Tag: Television

Poor substitute

We are so connected (Google Fiber) and disconnected (from people) at the same time.

Starting with TV broadcast which reduces viewership from a theatre like in “Cinema Paradiso” down to a nuclear family in their living room, to a Youtube video download for personal  use.

With smart phones, we don’t have people knocking on the phone booth for their turn or get listened in on party line In fact, the screen has taken over what used to be folded newspaper on morning commuter train..

In Asia, where technology-sharing is common (fridge, TV, rice cooker etc…) we now see a great divide between the old and new generation, of those who are low and  high-tech. Technological divide piling on top of generation gap.

It’s a lonelier place out there, although we “friending” more. Hello World! Any one out there?

American homes are connected via all sorts of devices: from set-top to desktop.

According to a study, per capita work space has reduced drastically since devices are getting smaller yet can store more data or because people simply work from home (no longer at Yahoo).

You would think we should then have more space in the office for a couch or extra chair, so co-workers can just pop in and chat.

It turns out, all those devices are poor substitutes for the one real need: human connection. No wonder English people now turn phone booths into pubs (third places). That is a good substitute and good use of industrial waste. If only we know what to do with those first generation big-screen TVs (intended as Lazy Boy’s Cinemas).

Search and Sedentary Life Style

It’s only been a bit more than 15 years since the Internet entered our homes (You’ve Got Mail).

Before that we got to run errand, with multiple stops e.g. at the library, bookstores and retail stores.

Now, just Google it. Price-comparison shopping, or just ordering it online.

We find friends online, learn online and practically do more things online (when someone comes up with a new app like SimCity or DropBox – now acquired Mailbox).

Around the time the Internet got to be popular, social scientists had already alarmed us about the decline of community participation (Bowling Alone). If that study were conducted today, the title would be ” The disappearance of Bowling.”

Let’s imagine that the ARPANET project did not get out for civilian use.

We would have:

– still run around to the library, searching through Dewey card catalog

– ordered from the Sears Catalogue

– played cards with friends (some still do, but not as frequent)

– gone clubbing to be seen

– treated phone, TV and computer separately (phone is personal, TV is social and computer is professional, for HR Block tax preparers).

So far, there has been a correlation, but not definite linkage, between Search (Internet) and Sedentary Life Style.

But every sign seems to point to a more mobile (on the go) computing and convergence, which at least relieves us from a desk-bound life.

I hope among the multi-tasks we find ourselves doing, walking will be one. Even McDonald now serving Egg-White Muffin.

After all there is a down side (sitting too much for too long) to even the most blessed event in human history: Search at our fingertips, and let the “bots” do the “hunting” for information.

Projecting your “Likes”

I once met a man who got a big screen TV.  It was oversized given the small dimension of his living room.

Since nearing retirement, he must have figured that it was worth the investment.

He would be projecting himself onto that screen a lot, so might as well “live” large.

A recent study about Facebook‘s Likes shows that on average we like 68 things.

It made up an average viewer’s profile. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/03/11/technology-facebook-likes.html

With a meaningful connection of 120 (Tipping Point), we can multiply to figure out our universe of Likes not to mention friends of friends.

We like something/someone because we project ourselves onto it/him/her, see ourselves in the situation, or find that which resonates and strikes the chords (99% gene pool we inherited and the rest were acquired at an early age).

Our neurons respond uniquely.

Big screen or small screen, we project ourselves onto them (turn off your lap top and you will see yourself reflecting on the screen).

Neil Postman studied the effect of television viewing. He concluded that the sheer amount of viewing itself was the problem.

His study (Amusing ourselves to death) was conducted before the coming of smart phone and mobile gaming.

When Apple radio and Google glasses get wide adoption, we will live in a more individualized society (each man to himself and his screen). It would render office cubicles relics of the past.

For now, at least, we can still strike a conversation even when the big screen is on across the room (or the I-pad on the dinner table).

When the screen is in front of the man (Google glasses), it would be like trying to talk to someone who “thinks different” with his or her Ipod on.

