Thang Nguyen 555

Divinity and DNA, eternality and here/now, the spiritual and the material.

Push and pull, past and future.

Are we nearer to Singularity? AI or we who are asleep at the wheel!

I always appreciate a good story, like the one about a chapel of New College in Oxford whose beams finally gave, but with foresight and anticipation, early builders had already planted replacement oak (5) centuries ahead.

We water the plants, raise a kid, save a little, because we believe tomorrow will come ( no where truer than for the LOC – loss of crew – 2 astronauts currently awaiting for a Space X taxi to fetch them – perhaps after the holiday).

We’re all hostages, in a different sense: stuck on Earth, not knowing how to get home (Paradise).

Some are more aggressive than others i.e. Icarus, just fly toward the Sun, on wings of wax.

Others, more conservative, brush, comb, spray, vitamins, weight on the scale, gym, annual checkups. The Crusaders were trying to usher in the Kingdom of God (supposedly spiritual) on Earth. The Buddhists just stoically let go, as far as the material realm.

We live with an illusion, that technology will save the day. Others, on Sundays or Holidays, believe otherwise (Theology). Waiting for Superman, for a rescue party.

For the UN, the UNHCR, the UN vaccines and supplies.

In a way, we’re all like LOC’s longing for a better tomorrow on the one hand, while cherishing our selective collective memory on the other. Our life, like a Super 8mm film, projected on the wall, showing our younger selves. Wedding ceremonies, birthdays and reunions zooming at breakneck speed.

It’s technology that reminds me nowadays of past uploaded photos. The Cloud reaches down to me, for fear I might forget my own “sum of selves”.

I was the youngest son of the clan (at the time). My younger uncle had died a martyr’s death, hence, leaving behind no younger heirs my supposedly younger cousins. From that vantage point, I kept looking up to the older adult: how they interacted (wearing Ao Dai whose collar covering up their neck; on a hot summer afternoon, everyone fanned themselves and in so doing, generated more heat – chicken and the egg).

Jacques Ellul eluded to “technique”. And how what we worked “technique” into our everyday life, the way we do things and solve a problem,; then generated its own problem. Hence, “the medium is the message”. Progress, electricity, rare Earth, competitive race and trading, social effects (kids don’t read), and obvious obesity.

Theology, however, pontificates. Faith first. a priori. Deductive vs inductive learning. Top down vs bottom up (scientific observation, problem ID, hypothesis, experimentation and conclusion).

Faith and reason, religion and society. Many scientists are still holding on to their faith. Many of the faithful have abandoned theirs (“Losing our Religion”, Russell Moore). From the future and from outer space, an alien (anthropologist) would conclude that: Earth is over-heated and saturated; uneven distribution of supply-demand, too many “gods” and creatures are tribal, trivial and trite.

Ask the crew once they are taxied back to Earth, their re-entry first impressions. In Gravity, the movie, Sandra Bullock woke up as if from a dream (George Clooney already drifted away in space and into Infinity). Now, that’s a fresh perspective and a good reset. Mine when coming back from overseas trips, was that we ‘ve got more broadband, but less desire to interact with our neighbors.

Talk is cheap. Has been and always will be. Action (unhooking oneself for others – as in Gravity) speaks, much louder, more impactful and is lifesaving.

I was overreaching and misleading with the title. It’s just that I did spend some time in my younger years learning Theology instead of Technology. I hope that the former will paint a clearer picture of what’s out there, as oppose to what’s over here. But it’s the latter that occupied me (in the name of time and money saving) with this password and that reminder, a ping here and a ping there. To the point, that its immediacy seems to be an end in itself. T=T in our world. That which occupies becomes and dominates. The perpetual present, here and now, ping and no pong. Just ping.

Tomorrow, I hope, will come. So plant a (oak) tree, teach a kid and say a prayer for the lost crew in space.

Let’s cut to the chase. It’s machine, invented by man, that shows us human, how to behave consistently, efficiently and even humanly. “I am sorry, I don’t understand” (human wouldn’t be that honest!). From flight runway to fashion runway, AI is now here to stay.

It has done away with middle men e.g. printing, book shops, magazine stands, brochure designer, soon, fashion models.

I was surprised while watching the DNC Convention (live) that Tim (machine) texted me while giving the acceptance speech of his life.

Omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.

The promises of yesteryears, which belong to God Almighty, now made available at the push of a button.

Man can become god-like, machine can become man-like, and the gods are relegated into the corner (Chinese restaurants feature Fortune God near their cashiers).

There increasingly are less need for learning how to spell, how to look up a word (dictionary???, what’s that), even reading a book (in Japan, books are read from Right to Left, last page first. How would that work in digital version???).

We read so we won’t be alone. Hardcover books, when opened, embrace us, pull us into the intrigue of the mystery (if that’s the genre you are into).

I grew up unhugged and un-tugged (to bed), due to my Mom’s extremely busy schedule (grading her students’ homework late into the night, teacher-student ratio: 1-57). This was on top of the touch-avert Asian culture (bowing so we can stay 6 ft apart, even before Covid) and she herself had been an orphan sleeping in Lycee’s boarding school.No wonder Asian love Kungfu, with lots of kicking, a contact sports to “bridge the hug gap” (that’s been there for centuries).

Now, to make up for lost time, I am surrounded with books, books, and books.

I am not a monogamous reader. I flirt, flip and browse. Sometimes, I even read the conclusion first, just in case (akin to eating dessert first).

The irony of our Age e.g. Kennedy Jr not for Harris, and Bush not for Trump.

We still need to see consistency, norms and some semblance of order and predictability.

Traffic safety law, SALT treaty, and peace treaty.

Another irony I came across the other day. It relates to LBJ, the young congressman who tried to bring electrification to the Hill Country, TX (population 1 per square mile at that time; so sparse that it wasn’t qualified and not worthy of tax-dollar spending).

Then he ended up ordered the poles and wires for An Giang Province of the Vietnam’s Mekong due to his sinking into the thicket of things.

