Marshall McLuhan – Thang Nguyen 555

12/24/2012

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…

Read more →

09/02/2012

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.…

Read more →

10/22/2011

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…

Read more →

06/29/2011

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…

Read more →

06/03/2010

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…

Read more →