Hello!

I fear the man I met with the big screen will someday find his super-sized TV quite antiquated, and that he would have a hard time getting rid of it. First it’s he who dies with the biggest toy wins. Then, it’s less is more. Can’t they think of some other variables to play with in product design? We the adopters and consumers of technology and gadgetry will always be both victors and victims. In that vein, if you owned a boom box now, just hang on to it, and wait it out. It might turn valuable antique one day if not already.

Bleed purple!

Red States Blue States United. Bleed purple.

Gotta to reach across the aisles.

Gotta to overcome complacency and condescending.

The time it takes to come up with a retort could be spent for constructive use.

Nobody has the right to the last word.

History is dynamic and constantly being re-written.

(If you read Church History you get one version, and in Howard Zinn‘s, you get a different one).

Your ex’s might say nasty things about you, but your kids might not.

Some high school buddies remember me for appearing on TV as part of the school’s dance group (incidentally, my daughter has been in the US number 1 hip hop team as well).

Back to Bleed Purple.

The nation and the world have waited.

For action, not talks.

For remedy, not diagnose.

We are all grown-ups caught in dire circumstance. Tonight, as I was leaving the gym, I saw a homeless man pushing a shopping cart full of garbage bags, all black, except for a guitar on top. He was pushing it up hill, but to nowhere in particular. Just keep moving.

Einstein says life is like riding a bicycle. You just have to keep pedaling.

When I jog in the park, I keep one foot in front of the other. And before I knew it, I was jogging.

I don’t understand bureaucracy, red tape and the politics of politics.

(Heard somewhere that it costs about a couple of hundred thousands for the government to create one job).

That money could raise a whole child in the US, put him/her through college and become an active participant in society (virtuous cycle).

Think purple.

Back to basics.

I heard the re-elected President recap on what made America great.

Among the core values was tolerance.

Bleed purple.

No more campaign after the election.

Now is the time to carry out those promises, those cheap sound bites wrapped in expensive ads.

Now is the time to reach out across the aisle and make those compromises.

Start early, like Walmart shoppers, if you want something badly.

The only time I saw the spirit of America was in the darkness of  morning (we call it Black Friday), yet the place was ransacked, with nothing left to buy except for Halloween candies (post season) and school supplies (also off-season).

Wonder if by the time politics is set aside there will be anything worthwhile to discuss or carry out. Or people simply got fed up, and dropped out altogether. Bleed purple. The sum of our strength is stronger than our personal weakness. Red or Blue, we got your Achille’s heels covered. No easy day.

Alternate Dream

American Dream has undergone a makeover of late (maybe because the Chinese economy itself was heading for a cliff, so it needed to apply a break on lending).

Whatever the underlying reason, America middle class is contracting not because of shrinking population , but mostly because of declining income and consumption. In short, the good old time isn’t rolling back anytime soon.  At least, not for the same people. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

For the past few years, we became schooled in all kinds of financial instrumentation: derivative, quantitative easing etc….

New economy, old economists.

Half of them was right half of the time. The other half call themselves “contrarians”.

I bet on the future.  I know kids are smart. They have been told to play it safe, to hold their cards closer to the chest.

And it (the Dream) did not materialize for them (at least, not  for their European counterparts).

So, they figure. I am going out on the limp to strike for gold myself.

Estonian kids saw the success of Skype. As a result, they are learning how to code at an early age.

Long way from the fall of the Berlin wall  to the building of the firewall.

Meanwhile, back  at the range, American are forced to be “content” with loss leaders, everyday.

Dollar Stores are rising while the dollar itself isn’t worth much.

Made-in-China use to be jeered at. Now it’s the only game in town.

