Tag: Twitter

Next-Gen Leader

With the passing of Mandela, the world raises a legit question: will there be another one in the horizon of equal moral stature!

Yes and No.

This is why. Gen Next grows up digitally.

Search at their fingertips.

Conversation has long tail.

Everyone is well-informed by those tweets (Welcome Pres George H.W. Bush to Twitter). Tweet not Twist!

They invent services, fix things and carry none of the analog legacy. Instead, they identify more with sports and entertainment figures than WW II heroes like Churchill.

Attention is their new currency (Ashton and the hash tag). Wardrobe malfunction is the norm. Instead of avoiding disruption, they build it into the planning and implementing process.

Everyone thinks different including rival Samsung who opens factories in Vietnam instead of China. The older generation is looked at as having dementia (shut down the government?)

Morgan, Madoff and not Mandela? Rather, their hero is one who cooks his own meal and takes the bus to work. The new Pope (who just spoke up against CEO salaries which used to double-digit higher than workers, now triple-digit).

Next-gen leader is currently backpacking in Nepal and Napoly. picking up on the nuances of a globalized and inter-connected world while building and rebuilding homes torn by tornadoes. They play by the rules, but not rewarded for points just yet.

Burden with school debt, they decide to get our of the box altogether, postponing their parent’s white-shoe

career for a chance to experience the many shades of grey.

I hope they connect the dots, and not just cross the t’s.

My daughter dances with the number one hip-hop team in the US. Her group is composed of multi-ethnic LA (she was a few years old when the LA Riot broke).

To her, the conversation about race is just as passe as AOL ‘s “you’ve got mail”.

Kids in the Ukraine and Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt are all aspiring for real change, and not just a phone upgrade

To them, bigger is not better.

And the Beatles are still cool.

If a seventeen-year-old whose cancer death “Clouds”  can rally 5,000 people at the Mall of America for a choir, than we still have hope.

This time, it’s not going to be a towering figure as we had hoped for. It will be multi-tasking multi-racial and multi-platform leaders.

Every kid knows how to self-invent, self-promote and seek self-correction (at least the spell check). The Internet with its power growing by the minute will raise the bar.

Tech language will bind everyone together better than the Queen’s language.

And the new frontier is out there, in space and under the ocean. New leader looks for role models in influencers and thought leaders whom they trust, digitally.

You cannot hide but be the truth, the transparency  and the trust they are looking for.

Their votes will be crowd-sourced and cross-checked, not a replay of Florida in 2000

Next-Gen leader has emerged on this side of the digital screen. We just don’t know it, or refuse to recognize him, or more likely, her.

It’s that fast and furious, or common like our Inaugural poet. It’s staring in our faces, from the screen. Next-gen leader has to play both sides of digital divide, virtuality and reality, not both sides of the aisle.

Ladies and gentlemen, may we welcome our new leader, via podcast and broadcast, via tweets and texts and via whatever platform they will and surely will invent. We just did not know we would someday ride in EV and get stuff delivered by drones.

Stay healthy and stay tuned (because we are going to live very long life) to be witnesses to change.

New world requires new leader. Just that they will come in packages we might not like or are comfortable with. In MN, they voted for wrestler and SNL comedian. Someday, our leader might come with tattoos and ear rings in non-traditional places. You might wish it otherwise, but it’s the new reality brought to us by the virtual world we had created in our own image. For now, the Pope will do.

Haiyan and Hyatt

The world’s poor seem to bear the brunt of typhoon destruction more than the  world’s rich.

They live in The Ring of Fire. Can’t afford to move anywhere and now can’t go home.

Disaster relief is needed. But long-term and sustained recovery takes time.

We have come up with pre-fab housing that can withstand heavy storm damage.

Made out of bamboo and steel.

Every crisis carries with it embedded opportunity.  For our human family to come closer together.

To show and share our humanity and hope.

Done my part too, for having spent a year in Bataan Refugee Center.

People were labeled “refugees”. But they later become Ph Ds in Physics at University of Chicago and Berkeley.

They might invent the next Twitter and Google ( one of the founder’s parents were Russian immigrants – Ph D in Math).

Between Haiyan and Hyatt, the journey is the same: climbing out of the heap, rebuild and move on.

Heart-breaking most of the time. But Hope never fails.

As long as we believe once again in the goodness of the human family.

People who share bread with strangers. Who chip in. Who started “Habitat for Humanity“.

