Tag: Twitter

Heart and Soul

The intangible qualities. We can only recognize them when we see them.

How can we put a measure on that which makes us human i.e. mortal yet full of life versus a machine whose sole existence is to carry out instructions and perform repetitive tasks without getting bored (the sad thing is when the machine gets to do interesting things, while human boring things).

Fordism has spreaded from automobile assembly line to the entire manufacturing process as we see today (Foxconn and workers’ tension).

Heart and Soul , however, are a bit elusive:  Air on the G String, Nocturne; Shubert can move you, a movie clip can make you feel  joyous or sad, elated or evaporated (The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face).

B movies and production houses have succumbed to poor substitutes e.g. sound track and laugh track.

Anything with an audience e.g. a lesson plan, a presentation, all-hands meeting; requires heart-and-soul delivery . To be flawless, one needs to go through 3 stages of rehearsal (courtesy of recent LinkedIn article on presentation rehearsal: You Sucks stage, Robotic stage, and finally You Rocks!).

Aim for standing ovation. Paint a broad stroke of vision, the type of speech Jesse Jackson would give at convention.

Facts and feeling. Sweat and tears. Fire and brimstone.

Orators of the past were known to speak at tent meetings for hours on end, most notably John Wesley. Today we only have day-time television which caters to the lowest common denominators : “Jerry, Jerry” ( with bouncers on the set). Or Maury, Maury …also w/ bouncers.

Jean-Luc Godard said: “all we need for a movie is a gun and a girl”. Hence, it seems as though all content was just  to fill the programming gap, waiting  to sell soap, soup and cereal.

Via Twitter, we saw glimpses of greatness, but only in 140 characters.

To stir the heart and soul, we need some work-up time.

Warm them up then chill them out. Stirring and settling.

Then BAM!. Hit them at the gut level. A call to ACTION.

Truth  has its own ring and can stand on its own legs.

Don’t get in its way.

Fear not.

Ask not.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.

I have a dream.

Man from Hope.

It took a village.

Great orators stirred us and their sound bites stayed with us.

We feel a lump in our throat. It resonates and reinvigorates us.

It stirs up our Heart and our Soul.

It passed muster.

Quality is what you recognize when you see it.

The rest, any machine can do, at the automobile or chocolate factory.

Le Temp Modern. I love Lucy. Foxconn Apple plants. From Detroit to Disneyland, at the turn of  the 20th century to present time, are we happier now? (studies show China experiencing similar dissonance i.e. wealthier, but not happier, due to eroded “iron rice bowl”). Or the gas line and hot-dog line (at Cosco) have weighed you down?

Wake up Hot-Dog Nation. We can do better. Think and Ask Not. Feel the pain. Use it. Start rising. And don’t stop there. Have a dream. A different dream (by definition dreams are supposed to be out of this world. What are you being afraid of: that it might come true?)  Seek First. That Thy will be done,….but first on Earth.

30 years on

USA Today celebrated its 30th anniversary issue, with bolder graphics and fonts (thanks! we can use larger fonts now).

Those papers we pick up outside our hotel rooms when traveling on business  (to be left behind at airport lounges).

Anyway. This issue features some “futurists” in each sector: urban architecture, space travel, transportation (Ford), internet (Twitter’s founder) etc…

A quote that jumps out of the page: “in the future, the world will be divided into two classes: those who are told by the machine what to do, and those who tell the machine what to do”.

Wow! unmanned cars which Google is currently test-driving. Electric cars = computers on wheels.

Information will be ubiquitous, like those electricity plugs we scarcely notice.

We will be 30 years older (just think back to 1982. Back then, a friend was “experimenting” with his personal computer).

Back then, we were transiting from cassette to CD, from a weak America into a stronger one (Carter was quoted as saying:” we have a crisis of confidence”), from being a debt-free nation into a debtor nation.

Now, Iran came in full circle.

30 years on.

A lot has happened, but then, nothing has been off-script: we still have an election, the economy is still in the top 3 along with the Arab Spring went south. Hatred incites, love unites. We need Buscalia (love Guru) and Moon (matchmaker).

30 years ago, we got the Concorde, Mc Donald Douglass and McDonald. Now only McDonald (even the Burger King near me was closed). A bounty is still out for the head of Rushdie, the writer in exile.

I heard in Detroit, houses were foreclosed section by section, and sold for 5K, but no one dared to come in and be the first penguin.