I know new games are in the works. Part of the chain of evolution is to invent disruption e.g. flat panel TVs vs tube TV‘s,  Wi-fi vs cable wiring. Perhaps someday we will see the electrification in transportation. For now, adjust your expectations. Wake up hot-dog nation. Rise from your slumber. Step out into the darkest of nights where the stars are few, but much brighter. The glass has always been half full.  It’s in the American character, belongs to those who left behind the familiar for the unfamiliar. Those who dare to dream and dream big. Anchor it  really high. And turn a portion of it into reality. One by one, and together, Yes We Can, again. An adjusted American Dream., smelled more like our new reality, is still better than none.

the right screen

Smart phones got computer, TV and phone screens, all in once. The combined screen.

I was sitting in front of a lap top and an attached large screen. For a moment, I looked at one screen while the action took place at the other. To catch on, I  need to follow the cursor to know where the action was.

In life, we have looked in the wrong place for the right thing.

(to make friends while in prison, for instance).

Penn State commissioned JoePa statue in front of Beaver Stadium, just to now debate whether to take it down.

The Christian in Asia a few centuries ago, were told to remove ancestor’s altars, traditionally placed at the center of the home.

The FEDs keeps reducing rates. Should we look there for future directions? Unemployment indicators? Housing and foreclosure reports?

Never have we been tested as during the past 4 years.

Am I looking at the wrong screen?

Prophets have arisen, and more shades of truths have been made available.

Which way is the wind blowing?

Put your money in Macau.

or in Manhattan?

Google Glasses or JcPenney?

Pick your people right. Business model can always be modified as we go along. Often times, it’s on the wrong screen anyway. Keep the statue. Make it a teachable monument. After all, JoePa had always championed scholarship and athletic pursuit hand in hand. Institution for higher learning should at least have intellectual honesty and moral conviction to defend its mantel and mission. Especially when it is now looking at the right screen not smokescreen.

Micro Resolution

When you were young and with others, you wanted to start a revolution.

But if you were young, but alone, you might want New Year Resolution e.g. diet, “biggest loser”, learning Spanish, pick up a new skill set.

Then when you have been around the block a few times, you still think of New Year resolution, but just  micro ones e.g. jogging every other day, email your kids every other week.

We need to tell ourselves it’s not been OK. That there is room for improvement.

Never too late. For older guys, to meet someone new, even a new male friend, is a hassle: how much can I put trust in the guy even though he has been my friend’s friend? What does he want in exchange ?

In business, even with benefits spelled out in details, people still want to let it simmer. Fools rush in!

On a larger scale, consumer sentiment makes or breaks an economy already teetering on the brink. It’s been more than three long years.

We haven’t trusted ourselves enough. Nursing our wound feels safer than taking small risk.

Government gets bigger, but our paychecks smaller.

The skeptics have had a field day: they would never run out of materials for late night TV.

David Brook of the NYTimes noticed a trend in communitarianism in a small town near Baton Rouge. The kind acts were so real it could be surreal.

Neighbor actually lighted the candle at your loved one’s grave?

Makes me want to live there, to be a part of this “Utopian”.

(in fact, the main character in the story did just that, with their move from  PA back to LA).

Right now, I am living  in a city of roughly 9 Million. And tonight, there will be at least one tenth of the city gather near the river to watch the fireworks.

I am sure there have been small kind acts everyday (I helped a kid in a toy car roll up the stiff sidewalk just now).

Here, people are “white-skin envy” (mannequins in stores are all white).

If you found a black person, perhaps he/she is around 40 years old, fathered during of the Vietnam War. Other Africans who did not make the soccer team also decided to stay on but constitute a tiny portion.

I read somewhere that the greatness of a nation is in how it treats its weakest link (the US with its handicap law enactment is undeniably civilized). Nordic countries are way up there on this scale.

In the end, it’s our every-day act of kindness that adds up.

Let’s make this our micro resolution.

President Bush was sincere when he urged the nation to go about daily routine, such as shopping (right after 9/11). That resolution could be taken out of context. I would rather understand him as saying, let’s have our micro-resolution of many as answers to the macro-barbaric acts of a few. The key is togetherness. His dad’s adage was “a thousand points of lights”. Let 2012 be the year of our thousand micro resolutions.