10,000 lives lost, or millions (during the world wars), we march on.

Work our way back to normalcy and diplomacy.

Romance and rage.

From Haiyan back to Hyatt.

The good ness of life.

As long as we survive, there is still hope.

The challenge of natural disaster should draw out what’s best in us.

Not like a deer stands frozen facing the headlight.

But the Phoenix that rises again from the ash.

It’s like two sides of the coin: death and life, destruction and reconstruction.

Now presents a challenge for designing sustainable and safe housing.

Architecture as if people matter. Economics as if people matter. Diplomacy as if people matter.

We could be among those 10,000 dead. Yet we are still here, the morning after disaster struck.

Go on and live out our lives as if people matter. Give nothing but the best if not all of yourself. That’s what it’s for.

Lonely crowd

Back in the 60’s , David Riesman already concluded that “the more might not be the merrier”.

Social network researchers have come up with diverse conclusions about Facebook and Internet use.

Passive vs active participation makes a difference whether we are happier or less happy when using social media.

We have yet fully exploited this new social platform (democratized, groundswell stuff).

Social media and digital content not only have width (geographically), but also depth (time irrelevant).

THIS PLATFORM FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY, ALLOWS US TO MAKE KNOWN OUR EXISTENCE ACROSS TIME AND SPACE.

Right now, these platforms are monetized, politicized and socialized.

But in time, they will also be memorialized and multiplied.

People of all races, creeds and generations can access and translate someone’s blogs and tweets into their languages,

and to understand what made someone react and respond at a particular time in history.

In other words, open platform.

Yes, if we passively participate (just browsing) in social network, we might feel lonelier. And vice versa.

Riesman’s Lonely Crowd again, even with Smart Phone and Wi-Fi (wireless on the beach).

Social Network is not a utility (Application layer, not Physical Layer). It allows each of us to create and share content i.e. collective cognition, not dumbing down.

Sort of what I am doing and have experimented with Liking, Blogging and Commenting (hopefully filming and video someday).

My Warhol‘s “15 minutes of fame”.

Neither Warhol nor Orwell could have predicted the rise of the Internet. Or else, they wouldn’t have staked their claims on

limited fame or state control, respectively.

Turns out that Riesman has been ahead of his time: we are social animal subjected to existential loneliness, a fate from which we can not escape with or without Facebook.

 

To Die Another Day

Those gene combination keeps going, mutating and evolving.

Buddistically or biologically, we aren’t going to die today. Maybe another day. But not today (I am obviously blogging still, 957 and counting).

Unlike a line in American Pie “too much whiskey and wine…this will be the day that I die”. Meanwhile, in the land of the living, some rules stay : what you sowed, you reap; do unto others as you would like to be done unto.

The sun rises and it sets; the usual tempo except when asteroid hit Earth. Death uninvited.

Every day, we got Twitter but not every day we got twister (depends on what region of the country, the impact and differences are quite significant). The later lifted trucks, cows and roofs high into the air.

Who said it’s peaceful when you die in your sleep.

I got a rare glimpse into the process of aging and dying this past week: accompanying elder siblings to doctor visits, pharmacy waiting rooms etc…

My brother is a pharmacist. And he will soon be waiting outside the counter for his own prescriptions. We all will be waiting in front of those counters (unless they streamline the process).

To die another day. But not today.

In Ishtar, Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty shooed away the crows “Go away, not dead yet”. The movie however was a bomb. Just desert sand and deserted seats.

The journey however continues, whether we are on a quest to Mars or to the Mall, in stages: born, live, reflect and die..

I am glad to have been shown by great writers how they searched and sifted through the details of their lives.

Still there are many great stories remain untold, while more mundane stuffs got printed.  Who can tell what sells?

Consumer’s taste is quite fleeting.

We avoid risks, unless it’s other people who take the fall (Oscar‘s host).

It’s called sacrificial lamb. Someone dies in our places. To appease death and atone for sin (collective).

Winter is soon over. Spring is forthcoming. Symbols of life are about to show forth and, to remind us once again that life won’t go away.

The gene pool, 99 per cent plus, will go on through the lives of our children. To die another day. Not today.

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”.

The grains of time

By now the transition from analog to digital has almost been completed.

Movies, music, photos and books. The old movies are easy to spot: actors using huge phones and driving old cars.

Vinyl albums made those hissy noise when touched by the needle.