30 years on. Where would you be after paying off the house and college loan. Will you be driving an EV?  a domestic?

Will we do away with laptop as we now do with desktop (BTW, the father of laptop has just died. He brought friendly design to computers ).

It’s in the American character to “make things happen” instead of “letting history happen to you” (quoted Marc Andreessen).

30 years on. We will all be writing our memoirs (lots of time on hand). WordPress will be bought out by other photo and video sites, perhaps Google. Then when we search for someone or some place, it will show all the tweets and Likes, Linkedin’s profile and blog, video,  Google photos and Facebook social graphs).  

Our “ego-sphere” will be stored in the Cloud (reminds me of Augustinian line “our soul is anchored in the heavenly, no wonders we feel restless unless we find rest in Thee). Deep search will  not be just for private investigators.

Then we will have privacy issues just as in Electronic Medical Records. In an accident, the EV will pop up our medical conditions for first responders to attend to. It’s a bold new world. Can’t wait to grow old. Aging will be a cool thing, and not jeered at (especially when we can afford spare artificial organs) (see my other blog on NEVER LET ME GO) . We will stay active in the cities and don’t have to move to Cocoa Beach, Florida (home of the USA Today founder). 30 years ago, even while escaping to Bali or Bahamas, we couldn’t wait to get online (You’ve Got Mail). 30 years on, we can’t wait to get offline. Maybe the hotel still leave a copy of USA Today outside the door. This time, definitely in bolder prints.

Socially connected

The inner ring then the outer ones.

We learn to trust, to collaborate.

Great things cannot be achieved alone.

That’s why the President tweets. That’s why we tweet.

Do you know someone who needs our services?

Or some place who is hiring so our students can apply.

We need those links and those leads.

People need people.

On LinkedIn, we keep seeing so and so is now connected with so and so.

The social graph keeps getting denser. Pretty soon, the net (shaped in our image) will be big enough to carry us to safety *unlike our social safety net which is in need of mending).

New world order, fashioned after our image and likings.

I have come across issues and images I would never have come across on my own.

Thanks to the net economy and taxonomy; yes, I can.

Let’s see if Twitter will tip the election (Kennedy election was a close call as well).

I suspect that it will.

We are not back in 2000. We are in 2012.

Apocalyptic year.

And we have made it thus far pass Labor Day.

Penn State lost 2 games out of the gate.

And the economy, especially in Europe, is still puttering.

Hard times. Like those Post Recession black and white phoros (migrant Madonna).

Something is to be done but then everything has been done.

Together we can. Can’t we.

More than ever before, we are socially connected.

More than ever before, we are doing worse.

What paradox!

What predicament!

All the tools in the world All the help in the world.

Yet still stuck in lower gear.

If we apply the five stages of grief  to the situation, we are now somewhere pass Anger and Denial.

We are in Compromise and Depression.

When people compromised, they ask for less  in return.

And when they are in depression, nothing gets done. Hitting the blank wall. Everything shuts down.

Socially connected or not, let’s remind one another to quickly Accept (acknowledge the Elephant in the room), and move one. Get out and vote . Get some fresh air. Go travel and spend money. Fall is a good time to catch up on some spending and yes, reading (Tom Wolfe is coming out with his voluminous piece again). Turn the chapter to “your life 2.o”.

Learn from Penn State, even with its first two losses. Ouch!

Connect and Respect

I often go first to Home Page on LinkedIn to see who is connecting with whom.

The Network Effect assumes people are inherently decent, deserving respect and reciprocity. Society continues to work on that basis. Not random shooting, nor indiscriminate mass slaughter.

We have learned invaluable lessons in collaboration: WWII, internet peering, crowd-sourcing and job networking.

We have also learned invaluable lessons in ignoring our intuition: derivative bubble or work-life imbalance. For every new member we are linked with, newer 2nd-degree acquaintances also joined our circle indirectly.

Connect and Respect.

We honor their transparency (completing a profile), their professional experience and background, and their access to “friends in the high places”.

At the base, we respect people as fellow human beings, sojourners in this pilgrimage called Life, of which Work is a big part.

Each person brings a unique set of skills and circumstances. If asked, each has a story to tell, a lesson to teach us.

I refuse to speculate about why a PhD Student decided to get firearms and bullets to shoot down people randomly.

