Thang Nguyen 555
Cultures on Collision Course
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Author: Thang Nguyen 555
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After Moore’s Law came Android’s Law (open-source software allows for faster deploy of smart phone apps – between six to nine months). http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/111990/your-new-smartphone-is-already-a-dinosaur Smart phone turns dumb phone pretty quick. (conversely, studies showed a steady rise of IQ as digital natives spent more time playing games). I call this “smart and smarter” generation. We are…
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Just a date (at least, that’s what Facebook was first conceived i.e. a rendez-vous that was not). Instead, user-generated-apps got creative, turning social media into social change ; means to miracles. We should have coders take an oath, just like doctors. That they will code to cure and not to plant virus. That the program…
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Life is full of paradoxes. Opportunity is embedded in the Chinese character for “crisis” (water bottle is selling for three to four times its normal price in current Egypt – oil is inching $100 per barrel ). Construction workers are mopping up of what is left of the Australian flood. And Netflix just rides the wave without…
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Charlie Chaplin would keep filming until he got it perfect (100:1 filming ratio to get the ladder to swing just right etc…). In “the Kid“, the little girl would throw rocks at windows, while our handyman walks right behind to fix them. Gillette would give away razors just to sell the blades (HP has done…
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I still remember Sang. He helped me set up sound equipment on the weekend (my attempt to crowd-source and create an open-air coffee-house for refugees), and attended my class on weekdays. Sang was in that transition camp in Hong Kong, on his way to Norway, his new home. I was feeling sorry for him, an…
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Steelers‘ number 33 and 34. Back to basics. One yard at a time to Super Bowl. On the field or off it, we have to retrench and defragment. USA Today cover story features “the faces of today’s unemployed”, showing a nuclear family, sitting in the back of the family pick-up truck, with two beautiful young…
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I clicked on the “Place Order” button, and a few days later, arrived the used paperback copy of Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher. Its tag line ” Economics as if People Mattered”. I thought I had that same yellowish copy somewhere after years of moving around. Back then, graduate students already drove small cars…
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The creator of Million-Dollar Homepage cashed out, and did nothing for five years. I have waited for the other shoe to drop. It just did. Do Nothing for 2 Minutes. http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/ The high school graduate does put his thinking cap on every so often, and knows how to create buzz. He either sells ad dots…
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Between Vietnam and China, around this week, close to 1 Billion people get on trains, planes and automobiles, trying to go home on the country side. Catchy label for them would be ” Confucian Consumers”. They will be scrambling on any transport, whether they are black or white (to para-phase Deng’s dictum), as long as…
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At 95, the founder of Peace Corps left us to figure out world affairs by ourselves. http://www.baltimoresun.com/topic/sns-ap-us-obit-shriver,0,2461815.story I used to shine my dad’s shoes, while he slicked his hair back. From where I sat, he appeared a towering figure. Men from that generation ( like Burt Lancaster’s “From Here to Eternity”) stood erect, principled and…
Thang Nguyen 555 