Me 3.0

If 2.0 were the American me, then 3.0 its machine-verified version. Don’t expect a director-cut i.e. riding into the Sunset e.g. leisure seeker or dutiful subscriber to AARP. Not me, who grew up in war-warped world.

In our agriculture society, country folks were herded in and out of their villages in “forced draft urbanization” process. Nothing but upheavals: monk burning, currency tossing and babies tossing among the ones on the upper deck of Operations Babylift. Finally, when things died down (peace at hand), folks once again were herded in reverse direction to clear the DMZ – with proven energy strong enough to breach the Embassy (4/75) or the Capitol (Jan 6).

When crisis struck, one’s knee-jerk reaction is to deny or assign blame.

“Let’s confront it” I said.

Like an eager airline agent, my academic advisor would tout suite enroll me in Speech (I see a window slot still opened). As it turned out, that class was a favorite football-players for after- practice napping.

Since I’d never see home again (or so I thought), this surgical and severe cut-off was only brave. It left me with no choice (to become sort of a Mid-West “white”) “where?” down in my heart…I’ve got a joy joy joy down in my heart to stay…”: wearing Shaft long-coat and occasional Rolling-Rock hangover like Long Duc Luong’s “What automobile!” in Sixteen Candles (actually I only tossed a handful of rice during the Rocky Horror Picture Show).

The 70’s last half saw a mix of fun and sadness (“Sorry” seems to be the hardest word).

Survival of the most fit-in e.g. speech, mannerism, dress – even a photo bomb by one of the summer camp kids under my charge. Camp Akiba in Mt Poconos housed rich rebellious teens who on Parent Day, received a trunk-full of candies. I risked deformity for conformity.

In a turn of event, 25 years out, like a tourist/intruder, I was able to return home, even to ride by the old alley – face shielded behind a moped “xe-om” driver. That was after Clinton’s Embargo lift: phone calls, phone cards, phone bills to Vietnam all skyrocketed high as massive outflux of Boat People, ODP and HO underwent cultural assimilation (their 1.0). The ones who did not make it out, currently migrate to urban centers and industrial parks, economic boom made possible by FDI from Singapore, India, China, S Korea and Taiwan.

On that trip, I found my grandfather’s home. Supposedly former “enemy country” (falling far from the proverbial tree, I was regarded an uprooted frenemy). Even my father and his younger martyred brother were once on the opposite end of our civil war.

A quarter century behind, war-torn landscape still felt eerie, Hanoi-Jane style. Left to crumble, grandpa’s mandarin compound needed a new coat of paint, badly. Au Parleur was still blasting at street corners, London Black-out style under Churchill. By visiting distant geography, I betrayed ideology. The West was moving forward at breakneck speed per Moore’s Law (chip doubling its speed every 18 months) and here, I was, sailing back somewhere in time as if a hundred years did not even matter (in the movies, they designate those footages in Black/White).

Hidden memories resurfaced e.g. cone hats and “bo doi” hats (non coi). Throughout my childhood, all I knew of the North were glimpses of censored postcards sent South.

The ties that bind. Love. Unconditional. Bloodline, grandson, one of us only remotely. Firewalls separated Military Regions and Cold War like East and West Germany.

Since 1954 only family photos were allowed back and forth. No wonder! I remember seeing someone’s kid’s photo, then for reciprocity, my own photo the other way, a trophy baby i.e. Northern root, Southern born, French educated with table d’honeur. Handwritings for humanity. See, we’ve born fruits here in the South!

Back then, just a rare postcard. Now, TikTok is inundated with posts by “woman on the verge of nervous breakdown” i.e. self-inflicted and socially diffused. Machine is better at behavior modification (“Driver alert” to Amber alert) than we. Over the Cold War firewall, we sent and received post cards sparingly. Over current firewalls, we sent and received posts per Metcalfe’s Law with exponential virality and everyday. Every man, woman and child is today a podcaster.

Outwardly, I could be passed for a local. Yet I ducked like the Deer Hunter when reentering the old neighborhood. Something wasn’t quite settled (emotional ledger not paid up.) My stay-behind half-sister took sibling rivalry to the next level: accusing me of neglect (she was born much later with all the amenities of Princess Bride). As if war and displacement were not enough a sentence. Hey, I did not leave under a better circumstance, let’s say, in the case of a Filippino nurse e.g. the good ones were the ones who left – leaving young children behind with relatives.

People think we’re machine to be squeezed and extracted, with ever efficient computing performance, tweaking and testing it (God knows they did that to animals to quicken farm to fork cycle). When all failed, we banged our heads against the wall. There go hard-earned relationships like kicking the soda machine. The fault, per Shakespeare, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. Nvidia got it right: we’re our worst enemy.

Promised leisure time (machine washes, dries and cleans etc..) has never quite arrived (at this edit, my A/C buzzes loud noise). Technologists live and work under the same stress and constraint as academics: publish or perish. In Texas, huge trucks just sit humming, burning fuel for cool air, like mobile A/C units.

