Tag: Luddite

Cyclo in the time of Google

By now, you can still see a few weather-beaten cyclos around albeit restricted to tourist quarters.

I still remember the sound of horse carriage in the streets of  old Saigon.

My kid will be lucky if she knows what a cyclo is.

She knows Google though.

Paperless and painless search. Now with semantic search.

My profile, age in particular, triggers online ads on retirement funds.

Each day, we clear out trash in our home office and online.

Meanwhile, cyclo guys paddle along, knowing that their trade is joining the ranks of old scribes, horse shoe makers and Kodak shops. And the cinema is about to close its curtain. My uncle’s cinema is now a storage.

I came back fully related to the character in Cinema Paradiso,  with nostalgia.

The underlining theme is still there: where is that old blind film projectionist/mentor ? Mine is a guitarist who has recently been out of work.

We both need a gig. Maybe it will work out for him since he has upgraded his play list on an Ipad. But not for the cyclo guy whose best day constitutes but a few passengers hauling bulky merchandise. Cyclo is now relics of a colonial past: white folks and colored coolies, on a leisurely ride along smoke-filled streets packed with motorcycles made in China. Future shock has moved on to its Third Stage (Muscle, machine and Mind), from cyclo to motor-cycle and onto Google. People are making money by a click of the mouse, and not by paddling those three-wheelers, using 21st-century skill set and not primitive strands of muscle.

Modern technology doesn’t come without criticism, starting with the Luddites onto soon-to-be-released Circle.

Consider a huge percentage of Search are on the subject of Porn, to shut it down altogether would present a dictator’s dilemma.

No turning back, or you will turn into salt. Gosh, I miss the sound of horse carriage at Ben Thanh market. I miss being skinny , vulnerable and trusting. Faith that can move mountain. That some day, I will see face to face, although only through a glass darkly in the mean time.

Wisdom comes from mistakes, not missed opportunities.

I’d rather tried and failed than failed to try.

Tell that to the cyclo guy, who ordered two glasses of sugar-cane juice, while I could barely gulp down one. All I did was googling, while he was cycling. Muscle man in the age of Machine.

 

Reading Re-Enchantment

Cover of "Care of the Soul"
Cover of Care of the Soul

Thomas Moore (double O’s) was quoting Thomas More (single O) in his book, the Re-Enchantmet of Everyday Life.

He came out with a bang in Care of the Soul. Essayist, therapist, monk and philosopher who hit the marks. Those marks point us back to Nature, Magic and Intuition. Qualities of life .

He treaded carefully, staying in “common grace” space, so as not to offend, or be typecasted  as a Luddite (anti-technology). But given a choice between a new printer (obviously necessary for his work) and a new piece of rug for home office, he would choose the latter.

Enchantment.

Mr Moore traveled to Ireland, seeking historical sites and scenery. He constantly argued for “touch points” with the Eternal and Sacredness: rock and ruin, trees and green movement in our parks and cities. It’s true that office workers never stopped in the lobby on their way to work (holding a donut in hand).

Building lobbies are for job seekers waiting for an interview. These days, that’s most of us, and soon, one of the Presidential candidates. His chapter on our  Martian nature was right on (I was talking about violence within each of us the day before the Aurora shooting). Hollywood certainly did not let violence go unexploited.

I am reminded via Mr Moore’s work that it doesn’t take much money to extract joy from Nature or from objects of sacredness (even graffiti is a cry for validation). At some point, we all want to have our profile on Facebook and Linkedin. Before Social Media, where were we all?

I refer to Respect in my earlier blog about Connect and Respect.  We must first respect those with whom we do business . And we must first get to know them (Connect) and respect them whether we eventually do business or not.

This takes sales rejection to a whole new level. We respect people’s IP (by signing a NDA) and we  don’t make reps work their tails off then turn around and use their proposals as unpaid due diligence.

Yes. Thomas Moore belongs in some Trappist order. But he happens to speak our language, live in our city and help cure our friends who got issues. He often speaks of life and magic as unfolding. In other words, it’s active and alive. We just need to give it proper attention and expectation.

Just magic in everyday life: a rock , a tree and poetry ; all will still be there long after we are gone. Now , that’s something.  That’s reassuring. That’s eternal, from our short temporal frame of reference. I am not going to re-read Re-Enchantment. But it does make me re-think about everyday’s touch points whether it be readership, relationship or romance.

Osmotic effect

BlackBerry was blamed for London Summer unrest while tech proponents gave it credits for Arab Spring.

Tech is just out there, with its incremental and osmotic effect.

What society chooses to do with it is entirely different.

There will come a time when we do need to switch to energy-efficient light bulbs, paint our roofs white and use plug-in hybrid vehicles. All 7 billion of us.

I have always been fascinated with the Mormons in UT and the Amish in PA and OH.

