Thang Nguyen 555
Cultures on Collision Course
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Author: Thang Nguyen 555
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By now, you can still see a few weather-beaten cyclos around albeit restricted to tourist quarters. I still remember the sound of horse carriage in the streets of old Saigon. My kid will be lucky if she knows what a cyclo is. She knows Google though. Paperless and painless search. Now with semantic search. My profile, age in particular, triggers online ads on…
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Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: The Economist Christmas Special was about America, a Ponzi scheme that works. http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15108634&source=hptextfeature It projects 1 Billion Americans by 2100. With its many niches, America seems to offer a bit of everything, for everybody: hunting, boozing, gambling, church-going and freedom to protest. I remember my first Christmas, living humbly…
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In the 70’s, the Me decade, we heard “All by myself” a lot on the radio. Now, it’s the age of collaboration. All by ourselves. Whiteboarding, synergy and M&A. Nokia, Sony and Dell. All are taking the back seat. Players we did not see coming are now in the field: Haier, Acer and Lenovo. Users…
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Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: Innovator’s Dilemma is when incumbents grow complacent and are challenged by emerging forces that disrupt and destroy them. Gary Hamel in The Future of Management urges constant reinvention of management principles e.g. decision-making be pushed to the outer edges. The point is, leaders are listeners, not lecturers. That’s hard! For centuries, we are…
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Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: A Canadian lady, back from visiting her family in India, was aboard the flight to Detroit on Christmas day.http://www.thecanadianpress.com/english/online/OnlineFullStory.aspx?filename=p122649A&newsitemid=27268234&languageid=1 She recalled vivid details of near-miss explosion, the terror and the bravery of passengers and crews. We cannot control some events, but we can control our reaction (10/90 rule). As…
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Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: Mind you, this is not a new Panda Express dish. Just China exercises its soft power, by sending S&R responders to Haiti (Western Hemisphere, many time zones away from the Great Kingdom). Why China? China has explored Space, Chips, and automobiles (not to mention its recent Bullet train, which…
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If it weren’t for the rain, I wouldn’t have remembered the incident. Being just a kid, I was home-bound by torrential rain. No matter how hard I tried, the adults in the house would not let me go out and play. My tantrum perhaps lasted for hours with ending compromise: I got taken to see…
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Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: Neil Postman didn’t see the rise of game online when he penned “Amuse ourselves to death”. But he was on to something worth discussing: we are heading toward becoming a couch-potato nation or in China, Internet-addict camp. When Chinese kids get sent to these internet addict camps, we witness…
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Same set of situation, variety of readings. Rashomon effect. In Vietnam, if you ran into a funeral, it’s luck. Wow! Positively positive. The deaths live on in the family, albeit high up on the altar. Part of one another forever. Unlike in the US, health care for all is health care for none (shut down). Negatively…
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I am sure Mr Clancy who has just died at 66 had many late nights facing the blinking cursor, unsure of where his thoughts and imagination might have taken him. The hunt for the next national-security threat. Cold-war genre morphs into regional terrorism tale. An epitome of story telling. I am a fan. It got…
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