Pay it forward!

the acceleration of nearly everything

Time heals, slowly. It makes for better wine.

But it also shuts the window of opportunity.

The moment we leap (even before we look), we defy fate.

No regrets.

In “Blink”, the author presents a clear case for intuition and conclusion.

It’s the opposite of SWOT with no action =  slow-burn effect that kills the frog (paralysis of analysis).

Most life-altering decisions are made not by (analytical) choices, but in a “blink”: a parent who picked up an added burden (hence, less time to spend with the kids), the first televised Nixon-Kennedy debate whose viewers favored the telegenic over the “tricky”, a leader who was reluctant but refused to disengage from someone else’s war ( Hey, hey, LBJ) at the expenses of his beloved Great Society .

If history is of any guide, we will eventually relegate what is now known as the internet to its proper place as we have treated its counterparts (radio, TV, phone book, encyclopedia …)

We will know that it’s there, accessible at any time, any place. But the novelty will soon wear off, or co-opted by corporations or back to the government (ARPANET started there anyway). In fact, contrarian already felt that our privacy and freedom are in jeopardy.

Internet, like everything else, will face its own “valley of death” before being adopted by the Rest. I still remember how excited everyone was with Skype and Netflix 5 years ago.

Meanwhile, it has done its job: the classification and acceleration of nearly everything.

Someday, when Search is complete with behavioral targeting, we can do away with “I am feeling lucky”. For now, if you…

Want to know about s/t? Goolge it.

Want to view and hear s/t? Youtube it.

Want to call somebody (or group w/ them), Skype him.

Although It doesn’t bring neighbors closer together, it offers us a tool to “google” them, or “verify” his/her online brand.

Something just can’t be rushed: your pot roast, your wine, and the cheese.

Or reputation, trust and friendship.

My classmate was excited upon hearing about a long-lost friend. Who wouldn’t want to see ourselves as we were once seen!

Maybe social networking is here to stay.

It connects people like the tie that binds.

Friends know what we like (that’s why they are on our friending list in the first place).

In the foxhole, we stay and fight, not out of ideology or conviction, but out of camaraderie.

Viva friendship and its enduring legacy, which can’t be rushed up.

It’s an age of acceleration, but only of nearly everything. Not of everything. A time to dance, a time to reflect. A time to die, a time to live. Still, I don’t forget those first few seconds, of  people I met. And I know they mine. The blink moment that lasts a lifetime!

Camel, container and call center

Each represents a distribution venue in various era.

Now, the man behind “As Seen On TV” wants to do away with call center altogether.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/business/media/30adco.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1309474819-WalLu/L4Q4AdzzCWZqpw4g

Essentially, he just keeps the container, while relying on the “cloud” and the credit card

to elicit impulse buying.

Welcome to the future, where pundits who blamed off-shored call centers for taking jobs away from Americans all of a sudden gone quiet (can’t blame the blinking lights in co-lo centers which might be residing in one of the trailers’ parks in North Dakota or Wyoming).

I had my experience of “impulse buying” when I called the 800 number to place orders for Time-Life Music of the 70’s (Singers and Songwriters set – ‘you have to call it now, to get the bonus CD‘ etc..). I ended up giving out my credit card numbers to an order taker

who I knew full well was working the night shift, and did not grow up listening to those music.

In a few short years, I won’t even have the privy of talking to a live person at all.

They will just keep the container to ship tangible goods, and have me download the rest (SaaS).

Clean tech, clean transaction. Direct response. No intermediary.

Ford ushered in the model T’s, all in black. This displaced the horse carriage. Now Hyundai overtakes Ford (just behind GM, VW, Toyota and Nissan).

Camel was the thing of the past (Silk Road).

I saw the picture of that bridge just opened in China.

That should facilitate a lot of containers, rushing to the port (for export).

What we used to think of as “long-term solution”, now happens to be middle-term at best, and short-term at worst. Technology with its high velocity compresses our concept of time. But, if anything still holds true, it’s our human nature (social animal) and 24-hr day.