Now I live in denser population, 100 degrees for 100 days at a time, as a striver and settler from a distant country to the Hill Country.

You tell me, what’s next on the agenda? Rural broadband for all! Gaza, Ukraine, Kabul?

Meanwhile, machine acts more like man, man learns less than machine. Both want someday to be like God i.e. omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. Keep striving, tweaking, and nudging. That’s how we did back in the VoIP days, transforming and transitioning human voice (analog) into machine signals (digital) via a process called quantization.

Just as my thoughts via the keyboard and your decoding them. In the hope that we come to an understanding, that we can’t stop progress. But someone must be at the helm, with steady hand, or else, we have a runaway train. I was scared out of my wits in two instances: a free flying chopper blade that floored us (see My Sliding Door blog) and at Three-Mile-Island, when as a news intern, I ran in the opposite direction of frantic residents fleeing an impending disaster.

Irony of our Age. Those who want to live, don’t or can’t (machine). Those who don’t want to live (World’s oldest 116 as of late ) do. Rest my case. Now, you deliberate.

Yesterday I was talking to a colleague of mine. During the course of the conversation, we mentioned NOC (Teleglobe days) Network Operating Center based in Toronto, CANADA.

My kid and her friends taught me about CROCS, their favorite footwear.

Then this morning, I learned a new, scarry acronym: LOC (Loss Of Crew).

It brought to mind a scene in Gravity, where George Clooney character cut himself of from Mother Ship so the other can live.

He drifted away (by default, becoming Icarus with back toward the Sun) into Infinity as we call it.

LOC. Loss of crew. Lost in space, at sea (recent submersible deaths) and on the streets (Amber Alert).

Each day, we face a new set of challenges. It’s hard enough to deal with inflation, interest rates and fluctuation in moods as we interact with new challenges.

It’s how we compose ourselves, grace under pressure and courage under fire.

Lt Murphy of Penn State drew fires away from his crew (getting satellite signals), Todd Beamer of Wheaton said “Let’s roll” before tackling the UA-93 terrorists.

Those alumni of mine did me proud. Not unlike Stallone in Rocky (shown during my time on campus) “Cut me” (so he can see the raging punches coming at him).

Life. Lots of challenges: buying CROCS for kids, visiting NOC’s for a tour of Teleglobe HQ, and even NASA LOC. I recently visited my cousin’s grave. Her husband was an MIA of 50 years. Now her kids were discussing having two pictures on the marker, in so doing, joining them in death, since it hadn’t been possible in life.

Greater than no man who gave his life for his fellow (generic) man (in Gravity, it’s Sandra B, and her grateful thousand yards longing eyes, started out with the Net, or abandoned to drive the bus in Speed).

We all have to let go at some point. Progress rides on these losses. Earhart and Markham, Apollo and Armstrong.

I will never forget getting in line to have my first glimpse of that exhibited piece of a Moon rock.

You believe what you see. Then this process emboldens you to venture into the unknown, seeing the unseen. What lies beneath the surface, the tip of the iceberg.

We have a boat load of thankfulness to pioneers and pathfinders before us (transatlantic flights), and now, transpacific crossing. From the emigrant to the immigrant, Mayflower to Boat People.

Those who survived and arrived built this Nation of Nations on the sweat of their eyebrows. One brick at a time. One English word, one chip soldering shift at a time, day-old bread and left-over packed lunches.

America the Beautiful (and the dammed). We don’t talk about the later, since they didn’t make it here in the first place. History books often edited out the bad and the ugly, foolishness and feverish rush to Gold digging. We buried Ponzi and celebrated Pelosi.

America, its past all buried (dead or alive), but always with a promise of a brighter future for all who gamed and came. Sometimes, it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Can someone put on the Net’s soundtrack “the whiter shade of pale ” as we reluctantly part with the blinking cursor on the screen. Goodbyes are never desirable, since it is synonymous at times, with farewells. Those who love experience loss. Those who don’t don’t. Life is constituted with both the seen and the unseen. Mind you, it’s the later that affects us more with hollowness to see and scar to show. NOC, LOC, CROCS.

I am a product of rote learning, of nudging, bending, pressuring, conforming, imitating, group thinking, “the apple cannot fall far from the tree”, social engineering, IBM clones etc…

No wonder. After a while, I came to believe, as Patty Hearst once did, that the Stockholm Syndrome is the Law of the Land, like physics and biology (empathizing with your abductors and their causes, the end justifies the means etc…)

I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to be somebody else, to live somewhere else. ” You can have any model T’s you’d like, as long as it’s black”. I’d rather go along, unquestioning and …oh well, conforming: ” oh, you want me to rob a bank for Our cause?” No problem.

Instead of upward mobility in the hope that the trickle-down economy somehow will spare some chunk of change, past the next to the top level, I sunk, slowly. Enjoying the view from the Titanic. First by acknowledging and confessing that I am a sinner. Then slowly I have become one, by appropriating the sin of my fathers (and theirs), acting out a pre-set, propensity and impetus to fail.

So does it mean , I am doomed from the get go?

Always I am in between, the Alpha and the Omega, striving and stumbling with no upward trend (have you paired the dollar of 50 years ago vs today’s! I was shocked at New Yorker’s sticker price of 8.99). When does this (quality of life) downward trend end!

Without affirmation, validation and award, the world needs assurance that it’s OK with its soul.

Machine learning, but men are not. Men sleeping, but machine are not. Who is going to liberate whom? Want a fruit juice? (Ken Kesey).

We exist, live a little, love a little and lose a little. We’re all different yet all the same (destiny, misunderstood and misunderstanding – born the wrong way, bought in the wrong cause and subscribed to wrong method). Always on the outside, not in the know. Forgot password?

Religions have been counter-productive if they seek the end to justify the means.

By itself, it is a path, a means, yet out of sheer insecurity, it compromises and shows its true color (Priest abuse, indigenous school children ab/inducted up North in Canada, private-jet preachers ).

We no longer examine cause and consequences, raison d’etre as to why we exist and how much we’re needed ( if at all, beyond election year, when solicitation from both parties die down).

