Tag: Marshall McLuhan

Reading People

I was approached by a guy wearing an FBI cap, asking me to buy lottery tickets.

It’s hot in Vietnam this time of the year. Almost everyone wears some sorts of caps with USA on them,  helmets with the Nike vectors or a hybrid version: helmets shaped like caps.

From top to toe, we send out signals and messages. Call it Non-Verbal language.

2/3 of our communication are not verbal (in Without You, there is a line “you always smile, but in your eyes, your sorrow shows, yes it shows”).

Yet few of us were schooled, trained or able to detect these hidden codes: I am cool. I don’t give a damn. I am somebody. I am everybody. I am nobody. Try me…..

Conversely, people receive unintended messages we did not know we  send.

I’ve got money. I don’ t respect you enough (clothing mismatched). I am carefree. I am careful. Don’t mess with me (tatoo and black T’s).

In the States, cars make statements. Here, it’s the scooters.

A guitar as backpack (musician) a rolled-up mat (yoga) a cone hat (urban migrant) a kid with balloon (mom has a night out and spends guilt money).

Every stripe and strand co-exist and negotiate limited space.

The upper crust has already left town to exclusive and elite resorts, leaving behind the “mass who live in quiet desperation” in the tourist district, where people lean against fake trees and work up a fake smile for photo ops.

If you stood and watched people, you are not sure between background and foreground, which one is more on display.

Wait until 4-G is here.

Then we will have completed our evolutionary cycle (self-expression with a cost).

When those sport cars came out, they were intended to say: I own this toy, reserved for me and my girlfriend (parents and entourage are not welcome).

So will it be with the I’s family of products (unless you share the listening device  with one significant other). The I-pod Shuffle was meant for one, jogger preferably.

Not the boombox that blasts out Christmas music for the whole neighborhood.

Yes, in our technological society, the clear message (which happens to be the medium, according to McLuhan) is that, I finally am. Arrived. Leave me alone. Leave your old world behind (communal and village-bound). I am OK, you are OK or not, it’s irrelevant. When the playing field is leveled (by us duck-sitting as advertising headcounts), they will upgrade to some other games which will require premium fees.

So we celebrate the upcoming New Year, with ” a will to try” so as not to be left out or behind.

My New Year resolution is to read people better, however subtle the intended messages might be. Often times, it’s mixed message. After all, the world is our non-verbal bookstore. Just  hope I don’t run into a real FBI agent, undercover as a lottery-ticket pusher.

Moving on

I read about and followed with much interest the Penn State game this past weekend.

Where is Joe? First he was absent on the side line, where his rolled up pants were a fixture more than signature.

Then he went up on the booth. This past Saturday, he wasn’t there either, nor was his statue. Ohio won, but not as easy.

The Nittany Lions put up a fight “push them back, way back”. Still, a lot went unsaid there. Just moving on. Motion forward.

Aren’t we all!

Labor Day, Memorial Day. First rest a bit, then Rest in Peace.

Moving on.

Self-deception.

Who are we trying to fool, except ourselves?

I read about the original cell which stays on for billions of years. I am glad we could die (rather cancer war than casualty of war). As  far as biology is concerned, we were meant to be immortal, Greek or geek.

But then, with all the abuses and accidents, we have pretty much done it to ourselves (global sales of weapon, pornography and drugs together curtail population explosion).

So we give the workers a symbolic rest, Labor Day. But actually, we meant for factories to have their machines deep-spayed and well-oiled.

Farmers don’t rest on Labor Day. IT supports don’t rest either in colo centers.

Labor Day belongs to the Industrial Revolution, the 2nd wave, with coal as the main source of energy.

I read that in an interview before his death, an out-spoken Cardinal talked about the Vatican being behind two centuries.

He must be referring to the image of  Sheep May Safely Graze while parishioners “flocking” to the only village church.

I think it’s Marshall McLuhan who coins the phrase “global village”. Even then, he  meant the mass brought together by mass media (Tower of Babel analogy) in a one-to-many broadcast. Little did he know, we now have many-to-many conversation, originated and uploaded from the ground level. As of now, everyone got their 15-minute of fame on Facebook (Famebook?) and 140 characters on Twitter (modern-day AP) – as in United Breaks My Guitar.  Perhaps even we, at one time or another, think, maybe the world can use a few personal computers, as Watson used to think back in 1943.

Institutions and individuals, both are behind the times. I caught myself a few months ago in a moment of prejudice. I heard a ringtone rap music. Not from urban blacks. But with Central Vietnamese accent. The combination shocked me, then it delighted me the second time around. But my knee-jerked reaction was “you must be kidding?” One would expect to hear Northern Vietnamese accent  in songs, not Central, and when it comes to rap music, it’s the American quintessential, not Vietnamese. If this long Depression does us any good, it’s a wake-up call. It humbles us . Yes, it’s the “end of men” as titled in an upcoming book, but by the time the “end of women” comes about, it’s the beginning of the machine age.

