Tag: Assembly line

The build-up

It’s like a can of worms, once opened, can never be put back.

Yet, that’s what makes us human: from A to B, we insist that a straight line is not the shortest. We have to factor in free will.

Even God respects that (by not forcing us to move quickly through Foxconn-like assembly line).

Our current network has also been designed that way: cache, redundancy, self-healing and load-balancing just to process data from point A to point B.

Our neuro-plasticity performs millions of calculation in milliseconds. “If you can read my mind”, “you won’t read that novel again because the ending is too hard to take”. Most recent finding tells us that we change more than we would admit (evolution in personalities). NYT 01-04-2013.

Seek those who bring the best version out of us.

Schools have done us disservice. Instead of ” edu-care” (bring out of us that which were already there), they try to put in and force fit the curriculum (which purportedly were carefully and thoughtfully designed by those who themselves had been force-fed).

Hence, we perpetuate and produce a planned society of “cogs” in the wheel whose heads are full of doctrine and dogma (stove pipes). No wonder we have problems communicating.

When something is introduced into the “system” (such as Free Will) with no scripted response, chaos and confusion are inevitable.

Like it or not, we are all in perpetual motion, but mostly in maintenance mode. Like an automobile, with engine revving and wheels churning, but is all jacked up, hence staying put.

Frustration leads to lack of confidence and enthusiasm.

Lack of  enthusiasm and lack of  passion give way to compliance. Dead men walking.

The build-up that eventually blows up.

Those who plan well factor this into the system. Controlled release.

Call it vacation, sabbath. Whatever. But  in a grandeur scale, individuals and institutions need periodical audit. How are we doing? Making any progress?

You look pale. Where is the fire? the light in your eyes. What has put it out?

“If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad?”

Get off the line. Go off grid. Go native. Go nature. Go free.

At the very least, be Live Man Walking, and not Dead Man Walking.

Do us and yourself a favor. Let not the build up blow you up. Man’s free will and God‘s (or Government’s) pre-determination. A tug of war for the soul, survivingg and not stifling.

Heart and Soul

The intangible qualities. We can only recognize them when we see them.

How can we put a measure on that which makes us human i.e. mortal yet full of life versus a machine whose sole existence is to carry out instructions and perform repetitive tasks without getting bored (the sad thing is when the machine gets to do interesting things, while human boring things).

Fordism has spreaded from automobile assembly line to the entire manufacturing process as we see today (Foxconn and workers’ tension).

Heart and Soul , however, are a bit elusive:  Air on the G String, Nocturne; Shubert can move you, a movie clip can make you feel  joyous or sad, elated or evaporated (The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face).

B movies and production houses have succumbed to poor substitutes e.g. sound track and laugh track.

Anything with an audience e.g. a lesson plan, a presentation, all-hands meeting; requires heart-and-soul delivery . To be flawless, one needs to go through 3 stages of rehearsal (courtesy of recent LinkedIn article on presentation rehearsal: You Sucks stage, Robotic stage, and finally You Rocks!).

Aim for standing ovation. Paint a broad stroke of vision, the type of speech Jesse Jackson would give at convention.

Facts and feeling. Sweat and tears. Fire and brimstone.

Orators of the past were known to speak at tent meetings for hours on end, most notably John Wesley. Today we only have day-time television which caters to the lowest common denominators : “Jerry, Jerry” ( with bouncers on the set). Or Maury, Maury …also w/ bouncers.

Jean-Luc Godard said: “all we need for a movie is a gun and a girl”. Hence, it seems as though all content was just  to fill the programming gap, waiting  to sell soap, soup and cereal.

Via Twitter, we saw glimpses of greatness, but only in 140 characters.

To stir the heart and soul, we need some work-up time.

Warm them up then chill them out. Stirring and settling.

Then BAM!. Hit them at the gut level. A call to ACTION.

Truth  has its own ring and can stand on its own legs.

Don’t get in its way.

Fear not.

Ask not.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.

I have a dream.

Man from Hope.

It took a village.

Great orators stirred us and their sound bites stayed with us.

We feel a lump in our throat. It resonates and reinvigorates us.

It stirs up our Heart and our Soul.

It passed muster.

Quality is what you recognize when you see it.

The rest, any machine can do, at the automobile or chocolate factory.

Le Temp Modern. I love Lucy. Foxconn Apple plants. From Detroit to Disneyland, at the turn of  the 20th century to present time, are we happier now? (studies show China experiencing similar dissonance i.e. wealthier, but not happier, due to eroded “iron rice bowl”). Or the gas line and hot-dog line (at Cosco) have weighed you down?