Until someone with “authority” tells us who we are and could become. Nudged, pressured, pushed and pulled. To become They, the abductors, the Jim Jones and Jim Bakker. In short, we’re finally de-individualized; no longer the person whose name was on the birth certificate. We no longer are with our names. We’ve become numbers. Assigned and slotted into a verticalized and structured algorithm like soldiers with dog tags for convenient identification, just in case.

Born this way, died that way. A completely different, inauthentic and unrecognizable version. If life is a Xerox machine, it certainly has ran out of ink, thus, makes poor copies. Just click “Accept” on all the terms of use.

The saddest thing in life is to live someone else’s life but one’s own.

Dutiful, obedient and without authenticity. Parents are guilty in this respect as much as Priests, Teachers, Politicians and Philosophers (those who tackle the “why’s” ). How many gay men and women died without ever given a chance to “come out”. How many soldiers died in “friendly fires”, whose death certificates did not reflect the reality of war (perhaps to protect pension). Those who suffer silently, without an internet connection, to vent, post and share their grievances (today’s Patty Hearst would be deprived of her access to a phone).

Last week, we had a moment of joy: prisoner swap. Patty Hearst comes home, so to speak.

Now, the hard part: de-briefing and de-programming. Our “Spartan” have done his job – hostage rescue. Now as a society, we must ride this momentum (of “one is free, all are free”), and reexamine who we are and who we want to become.

As Sec of State says it all ” given the choice between a society that does everything to bring its innocent citizens home, and the one who went the distance for its terrorist, I would choose ours any day”.

Becoming You, I’d say, is the hardest of all, in a society and social media that say otherwise. Your mission and mine, is to become ourselves, from cradle to the grave, owning our idiocy and idiosyncrasy; that way, while we are around, the world could exhibit its flavorful whole.

Our world is wonderful not without you and I in our fullest (of nuances).

So drop the facade, the pretense, unlearn those rote learning, stop saying the expected and for once, release that weight (stress) someone has outsourced onto us. Fly free, face the Sun, and feel the warmth of free air and freedom. I’d take that over any Stockholm S** any day, since we all eventually die alone as part of the package we didn’t sign on.

The Olympics reinforce healthy competition: win/lose by the rules. It’s been said that our happiness depends largely on our relationship to one another e.g. Tennis Champions McEnroe later picked his rival as Best Man.

In life, it’s who we associate with at clubs (analog) on LinkedIn (digital) that matters. I was fortunate for having a string of personal and professional endorsement: from graduate-school study-mate to corporate colleagues, from bosses to partners.

My 360-degree reputational currency are intentionally diverse e.g. female, bi-continental, multi-cultural direct report etc. to self-authenticate in our age of AI, as an un-doctored profile and photo.

Over time, we extract wisdom from their “social nutrient”, a connection of our connection often influences us more per some study (six-degrees of separation). Glenn Arnold of Wheaton Journalism school for mentioning Willaim Zinsser that set me on the right course. Influencers come in all shapes and sizes: teachers, families and friends.

The Internet offers nuggets of wisdom from crowd: people we never and probably will never meet (Wikipedia). Kids in the candy store: overwhelmed by colorful choices, with untrained capacity to absorb (sugar high) or find use for. We become digital chipmunks who store food for fear of famine.

How to inoculate ourselves against bad information? Just like how to know which foods are best for our bodies. We have become hoarder and sorter of data as they pour out of the firehose. Tangents stuff wears us out: information-fatigue.

The future belongs to data scientists. Neil Postman made similar comment about Television in ” Amuse ourselves to death”; little did he know the Internet and streaming usher in a biblical deluge.

The art of unsubscribing and deleting are our new lessons. Reply by Texting STOP. Non=permissible marketing (not that AI ever cares or feels rejected) just for self-preservation and sanity.

The internet and the individual, crowd wisdom and personal (paced) enlightenment, zeta bites vs mouthful bites.

People trade goods and services. This time, it’s data trading (ad auctioning). As if we are lab rats, brokers and posers of untested wisdom. as trial-error Yelpers. Since we cannot “try them all”, we become superficial rankers, human last touch on those machine SEO.

From local village to global village, frequent face-to-face to virtual communication (with complete strangers), we experience unprecedented geographical shift and generational shift.

In short, “the gods must be crazy”. At times, we wish that “coke bottle” had never fell off the sky.

Let’s go off grid (you wish!). Per NYU study, we need a digital New Year resolution. A Sabbath break.

Wise council might come from people of different color, younger generation or past generation Where are the Medicine men, the Chiefs and the Astrologers. Back in the 80’s we had Shirley MacLaine’s New Age, and Nancy Reagan’s Fortune Tellers – to schedule our State-Affairs meetings.

It baffles me that in our jet age and Internet age, people are still doubling down on and tranquilizing themselves in rabbit hole, finding comfort in well, comfortable data set. Always work and play from home, never setting foot outside of the bubble or talk to anyone outside of their Dunbar circle (our digital security blanket). The more advanced we are, the deeper our longing for a selective past, and since we cannot recall the past, we become angry and self-destructive. 19th-century America without tax? Gilded Age without the Great Depression?

At the end of all travel, as they say, we arrive at the same place, only to know it better ( e.g. at Kennedy times, post-Bay of Pigs, 11,000 “advisors” to China Beach, then peaked at half a million finally dwindling down to the last 11 Marines on the last chopper out. America knowing itself – every time we read aloud the 58,220 names on the marble wall). To travel means to experience not only places, but also ideas (Montaigne).

Changes from within comes after changes (often defeat) from without. The world works slowly inward as we are more receptive one layer and generation at a time. It takes courage and loss of face, mostly shame and guilt, to course correct.

To admit we were wrong e.g. social media – a systemic failure – is to give ourselves a needed realignment. Self-projection are products of self-delusion. Advertisers always print two versions of mass-producing bumper stickers and T-shirts, mini-flags and presidential portraits. We might as well print ours, Self photo-day. Not to mention, our friends are saved from feeling cheated for having gotten to know someone they once thought they had known.