Nor do I try to explain away why higher-ups at Penn State Higher Learning decided to cover up the shame, which only worsens as time goes on.

When we feel that those were grotesque, instinctively we are for decency,  respect and want to connect.

Each person is sacred in his or her own right. Each person has a lot to give even if by being just a connector or memory keeper. The more the merrier. Keep them coming. Seek first to understand, more than to be understood (courtesy of the late Steven Covey).

Thank you for connecting and respecting.

They keep coming

In a few days, they might put on Neil Diamond‘s America.

Voter registration. Organ donor. Vehicle registration.

They bring some cash (let’s hope so) and a load of dream.

Many had left personal chapters of their lives before boarding that plane.

Just like the Irish and Polish a century and a half ago.

Except that the ports of entry may now be in Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The new Ellis Islands.

First stop often are ethnic enclaves which help ease their transition and acculturation (euphemism for losing out that which had made them them in the first place).

Gone are the scarves, the beards and the cone hats.

Instead, we have everyone wearing some sort of emblems: American Eagles, Newport Beach, Disney and sports teams.

I used to proudly wear PENN STATE grey and blue.

I still am proud.

But having been here too long, I started to realize I had overcompensated to becoming an American. It is a melting pot which frisked me of my ethnicity.

Once in CA, I realized everyone had come from somewhere else.

It’s LA. Dream factory (Hollywood) and Disneyland.

Not just people who reinvent themselves. The city itself has done that (you will not find the setting like you saw in the movies).  You are lucky to buy a map and take a tour where the stars might live (if they don’t check in a secret hotel to hook up).

Stuff of dream, of mirage (farther out, it’s more true in Las Vegas, but then, what happened there stayed there).

Yet they keep coming. Keep driving the vehicles. Keep smiling for the camera (except for the traffic control one).

And best of all, like one of the two Google founders, parents raised them to be good in math, which indirectly give us “Search”.

I feel lucky.

America feels lucky. And should be thankful (two-way street).

OK, now you can fade in Neil Diamond’s America. It’s Fourth of July.

If you hear a lot of fireworks, you know the economy is back in full swing.

One more reason to celebrate, besides Independence from the Brits and wherever else they – we – were from. But keep a toe back there, because

it’s good to know where one was from, and appreciate that unique root. May your descendants give us all the “googles” in this land of opps, starting at the DMV line. License will be in the mail in three  weeks.

My Saigon

Like Trinh Cong Son‘s Diem Xua, I got my own imprints of what  Saigon was like.

Especially on Sundays, like today.

Shaded streets, short strolls and sweet smiles.

Who needs all the executive shirt with designers’ emblem on it.

Instead of shirt, just smile even when you are not on camera. “Cuoi len di em oi” Just smile.

Le Sourire.

Flowers for the graves, flowers for the grade school teachers.

Lots of laughters, lots of tears “Ta chi can mot nguoi cung voi ta doi chet moi ngay”

Just a person to pass the time with while awaiting death inevitable.

Hence, Saigonese put on their best.

Last night, at a friend’s private birthday party, I sat outside on the balcony, looking into the glass door, taking in the scene, as if it were a movie set. Was I there, or just watching myself being there?

Am I in or in but not of it?

They say you can take a Texan out of Texas, but you cannot take Texas out of a Texan.

Perhaps the same holds true for Saigonese like myself .

Something about the French cafe, the Vespa, the Chinese noodle, and now, the KFC.

Saigon is a synthesis.

We “cao dai (unitarian) every strand of thoughts and expressions.

No one knows or is let in to our core. Double protection.

Suspicious of foreigners yet embrace them all.

Like on LinkedIN.

Like on Facebook.

Like on Twitter.

Just smile.

Le sourire.

Lots of laughter and lots of tears.

Just one life time.

But in mine, I have seen Saigon live multiple lives.Try every dish, every taste: bitter cucumber or  pickled lemon.

We take everything and leave out nothing.

During my entire life interacting and learning about Saigon , I have yet seen Saigon lose out.

It blends and synthesizes everything.

To the point where you could only recognize it by its smile.

Then the younger generation takes over.

You see the resemblance but can’t put a finger on it.

Turns out it’s that smile underneath the facade.

They smile when they are happy and when they are sad (see Understanding Vietnam).

Saigon’s smile is more of a reaction than an expression. “You always smile but in your eyes your sorrow shows”.

