Me 3.0

If 2.0 were the American me amidst the melting pot, 3.0 its machine-verified version of what’s left un-meltable, ever evolving and data-rich, bleeding into fourth and final phase. Life throws a curve ball: peak experience intersects energy decline. For now, don’t expect a director-cut i.e. “one more” ride into the Sunset. Not me who grew up in war-warped world with unsettled ledger.

In our agricultural society, unlike cities on the hill, country folks were herded in and out of villages in “forced draft urbanization” process. Nothing but upheavals: monk burning, currency tossing and babies dropping, survivors on the upper deck of Operations Babylift.

Finally, when things died down i.e. troops withdrawn and Watergate settled, those same country folks were herded once again, this time, in the opposite direction to clear the DMZ – with energy and muscles strong enough to breach the Embassy (4/75) or the Capitol (on Jan 6) for catharsis if not Constitution.

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 Penn State academic advisor tout-suite slid me in Speech with unmatched eagerness and enthusiasm of a bored airline agent (I see here, a window slot, still opens). As it turned out, that class was a favorite for football after- practice nap (student’s residual message is idea not worth sharing as in TED talks).

Neither a tourist nor an exchange student, I dove straight into the cold and damp current. Already late to Winter quarter (one of the coldest in 76, with Buffalo residents entered their houses via the chimneys like Santa), I had no reservation nor hesitation to surgically sever and culturally self-amputate. After all meltable me melted, it left me with no choice except 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 with occasional Rolling-Rock buzz like Long Duc Luong’s “What automobile!” in Sixteen Candles (actually I only tossed a handful of rice during Rocky Horror Picture Show).

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

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

Yet at a turn of event, 25 years out, as tourist/intruder, brought me back. Torna a Surriento – Tro ve Mai Nha Xua. Home coming. The old alley – with face shielded behind a moped “xe-om” driver. Perhaps Maggie Q, the Protege, or Daughter of Danang could do better visually. 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) this side of the pond. We’ve got “Unwanted”, “On Earth we’re briefly gorgeous”, “The Sympathizer”, “The book of Salt”, “When heaven and earth change places”, “Birds of Paradise” …lit on leave, loss worth sharing, diaspora at a cost.

The rest of the population, after two more regional wars (Cambodia and China), settled down with New Economy (Doi Moi). Currently, folks are experiencing migration 3.0 to urban centers and industrial parks, made possible by FDI from Singapore, India, China, S Korea and Taiwan (Google phone, anyone?) to escape Middle-Income trap.

Back to my 2000 trip. I found my grandfather’s home, my roots. Supposedly former “enemy country” (falling far from the proverbial tree, I was an uprooted frenemy). Even my father and his younger martyred brother had once been on the opposite end of the war spectrum.

A quarter century behind yet war-torn landscape still felt eerie, Hanoi-Jane style. Left to rot, grandpa’s mandarin compound needed a new coat of paint, badly. Au Parleur was still blasting at street corners, London Black-out style. The siren was built to last, since it meant to alert more bombing than WWII Europe. 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 slowly back somewhere in time, dissolving from color scenes to Black/White static; as if a hundred years did not matter. I practically could hear happy noises from my parent’s wedding, the flash bulbs and vinyl music from a bygone era like Chopin in Vietnamese.

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

The ties that bind. Love. Unconditional. Bloodline, grandson, one of us albeit firewalls separated Military Regions like East and West Germany.

Since 1954 only family photos and open post cards were allowed back and forth. No wonder! I remember seeing someone’s kid’s photo, then for reciprocity, my own copy, the other way, a trophy baby i.e. Northern root, Southern born, French educated with table d’honeur for brag. Handwritings for humanity. See, we’ve born fruits here in the South! Propaganda mules we all are, posts or post cards by “women on the verge of nervous breakdown” i.e. self-inflicted and socially diffused. omg!

Machine is better at behavior modification (“Driver alert” to Amber alert). Over the Cold War firewall, we sent and received post cards sparingly. Over digital firewalls, per Metcalfe’s Law we share unlimitedly, exponentially and virally. Every man, woman and child is a podcaster. At least, a data-rich social media mule.

Outwardly, I could pass for a local on that trip. Yet I ducked like the Deer Hunter when reentering the old neighborhood. Something wasn’t quite settled (emotional ledger not settled up.) My stay-behind half-sister took sibling rivalry to the next level: accusing me of neglect (she was born much later like Princess Bride). As if war and displacement were not enough a sentence to torment my soul. Hey, I did not leave under a better circumstance like those exchange students or on tourist visa.