Since the early 60’s then late 70’s, it’s always been future-forwarding, future shock and future dreams. We are busy upgrading our hard and software (the Code). From mainframe to mainstream of “personal” computers (I phones). Billboards once reminded us “Don’t drink and drive”. Today, it’s “don’t text and drive”. No longer do we say “Operator, yes, I will accept that ‘collect’ call”.

Progress flows one-way. A “Moore” future (of AI) and a less well-being (of mankind). Where do you put e.g. remote controlled and drone-dropped bombs, spamming and phishing. 20,000 dollars drones took down 2 million-dollars bombers, to quote Friedman on Washington Week.

More electronics devices less human contact. Everyone charges up digital devices, but neglect time-out for people. What happens to putting connectivity in the hands of the people? Where is the Whole Earth Catalog, or that counter-cultural soul of the spiritual machine? What happens to a walk without wi-fi? From Media Lab (Steward Brand) to social media (TikTok), from Defense Industrial complex to Communication Industrial complex. From limited choices of 6 o’ clock news over TV dinner to billions of amateur podcasters, our personal bandwidth cannot elastically keep pace. Our spectrum gets multiplexed to the point of being terrorized.

That’s what “technology wants”: fluidity. It’s Un-American – to not capitalize and monetize, from tech to ties (multi-level marketing), from legal front (public funding) to private sphere. It’s the Uberizing and motorizing of everything. If legalized, they will bring back professional mourners (wedding planners, funeral planners). Anything for a buck, even tears on cue.

I visited my grandma’s grave in Hai Duong. Her ashes (from the South) had been hand-carried then reburied to be reunited with my paternal grandpa. I felt a tug in my stomach. War and displacement. The end of history in Fukuyama term. Personally, it’s one of the highlights of my life, seeing grandma at rest, this time, permanently.

After all, she told me tales (Good news for modern man) to ease my toss-and-turn siestas, like a roommate she practically was – first of many, later campus-assigned: Penn State, Wheaton and Gordon, white folks from NH, black folk from Nigeria. Like technology, I was on a proverbial white-water rafting, from Northeast to Mid-West then out West and beyond. Technology and me and the dog named Boo.

Me 2.0, follows the money like an earlier version of the microchips i.e. faster, nimbler and generate less heat. To anglicize, Americanize, assimilate; it’s part and parcel of one’s colonial legacy e.g. British accent (Hong Kong) or French (Indochina) or in Vietnam with Nguyens and Trans (just to prove, in crisis, there are both danger and opportunities for self-reinvention and advancement). Chameleon we all are to survive (IBM sales clones). Kumbaya bayo…

Not unlike the spy who came in from the cold, with new currency, and passport. Mostly for machine to recognize or else: “Oh, you’re not in the computer”.

Bourne. Jason Bourne. Bond. James Bond. Could you imagine Bond chasing the bad guy, riding a pedicab and putting on a cone hat (practical, lightweight and face-shielding). Yet somehow, seeing cone hats in hawkish OC felt more like spotting the “enemy” on patrol. That’s how Hamburger Hill and Hollywood Hill pre-conditioned us. Search, destroy then burn to save. Deny the enemy his sanctuary.

That’s war aftermath. “Horror horror!” (BTW, both Heart of Darkness and the Deer Hunter, were adapted to the screen for a post- Vietnam audience). Slowly my 2.0 Americanized version, evolved from hawkish to centrist/dovish, Tom Dooley to Tom Hayden, as war propaganda “tranquilized” effects worn off. War disrupts, destroys and dehumanizes.

I do appreciate decades of containment, of pushing the conflict further up North of the MZ’s which bought me some time. When World Airways last flew out of DaNang, we saw the blood orgy all spent (65-75).

Me 2.0 shared the grief and pain of war aftermath (hot War and Woodstock behind). “How I wish there had been someone to whom I could say I was sorry” say I, one of the quiet American.

Meanwhile, loud Vietnamese victors, with 50-years’ worth of remittance behind, still live and die daily in 2-wheel traffic, never reaching the Promised Land (the lucky ones in the US also die in four-wheel traffic, never obtained the American Dream).

Instead, we found defoliate patch of land due to all the bombs from WWI and II combined, 400X Hiroshima – those expenditures could instead and easily translate into, per LBJ predicament, many Tennessee Valleys. Torn between two lovers. Between the rock and the hard place.

Grief’s final stage: acceptance: inter-continental inter-generational marriages, international joint ventures and travel, foreign students and Fullbright scholarships (I used to envy international students who could repatriate upon graduation). Everything declassified and re-normalized from Vina Capital to Vina Milk, 136 billion in export goods.

Me 3.0 emerged amidst accusations of “Cai do mat goc” uprooted traitor! who was craving a Taco in the middle of Vietnam (Viet-Kieu, Vietnamese American, acquired Mexican tastes or felt longing for a US holiday firework e.g. Black Friday after Thanksgiving or reinvented oneself on Halloween).

