Tag: Online Communities

Dance clips

My daughter went pro on YouTube with the Academy of Swag (Don’t Like, or Matrix, or World of Dance – International Hip Hop Competition).

Happy New Year!

She got my dancing genes. But more disciplined and better trained since the age of 6.

With every successive generation, we witness a shift in speed, style and sensation.

Those combination and permutation of the team’s choreography.

I saw a billboard about the three Blue Guys (Las Vegas show) now with Balls.

This year, we got electric vehicles, we got VW transverse platform.

Work smarter and harder.

THE CHALLENGE OF OUR AGE IS TO SHIFT FROM BEING A CONSUMER SOCIETY TO THAT OF A PRODUCER ONE.

We are expert users, but clueless at how to make things (even dinners).

Some people go through life never have to handwash their clothes, or ride a bike to work.

The machine has taken over. Dictating how we preserve and share our memories (Twitter 140 characters, and video clip, not too long. By the way, Twitter has just purchased some video company for product extension).

The “disruptive” guru Christensen predicted the coming demise of the likes of Apple and even Harvard.

King of the Hill for 15 minutes.

So my 3-minute of video on Facebook is now “disrupted” by my daughter’s 10-min YouTube clip.

It’s about time. Not to quit. But for both of us to keep on dancing. Until “the sun comes up from Santa Monica Boulevard”.

Perceived message

Message received often times is different from message intended.

Wrong timing. Different context and stress level. Words that inadvertently trigger negative emotions.

We live and learn.

It’s not easy to get across, at both cognitive and emotive levels.

Male are known for missing emotional signals more often than female.

That’s why long distance relationships are hard. We can’t rely on non-verbal cues.

Perfect communication doesn’t exist.

Only when two frames of reference converge in a perfect eclipse.

It’s as rare as the Moon and the Sun passing.

Yet we try. We rely on objects to speak for us, on gifts and on symbolism.

These days, people use chat, text and video calls. Yet Hallmarks cards are still thriving.

Twitter is for bursting self-promotion.

Facebook for social, more than two.

LinkedIn for professional networking.

That leaves the ubiquitous SMS and chat (which requires simultaneous typing).

I know that fax and voice mail are on the way out.

Just like pagers and answering machines.

We move on. We change the way we communicate. With emoticons and acronyms..

Languages that once belonged in OPs domain now drifted into our daily conversation.

Machine-like language for a dehumanized world.

Please get to the point ASAP.

OK. I promise to get it done by COB.

Can you hear me saying? All I intend to say is ….

Please don’t get it all wrong. I meant well. Oh, that’s not enough?

Sorry, I completely disregard your circumstances. Are your under stress? I see.

Let me start over again. Since you are this and that….. I just want to say this ….and that. Now we acknowledge the other ‘s level of communication, we begin to factor in empathy. I often feel the same way. People read me wrong most of the time etc…But I found that ….

One of the best conversation on race took place in a(imaginary) trench, between a Princeton Lieutenant (white) and a career sergeant (black) in Matterhorn. Since they both were going to die, the Lieutenant asks the Sergeant to teach him the “hand dance”. After a few times, he still did not feel right. The retort ” that is because you are not Black”.

Even when you meant well, still it’s not enough. Perceived message.

Neon God

” People bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made” (Sound of Silence now inducted to

the American Museum as Classic American Sound to be preserved).

Meanwhile, we spend an average 8 hours per month on Facebook, “the cathedral they made” (same amount of time people attend church services).

Twitter is not addictive. Facebook is.

Via the latter, we learn about people and companies, and the company they keep.

Those “likes” and snippets keep trickling in, like rain drops that Pavlovian-condition us to salivate.

Facebook works well with Youtube. One-two punch.

The video link is right there, ready to be viewed.

While Twitter is like a news feed, Facebook has become our trusted source of recommended entertainment and enlightenment.

Family photos and commercial photos both pop up indiscriminately.

It’s all in the pipe, and we open the floodgate, willingly without reservation (after all, we “friended” them in the first place).

What in the beginning resembled child’s play now commends global attention and respect (our next Steve Jobs).

It’s like a Casino, Cathedral and Community theater all in one.