“I look at life from both sides now” (from the long 60’s). My parents and half of my siblings have recently gone. Life transitions jolted me as a “kid” unaccompanied (abandoned, as kids often say “my Dad went for milk”). Vividly, I can still recall getting lost, while the adults were searching for me (Tet festival at the park.) I circled back, stood on the roof of the car, holding a red balloon up high, like in a French movie.

Getting lost in the crowd now repeats itself on the web. The unknown future is full of virtual strangers from strange shores, at the urge and nudge of AI (executive search anyone). Algorithm recommended. Unregulated peppered with self-censored wisdom of crowd will serve as PG -13 guardrails (Congress won’t budge beyond Section 230).

It’s frightening and uplifting.

Melinda Gates in her Stanford Commencement talks about “small waves” that lent perspectives to “big waves’” doomsday’s scenario (remember, we’re water, not waves).

Our core humanity looks up to the sky and soars. In the name of progress, each generation wants to outperform previous. Graduates want immediate entry into the workforce. French senior citizens want earlier retirement. The piece of the pie vs the percentage of GDP.

It’s relationship that fulfills our lives. Things money can’t buy e.g. 360=degree reputation, self-respect (the right version of self), integrity, taste, class, memories, decency, dignity, empathy, humanity and loyalty.

Keep your authentic self. In the end, what we are most fearful to lose is what counts the most. To test this, just go out of your way and be selfless for a day (and pay associated price).

At funerals, no one misses dead wood. What counts is the deceased’s kind personhood, cherished warm memories and “de-classified” hidden selves, linkage and love. How we make others feel (be-little or uplift them). To paraphrase Hemmingway” we are strong in broken places and it’s through those cracks that light can shine through”.

On your mark, get set, go! Get some personal and reputational rehab- this side of Paradise while it’s still time.

While in Paris, the Olympic reminds us competition is good. But it doesn’t have to be demeaning.

Competition – rules based – doesn’t just happen in that particular locality or only in that summer. It’s in our heart, Notre Coeur not Notre-Dame. Compete against the clock…”how many potatoes can you eat in your lifetime”.

Keep paying forward, share some fries. Go get milk and return. In hopes that future generations connect and comprehend better without self-destruct. Grace and humility in defeat, but in competition, courage.

Paris, je t’aime. P.S. check out “Full Time” the movies about a single mom during the strike.

” If I had two heads, one would have rolled away, outside the gate of Pier 5 on the day before the Fall of Saigon.” (my Sliding Doors/when it’s worst)

At times, on reflection, I wonder what would have become of me, of that other abandoned head – like our abandoned car – grafted on someone else’s body. Would I be riding a motorcycle, taking my time with those Round-About to shop for an affordable cup of coffee? Definitely I would be pondering “what-if” I could have left on the last chopper out.

We do have a capacity for imagination, for getting outside of ourselves, for empathy. In doing so, tone and tame down our self-delusion.

Live one’s life so as to have no regrets, revision or recrimination. From Marcus (Aurelius) to Montaigne, Chardin to Chaplin.

Of course we fell short (of our own expectations). Who doesn’t! (BTW, it’s the indisputable foundation and pre-supposition for redemption ” all men are fallen short of God’s KPI”. )

People are rated and run on their records, reputation and revised revelation.

We forget our past transgression in order to look ourselves in the mirror, then “self-talk” or self-congratulate. In sales, they even taught you: ” I like myself” X 1,000 to brace against rejection.

The first person I need to convince each day is myself: am I OK? can “we” get a move-on? what’s next! what is to be hoarded, salvaged, discarded and improved? Getting things done. Yelping yourself. The rating, the ranking, like your FICO scores, change from day to day.

If you’re energetic, restless and with above-average self-exhibition, the long-term chart shows high peaks and low valleys. If you’re an introvert, and a contemplating type (who often take the less traveled off-ramp), your path runs past fewer crises (risks and rewards well proportionated and measured).

We live and die (socially) by our reputation (others’ perception). Personal polling.

The other day, I went over my endorsement page and noted one of my colleagues, now deceased, said some nice things about me (should I keep it? delete it?) It touched me deeply. Online, you live forever, by your record, reputation painted by feedbacks from people dead or alive.

It’s both scary and privileged. Since when could our entire population afford to live in a glass house! Every key-stroke, every utterance, every text is to be stored/retrieved and shown as evidence of your attempt, aspiration or missteps (in the 60’s, they have to hire people to listen in the “Conversation”).

I have always loved lighthouses. It’s one of the best icons. positioned on high ground, brightly lit and spins around 360 degrees. It warns seafarers and sojourners not to proceed too close. Danger signal: Don’t live as I do … sort of legacy-campaign. At least, we exist to be of use.

In the end, we are all like Columbus, throwing up sea waters, exploring and exploiting nearest environment for own gain. Along the way, we hid from ourselves from evidence of yesterday’s shame: people who hurt us, people who we in turn hurt back, not by nature, but out of self-preservation. Like a Thomas Wolfe’s line ” each of us is all the sums he has not counted..” Look homeward, Angel. (Do visit the village of Ba Tri near the Southern tip of Vietnam, where mass-skulls museum is still open).

As human, we need a healthy self-image – self-edited version of our little and short history; all the while, we preserve and perpetuate selective memory. It’s a dilemma and a drama trying to balance the yin and the yang, the moody inner self interacting with fluctuating social. Our record, reputation and self-revelation are all there. People (and programmatic ads) know us better than we do ourselves (I viewed a Hollywood page, only to be so informed about dead actors.

It’s like white-washing our personal history, our Holocaust and Hiroshima, Watergate and Lewinsky-gate, Y2K and J6 and George Floyd. It’s all there on Alphabet (who is better known as Google) and other search engine.

Forget not who we were and still could be. Often times, on reflections, I wonder what would become of me, the other head that rolled. Would I still be riding an old scooter, wearing a helmet, and a poncho, circling those Colonial French Roundabouts, in search of God-knows-what just to finish out my “shift”.

