Tag: IPhone

Tech talk

NYT‘s David Brooks zoomed out to reveal the evolution of our social philosophy, from care for the Soul, to Personality then eventually to Decision-making (data deluge).

This is the age of the intelligent machine. Massaging data. Algorithm and Analytic.

No wonder, machine language also creeps into our daily speech.

Let’s try to pin them down.
First we google it.

Terms like cramming, cookies, cache . Technology trumps  theology.

A friend tries to ramp up her business. But she needs to retool herself with business and soft skills.

Let’s get cranked up. You are running low on bandwith.

He gunned the engine, but given high gas price of late, he ended up running on empty.

He hardly processes the information before pulling the plug on the project.

One needs to fast-track the program. Otherwise, we call it pre-empt.

EV Battery company runs out of juice, but us human runs low on battery.

With the advent of social media, we are inundated with invitations from strangers whom we don’t want to interface with.

He goes about his day on auto-pilot.

We are analog creatures using digital devices.

Just pop the TV dinner into the microwave.

You look stressed. You need to press “reset”.

Please scan your right index finger for identification, raise and stretch both arms (let everything drop) for the metal-detector.

The class doesn’t tune in to the lecture tonight.

I am exhausted; I need to reboot.

If you rushed to market , you might crash.

As far as this relationship goes, it’s been on screen-saving mode.

Exhausted, I feel I need a massage to recharge.

There was a time in the 60’s when terms like “groovy”, “swell” etc.. appeared then disappeared.

It is to show as a species, we do move on to better “versions”. In social psychology, we concentrate on WE (60’s), then ME (70’s) and now IT (the machine). Someday, it will be MIT (me and machine – Ipod, Iphone, Ipad going to bed together. My nephew sleeps with the I-pad on, to listen to audio-books).

Issues like interoperability, integration and convergence were dealt with in the Bicentennial Man.

In the end, Robin Williams who  played the Machine, asked to be terminated. He regret not being able to cry, like us.

Life is like peeling the onion, one layer at a time. Sometimes, it makes us cry. I would rather die a man than to live in eternity as a machine, quoted Andrew Martin. In other words, please “unplug” me when it’s time to go. Someone quoted aptly that “Jesus wept”. Crying has been a privilege.

It also makes us human. It even makes God human. Empathic we are. I feel for the machine, who no matter at what speed of processing, cannot shed tears. Maybe David Brooks can write a code to teach the machine to evolve, from data and decision matrix to have some personality, and eventually to care for the Soul. Man and Machine can then meet half-way.

Social boosters

We stand on the shoulders of giants: wheel, movable types, steam engines, electricity and the internet.

Now Iphone 5.

Larger screen, one extra row of icons, aerial and panoramic view.

Information on the go.

I can rattle on.

We are at a point when our ways (technology) are growing faster than our use (apps).

Because of the Iphone 5  panoramic view, am I to travel to the Grand Canyon to take advantage of this new feature?

With Google Earth, do I keep looking at my ex’s house from out-of-state?

After a few trials, we will get bored and move pass new-toy stage.  Not that I am ungrateful.

I do, however, appreciate all the help I have got, as once said, “it took a village”.

My Acknowledgement page should be exhaustive: from parents to people I don’t get to see any more. But also the coffee vendor whose son I befriended during my last months in Vietnam.

People who day in and day out got up early, and get the coffee  hot and ready.

Social boosters.

I appreciate the invisible bakers and dishwashers. People who are portrayed in “Nickel and Dime”.

Soon, we will have fewer of those: milkman and mailman, paper boy and cable guy.

All the jobs seem to have been shipped somewhere else. End of  men.

The US retains high-touch high-value jobs while off-shoring its manufacturing base  (thus rendered irrelevant many civil-rights accomplishments such as EOE).

Latest indicators show Switzerland and Singapore in the top-tier, while the US and Japan trailing in  World Economy (competitiveness).

Still I miss and am grateful for social support, social interaction and yes, occasional social friction.

Now, we order things online, self-serve at the pump, mix our own soda drinks or ice cream flavors and even design our own T-shirts. We have morphed from being a Con-sumer to being a Pro-sumer (even the IT admin will soon be packing because of the iCloud, gas-station attendants because of the EV charging stations or cash-only kiosks. JetBlue, SouthWest both let passengers book their flights and self-checkin).

I  miss those social boosters. Where would I be today without them.

We stand on shoulders of giants, inventors of the past, but also on “nickel and dime” folks. Soon, we will have to say thanks to the machine, which seems to have beaten us to the punch.

