Tag: Iranian Revolution

Reality bites

It’s Sunday. Jamming Sunday.

Singer-musician-owner of Van’s Unforgettable was kidding, after a round of live and unrehearsed performances that we should just play a commercially released CD  since we at times failed at recalling certain lyrics.

He had a point. The age of automation and atomization is here.

Each of us, with headset and  in private should just entertain ourselves.

IN THE COMING DECADES WE WILL EXPERIENCE A KIND OF NEUROSES THE WORLD HAS YET  HAD A CURE FOR.  Knowing everything yet not knowing anything.

Spying on everyone yet not knowing anyone.

Data rich, content poor.

Socially connected, but emotionally isolated.

Like the song by the Foreigner, “I want to know what love is…why don’t you show me”.

Mobile and cloud computing, with semi and soon full automation assembly, will lower the costs and increase personal computing power. Yet no eye- contact, no time for organic relationship.

The lost art of  the start : “Hi, my name is….”

In the 60’s, the anti-war group was cool “Hell No WE won’t go”.

In the 70’s, the me decade.

In the 80’s, the politicization of religious America (as a reaction to Iranian Islamic revolution). The We there was meant for many splintered groups, not just the Moral Majority.

In the 90’s, chip speed gets faster while at the same time, we  “got mail”.

So instead of getting inter-connected, we end up with the atomization or re-individuation this time mobile-enabled.

By 2020, we will have lived in a world utterly foreign to our parents.

The narcissistic propensity comes in full circle. First, in looking at his reflection in the water that Narcissus felt in love with himself.

Then, the witch looked at the mirror (who is the fairest of them all).

Now, it’s the crystal – Samsung or Apple – screen which is our digital mirror or still water.

People are using mobile phones to put on make-ups, to take pics of themselves etc…

To “friend” and “Like”.

Mostly, as a recent study by Solis, to project onto others that which happened to be theirs in the first place.

Sort of Paris-Hiltonian world. “Nobody f… with my family and gets away with it”.

She is our new “Godfather” personified:  famous and furious.

Lethal combo.

Sex symbol and icon of a new age. The age of virtuality. Of 4-hr work week. Of instant access and gratification.

The Orwellian world has arrived, except this time, it’s so democratized that you don’t recognize it.

So put on a CD. Click on play, replay and instant replay.

Puff, the magic Dragon. No wonder music has also evolved, from Peter Paul and Mary (communal 60’s) to Madonna’sMaterial Girl (greed is good) to Gaga, At the edge of Glory.

Who cares about attempts at creativity, or our feeble memory. The chips will do all our memorizing and processing. All we have to do is “amuse ourselves to death”. Sit back, relax, and take a pill. Protest not. And even if you do try, you won’t know how. The machine and the men behind it have it all figured out in their races to world’s domination. Wake up checkers in this new attrition war. This time  it’s neither cold nor hot. Just virtuality vs reality. A fight to the death – the mother of all realities.

Uplink-Upload

Remember Nightline when it first debut?

Satellite uplink made possible real-time, split-screen dialogue, with multi-continental guests and in-studio moderator.

Safer than appearing on Jerry Springer (which need at least two or three bouncers).

Now we have video upload from crowd source.  We have moved beyond “lonely girl” in front of a fixed web cam, to

high-resolution digital videophones that can run with the Iranian students in street protest.

These incidents somehow share a thread: technology and social history converge (uplink-upload, Iranian revolution and counter-revolution).

ATT was asking the public to refrain from using too much wireless bandwidth. The same people who were joking about Russian bread line are now asking others to ration their data consumption (brought back to mind “rolling black out” in CA ten years ago).

Spy kids have outgrown their allotted bandwidth (early days of Google at Standford U saw this happen as well).

It has been tough on network planners: back in the voice-only network, ATT used to plan for Mother’s Day calling traffic. Once you can handle that peak day, you are set for the rest of the year.

Now, even with all the Global Crossing, Qwest and Level 3 excess capacity, we don’t seem to have enough (turn on those dark fibers, Let there be Light!). Off-shoring makes sense because worker bees can operate in a 24/7 Information Conveyor belt, and VPN can “follow-the-sun” to load balance their network capacity.

Social networking, M-commerce and groundswell for companies to crowd-source will feed the network effect, as Web pages become more multi-media in appeal, attracting more viewers (not readers), whose attention load will only increase (same strategy which Portals like Yahoo tried to do in their inception). Today, we have roughly 3 Billion+ email users.

Socially, however, we have less face time, and become more attention-starved, esp the extroverted  among us. (I notice advertiser’s move away from the Organization Man – IBM clone, to tech-centric spoke persons for companies e.g.  UPS, Cable and Verizon.

It’s as if the stage hands are now MC’s of the show, retiring the PR-Marketing folks to the background to do SEO tedious work).

So much to read, so many people to chat with and scenes to upload.

Is it a great time to be alive or what!

Too bad even John Lennon couldn’t have “imagined” a multi-media world we have today, and it’s evolving still.

After all, 29 years is a long time to be gone from the scene.

People are hurrying to compile “2009 the Year in Review”, “the top Ten of the Decade” etc…

Stop. We barely get through the warm-up part. Easy on the appetizers. Things are still cooking and this time it’s not pie in the sky. Modern Family now features a gay couple adopting a Vietnamese baby girl. Society is accepting of social change. And technology facilitates speed of adoption. (Good) hacker’s mindset brings about Wikipedia. It’s like reading college papers but never the final draft. Rashomon multiple POV. Keep uploading, the more the merrier.  The architecture is such that one server down, the myriad will rise up (redundancy).

Back then, you either watched Johnny Carson in pajamas, or Nightline (with guest from PTL, Tammy’s tears over her make-up, a deja-vu today if you watch Barbara Walters top ten list which honors SC Governor’s wife ).

Now, day or night, with DirecTV, Slingbox etc…you wish you had multiple lives for the 5-hour average TV viewing. And that’s just downlink viewing. We still have Hulu and YouTube for you to download. You don’t want to miss the talk of the town. It’s our new Water Cooler chat-up of the 21st century, where you don’t need a tie to stand in the hallway.

Just a connection to upload your share of social lubricant. Just remember not to take up too much of ATT bandwidth.

It’s our 21st century version of “Russian bread line”.