People think we’re machine to be culled and extracted, with efficient computing performance, tweaking and testing to perfection (God knows they did that to animals to quicken farm to fork cycle). When all else failed, we bang our heads against the wall. There go hard-earned relationship. Just kick the soda machine when it did not yield your proverbial coke can. 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 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. I am sure, it’s extremely consuming at data centers.

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, “don’t text and drive”. No longer do we say “Operator, yes, I will accept that ‘collect’ call”. We want to monetize “followers”, turning attention to intention of purchase.

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 their digital devices, but neglect connecting with people. What happens to putting connectivity in the hands of the people? Where is the Whole Earth Catalog, or once promised counter-cultural soul of the spiritual machine? HTML?

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 (Huntley and Brinkley) with LOP (Least Offensive Programing) to billions of Gong podcasters, our personal bandwidth and attention span suffer. Our spectrum and psyche get multiplexed to the point of breakdown from being terrorized. Centuries of curating have equipped and enforced tolerance level. Beyond that, we experience shellshock. The triumph return and reign of the low brow.

That’s what “technology wants”: fluidity. It’s Un-American – not to 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 would bring back professional mourners (wedding planners, funeral planners…got it?). Anything for a buck, even tears on cue or male revue for wake parties.

I visited my grandma’s grave in Hai Duong. Her ashes (from the South) had been hand-carried then reburied to join my paternal grandpa. I felt a tug in my stomach. War and displacement. The end of history and the end of the line. Yet it’s a highlight of my life, seeing grandma at rest, second and last time, in peace.

After all, she told me tales, among which, Jesus was betrayed by Judas, to ease my toss-and-turn mandatory siestas, like a roommate she practically was – first of many, later campus-assigned: Penn State, Wheaton and Gordon, white folk from New Hampshire, 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 earlier versions of the microchip 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 opportunities for self-reinvention and advancement). Chameleon we all are to survive (IBM sales clones). Kumbaya bayo… Jumping from hot oil to the melting pot, I need to shred the meltable, traveling light.

Not unlike the spy who came in from the cold, with new currency and passport. Mostly for machine (and man) to facial-recognize and let me pass the turn stilt or: “Oh, you’re not in the computer, it says here”. (to this day, I still can’t see what they saw on their CRT’s).

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. Platoon and battalion, chopper evac and last-day evac.

“Horror horror!” (BTW, both Heart of Darkness and the Deer Hunter, were adapted to the silver screen for a post- Vietnam audience). Slowly my 2.0 Americanized version, evolved from hawkish to centrist/dovish, Tom Dooley to Tom Hayden, as propaganda “tranquilized” effects worn off. War disrupts, destroys and dehumanizes. Not just while it’s hot, but also during its prolong post-event.

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 ( War, Watergate 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 reached the Promised Land (the lucky ones in the US also die in four-wheel traffic, never quite seen their American Dream realized).

Instead, we found defoliate patch of land due to all the bombs from WWI and II combined, 400X Hiroshima – those eco-cide and ethno-cide expenditures could 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). Everything declassified and re-normalized from Vina Capital to Vina Milk, 136 billion in export goods. Yeah! 5000 USD per year per person.

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 taste or felt longing for a newly acquired US holiday e.g. Black Friday, Thanksgiving or 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 never 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 with 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 as opposed to Vietnamese as previous. 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 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.

My mom used to be a teacher with 57-1 class ratio. She graded papers late into the night. No tugging in, trophy child or not. Hence, my sister stepped up e.g. first day of school. Both female adults were way ahead of the curve, at least half a century compared to Afghan counterparts. Mom’s career spanned at least 1500 pupils who went on to raise good families with 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 our all-boys school. The war was raging hot for my adolescent decade which saw 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 smile, 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 core values. In Mr. Klein (played by Alain Delon), he was forced to flee in under two minutes, grabbing his fire-sale painting by fellow Jew, only to be herded into the death-chamber train himself for camp tattoos in place of artist’s signatures.

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 (pain, crisis, danger, uncertainty and mishaps). 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”. Instead of flying cars, we end up with TikTok.

While machine is trying to become more like us (nuanced) we are to emulate machine (more speed and less complexity), 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 then skipping town. Permanently.

America and dreams are synonymous. You are what you have. 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 that promise an alt+ctrl+del. Then back to the business of America, which is business. Smart Carter (nuclear engineer) lost to Reagan, the GE product pitch man.

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 go far to cover our “tattoos” shame. City on the hill, Disney down the land, charter cruise from sea to shining sea.

If 2.0 were the Americanized me, 3.0 its data-rich upgrade: like AI, ever-learning, ever green. Any pilgrim on path of soul search deserves my empathy and respect. We’re sojourners, and the road is long. The opportunity cost was quite inflated, paid far away from home and more often than not, involved losing oneself in order to gain it.