one of the worst. I had faith in…. faith in this, faith in that. It worked before..why not now.

It gave me prosperity …(In God We Trust), food the fridge and fun in the family. Now this???

The world has yet seen and understood the new Pivot when the machine lets you down, or the battery. runs out and when the software is outdated.

Lucky for us. We built them, tested them and knew the statistical probability of failure, of betrayal.

Unlike man, machine is rather predictable. It needs updating, just like we.

Unlike us, it could go on upgrading e.g. Tesla Model Y, priced 29,999.

For us, we have managed to “up” our Average Life Expectancy past 70.

But the learning curve, and our fits-and-starts curiosity could not trail that of the machine (machine learning).

We live in a zero-sum society, with blame and blasphemy. Machine on the other hand continues its non-zero sum trajectory, words2vector and babelizing itself to all languages of the world.

I can’t wait to travel remotely, conserving my battery and that of the machine, to speak to a native, to understand and be understood.

And the world…will be One. Imagine all the people….go, build the boat – technology – and get them all onboard, in anticipation of the Great Data Deluge. Have faith always, in the right thing, at the right time, with the right people. Not holding a baby and turning into stone (Hon Vong Phu), but taking action. On a brighter note, my sister finally made it to America, with her 4 kids intact.

She returns occasionally for a visit at age 82, even as a widow. As of this writing, she hasn’t turned into stone, despite once had faith in the US and its almighty army, its “pivoting” policies and its prone to cut (loss) and run at first sign of defeat (picture a financial guy, carrying his box escorted out of one Wall Street building in 2009). Have faith!