We still are going to buy from people, trust friend’s recommendations and optimize time/value trade-off.

Hence, in taking disintermediation to the extreme, companies end up trading customer satisfaction for operational efficiency. Pushing it, they end up killing the golden goose (conversely, happy customers turn evangelists, the end result of exceptional customer service). It’s what getting the customers to come back and bring their friends that count more than a single impulse buy (exercise equipment, as seen on TV).

Customer Life-time Value.

Facebook’s CEO knows this network effect well when he mentioned that in 5 years, social media will morph into something we won’t recognize . In today’s speed, 5 years is a life time ago, when we were “irrationally exuberant” with housing prices and nobody even saw the coming of the Ipads.

On this, I am willing to revise my long-term planning. Let’s say, 2015 is far out enough into the future, when not even Cambodian college students want to work in call centers. They will be too busy counting the US dollars sub-contracting for Chinese supply chain companies whose containers are full of stuff “as seen on TV”.

The Columbo close

Many of us in Sales would remember and practice the Columbo close “Before I go, just one more thing….” (then we would go ahead with a Summary close, with one foot still in the prospect’s door).

With two years, and 555 blogs, I thought I was done with it. But then, just one more thing…..

Peter Falk knew about personal branding long before there was Facebook and LinkedIn.

He figured, to make it in an image-driven world, (w/ right eye removed at an early age) he would have to:

A. work harder (in this case, asking  one more question)

B. work  Last Impressions while others focused on First Impressions (beat-up raincoat, Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall).

C. work from his strengths e.g.  M.A. in Efficiency, government job experience  – both used his analytic skills to “lock-in” his signature role as Ltd Columbo (much like Alda in M*A*S*H).

In that vein, I want to continue the ride, “still against the wind.”

When I tried out for Vietnam‘s prestigious high-school, I failed, because of all things, my Vietnamese language (I finished French Elementary, not Vietnamese). But  I did get in the year after.

Then I tried out for the high-school band. Luckily, I nailed the audition: they were playing California Dreaming, Don’t Let Me Down etc… right up my “foreign-language” alley.

Even today, tourists in Asia can still find bands that play 70’s music, even when band members couldn’t converse well in English. They just listened and repeated after the tape.

Then, I got thrown out of a long line in front of the US Embassy (a week before the last day of the War). They were worried that a long line would give away the impending doom.

But I am here now, and even got back to Vietnam, walked in that same embassy to have my M.A. degree notarize (after local, State and DOS steps). It was requirement for work permit.

Oh, just one more thing.

The professor of Journalism 101 said I would never make it (with manual typewriter? grammar? or make it in Liberal Arts?) So I packed my bag, and went to Hanoi at the beginning of the Great Recession, and passed the Cambridge English Teaching Award exam.

Just one more thing. I have worked at Fortune 500 companies for 15 years, driving beat-up cars (but won 2 brand new ones to pay off my student loan) albeit without the raincoat, and pulling a Columbo every so often.

How is that for someone who couldn’t pass Jr high entrance exam in Vietnamese.

On second thought, maybe I can inspire those who have always got nice cars, nice houses, speak fluent and perfect English with library full of books hardly touched.

Now, they just want to rob the bank, not to get away with money, but to be put in jail for medical coverage.

Please don’t. Just work on your strengths. Peter Falk (and for that matter, Danny DeVito) rise to fame not on their eye or height. They differentiated, focused on core strengths, and charm the audience not without empathy and a sense of humor.

Maybe my strengths lie in the fact that I don’t give up or  forget easily.

Most of my failures have been put to use, as stepping stones.

In short, my  next company and job will benefit greatly because my former employers and I have paid a high price for my ” professional profile”  It’s up to me to never repeat the same mistake twice. And that, I don’t forget easily.  Before you dismiss me with a HR’s cold “Next”, let me recap by saying,  “just one more thing”: was it my leadership talent? or my persistence? or my ability to work well with others – that you fail to register? Like in any closing situation, I “SHUT UP”. Wish I had that trench coat on.