Tag: IPod

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.

Strange sounds, familiar shores

Instead of “I woke up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me…” like Paul McCartney,

I woke up to strange sounds these days: peddlers who use “low tech” au parleur (bull horn) mounted on bicycles or tri-cycles (selling boot-legged CD‘s). In fact, it was my first time got chased by pleasant sound from behind (most of the time, it was emergency vehicle with a sense of urgency). By music here, I mean, not Beatles‘, but Slow Rock (nhac Sen), lamenting heart ache and heart-break.

In the evening, you can hear metal belt sound for in-home massage ( I have never tried).

I miss those wood-on-wood sound of a noodle peddler.

Those were the best snacks a boy could wish for. Speaking of Vietnam childhood and music.

Steve Jobs and friends were listening to music with headsets so they could do it while laying down.

One of his signature photos was an empty room with just a lamp, with him sitting cross-legged.

Very Zen-like. Minimalist. Pure simplicity in design.

He went on to take classes in calligraphy (even Reed College curriculum was still too restrictive for his type).

The sum of all these experience gave us the I-pod with ear-plugs, and later on the I-phone and I-pad.

Studies mentioned that babies could hear before birth.

If this is true, I must have heard an early scooter, a vendor on wheels, someone trying to get the grill going, or a rooster announcing a new day.

Dawn in Vietnam and dusk in the US. (You can experience similar feel, let’s say by traveling down Mexico, but then they got the same time zone as in the US).

Sharing the same Moon.

Sharing the same hope, fear and dream:

Will my kids grow up “con nha lanh” (teachable), and not into drugs.

Will they stay or leave for strange shores?

Will they listen to our voice, those familiar sounds, or they will just “follow the money” and “hearing voices”.

In the end, especially in our flat world, the sound of jet engine and popping soda cans will bring us home from any strange shore.

For a moment there at my friend’s party, we danced and jumped to a familiar tune (sound), felt our hearts go on beating (The End of the World) and saddened “when you say, ‘goodbye'”. The day can’t go wrong when you “get up to the sound of music”, let’s say in “Beautiful Sunday” (when you said, you love me, hey, hey, it’s a beautiful day). Or at night, when soothing sound you first heard while inside Mummy’s womb was that of the noodle man’s peddling.

Nano in the wind

Kansas didn’t expect its slow number to be a hit, but there it was: Dust in the Wind.

I am privy to have met three gentlemen, all Vietnamese nano technology scientists.

Through them, I learn about our next frontier, not out there, but right here e.g. coconut shells from which carbon nano tubes can be extracted with the right equipment and technique.

It will be a while before these findings found themselves into your Wal-mart stores.

But for now, nano tech has defense, health care, pharmaceutical and solar applications.

I am sure the ethicist and novelist have debated the implications of nano toxicity and runaway technology (Prey).

We need those debates just as we had when the atomic bomb was first invented.

As a nation, I don’t think we have responded well to Secretary of Energy Chu’s call to action (that if all our roofs get a new coat of white paint, we would reduce carbon emission substantially). The upcoming Kyoto summit should divide up carbon ration per nation.

Nano is the new plastic. Dustin Hoffman‘s counselor would have to redub his line  in “the Graduate“. Every 40 years or so, we see a new game changer e.g. from dirty coal to clean room. I’d rather see creative destruction than self-destruction.

Next Gen has grown up digitally e.g. Kindle, Reader and whatever else. Broadcast your line, your script and your ads to our hand-held device.

24/7 streaming. “We are mad like hell, and we won’t take it anymore”, yelled a generation of Network audience.

This time, they seem more in control, and participate in reallocating “power, to the people”. Nobody is leading this time.

Just the Net which is neutral. Emanuel, White House Counsel, or Emanuel, Fox News White House correspondent, both are treated the same, as far as the Net is concerned. Just 1 and 0, at whatever broadband speed you buy.

All that remains…nano in the wind. Years from now, Kansas’ Dust in the Wind is stilled listened to, more than all their other rock numbers combined. Quite unintended. Just like our many scientific discoveries, among them, nano technology.

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