See me, text me, group me, call me…

When I saw a near accident today (a beat-up car driver, on the cell phone, backing up and brushing my neighbor’s mail box – which pulled my neighbor out of the door, in the middle of a mobile call himself), I realized we were indeed in a different era (from one which people sat on the front porch, chatting face to face).

So ATT needs to go big infrastructure-wise (when bankers get in the mobile banking game, we know we are no longer content with just online banking from home). It essentially undoes the 1984 break-up back in the copper era. The strategy at the time was, whoever owned the “last mile” to the house wins. Mid-80’s happened to see the rise of Motorola brick phones which got more mobility and apps e.g. meet-up and mash-up.

Can you see me? Can you hear me?

If any group that needs to adopt latest tools for business development, it would be the porn and charity groups. The former has always been early adopters of technology (VHS, cable, and now .xxx domain), while the later, relies on donation to survive, hence, relying on the best tools out there.  I still am not getting used to seeing Red Cross signs which say, “Help Japan“. In my mental positioning, Japan was up there with best of the best. No offense, I wouldn’t think twice when the sign flashes “Help Haiti” or the like.

We indeed are ushered into the real 21st century, when our old mental maps don’t jibe with what’s out there (from Big Mac to Big Moon).

To top all this, Victoria Secret came up with a coupon which acts as a lottery.

The tag line stated that “even us, we don’t know what the amount is. It remains a Secret”. Oh well, chances are, it’s $10 coupon, enough to pay for shipping charges.

I am excited about apps like GroupMe etc… because we often are separated from the group, let’s say in Vegas, by chance or by choice.

GroupMe and the likes enhance our field trip experience.

Corporate outings can exploit this app or extended families, like mine, who are scattered across the country and world.

Blogs and posts are too passive. GroupMe satisfies the demand for immediacy and mobility.

Still, I like the Who’s line, when edited in slow motion (despite the constraint of audio connectivity, they did what they could to increase mobility, in this case, vertical jump to defy gravity itself)”..Feel Me, Heal me..through you, I can see the  Billions….” It’s Billions, with a B.

the Who

supply chain dilemma

First they outsourced to lower the cost of, let’s say, an I phone.

The guy (Chinese farm-to-factory worker) if not jumped out of the window from a Foxconn‘s dorm, wished he had because there was no way he could afford one. Even his counterparts in NYC had to get in line just to hand carry the same phone back to China for a profit.

Meanwhile, leaders are scratching their heads, trying to turn that same worker into a domestic consumer. So, he needs and wants a raise. Wage increases drive up production costs, making it less affordable for emerging domestic market.

Or, because of the innovator’s dilemma, product cycle, market adoption and planned obsolescence, consumers taste moves on to Galaxy etc…just as you adjusted your production strategy (Dell just-in-time, then went Retail, then went private).

It’s hard for young people in China and Vietnam not to want an I Phone. It’s harder to keep their wages down while aspiration is up. Meanwhile, the US needs jobs here at home. The same with European countries which can offer quality workmanship (even though for years, they haven’t had a decent manufacturing order to practice their skills ).

For IT outsourcing and cloud computing, it’s easy to “follow the sun”. But for manufacturing it is hard to pick up and move, then move back. Two trends seem to recently emerge in the US: resource-sharing (ride and facility), and reshoring.

A few workers jumped out of the window in China signals the beginning of many  to follow elsewhere.  Remember we live in an interconnected interdependent world where one-upmanship now spans the globe (Indian IT workers are seen partying just like counterparts in Silicon Valley during Happy Hour).

One CEO is nominated CEO of the Year (Netflix), two CEO’s going bankrupt (Blockbuster and MGM).

I got a Sixth Sense. I see dead people. The time, they are a’ changin.  The guy who hummed it (Bob Dylan) was featured in a WSJ article as slipping due to aging.

We got enough worries about the ever expanded and contracted cycles of long-tail product but short-term people.

Ford was quite correct to make the model T’s affordable to his workers (whose wages were quit high). That seemed to put the dilemma to rest in his time. Times, they are a changin, since Model T to I phone. Quite a gulf to cross from creators to consumers.

California Dreaming

TIME spotlights California on its cover this week.

As a country, California would be with the G8 ( between Italy and Brazil, thus displacing BRIC with CRIC  i.e. California, Russia, India and China).

Yet it has no world-class soccer team (despite having in-shored Beckham) just yet. That’s said, it is one of the brownest States in the Union. And it will stand tall, demographically and technologically.

I wrote about the up-trading Taco truck in my earlier blog. TIME also showed a Korean BBQ truck  using Twitter to announce its stops (high-tech high touch).

What surprised me was foreign students’ major in the State: more chose Business and Management over Science, Math and Engineering (exactly what the Chinese need to move up the value chain).