While Ebay might be the largest bazaar, Facebook has become the Neon God (the Bubble of our own making) to which people bow and pray.

The platform has become the prophet.

The medium, the message.

8 hours a month, forever and ever, world without end.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2095516,00.html

In restless dreams I walk alone…. and the voices of the prophets are written on subway walls, Facebook walls, and whisper’d in the Sound of Silence.

The future, never in past tense

Peter Jennings took a smoke break, his first in years, from 9/11 live coverage. It was the beginning of his end. The Canadian co-author of “The Century” must have studied the Wright brothers, whose invention could lift itself up into thin air albeit for just a few blocks. But he had never seen anything like the two planes that aimed low that morning.

In the decade since, from Steve Jobs (the I-series) to Steve Chen (Youtube),

from Facebook to Twitter founders, we have seen a new breed of inventors.

Instead of fixating on the hunt for an old man, wrapped in blanket with a remote control, watching makeshift propaganda videos of himself (BL), these digital natives followed the trail to the future.

They limit data transmission to short bursts (140 characters) or miniaturize play-back device (I-pod) while charging only 99 cents per song. Search has evolved from generic to semantic and shopping from global E-Bay to local (Zagat).

Rattled? Yes.

Deterred? Hardly.

Five stages of grief, processed in one fell swoop (in less than a decade).

What evil didn’t plan, was for the very invention in the West, be used against dictators in the MidEast.

(Arab Spring propagated and went tweet-viral in Egypt, birth place of caliphate).

You can take down a building, but not its blueprint.

Yes, there were people who ran down the stairs to safety, and stayed there in the past.

But there were also 343 heroes who ran up the stairs, 43 more than at Gates of Fire, to “fight (fire) in the shade” .

Just as the analog stairway (Encyclopedia Britannica, book stacks) shows the way down, the digital one (Wikipedia, Skype) points to “the sky is the limit”.

In the decade since, we have started “friending” each other, made possible by another Harvard drop-out, whether we were from NYC or not, just because we all share in a future, that will never be conjugated in past tense.

How I wish to have “followed” Peter Jennings on Twitter to read his post-9/11 reflections!

Filter builder

Building up our filtering capacity does not mean firming up our prejudice. But no matter what we do, we can only watch an average of 4 hours of TV and a few hours on the Web, mobile or stationary.

So we rely on thought leaders. Two-step information flow. Except this time, information flow through a social network i.e. multiple gate-keepers. We essentially recreate what early radio stations did when they strung together broadcast relay stations (to deliver a larger audience to advertisers) with their affiliates.

To be prejudice-free (reaching out only to friends and reading only their posts), I try to connect with a diverse pool, from left, center to right, black white and yellow, male female and gay and straight.

While we die alone, we don’t have to be isolated in our thought life.

In fact, we should recalibrate our filter, to let in more

data of different shapes and sizes. Ours is a post-Columbus Google era and each of us, our own press agent. Some even venture to suggest Social Media profile to replace credit history.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/26/why-your-social-media-profile-might-be-your-next-credit-score/

In 2010 the year in review, they posted a picture showing a naked Haitian woman who contracted cholera, lying and dying on the streets. No one stopped to cover her up (I hope the photographer would, after taking that picture that stirred our conscience).

And remember Nida, dying in front of our Twitter eyes during post Iranian election?

When I was in International Journalism class, we touched briefly on information flow, and how it had always been from North to South, from information-rich countries to information poor ones. Well, that was before YouTube and Twitter.

Now, anyone with a clip or tweet can share. New Dean of Columbia Journalism school, Steve Coll, will have to start a Twitter account to  stay relevant.

I have yet learned how to build a twitter filter. So what harm can it do me, reading unsolicit 140 characters. It would be an equivalence of hearing an elevator pitch from an aggressive salesman, whose odd of success is quite small (because he skips over the discovery phase). But some tweets stick and I learn something new every day. Technology is just a tool to deliver content.  Just don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Do you hear what I hear.

Here’s my card

You have heard that line in movies, at the bar, or convention hall.

The Post had an article about the survival of the card in our digital age.

Maybe because it’s so small, so humble, and so obvious.