They seem to have operated on a different plane.

The osmotic effect stops at their county line. Off-grid.

No stimulus, no response. No Playboy bunnies, only horse and buggy.

Meanwhile, 300 millions Chinese have been lifted out of poverty just as millions of American children are now entering it (boarding the school bus from outside of their motel rooms).

Osmotic effect.

With hooded sweats to cover their faces from London CCTV cameras, mass rioters force us to reconsider the Luddite‘s view. Has everything been too fast and easy?

It’s the difference between real noodle versus instant noodle. Try it to see what I mean.

The broth, slow cooking and osmotic effect. Something still needs time and not rushed into.

Like cleantech adoption.

Attending my funeral

The paper announced “a A student committed suicide for not passing Vietnam‘s first IBM-graded SAT“. So, my classmates showed up at my house the next morning for condolences. True story. Not having seen the column the day before, I was completely taken aback.

Hence, my first exposure to bad journalism, and Vietnam’s first trial run with a machine (1974).

The Luddites must have been out for blood.

They wanted to “grade” our essays, in the old Mandarin style whose exams lasted three long days (camping out etc…) (Leu Chong).

We had been anxious leading to exam date e.g. shopping for the right No. 2 pencils, rehearsing multiple choices etc..

Our real first exposure to the “spiritual machine” with its lock-in platform.

In our little minds, machine was God. It could fail you (and in my case, it did). Turned out, they had to manually grade a few hundred of us in between batches.

I never forget the worrisome faces of loyal friends, who had passed but decided to hang out (our version of “funeral wake“).

I told them they should go out and celebrate. Forget about me.

But they insisted “one for all, all for one”.

Then those girls in the class who also showed up expecting to see me in oxygen mask, or in a casket.

The feeling was “out of the body” to say the least.

How often can you afford the opportunity to look at this scene from the outside? (astronauts get a rare glimpse of the Earth from space, but it’s a matter of geography).

That should put materialism in perspective.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The story did not end there without a happy ending.

We were sitting around, long faced, when a friend (drummer from the band), rushed in to announce that they had just posted an addendum to the results. So we raced to the school (on scooters, like the new Zappos ads).

And we found my name (as if it were the Vietnam Memorial, except this one was framed in glass).

And we opened the beer (my father paid for it).

And we jammed the guitar.

And we screamed (no karaoke back then, just yet).

Then we went out dancing.

The dead came back from the brink.

The A+ student got his dog day.

And got admitted to Pre-med (I would have entered the tweet contest for U of Iowa MBA scholarship if there had been such a thing).

With confidence and momentum, I helped raise fund for the refugees floating into our city (public speaking in front of a large lecture hall etc..). After all, I could have stood outside of its walls, cursing  the machine? the manufacturer? the IT administrator?

No college, no draft deferment i.e. enlisted and got maimed ( a friend came back from the front with one eye left in him).

For that one day, I had a preview of my funeral. In Amadeus, Mozart used this powerful visualization to finish his Requiem.

In my end, my beginning.

Unless the seed dies, it won’t produce much fruit.

Lose yourself, that you may find it.

This not a suicidal instinct. Just an acknowledgment that the seed of creative destruction was planted in each of us since day one.

Like a tracker, lo-jack.

We will need to be “disassembled” to be “re-assembled” on the other end.

Pride and prejudice, fear and loathing, all nano bots in the wind (Kansas).

Ask any leader about his lessons in success, he will mention failings.

They went together, like two sides of a coin.

That shock has served me well. South Vietnam collapsed that Spring.

And my summer celebration was the last of “Happy Days” with my friends (drummer, dancer, bass player etc….) many of whom I have lost touch (and I don’t believe they are on Facebook).

I just know that friendship is to be cherished, and that true friends forget  their own celebration waiting out for you. Victory for one is victory for all. That’s why, on Spaceship Earth, we need to be concerned about one man whose vegetable cart was taken away unjustly

(not to mention he got slapped by a female inspector in a Muslim society).

To him, death by immolation was better than death by humiliation.

And one man’s death sowed the seed of discontent that sprung up to become what we now coined the Arab Spring. To him, immolation equals cremation.

Culture shock, future shock, aftershock

We just saw an aftershock in Japan at magnitude 7.0. In and of itself, it’s a major earthquake. But, since it had been preceded by the big one (9.0), it is pale in comparison.

As to culture shock, a man from the Amazon who got transported to Seattle, WA will only hear one thing in common: Amazon.com.
The rest like Starbucks, Microsoft etc… seems strange to him. Off the bet, he needs winter wear to survive.

Like Austin Powers who needs to adjust expectations, majorly, upon stepping out of deep freeze.

Things are partitioned with biometric passwords and cumbersome authentication process (unlike the Woodstock fence which got pushed down and stayed down for the duration of the three-day concert). No room on the VW van or Love bus for Luddites.