And books, like the one I am reading, War and Peace, are so heavy. You can’t help realising that you are entering Tolstoy‘s Imperial Society.

Physical versus digital world.

24/7 always-on grid vs our 16-hour world (8 hours for sleep).

People, through connection, find suitors in the old world, friending others in the new.

More atomized more access, the new takes scarcity and locality out of the equation.

Just Google him or her.

Follow him/her on Twitter (despite the miles apart).

The social graph shows his/her photos, Likes, and Time Line.

Little Red Riding Hood was told not to trust strangers (wolf in grandma’s clothing). Now she is encouraged to click Approve, and upload every details of her waking life.

Yet those grains of time as appeared in old B/W photos speak volumes about our ancestors. Mine always seemed to appear in groups, staring straight and standing straight. It’s as though they had all been military cadets.

I have gone through life, never had a chance to see if my grandparents even smiled at all.

Now, with X-Gig memory cards, we can afford to leave behind traces of happiness. Limit not ourselves to event only, since everyday is an event. Monday, Monday, it turns out that way.

Having said that (technology enhances self-expression), I must give it to the previous generation whose movie theme music remains unsurpassed. Think of the old James Bond theme music (three cheers to SKYFALL which has just won the Golden Globe),  Moon River, Love is Many splendor Things…. You can always tell their genres e.g. Big-Band or string guitar. The 50’s gave birth to subsequent women liberation and self-expression in couture, hair dyeing.

Those shiny  but short skirts, the boots, and low neck lines. Furniture and interior decoration was hip as well. Now, with mass merchandising, young men and women took for granted their individuality online while at the same time paying less attention to outer appearance: metro-style, with T-shirts and trans-gender jeans.

While collegial looks are available to all, online “friending” is quite restricted. You need access to your “friend’s” page. Even then, you will know very little, besides what they wanted you to know. More access yet fewer information. Sounds like we are back to square one, with grainy B/W photos. I hope someday I come across in family’s album something resembling a smile. Maybe at the time, women colored their teeth black (to prevent cavity). Hence, the embarrassment. Or that they took pictures with a family patriarch who was stern and strict. Or the photographer had been trained to take ID photos only (no “cheese”. ) Then I remember Mona Lisa, and how we all “read” into that painting a smile that might or might not be there. Obviously, we can see it in her eyes. That smile stood the test of time, however grainy and non-digital.

Slippery Saigon

I went out for my morning jog in slippery Saigon.  I was hoping for cooler weather. Now that my wish was granted, I begin to have second thought: if it’s cool here, it means somewhere up North, people are freezing, or boats and houses destroyed.

We live in a connected world and leave behind carbon footprints.

A cigarette tossed into the wild could ignite a forest fire. A harsh word, ill-thought-out and unsolicited comment could damage a child’s self-esteem.

Should they be protected, insulated and shielded from the pain-filled world out there?

How much “reality” should a show depict to open a child’s eyes?

When 9/11 happened, my then 10-year old could not comprehend its magnitude.

Now, my second kid and I are “following” each other on Twitter. Cool!

Back in my time, my parents hardly ever sat down with me, much less “follow”. I am a product of multiple generations, where an uncle, a cousin, an aunt and now nephew, all chipped in with unsolicitated advices. It’s our version of social compact.

But when this social compact broke down, it’s quite ugly e.g. to pay down gambling debt, a father/mother would offer their daughter(s) as payment (to be an unpaid maid or concubine – a phenomenon not unheard of in the bordering towns near China and Cambodia).

WE HAVE A BIG 21st CENTURY PROBLEM: TECHNOLOGY IS MOVING FASTER THAN OUR CAPACITY TO ABSORB IT, WHILE OUR CULTURAL MORES STAY IN THE BACK WOODS OF EMERGING COUNTRIES.  People are still auctioned off, raped, murdered and mutilated over a fake I-phone, for instance. In India, gangs raped bus passenger or Swiss couple who camped out.

Our Western liberal mind screams out when hearing about these incidents.

Then we shrugged it off when the Mafia in Chicago make their extortion route.

Hollywood even made money on these film-noir genre. Hypocrisy? Absolutely.

Who am I to judge? Who am I to carry the chip on my shoulders (Hey Jude).

In What the Dog Saw, Malcom Gladwell pointed out that although imaging and images have better resolution, our capacity to read them (intelligence) will have to increase ten fold to make it effective.