Google was thinking big i.e. “organize the world’s information”, thus, overlooked the tiny card in our wallet.

I received a business card which says “name, looking for employment in such and such field”.

I thought that was quite a sign of our time.

I got tired of printing my position (will work for food). So I printed my social network URL instead.

Our identity has slowly evolved, from off-line to online,  national passport to digital passport.

Virtual identity. We update photos and other data on our social graph.

We used to have coaches in sports, music, career. And now, there are  new breed of  online business coach.

Larger play place. More global. Higher benchmark.

It used to be “on the web, nobody knows you are a dog”.

Now, you need to approach multiple platforms from Twitter to YouTube, from Facebook to LinkedIn.

New rules of engagement.

New rules of PR.

Yet the business card stays the same.

Hi touch, low tech.

Easily exchanged at mixer.

Strong hand grip. Name tag on your right chest. Card on your left hand.

Impressive impression.

Twitter speech replaces elevator speech.

Let’s go.

Your name? Mine is .

Here’s my card.

 

Twitter speech

Before there was “elevator speech” . Now Twitter speech (or CV) offers a quick summation of one’s career mission.

Best and worst of  wise cracks and fortune-cookie wisdom.

Modern-day equivalent of digital tombstones. Tombstones leave behind relationship-defining legacies  i.e. mother, teacher, sister etc…

In The Last Lecture, the author expounded on the importance of relationships.

Imagine yourself looking up to the fluorescent lights in the ICU, tubes in nose, trying to utter your last 140 characters.

What would you say, “I am sorry for all the lost times”, “I am proud of you”, or “I wish I were given more time to see you grow”.

I have said enough on these blogs. It lasts me a life time.

So my Twitter speech would be: “Dare to live, dare to love, dare to win, dare to fail, dare to face yourself in the mirror”.

What’ s your Twitter speech? Your last lecture? Your last blog? Your last Social Media update? Your last e-mail? Your last chat?

Your last sound bite.  Your bumper stickers? Your tatoo and tombstone inscription? (I deleted a dead friend from LinkedIn connection yesterday. Felt weird!).

So many tools, so little time to show or simplify our personal brand. No wonder marketing people insist on improving their Elevator Speech.

It seems that our brain cannot grab lengthy and winding abstract. In the age of over-stimuli and algorithm, our brain wants “instant Google” and our body, instant noodle., preferably spoon-fed, one tweet at a time. I am sure within a few short years, people will talk in Tweets and  choppy chats like campaign slogans even when bandwidth is more abundant and Twitter itself is no longer “over capacity”.  In our Twitter age, elevator speech itself needs a make-over. It needs to be twitterized. Gone are the days when we came back to the office, with a stack of pink telephone messages, asking us to “Please call your mom. ”

 

Unsung heroes

I channel surfed last night. C-SPAN 3 covered the Memorial in PA for flight 93, those unsung heroes who diverted terrorist plot 9 years ago.

The uncut shot kept panning the vast expanse of Pennsylvanian field, future home of Flight 93 Memorial.

Graphically speaking, it was boring. MOS (mid out sound) since the mike did not reach far enough to hear the VIP conversation (First Lady and former FL were among them).

In contrast, we could see and hear Terry Jones, instant celebrity for his threat and now recanted threat, just fine.

His Campbell-soup-like-15 minutes of fame.

An article in the Washington Post says it all “tyranny of the moment”.

The Web democratizes so much that the Gainesville pastor gains a PR upper hand (which makes Kansas pastor who has protested at military funerals envy).

He even grew his signature mustache to come across as credible (it’s a step up from preaching just to his extended families).

I am sure he will have fans and followers if opened a facebook page.

Meanwhile, real heroes who took action and paid the price with their lives barely got their names on the marble.

Such is the state of the world as we are living it.

Imagine flight 93 heroes debating the consequences of their action. No, there weren’t any time. They just went ahead and did the right thing.

Brought to mind my favorite quote: “he is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose”.  American martyrs don’t get noticed,

since it’s not in the US culture to condone and celebrate such an act. But it did happen, on that fateful day, which we often forget due to tyranny of the moment.

 

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…”