Me 3.0 = set me freer from gaslighted 1.0 (Phoenix program) and media saturated 2.0: “brought to you by” (The way we were) described by Schopenhauer:

“He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits sometime in the conjurer’s booth at the fair and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and then they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone. (On the Sufferings of the World).

For example: upscale Viet-American 2.0 then promoted to shift supervisor in the US to “train” Afghan 1.0-night shift workers how to adapt and work better with China-imported machine who will soon replace both.

Me 3.0 thrives on its self-battling and self-recrimination, self-loathing and self-adulation: cursing in native tongue at congesting traffic or feeling nostalgic when watching Alain Delon flick, with English subtitles not Vietnamese. A turn of a phrase, a lullaby and a face in the crowd “Ngay tro ve, anh buoc le…tiec rang ta doi mat da nhoa vi qua doi cho” (the way back, luckily there was the friendly and helpful buffalo to aid with vet field chores).

I once took my dad to breakfast. He was still working on his- missing teeth and all- long after I had finished mine. Yet, that’s what happened to a senior survivor of that dark Cold-War 75-85 decade. Forgive Thyself! my P.S. to the Lord’s prayer.

Meanwhile our post-Cold-War world produces more casualties. From covid’s 7 million dead to the death of Skype – and decline of traditional society e.g. Confucian to Church hierarchy, Conclave smokestack to Rust-Belt smokestack with vanishing dreams; feeling cheated having paid dear price only to arrive and find most jobs have migrated the other direction.

My mom used to be a teacher whose class ratio was 57-1. She graded papers late into the night. No tugging for me, trophy child or not. Hence, my sister stepped up to cover. Both female adults were way ahead of the curve, at least half a century compared to Afghan counterparts 1.0. Mom’s career spanned at least 1500 pupils who went on to raise good families, some second-generation students came by accompanied by their moms to show respect.

Today, my kid’s school in Austin fortunately is run by a more diverse staff. Back in wartime Vietnam, we were taught by mostly male teachers (draft-deferred) at an all-boys school. The war was raging hot. Hence, more female widows than female teachers.

Traditional society relies on women to shield and shelter children: “Don’t talk ills of the death.” “Wipe your noses”. “Not with a mouthful you hear”. (My cousin passed away without a scrap of news about her missing MIA ranger Colonel husband).

While in Me 1.0.” ignorance is bliss”. Happiness = a stroll in the park: unpretentious smiles, handholding in all-girls or even all-boys school (no, we weren’t gay). Wartime (in Back Fire pg. 22, Loren Baritz mentioned how US Marines detested the hand-holding effeminate scene).

If leaving everything in under 2 minutes again, I’d prefer keeping my phone and passport, credit cards and Medicare. Like a spy who came in from the cold, I’d need new identity. hair color and contact lens, wearing a double-sided coat like Bourne and Bond to evade surveillance.

Why not hide in Schopenhauer’s “conjurer booth” to watch recurring Cinema Paradiso.

My depressurized de-acculturalization has been a blessing in disguise: technology progresses at break-neck speed, while the inner man like deer facing a headlight, holds on to meager valuables. In Mr. Klein (played by Alain Delon), he was forced to flee in under two minutes, thus grabbing his prized marked-down drawing only to be herded into the death-chamber train. Those who survived later emerged with symbols of shame: camp tattoos.

My American life was more like a chip set under Moore’s Law, home for 18 years, then forced to double in yield every 18 months. Use it (it here is pain, crisis, danger, uncertainty and myriads of other negatives). Fake it till you make it. Like a failed start-up (zero to 1) that promises the moon, one was to generate viable alternatives to appease investor’s ROI pressures (screw it, les do it), in utter disregard for unintended consequences and unforeseen costs e.g. Bad Blood, EFT and Alzheimer’s Cassava as written in “Doctored”.

While machine is trying to become more like us (nuanced) we are to emulate machine (speed and less complexity), like white Waymo vs yellow cab.

No wonder UVA mass shooter was son of a Korean high-pressure upbringing, or an Austin Vietnamese man committed suicide in his yuppie prime (in wartime, our lyrics were ” wish to be born like flowers, fleeting but beautiful”; now, that impermanent beauty has been replaced with a more permanent chipset.

When Nixon first coined “Vietnamization of the Vietnam War”, he wanted to pass the buck (to get himself re-elected: “Bomb the S.O.B. back to Stone Age”). Inadvertently that set in motion my own self-exfiltration: skipping 10th grade before skipping town. Permanently.

America and dreams are synonymous. At times, it’s Woodstock nude in Upstate NY or burning man in Death Valley, Apple in the orchard or Apple soon in Kentucky. Xanadu dreamy and circuitous.

Give me your tired and poor (say not, the KKKs in Mississippi). Early adopters among us already special-ordered shirts with monogram as if that would cover tattoos shame.

If 2.0 were the Americanized me, 3.0 its software upgrade. Any pilgrim on path of soul search deserves my empathy and respect, knowing the high opportunity cost away from one’s birthplace. More often it involves losing oneself in order to gain it back.