To completely “delete” someone, you would have to wipe clean his/her paper trail, digital record, dental record, EMR, court filing, tax filing, educational and social documents after dumping without exhuming the decomposed body (I happen to see “the talented Mr Ripley” and earlier French version played by Alain Delon) and even then, the best detective in Lawrence Block tradition can still follow those bread crumbs to reassemble and reconfigure what had actually transpired.

For the past 15 years, I have been toying with the Internet as an user. I just want to see where the distributed nodes take me. It’s been a wild ride without a single ticket (except to pay for Spectrum Internet). Endless and boundaryless. Fun and fearful. Educational and entertaining. To death.

Any ride would take you outside of your confine, lift you up high so you can see (and be seen, like lighthouses). In the end, with wishful thinking, I would love to retrieve that other head for proper burial, as I once read about that lost whale in the South China Sea. Like a Clint Eastwood line in Josey Wales, ” I guess we all died a little in that war”.

Then, I will be at peace, knowing my non-judgmental lost twin was finally found. I am OK, no I am OK. I like my (other) self. I like myself! You will only know what I chose to reveal, tip of the iceberg. The rest might be known to you and AI, but unbeknown to me. Then, there is unknown unknown, but we won’t get into that.

Beware of those who throw stones, if you lived in a glass house ( anti-social media). All this btw was triggered by a review of my professional endorsement, ironically, from a now deceased colleague. God rest her soul.

The Eclipse, Y2K, Powerball, 777, flat lining.

Those are events. Infrequent ones. But randomly, there exist “perfect storm” scenarios. Black swan.

In short, it’s the category of One. Can’t compare them with “peers”, can’t “clone” them, can’t be reproduced.

Unlike in the East, past or present. People still explain the unknown world with the cycle of 12 animals (the Year of the Cat). Unlike in the West, where witches still fly using broom instead of supersonic jet fuel.

We don’t want to be surprised, to expect miracles, or to go through changes.

It’s unsettling. It’s rattling.

Yet in order to move forward, we need to rid off some baggage. To stay lean.

We use cattle, human, and machine. To extract nutrients (banana juice, wine) and sustain life.

Out of the many One. Pedaling those two wheels forward (Life, as defined by Einstein). Only to go in full circle, back to beginning. Compete to lose. Failure is mother of success, so they say.

How about doping? Tour de France. The Olympics. Just a noose head. And the winner is…

So proud, so humbly accept the prize, the reward of hard work.

All derivative. All beneficiaries of Life itself. At one time, we define ourselves via acres (agrarian society), then by horsepower (industrial society), and now the speed of chips (AI age).

My apps are better than yours: Viber, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, TikTok, X, Youtube, Google, Messenger, Meta etc…

Long ago, it was “I was born in the year of the Pig” (laying around with food, while the buffalo, work the field for someone else’s food).

How we view the world and ourselves have slowly evolved with times and geography.

From naming (Barrack to Barry, for instance), to claiming (I am an US-born citizen, purportedly, one cut above naturalized ones).

Ivy League soared higher above “Cow College” etc… the 80/20 rule dictates that those at the top produce more (and of course, never trickle down to the bottom of the pyramid).

BUT…we need to scale, numbers on the board, we need volume to negotiate rates.

And so it goes. Eye balls, fingers on the keyboard, Likes, feedback, enumeration and billing.

Reality set in. The business of America is business. Send me the bills, tax and interests included.

Are you a veteran? Have you ever committed crime, bankruptcy, divorce, shoplifting? Negative points. Higher loan-shark interest. Up front fees. Secure card.

From being born in the year of the Monkey, to being slotted as responsible card holder, customer (Prime) and Costco member. It’s a long way baby. You’ve arrived. It’s the post-Yuppies world.

It’s a wide world. We know you better than you yourself. We remember, remind you of your selection, preferences and inclination (intent to purchase).

Our choices are unlimited. Yours limited. After all, you are locked in per genetic codes (you’re Black) culture codes (12 choices of animal) and linguistic code (Parlez-vous Francais?).

To move forward, we need to take a look in the rearview mirror. For safety, change one lane at a time. Evolution is slow, but sure. Technology moves at a speed we can hardly cope with.

At some point, all will be aligned. Once in a lifetime event. Perfect storm. Like a line by Bread, ” then you and I will simply fly away”.

Dust back to dust. But before that, we pout, shout, laugh, rant and rave (about born this way, born that way) and then, even run for President. All aligned. Hail to the Chief. Just make sure the released photos were doctored or photoshopped. It’s the age of AI, not agrarian.

An on-screen giant – Donald Sutherland – has just lied down. Age 88.

Watching M*A*S*H* the movie with him in a leading role, one finds ample instances of disregard for human frailty, but not for human life, more camaraderie than canon, laughter than profanity.

Post-60’s era was a time of “Je ne sais quoi”; what can you do; I now turn the attention to myself. You’re OK, I’ m Ok. Can’t sit in, teach in or dance to the tune of Hari Krishna forever. Student loan was coming due. Got to graduate, sign up for on-campus job interviews and raise a family. Carly Simon loved her refrain ” and that’s the way I have always heard it should be”… only to later put on belly fat (All in the family lazy chair) which Jane Fonda’s aerobic craze was glad to help.

But only after the malaise of Watergate and the M.I.A. mess from Vietnam were completely exorcised. McCain and band came home. Wait here, please – lines at the VA after skipping the Welcome-Home party as in the Deer Hunter.

Sutherland found himself in war-movies roles such as “The Eagle Has Landed” (Robert Duvall as a zealous German Colonel with an eye patch and a Churchill-kidnapping plan – Sutherland, a professor who infiltrated at a secluded English-coast town). His on-screen role varied from spy to surgeon ( Hawkeye Pierce), who was drafted to Korea.

Sutherland’s vulnerability ( a spy who left love letter behind) pierced through both screen and shades – not even a John Lennon’s 60’s orange-tint can hide – penetrating without self-justification (that he was of the upper class sensibility ) e.g. professor/spy (Devlin), surgeon (Hawkeye), Counsel to the President (Clark Gifford), Oil Tycoon (Fierce People).

