Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: MSNBC  interviews a blogger from Good magazine on automation nation. The take away: automation is moving beyond manufacturing sector (e.g. Google test drove an unmanned vehicle in California, or Italian researchers tested a driver-less van, from Italy to China) to service sectors, such as health care . Japan has been deep…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: The-girl-with-a-dragon-tatoo series got me hooked. I know it’s cold  in Stockholm. And I know he did not produce tangible products from the factory, such as sweet or swatch. But he offered readers an emotional experience (getting out of mundane existence, stepping into character and experiencing triumph and tragedy unavailable to us…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: IT engineers are back in demand. A few years ago, it was the opposite. Labor surplus creates serious contest on “Who wants to be an employee”. All things being equal, I take attitude ( one executive told me, all things equal, he takes the one with the best communication…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: First, with satellite uplink, we experienced reverse information flow in the 90’s. Then the Internet, with Information without borders  e.g. tweeting from Iran post-election . There has been some experiment with online funding (P2P micro lending), mashing new concept from India with the beauty of the Web (disintermediation). Kiva…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: World’s oldest woman. 115 years old. Oldest man, from Japan, 116 years old. Life expectancy in 1900 was 47. World population has increased drastically. (Bio tech century). At the nano level, we can detect early symptoms of all sorts of disease (nano pharma). Ironically, as the West is more aware…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: In Selling Professional Services to the Fortune 500, Gary Luefschuetz warns against mix and match people and rates of various service tiers, which will compromise the rate structure. In short, swim against the tide. IBM got it. Cisco follows suit. And HP is moving in that direction. The Economist…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: Listening is hard to begin with (just ask a psychiatrist). Listening across the cultures is doubly hard. It requires an extensive grasp of the others’ frame of reference. As technology enables the world to shrink, more groups join the globalized market. (The PM of Malaysia was on GPS telling…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: Chinese buyers, that is. Not a bid for 76 gas station, or IBM hardware (now Lenovo). A GM unit then Symentech. On seeing David Stockman on TV. I thought I were back to the early 80’s. This time, just one just needs to replace the word Japanese, for Chinese (remember…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: The concept of half-life (radioactive) , if could be applied to soft sciences e.g. happiness, can go on to infinity. In today’s term, it’s called austerity: scaled-down cars, DVD nights, and local trips. During the Clinton years, we had a good run. The Japanese had theirs in the 80’s. Now,…

Originally posted on Thang Nguyen 555: One is auctioned for 85 million (with tax and fee), while the other merged with Newsweek after it was sold for $1.00 After a lifetime of standardization and automation, something is still of value. Nobody had appreciated Van Goh’s self-portrait or any of his pieces until after he was…