Wake up Hot-Dog Nation. We can do better. Think and Ask Not. Feel the pain. Use it. Start rising. And don’t stop there. Have a dream. A different dream (by definition dreams are supposed to be out of this world. What are you being afraid of: that it might come true?)  Seek First. That Thy will be done,….but first on Earth.

Repo and Retro

We don’t want the former, and wish to collect the latter.

In our age of mass production, supplysiders push consumption to the  point of writing up bad loans, hence Repo.

Then, and this happened to me once, products came out of the assembly line all look alike: I once mistakenly opened an identical rental car (Taurus) and it even started until I found out my laptop wasn’t in the back seat.  Now, we want Retro because of its obvious scarcity.

On weekend, we see different lifestyles at play: Harley fans, sport cyclists, families on outing, baseball league and of course, retro car owners, parking their souped-up automobiles in Main Street Old Town. Onlookers must have felt a mix of envy and admiration. Nothing feels better than a waxed-up oldie.

In contrast, miles and miles of repo cars are found next to “salvaged” cars in our industrial wasteland. Repo men branded them with chalk. Same steel. But the retros are well-kept while the repos are sold for parts.

What a difference in attitude and emotional investment.

This unchecked attitude can get carried over to how we treat people.

When we love someone or think positively about that person, we treat them (even if they are old or have passed their useful phase) as “retro”.  In contrast, when we found no utility value out of them, they are essentially, in our eyes, repos.

Their values are now up to the bean counters to decide. Fair market value for repo and increased value over time for retro.

We need to retrain and keep that child-like innocence, to look at life anew. To see people’s value and worth. In the age of mass production, we push consumption and adoption (I-phone 5 and new markets like China). But have we developed the ability to tell the difference between people and product? (to make things worse, career coaches often recommend us to “package” ourselves and “reinvent” ourselves, just as they had once failed with the New Coke. Or that discarding habit has spilled over to the inner sanctum of our hearts? The way McNamara used to crunch the numbers during the Vietnam War (ROI means how many casualties on each side etc..).

I will never forget the characters in “Never Let Me Go” by Ishiguro. They were “created” to serve as industrial organ donors (Repo) to preserve Retro (rich people who can afford surgery to replace their failed organs). While waiting to “donate” their body parts, the main character, Ruth, asked “Why did you collect our art works then”. “Just to see you got soul at all” replied the Principal.  There is a line to be crossed over from Retro to Repo. Then the issue looms larger than just a misspell. It’s a cancer growing undetected in our post-industrial society on steroid.

My SAAB story

OK, I took a picture standing next to the convertible SAAB I won, but I took the cash option ( for grad student loan).

Now, this brand, along with Pontiac and Saturn, will soon be relics of the past.

We have a lot of In’s/Out’s at the end of this decade: ABC new anchor, BoA new CEO…

It’s been a strange decade. “Overloading” is the word.

On top of Y2K, 9/11 and 06.08 Recession, I have some personal reshuffling, not to mention the deaths of my parents

and father-in-law.

All along, I knew Google would hit the jack pot and  Voice will be at near-zero pricing ( even when bundled with wireless).

I have been privileged with friends and colleagues online (thank you Social Networking sites).

We went through a lot together, some have gone with me through 5 companies.

And I don’t remember when I do away with watching Network news at 6:30PM.

Perhaps by 6:30, I have already got “informed” with pop-up news online, radio and cable news.

PBS format of the News Hour stays very consistent and this has been a blessing in disguise (amidst uncertainty and change).

I have worked out of home a lot during this decade, except for a few years of commuting to Santa Monica from Orange County, and a few months abroad.

I don’t understand people who not only make money with “the 4-hour work week”.

Naturally, this decade has seen:

– cutting the wire line phone

– doing away with the fax machine

– Skype becomes the new wire line (w/headset)

– driving smaller vehicles, if at all

– watching HDTV

– lost taste in ties (what color and pattern is in now? )

– hardly see “chain” e-mail regarding Microsoft handouts, or Nigerian fake uncle’s will

– Vista Operating System gone

I enjoy all the feedback loops, collaborative tools and open-source in this Brave New New World.

Next decade?

CD‘s will join the fate of cassette tapes, books belong to those archives, and students don’t carry hard back text (just E-reader and other gadgets).

More on-screen heroes will emerge from the East, to retire Jackie Chan ( a new Bruce Lee).

Boomers will volunteer to build a more conscious-raising society.

They have been witnesses to changes, from social to technological, from local to global.

That generation is worth listening to (who wouldn’t want to be critiqued by Robert Redford at Sundance when trying to make a film).

And perhaps, the most anticipated happening of the next decade is the Next Big Thing.  Maybe it will be out of Shanghai or Mumbai. Keep your mileage plus handy. You might need it for those long flights. But this time, no more lugging those hard-back books (Tom Clancy) or heavy lap tops. And, leave your tie home.