There was nothing “ordinary” about him ( even in Redford’s directorial debut Ordinary People), dealing with family tragedy (his favorite other son was drowned in a boating accident). Self-recrimination was so severe that any ordinary thinking Dad would have to face up to it, to mob up. To his other son played by Timothy Hutton “ I will arrange for you to see someone “ that is after swim practice. A rational solution to an emotional problem.

In Fierce People, he befriended Diane Lane, his masseur, to thank her for saving his life. An oil tycoon with ill-gotten wealth, he lived out his last days in full display e.g. hot-air balloon Birthday Party. Meanwhile single mom and her coming-of-age son (played by the late Anton Yelchin), lived on-prem in close proximity hence bred intimacy e.g. the young man was in same-cut blazer at the party thus signaled to all he might someday be heir to the throne.

To dispel a downstair rumor, our dying tycoon – still as vulnerable as Hawkeye in M*A*S*H* ( when mistaken for a driver ) – dropped his pants ( you believe me now? ). By all indication, he visibly (not to the audience) wasn’t capable of sleeping with the boy’s Good-Samaritan mom even if he had wanted to.

How can someone achieve that much? By studying and play-acting multiple lives, while emptying his own. Glibly and fluidly at ease in various roles – he came across relatable but not without a darker shadow i.e. to gamely play along where the acting leads e.g. holding up a chest X-ray to the sun as one would when viewing an eclipse through a pair of 3D glasses: Gould’s set-up : ” Oh, I will need an assistant “- at the operating table in Japan and as a golf buddy while in-country.

In the opening scene he just took off in an Army jeep (stolen) ” Yes Sir”. In the end, Robert Altman closed Hawkeye’s in-country tour with ” Did he just steal our Jeep?” ” No sir, that’s the one he came in with” ( false license plate screwed on during the entire war-weary stay).

The scores of “Suicide is painless” define M*A*S*H*. On UHF channel, watching its rerun late at night, with my father – after a decade of being apart- on the couch next to me, I put self recrimination behind and myself to sleep. That sound, thwap thwap thwap, soothed my soul and stayed with me – bridging the Pacific oceans mixing pain and pleasure in the mid-80’s (Do you want to hurt me? Do you want to make me cry? oh boy, Boy George, Sweet dreams are made of this).

In Altman’s hands, comedy are made out of tragedy, a scene out of a shower where the whole medic mob turned out in anticipation of the “lynching” – in this case, a complete collapse of an Army unisex tent to unveil our soaking wet Hot Lips in full hormonal rage.

That much irreverence (well aligned with One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest) wrapped up that era’s articulated and calculated protest against: the Cambodia bombing, Kent State shooting, monk burning and high-profile assassination. From “Ask Not what your country can do for you” to – to fold or to flee (via the up State lakes to Canada)- in Hayden’s words: “it’s the isms that caused the schisms”.

Before ” that’s the way I have always heard it should be”, we found malaise, crisis of confidence, the eroding trust in institution and mis-direction of leaders who got followers into the jungle of Vietnam and the jungle of Guyana (Jim Jones).

I have been on the trail to Tustin, I been to Austin just like Neil Young’s “ been to Redwood, been to Hollywood….looking for a heart of gold, and I am getting old.”

There is nothing “ordinary” in those post-VN Cold-war decades except for tragedy in high frequency.

But occasionally, some shooting star, from Canada – to where draft-dodgers used to flee- graced us with light-hearted medic pranks (injecting morphine to the opposing team’s running back or the suicidal black pill for company dentist’s “Last Supper”) – fierce and fun – as if one could remain forever young as a permanent student in Animal House.

R.I.P. Donald Sutherland, so “ordinary” a human being yet lived life in full-range. His passing makes us wonder how many lives we could’ve had yet remain unlived.

“Did he just steal our Jeep?” ” No Sir, it’s the one he came in with”.

When living and working near death, what does one have to fear and loose!

“Suicide is painless” on A- track and on B-track, the thwap thwap thwap of medivac alert ( I really really miss you Dad, not just during our 75-85 unfortunate absence – we certainly were no ” Ordinary People” whose ending shows Sutherland hugging Timothy Hutton, saying “I love you”).

Kiefer, know how you feel

Neither Hippies nor Yuppies, I just wanted to skip some Maslow Hierarchy steps and get to the meat (self-actualizing) of things. Thanks to student-loan deferred years, I volunteered in Asia and Africa – front-ending my giving – energy, time and com-passion (as opposed to wait and accumulate spare change and spare time to donate “stale” leisure seeking years to charity work overseas). It’s my self-funded version of Peace Corps “ask not” – what the suffering world can do for you…

Upon re-entry, I had to start over i.e. $100-suit $50-car, hitting the pavement: Sales, then Alternate Sales Channel, Multi-Cultural Direct Sales, Revenue Assurance and Train the trainers in Long-Distance Telephony and Voice-mail system with front-desk folks gave me the look.

As the looming Y2K scare approached, heralding the imminent death of long distance, we were all pumped with adrenaline: even elevators and microwave ovens seemed way too slow. Wall Street was rumbled as robber barons prowled, scouted and land-grabed the Next Big Thing: WorldCom bought MCI number 2 with hyper stocks, ATT and British Telecom joined in a Concert, Time-Warner ” got email” from AOL; all the while MCI held on to Vint Cerf of Distributed Architecture – still is in and of full use today in Ashburn, VA (Money – still – Coming In). Information and data pipe.

Everyone tried to connect the world via whatever communication technology: Telephony, VoIP and Dial Around. The same mission and model of Meta and Big Tech today, albeit under the shadow of globalization and its discontent. The more technology (the way), the more reluctant we call on our fellow human being (the will). Instead, we become test subjects for the new “distributed” experiment, with robot-calls, bot-mail and rabbit holes. Permission and subscription marketing. I agree.