So we need to keep up with our own invention. The tool has become the teacher. This begs a related topic: our capacity to reflect. To think about our mistakes (committed or omitted), to change course. This integrative skill differentiates us from mere technologists (repetitive) order takers (reactive). Back when the 3 networks (TV) ruled, the anchor who could ad-lip was highly sought after. He/she had the skill to see and describe reality in context and in step with what were happening  real-time. Peter Jennings did that during 9/11. After having a smoke, he died of lung cancer. He crossed that journalistic line, from being an observer to being a participant of that same drastic event.

It’s still slippery outside. I promise myself not to slid and slide in the rain. Now is the time to reflect on slippery Saigon. On our capacity to keep up with modern technology. Just have to stay away from the clans who somehow manage to crawl on Facebook, trying to “friend” you with unsolicited postings. Something isn’t going to change, or avoidable. Just like the wet weather here today.

Marconi and Marcom

In the late 80’s, PacTel Cellular boasted seamless connection from San Francisco to San Diego. That is, if you had a battery pack to power the wireless devices (MicroTac? Motorola).

Remember this was pre-Twitter days.

Now it’s 12/12/12 and the Mayan’s calendar is soon running out.

Back when Marconi was experimenting with sending signals across the Atlantic, skeptics had a field day (light and signals traverse in a straight line, and thanks to Columbus, we know the Earth is round. Good luck Marconi!).

Those guys obviously did not play pool (angling and bouncing).

Putting all these elements together. We got Marcom.

The art of positioning your company, your brand and image for the longer term.

Many-step flow. Diffusion of innovation. Crowd-source and users’ Likes.

It takes time for people to adopt.  When MCI tried to attach a piece of equipment to the ATT network, it got stalled and deterred.  Jack Goeken did not give up.

He was trying to help truck-to-truck short-way communicate from St Louis to Chicago.  And in Marconi’s case,   ships-to-shores communication. Both faced hard resistance (today’s equivalence of “Who killed the EV?”).

That was before peering, inter-operability and other engineering agreements.

Currently, we still have to “unlock” an I-phone.  People were put in “voicemail jail” etc… Technology and man’s freedom.

IP issues and the trajectory of human achievement and advancement.

Think back to the age of gramaphones. And fast forward to the i-pod Shuffle.

Then you can see the full sweep of tech (just in sound recording and reproduction).

Marconi sent signals across the pond. Bell asked “Mr Watson, come here“.

Now we got Youtube and “Concert for Sandy Relief“.

Put together a Marcom plan for yourself, your family and your company.

It’s our modern-day equivalend of yesterday’s black/white photo albums. Our heritage in the making.

Enjoy your Christmas wireless experience. Don’t forget those trailblazers. It’s heart-throbbing to finance those expeditions, today’s equivalence of Tesla and Virgin’s space tourism.

But then, without the likes, we would still be listening to each other from those gramaphones.

When dreams are gone!

A few blogs ago, I wrote about Noel Decoration in Saigon.

A few weeks from now, the glitters will have been all gone.

Party is over.

Then, it’s a long grind. 2013.

The quants have already crunchedl year-end data: sunk costs, margin, consumer behavior (irrational at times – hint: sell spirits over the holidays).

The monks look on Christmas helplessly. They wait their turn (Buddhist birthday).

Girl friends are hoping loudly for gifts, employees for bonus.

After all, it’s Christ‘s birthday.

The author became a character in a  play he had created.

Empathy. Homelessness. Rejection. Illegitimacy (ask him for his birth certificate).

Our consumerist society has co-opted and corrupted every single occasion to sell merchandise. Together, we build “brand”.

The dream goes like this, “it’s Christmas, the season of giving. So borrow and buy, first for your miserable self, then for those near and far, like them or not. Ship them, don’t like them, then return them. We will send something else, or give you store credits to shop some more”.

Many of these “gifts” end up in the closet along with next year’s wrapping papers.

And dreams just don’t stop there. New Year’s Resolution, ranging from vocational training, weight loss program, and cosmetic surgery. We keep trying, because after all, “life’s a moment in space” with a few surprises around the bend (hopefully they installed mirrors around the curves).

“When dreams are gone, it’s a lonelier place”. In a few weeks, those same hot spots where decorations are now up, will be desolate.

The crowd will have moved on, from Bethlehem to Babel, from cashier to customer service. Next! Return or exchange? 2013, long grind.

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.