With 13 percent Asian, California has a natural inroad to Asia (just a plane-hop away).

Washington State has also capitalized on its geographic “proximity” to set up strong ties with the East (and sell some apples, Window and Starbucks while at it).

Who wouldn’t want to live in California: paradise and paradox, problems and promises, most congested freeways, yet greenest state. It has a underexploited Modesto and an overexposed Hollywood , clean tech and bio tech; gay and straight.

California is home to dream factories (Disney and Dream Work). So enamoured with the big screen that the State elected actors to be its Governor not once but twice. Its script keeps getting a rewrite even on location (budget cut? well, hold up a knife Governor. “This is a knife” the line last said by Crocodile Dundee on his first visit to the Big Apple). It’s used to be “Go West young man!” Now, it’s keeping going West and follow the sun.

I talked to people in the Orient and they wanted to come and live in California. To them, California is America (especially if they have a free account on Yahoo, own an I-Phone and watch YouTube, all California home-grown, like its wine and raisins). In up scale China, one can find new developments that were modeled after Newport Beach.

“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray”. If the gubernatorial race is an early indicator of things to come, we are in great shape. After all, anything can happen in a dream, or when we “sit down and pray”. The truth is, my relationship with California has been a dysfunctional one, as is the State.

Despite its high costs of living, California is where you’ll find innovation around the corner, or in the garage .

Californians don’t do attic or basement like East-Coast counterparts. They compose music on wheels (Jewel), produce TV shows on wheels (Jay Leno), and of course, cater tacos on wheels. Year round, they don’t need the bottom half of their jeans (hence the cut off or zip out). This recession and recent gold price peak led a bunch of people to the high mountain, once again, creating a mini Gold Rush, California’s original raison d’etre.

Most listened to is its rush hour traffic report. Least visited is the downtown LA library, before or after the fire. When EReader and Kindle get full adoption, they will turn library into museum .  What’s hip in California (women volleyball, muscle beach) can’t be easily duplicated .  This Wednesday, Google will team up with Lala to help us search for that “California Dreaming” tune. Just a phrase, such as “I walk into a church” can trigger a bot crawl.

Or ” I’ll be back” to pop up the Terminator. It doesn’t hurt to have a Governor with sound bites or once picked up a dumb bell in what remained of  a LA fire.

And the media ate it up: light, camera, action (background lighting, actor, prop and audio). Keep dreaming California.

 

Apple in my eyes

 

Everybody loves a winner.

Today’s is Apple, starts with the “A” in the alphabet.

Not bad for a college drop-out who then learned calligraphy, hung out with “evangelist” Kawasaki, forced out then came back to the tune of billions. He embodied the “I” in I-phone.

I remember my first encounter with personal computers, and of course, it was a Mac.

Silicon Valley back in the early 80’s was brimming with S Asian programmers;  the Vietnamese-American community were working 2 or 3 shifts a day as assemblers (before the offshore trend).

You got to have a garage: garage band, garage sale, and start-up in garage. It’s cool to be in a garage, although it was meant for cars.

In California, you don’t freeze to death by sleeping in a garage, unlike in the cold Winter of the Northeast. Thus, it allows for start-up mindset and venture capitalist, risk takers, trend setters or just drifters.

You definitely find yourself there, because to go further West (young man), you will have to fly to Hawaii.

The best you can do is driving North, through Red Wood, onto Portland and Seattle.

Meanwhile, South of SF is sufficed.

It will keep you busy “coding” for a while.

What Steve Jobs brought to the business world is his signature turtle neck and a little bit of rebellious streak.

Meanwhile, he doesn’t mind to surround himself with the likes of Kawasaki, long before having an Asian partner becomes a hip (Yahoo, YouTube).

People of the Valley are not only Californians, but also tribal members of the Tech world. You don’t talk shop, you talk Tech. You are not the Man, you’re the Burning Man.

I remember attending a speech by Armstrong when he became CEO of AT&T. And having been at various start-ups

such as MCI and Teligent, I had a nagging feeling that you could not fake “coolness”.  In other words, you cannot be both the old IBM (blue suit) and the new new thing (like Apple). The elephant cannot walk.  Sure enough, after some “reality checks”, IBM sold off the hardware division to Lenovo to pursue the higher margin world of convergence and Cloud, while AT&T back then sold off NCR and other assets.

I admired the crowd Apple stores were able to draw in.

Apple takes it to the mass, at a boutique level, and bridges the gap between high-tech and high touch.

It’s been a long way since 1976 garage days. A lot of Chinese take-outs, brainstorming and risk taking.

It’s really tough to be number 1. Now the hard part is to stay King of the Hill. Apple in the post-Jobs era. Gotta Think Different this time.