People are different yet universal in their love for families, respect for the elderly and an uncompromising commitment to educating younger generations. They may say change is the only constant but actually, it’s human nature that is: reciprocity for small acts of kindness, shared tips for mutual survival, say one thing and do another, hence hope of an eternity with more fairness and fulfillment.

At MCI, our group (International Market Direct) was rolled under Direct Sales (US). Quarterly meetings held all over the country. By design, I was cross-trained deep and wide: even with company shirt in a 4K run, covering all the bases with micro targeting: Little Tokyo, Little Saigon, Little Havana despite their undercurrent universality e.g. traditional diet, spiritual ties and clan loyalty, albeit scattered and extended family with ocean apart.

So ingrained and ingratiated that on my vacation to London, I drifted unconsciously towards its Chinatown out of curiosity (even Chinatown NYC is different from Chinatown SF per regional adaptation and accent).

Quite an occupational hazard!

It is lucky to belong to a sub-culture group let alone a multi ones.

Cultures mastery requires deep diving and broad strokes, context and nuances. Even today, Shadows in Paradise and Netherland are required reading for me. Kindness can be found in unlikely places, in different people and their view of sports and heroes. Homo sapiens to homo sapiens.

Despite its high wall of steel (and papers) – I owe this to Remarque, the United States, for one reason or another, has been graced and enriched with long-distance strivers, When Corporate comes knocking, small ethnic business owners took notice. A wide range of them, embedded in their community with native mastery.

On a typical “sales call”, I walked them through the “indemnity clause”, explained “Acts of God” and made sure their sales reps don’t wear MCI uniforms (since they were another layer away from a W-9 outsourcing contract). We provided the backhauling and backbone switching capabilities; they on-the-ground mouthpieces. Most were leaders in their respective community, operated out of makeshift “embassies” of rumors and gossips: Pakistanis, Eastern European, Chinese/Vietnamese and a garden-variety of Latinos under the Hispanic umbrella.

Often clustered along coastal cities, foreign folks turned sales agents were more at home in warmer weather and thrived better in urban face-to-face culture (port of entry), unlike European emigrant counterparts who at first had crowded in Northeast tenements.

By getting to know these beautiful strangers, I learned not just geography and demography, but also psychology – underneath their tough bearded facade – a soft longing for their homeland, roots and soul cuisine. Long-distance telephony serves as a bridge, reconnecting hearts across the pond (very much as depicted by Michael Corleone who went into hiding in Sicily, leveraging his father’s hide-away from the pursuit of rival gangs and the long arms of justice).

You may say the US is a melting pot or a salad bowl. You may say it’s a synthetic country or a syncretistic society. Yes, indeed, but you got to “serve somebody” like in a Dylan line.

People called themselves “American communication agency” to mask their foreignness or P.J (initial-only) to abbreviate extremely long un-Anglicized last names; all to avoid erecting unneeded barriers to buying. Once I visited an office in the now-no-more Twin Towers and guess what: outside the door: s/t s/t American, but inside it’s a Chinese outfit seeking outsourcing contracts.

Broadband excess breeds splintered off channels and nodes, and gave rise to narrow casting, just as once predicted by the likes of Alvin Toffler we all read in college (and now, infinite numbers of creators and publishers called yout-Ubers and Ubers).

It’s hard for newcomers to frictionlessly and fluidly fit into our socially opened slots – members only society – (even at the DMV, with updated software, one is lucky to obtain a driver license within a month). Now, with available bandwidth, the melting pot slowly dissolves to make place for a digital salad bowl – Hollywood and Bollywood, TikTok and Twitter.

Their journey to Paradise was paved not with gold, but with more paperwork. We, the agent recruiter, was of no exception. More filing e.g. FCC 214, like corporate lawyers hustling for pre-paid legal contracts. With a Telecommunication license, they could privately brand their bills (without knowing on this side of the Internet, everybody can be an Alex Jones).

The so-called “others”: unspoken, invisible and dismissed as irrelevant, have conveniently been cast in shady light. Villains used to be white bounty hunters – De Niro’s Midnight Train (or of mixed-race gangsters e.g. Jeff Goldblum in Death Wish before Big Chill).

Immigration (trailing theaters of war which moved around the globe) evolves to include and induct more folks from different countries of origin. Then Hollywood took notice. In the name of realism, casting agencies (follow the vein of clinical trial trail) add a tat of darker-skin tone for antagonist (just crank up the dolly to make them look small and devious), e.g. in Trading Places, John Landis upended this stereotype by placing Eddie Murphy way low, as Eddie pulled an “Eddie” on two beat cops – by pretending to be a blind and crippled VN vet.

Go ahead, make my day. Just “a few dollars more”.

Lately that pendulum swings back with “Everything Everywhere all at once”… whose nominated Oscar best support actor says” Don’t give up on your dream” (the American dream i.e. better FDA, school and traffic safety). Netflix certainly cast a wider net (as of this edit, they cross-package w/ Hulu and others).

While get-away cars get smaller, bad guys grow darker. Back in “Dog Day afternoon”, or The Chase, robbers used to ask for a bus (to transport banking hostages to the airport). Now a days, they upgrade to a chopper.

People in the field (back to sales agent) behave differently: less formal. No appointment necessary. Just drop in unannounced. One agent even doubled up as a pizza man, while another sold lavender perfumes for supplemental income. While crossing a street of San Francisco, I was flanked by two tall Croatians: one with no hair, the other lots of it. All three of us at different times, refugees of a distant conflict; yet none with “flowers in their hair “. Wall Street whiz met Main Street smart (just follow Mike Douglas filmography from Summer Tree to Wall Street to Falling Down).

Between corporate (Wall St) expectations and market (multicultural marketing) demand, we strived. Pull and push. Riding two horses everywhere all at once.

Our group grew stronger, smarter and swifter. During the Chinese/Vietnamese New Year season of events, I did not sleep for a month, knowing the revenue base acquired per rule 78, will balloon to a hefty fiscal year (while co-existed with a nagging fear that tech ride itself per Wall Street greed would not last long).