Welcome to our digital future, where everything is mobile and online.

Austin cannot use his traditional charm to pry for information.

In other words, his spy craft needs serious brush-ups.

(incidentally, dentistry has advanced quite nicely since his time).

He will hardly get any service or human interaction: at the gym (finger print pad, more sophisticated than Austin’s spy school,) on the phone with “customer service” (speech recognition and voice activation before you get a live operator, from call center far way, whose accent Austin incidentally can ID, but may be doubtful if he had mis-dialed the country code).

Even kids check text messages while talking to parents. The Dad still checks out stock quotes while his wife nags that dinner was ready.

Yet one deadline remains the same: April 15th. As sure as death, tax time is due time for everyone. Government might get shut down, so pay up.

The future is now. But it comes not without a few shocks of its own.

Meanwhile, ROW (rest of world) is playing catch up. Emerging countries all try to export their stuff to the Walmart near you. Pretty soon, we are surrounded by Dollar stores, where everything is priced at one dollar, inflation-adjusted.

BTW, when our Austin Powers runs into our Amazon man in Seattle, they can agree on one thing: we need to take care of Mother Nature, because these aftershocks are not funny. Quite inconvenient indeed. Whether you are a primitive man or a hit man, you know that when the bell tolls for thee, it’s also for me. Culture shock, I can adapt. Future shock, I can embrace. But aftershock, …. it keeps me up at night. Just check with Fukushima and Sandy refugees in the shelters. They can tell you, it may take years, not months, before they can return to “normal”. I can empathize, having absorbed all three shocks myself.

Forced leisure

MSNBC  interviews a blogger from Good magazine on automation nation.

The take away: automation is moving beyond manufacturing sector (e.g. Google test drove an unmanned vehicle in California, or Italian researchers tested a driver-less van, from Italy to China) to service sectors, such as health care .

Japan has been deep into robotic technology, a national policy to appease conservatives who were anti- immigration, and democrats who caters to its aging population.

Today, China has the fastest computer in the world.

Translation: it can develop faster elevators, bullet trains, assembly lines and bottling lines, weather forecasting, medical tech, bio tech, clean tech and up-the-value-chain services.

In short, all things that compute.

I cannot envision 1.3 Billion Chinese forced to travel and spend their leisure time away from factories and industrial parks

(take a nap in IKEA showroom, anyone?)

Unlike Japanese companies which have off shored their work force to counter balance their unfavorable currency (as of this edit, its Central Bank refuses to print more stimulus money, resulted in Asia’s stock plunge), Chinese companies have moved factories away from coastal cities as far as  Africa for cost-cutting.

Automation and offshoring  full impact will ease wage pressures and labor unrest e.g. Foxconn workers’ suicide.

It’s a Detroit way to fix Union challenge. First, they shifted manufacturing jobs South of the border, then, overseas. Then, service jobs were off shored as well. Now, even call centers in India’s major cities got further outsourced to secondary cities to shave off costs, with automation as first solution.

(I was just interrupted by a Spanish-speaking automated voice pitch from a retailer, probably urging me to rush to early Black Friday). First get someone else to do the job elsewhere. Then the machine. Then the customers.

Toffler was so prescient in observing trends such as pro-sumerism (the consumers contribute to the process of making the product e.g. stuff your own stuff animal, upload your Facebook data) and outsourcing. Kurzweil has been a thought leader in predicting that “Singularity is near“.

In the age of assembly line, Jobs the rebel, came up with the I brand (people buy the I phone cover to show individuality). Even I-robots invasion into our domestic lives. As Gordon Moore continues to see his “law” be self-fulfilling, Michael Moore will produce angrier documentaries i.e. about industrial changes and worker’s displacement.

Changes that are almost at the “speed of thought”. Bill Gates could think of the title, but his successor is left holding the bag. Knowing that change is coming is one thing, adequately preparing for it is quite another. These days, one cannot fight against the machine (winning at one chess game doesn’t guarantee much). The cat is out of the bag. Even if we took the Luddites approach, 21st  century lifestyles can’t accommodate collaboration Amish-style.  We left our farms for the factories just to end up with forced leisure. No wonder micro-trends like knitting, pawning, flannel shirts are back (knitting for boys?).

Back to frontier days, and the spirit of survival. In the Golden State, digging equipment and Levis are back. The Alpha male mentality. Off the grid.

The good thing is , blue jeans are still in. If you can still fit in those. If not, off to Wal-Mart, where jeans are cheap (thanks to logistic and automation). Have you noticed there is no one around to help you find your size? Workers have all turned shoppers of goods produced by 24/7 machines that don’t take break or demand health care.

Machines can’t afford to take time off. Neither can we, but it is increasingly forced upon us.