The point is, early adopters will keep on adopting (space tourism, echo tourism, edu- tourism, medi-tourism )

And the richest among them, will keep moving beyond Beverly Hills and Betty Ford clinics to “the Island” to do some serious make-over (spare body parts replacement and rejuvenation). Versailles-style ($17,000 leather boots).

Go ahead and protest. Show some guts and show some skin. By the time we do, they no longer find some use for fur coats to cover their once wrinkled bodies. They already got new ones put in. Talking about moving on. Just make sure we don’t become the Pharaohs of the 21st century, embalming ourselves to no avail.  Where is Joe Pa? Ohio won again. Shuck!

Voice & Video

Via camera phone, satellite uplink and YouTube upload, we got pictures and sound of the upheaval in Libya up to the minute.

The golden gun (its now-deceased owner must have watched James Bond’s Gold Finger), the Club Car and female bodyguards.

When I was growing up, we were cooped up inside the house (curfew) while news of a regime toppling beamed through state-controlled radio.

One military leader after another read prepared statements after both Diem’s brothers got assassinated in Cho Lon, Vietnam’s largest Chinese enclave.  Then, there was counter-coup and counter-counter coup (I lost count).

Back in 1963, to listen to the radio, we had to put our imagination to work.  School was out (our version of “snow day”) while Marshall law took control of the streets. Fear and trepidation were in the air. Everyone felt helpless. In short, breaking events weren’t unfolded as neatly and with instant access as they now are.

Before digital, networks had to spend time laying  the control track (on the 3/4 inch video), then the sound track and finally the B roll (video track).

Now, we got Instant access via Web apps, today’s B-roll , from the desert.

Every revolution seemed to culminate in Occupy the Broadcast Station.

Hugo Chavez and his band of brothers once tried just that, only to find out it had been moved. They were captured and jailed afterwards (partly for not having a Google map update).

Speaking of Google which purchased YouTube.

Although the later barely is profitable, it adds value to Google’s central strategy (organize the world’s information).

Where else can cable news get their video source to show, for instance, a Chinese toddler get ran over twice ( Where was the Good Samaritan in number 2 economy?).

Or an inappropriate tweet (and later denial) which derailed a Congressman career.

Voice and video in our time.

ABC News digs up its archive to show Barbara Walter’s decade-old interview with the Colonel, who was,  in her words, “vain”.

She got a career boost after joining  Walter Cronkite on his MidEast trip to interview President Sadat (now, we have woman as Editor-in-Chief at the NYT).

Back then as it is now, foreign experience makes or breaks a reporter’s career ( Dan Rather, Peter Jennings both had their early start in Vietnam).

Today, we’ve got  Independent Television News and Al Jazeera that supply voice and video feed for our 24/7 cable news cycle. This empowers a generation of digital camera-phone owners to become amateur stringers. If Chavez had to do it again, he wouldn’t need to occupy the broadcast station: just press Record and Send. Voila! Voice and Video. However shaky the shots, speed trumps (broadcast) standard. Wonder what they have to do at the FCC to cope with information explosion. And it doesn’t end there with Google satellite and  street maps. The EU has just sent up a new horde of advanced satellites into orbit. It’s a classic case of dictator’s dilemma: when one can have (information) access, all, the opposition included, can too. To deny one is to deny all. Yet, in abundance of choices,  I just miss those radio days “when I was young, I listen to the radio, waiting for my favorite song…”; this “hot” medium forced me to exercise my imagination (e.g. visualizing a live soccer match) based solely on voice and no video .  Now, everything is put on display, even what’s inside a Libyan food freezer. Gory and Gold Finger.

Technology doesn’t sleep, but we do.

I had my share of empty TV studio, that is, between broadcasts (6PM and 10PM). Now, there is no recoup time. We have evolved to Office 365, with servers resided in the “cloud” instead of the (telco) closets. Mobile working has evolved from CB radio, to Motorola brick phones, from Skypage to Skype chat.

Cryptography moved from a code book to complex self-improved algorithm (Amazon shopping experience : buy this + this = this.)

Pop-up ads even have a “K” for keep (time-shifting ads), while some companies are now offering a service to measure your Twitter‘s scores (influencer’s graph).

McLuhan was on the mark about “the medium is the message.”

Dot.com domain was just a start.

ICANN is opening up more domains.