We also had a “charge the bunker “mentality, to take down the incumbent (only to see its grass grow back) like a David against the Goliath (ATT). BTW, MCI “Jack the Giant slayer” used to tape the sole of his shoes so they wouldn’t flap. Microwave Communications Inc had its start with installing “microwave equipment” to connect Chicago-St Louis-route truckers. In a published story, he was reportedly shivering in Windy-City cold – without a coat – hence easily blended in as “one of us” (when trying to make copies of ATT documents for court filing) I could relate to this, schooling and shivering near Joliet for two years.

Telephony (grandfathered by Telegraph) itself has been replaced by the Internet, which in turn, bows down to generative AI and Chat GPT, Nvidia and Intel (fintech, biotech and infotech), Amazon & Apple chips and TSMC chips.

Back then, Microsoft bought out everybody yet missed out the rise of TCP/IP (instead, it bought out Skype and Nokia). Everybody is into AI now. With Anglicized names, preferably feminine to mask the more “male” hardware behind it. At the cost of our taxpayers and past invention (OSI model which enabled physical and network layers, to make app one possible).

I learned then and now, that Karma run across cultures and times while people strive and sacrifice for next generations (law-abiding, tax-paying high achievers), in movies as in real life (Michael’s line:” just as I thought I am ready to…”mainstream”…they pull me right back in ” i.e. gunning down his little girl outside on the steps of the concert hall, Coppola’s own real life daughter.)

I also know first-generation businessmen cheated and evaded tax, all cash under-the-table. Supermarkets of exotic foods with no Superman’s watching eyes – often opened the back doors to long-distance callers and cash suppliers at night (time difference, cash and carry). Since we were in the possession of call details: date, duration and destination, we just factored them in as promotional cost of doing business – necessary to grease our day-time deals (to secure good locations). Data rich versus data poor, East West, North and South shores.

People cried, argued and screamed, broke up and made up over the phone as if higher octave and louder voice will better solve problems at home while full-timing abroad (imagine the same with the Pentagon and that Colonel with a bullhorn played by Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now) or the way protective mothers (Claudine) yelling at their kids over the ocean waves.

By running agents in the field, I crisscrossed the invisible line, with English as my sling shot; knowing full well across the table sat prospects who had been conditioned to self-editorialize per harsh upbringing. It takes one to know one. Those social tests can only be overcome with time and trust. Some scholars call this “weapons of the weak” e.g. time, patience, tolerance and endurance.

In looking forward, I hope you do visit an ethnic restaurant (Afghan or Somalian) or travel to a foreign port (like the Fonz currently in Dublin, straight out of the AARP cover page) or locally get to know a Syrian family (with a young girl volunteering at nearby community health center in hopes of getting on its medical payroll) – As long as the lemon trees still grow.

Watch Bill Murray’s Rock the Kasbah and put yourself in the shoes of that brave girl who secretly rehearses:” Oh baby baby it’s wide world”.

The road from Main Street to Wall Street, from back door to front door, from obtaining an alien number to getting a Social Security number, lay myriads of obstacles. Both corporate and small business want to thrive, both recognize the 2-thousand-pound gorilla: the new robotic reality and an army of W-9 sellers on eBay and Amazon.

AI works the alley, providing “ghost work” to extract human expertise on behalf of its Wall Street lords. We’re transitioning from face2face, one-on-one conversation to a many-to-many society, with AWS and the likes, exploiting and extracting every venue every minute of every day. Prime or non-prime, from OPM to Other People’s Time (sharing economy’s prosumers e.g. self-service in the name of taming inflation, yet helping behemoths build their towers of Babel – w/ Mechanical Turk – ever green, ever learning and improving).

It (technological society) prides on being efficient and infallible, in hopes of helping helpless human connect; by bits and bi-nary data, while analog human- in all colors, shapes and penchants for irrationality drift further apart as hidden costs and unintended consequense.. Miscommunication and its discontent (when will wealth ever trickle down – except only for the rung just below the top 1 per cent per some studies e.g. the original Chef at Apple HQ). Modernity always plays to win, cultures of the West, and cut-throat labor/raw resources of the Rest.

Not long ago, kids from East Europe drove Beamers after hours on their keyboards, pretending to be someone else to influence election in the US. An in-place, reverse assault without a need to get in line to fill out tons of forms and paperwork as early immigrants.

I could have enjoyed a longer telephony life (unlike my predecessors of Baby Bells). But then, the journey is the reward. Despite our differences and no matter what some may say to self-elevate at someone else’s expenses, America will always reach for the stars, seek new heights and retain decent standards, while not trying to solve crisis abroad in cookie approach and hopes that problems at home somehow self- dissipate.

America has nursed its wound, has been “torn between two lovers” since LBJ. Now, more aids, no boots to Ukraine. Time has un-cubed and uncuffed people this side of the Atomic Bomb. Have you noticed both Zelensky and Zuckerberg are always in their T-shirts? Quite an optic contrast to Yalta conference (where three leaders posed in coat for Peace messaging).

The long-tail nature of our Internet allows initial divisive social media. While data over the distance reaches near zero cost (given ample broadband connectivity) students of cross-cultures know the hardest gap to bridge is the last few inches between people. Judy Woodruff has been following this story across America, in the tradition of Charles Kuralt and Studs Terkel.

That’s how I felt working as an agent runner in pre-internet era: breathless and sleepless, juggling multiple balls in the air and stressed out in LA traffic. Multi-cultural markets don’t congregate conveniently downtown with paid parking. We could not “text” our agents to delay an appointment since no one at the time had an I-phone or an App.

I often wonder what kind of a penniless masochist it would take to volunteer in Asia and Africa only to come home working for Corporate America (paid off student loan debt by spreading in all four). Between two irreconcilable and irritating worlds lie shadows and stones on which strange names finally are spelled out in full and in original forms.

Names once abbreviated to not hinder the flow and fluidity of technology, commerce and progress. Hippies, Yuppies, Luddites or plain-old-telephone (POT) strivers from a different shore. Bye Alexa.