My Saigon. Cuoi len di em oi, du nuoc mat rot chet vanh moi. Smiling while swallowing tears.

Twitter and Twister

The later brought destruction to the Mid_West, but its impact is immediate, albeit regional.

The former more dangerous, simmering and long-tailed.

140 characters are more than enough to assassinate a character, his/her reputation which is built up over a life time.

Be careful.

Social malaise not social media in the wrong hands.

Not enough post, people don’t recognize your brand.

Too much, they are bored and become anesthetized.

We are living in parallel worlds: Twitter‘s and Twister‘s.

Digital and analog.

Both are real, as real as what’s floating and flowing through our heads.

With Twitter, we can edit, and control.

We leave our marks in the world.

140 characters at a time.

( I am at an internet cafe near Tan Son Nhut Airport. A baguette vendor just walked by to take order. Talking about digital and analog!).

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have become part of our digital life. The trinity came on the scene only half a decade ago.

During that time, we have had the housing crisis, and its reverberation.

Nature shed its blood, shakes its fist and shred some fat.

Survival of the fittest (MySpace, Kodak).

I must give it to Levis. During and after the Gold Rush, the unintended consequence was Levis jeans.

Winners and losers, but Levis always wins.

Now, gold diggers and gold traders are wearing them to.

We play the game of Island survival to exercise “forced choices”. Jeans always is a must-pack.

In five years, Facebook and Twitter will still be here.

Twister will come and go.

Still, be careful of both.

Its impact might be long-lasting. More than any of us is now realizing.

Just ask the scribes. They had no idea what they were doing when copying the Bible and later, print them.

A well-placed thought and well-said line becomes a saving line for someone in need and in search of truth, on or off-line. But ill-thought and ungraceful comments stay digitally and eternally.

Flaubert et moi

Actually this is about the redemptive aspect of literature.

Set in 1843, Flaubert‘s character rode the psycho-somatic roller-coaster. The result: Madame Bovary set him apart from his Romantic contemporaries. He started the school of Realism even though he never admitted it. Bovary got married, Bovary got bored, Bovary had an affair and a brush with death but recovered just to fall into the arms of another man.  Finally, bankruptcy and death. But Bovary wasn’t the character. It’s Flaubert’s attempt at depicting French country side and country living of his time (Like Roger Altman‘s films, the place is the main character).

In fact, some critics overheard him said, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi”.

Feeling hemmed in and enveloped by a flat country side which to others  might be heaven – wife of a country doctor  etc…but to our character, it’s an oppression.

She longed for the return of the glamorous “Gastby type”.

Flaubert held up the mirror to show us ourselves, the mirage we invented and dreams projected (which essentially our shadows in the cave).

I had no preconception before reading that piece of art.

Having finished it, I still have no post-conception of it.

It just was. Human nature.

The illusion of a better find around the bend, of Moore’s Law that keeps multiplying to infinity . This is antithetic to Flaubert who was known for his dis-taste of machine.

I wish I could read it in French.

But the English version is Flaubert enough. I understand more about escapism, nihilism and “the journey is a reward” .

The illusion that one can control and change destiny.

As fate would have it, Bovary died a wretched lady and her doctor-husband stayed on in the very town she had detested.

Back then, in that setting, writers must be autocrats to afford deep researching of the characters and setting of a novel.

What would he do had he been born in this century?

Like Norman Mailer, he perhaps would stick with the typewriter and not Twitter.

Meanwhile, what would we do being born in early 1800?

We would die younger, hence the longing for escapism must have come sooner.

Would we want to switch places with them?

Are our qualities of life surpassing theirs?

How about the index of misery?

Perhaps Flaubert breathed cleaner air, but according to his character,

still oppressed and constricted.

The take-away from Madame Bovary is ” le mot juste“. Flaubert would read out loud, finding the right word that tickles the ears.

Again, I wish I could have read it in its original language.

One thing I appreciate about Vietnam: you can go to a bookstore, and buy translated books from Russia, France, America or South America.

Someone, somewhere in this “belong-to-bottom 15” of miserable index, is trying to look up le mot juste, to do justice to an author’s intent.

When they found it, they would not let go of it. So would I. Everything (word) has its place and time under the sun. Flaubert’s place has so far been secured in French literature . If Madame Bovary got digitized though. Flaubert would have hated it.

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.