And within a few years, we will be inundated with dot.this, dot.that, same way we now have with mobile phone area codes (which used to have a zero and a one in the middle of the three-digits).

As with cable TV channels where pundits feel the need to fill the emptiness with noise, new technologies such as Twitter and Facebook (and Google Plus)  will challenge us to come up with “sound bites”. Our attention span has evolved from attending for hours on end under preacher’s tents to today’s tweets.

Our brain has learned to process messages and images much quicker.

Bum, here is a Bieber’s (Be Bop a lula), Bang, there’s a GaGa (innocent like a Chic out of her egg-shell).

Good thing that we can upload and talk back. But not for long, just 140 characters.

You can tweet again, but it won’t be a part II of an earlier tweet. No guarantee.

So we learn to tame new technologies, and cope with their sheer availability.

User-generated content. BTW, from Page One, a documentary on “a year at the New York Times”, journalists on Charlie Rose, commented that the paper was now in better shape than it had ever been.

So the proliferation of citizen-journalists doesn’t threaten or dethrone existing media. Not when it’s the NYT.

Meanwhile, I keep reading volumes of “likes” from one Facebook friend.

All of a sudden, I miss my solitude in a broadcast studio when show’s over.

Lights off. Let’s go home. We need some sleep. The audience already turned off their sets.

In Vietnam, they would put back the Indian poster for white balance.

I guess it’s called the “sleep mode” because studio cameras need longer warm-up time. In today’s parlance, it means our influencer’s scores got dropped a bit when we are offline. The real self needs rest, so the virtual self must give.

Introspect, retrospect and reflect

Books started to come out, dissecting the effects of the Net. A new one, entitled “The Shallows, What the Internet is doing to our brains” by Nicholas Carr.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6523DV20100603?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology

In retrospect, it brings to mind Neil Postman‘s “Amusing ourselves to death“, a classic critique about effects of television.

(He argues that the sheer quantity of content piped into our living room – our 20th century camp fire – distracts us and anesthetizes our senses).

Now, another author took a serious look at the effects of the Internet.

And how it will, by sheer size, divert us from utilizing our cognitive skills such as introspection and reflection.

In other words, both Neil and Nick ( and Marshall McLuhan) recognize the weight of ” the Medium is the Message“.

Data-rich, yet context-poor.

We will turn to be a civilization of multi-taskers, with up-to-the-minute news flashes and mash-ups, short bursts of data (140 characters plus headers). As of this edit, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) have just taken down the Times and Twitter sites, our electronic “Twin-Towers”.

Vietnamese government begins its ban on sharing on social media starting this weekend. We might have to revert to raising pigeons and save empty bottles (message in the bottle).

The President himself used to carry a Blackberry besides the Pentagon football codes.

N Korea, for instance, says “war could burst out any minute”. BP says the pipe was cut, but not as planned.

So on and so forth.

We know a lot of disparage facts.

But very few of us knew the background, context and historical twist and turn (Korean has experienced a few close-calls since 1950 partition,

or that before the Gulf spill, there had been another off shore explosion in Mexico).

In other words, we are a wiki society with massive of free information, yet no version is the final draft.

Yet the author (Nicholas) goes on saying that we are a nation of Librarians (like Bill Gates’ mother).

I would argue that librarians wouldn’t exactly have access to the millions of YouTube downloads until now.

And that internet adopters seem to be on the young side, the jury is still out on them, to see if the Millenium Generation will fully develop their cognitive faculties.

I do know that they are more environmentally conscious, use more SMS (cheaper that way) and show the same youthful tendencies (rebellion for one) . I hope they pick up on earlier generations’ aspiration of “sharing the land” and preserving Mother Earth.  (If you hear the song I sing, you’ll understand – Youngbloods).

And maybe they will get closer to the truth as opposed to facts on Twitter ( fact-checking professor’s lecture, for instance).

Nothing wrong with the cult of amateurism. In broadcasting, shaky camera shots used to be edited out. Now, in the age of Twitter, YouTube and CNN, any cell phone user could be our eyes and ears. Through them, we learned about NIDA of Iran, the Israel commandos at Gaza seas and the chemical abuse in Syria .

Then it’s up to us to dig deeper, on Wikipedia,. In my opinion, the internet triggers our curiosity which leads to further discovering, learning,  thinking, categorizing ( pattern recognition), and finally, reflection (about the nature of man, for instance, as Augustine and Rousseau once did, contrarily.) The worst case scenario is to be inundated by it to the point of stop thinking.

Facebook and YouTube take that one step further, by showing us faces and music. So there we have it: the visual, auditory and of course, tactile (click away). Amuse yourself to death. There are too many of us anyway. “All my sorrows, feel I am dying…”