Tag: Twitter

Third life

As recent as 60 years ago, a businessman could let his hair down (or hat off) at home, smoke a cigarette or pipe, and watch the news

(in black and white). In fact, at the U of TX Austin museum, an exhibition is underway to show you just that: witness to a century.

Now, we spend a considerable amount of time online, commenting, following, blogging, liking and…venting.

Welcome to modernity i.e. jet plane, mobile devices, fast food and “social” sans borders.

It will either be misinformation or disinformation about us, and certainly, easy access (Snowden’s alert).

(at least, on LinkedIn, they let you reverse look up people who looked you up).

Some people even advocate cyber abstinence or cyber sabbatical.

The idea is to rearrange our priorities so face time can take precedence over screen time.

Twitter is so prescient in mobile connectivity. “Where are you now” has been one of the most asked questions in mobile conversation.

Now, with Twitter, we can proactively let “followers” know our where-about (In transit at a Korean airport, for instance).

Next and last frontier would be cloud-based computing (dropbox).

One exception: college students still prefer to haul around heavy textbooks over digital readers. Masochist?

Or just the last streak of rebellion?

In case you haven’t noticed, we now know more about Facebook friends of friends who posted regularly on-line, than our closest relatives who live far away.

So back to our businessman in the 50’s, who wore suspenders like Larry King‘s. Only now that our Happy Days dad comes home from work (first life) skips over his second life (wife, kids and supper time) to go online (third life), where he keeps taps intimate details of his “friends”, while his wife, perhaps is doing so on her mobile, while out shopping for a bargain on groupons.

And what about the kids? They have already got their daily dose of  100 SMS messages before seamlessly continue their virtual existence on multi-screen. The truth hit home to me, when, upon staying at a friend’s house last week, I discovered a stool in the toilet. Asked what it’s for. Guess what, the kids surfed the internet while using the bathroom. That stool was his lap top stand.

Welcome to our 21st century, when we not only have public and private life, as in the 50’s, but also, virtual life.

If unchecked, this technology-aided life (Third Life) will take a larger chunk of our 24-hour pie, even bathroom time. Amuse ourselves to death.

My machine vs yours

When Henry Ford put together two motor cycles side by side to invent the automobile, he wasn’t interested in pleasing his customers, “you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black”.  Now, car turns commodity, the Chinese came up with Cherry, the pink car designed to please its female customers  Bye bye Alpha Male.

We are moving swiftly to post-industrial society, where valued apps differentiate services (the Application layer).

My android app vs your I-Phone‘s. More women play games that fit their lifestyle, instead of shooting down the enemies in Mortal Combat. And medical records can be made available to avoid cross-drug effects. Ironically, pornographers are way ahead in tech curve (money-motivated people adopts invention very quickly).

How much more the “good” guys can advance if they put their mind into it.

My machine vs yours.

Let’s race.

We went to the Moon, collected rock samples, and returned safely.

Now, we just have to sit down in a chair and think.

Let our fingers do the walking on the keyboard, not feet on the surface of the Moon. Let them glide, and be the extension of our speed of thought.

Besides speed (Moore’s Law), and network effect (Melcafe), we need Movement (macro-wiki?)  to lift ourselves above the mundane.

Google’s “don’t be evil”, Steve Job‘s “be hungry”.

Sadly but truly, hunger and fear are good driving forces. The former compels us to hunt, the other to invent weapons to protect ourselves. Peter Drucker once said “organizations exist to do two things: innovation and marketing”.

From Taser to Tommy, it is not unusual to find in a woman’s bag: car alarm, I pod, I phone, flash lights, garage door openers, remote control of all sorts etc….

Wireless technologies have liberated dancers/singers so they can move around the stage, and their laptops around the house.

My machine vs yours.

Surround sound. Shared sorrow. The Japan that can now say NO.

Once thrived, now disheartened, Japan has quietly moved on to robotics to serve its aging population. If any country that could work technology into health care, Japan should be it. I had a chance to sort through first hand, all sorts of machines junked by hospitals. Brace ourselves for 21st-century hospitalization, where you can’t affor having allergy to all things machine. From Youtube to test tube, you will instead of viewing your music video, end up breathing from one.

My machine vs yours.

The Who will change its tune, from “see me, feel me” to “test me, read me”.

The machine won’t prolong life, but at least, it can give exact reading of time of death. That’s when the cursor blinks, without going to the next alphabet.

No period. Just blinking, incessantly.

My machine vs yours. Learn to live and love it while you can.

Under-utilized imagination

The-girl-with-a-dragon-tatoo series got me hooked. I know it’s cold  in Stockholm. And I know he did not produce tangible products from the factory, such as sweet or swatch.

But he offered readers an emotional experience (getting out of mundane existence, stepping into character and experiencing triumph and tragedy unavailable to us otherwise).  The author did not live to enjoy his success, which is a tragedy in and of itself.

We despise those who cooked up sub-prime collateral obligation. But we wasted a lot of brain power which could get us out of our dilemma. I am hopeful that someone is building a better Twitter, a faster YouTube, and a more efficient Netflix.

On LinkedIn, the Innovation group has experienced phenomenal growth. It is to show that we want to connect with like-minded creative people.

If you want to generate energy, join a Samba group. We don’t get much results by exercising alone. The same way when it comes to exercising our imagination.

One person’s zany idea might trigger another’s bankable invention (the Orange Revolution).

Last Saturday, I sat with a few people who at one time in their career achieved sales success.

These sales veterans wanted to brainstorm some ideas. I remembered the excitement and anticipation among the group.

Multiply that experience by nth time. Then we might get  that gene pool to work. Each of us already is a miracle (at conception). Now, we need idea incubation (Edison and his team, not Edison the lone inventor).

And maybe, a star is born. It doesn’t cost much to exercise our imagination. It’s already there as nature’s gift. Some of us capitalize and monetize it better than others. In the case  of the-girl-with-a-dragon-tatoo trilogy, the author did not live to see his characters alive on the screen. God rest his soul. His characters are so real to the million who bought those books. Who said imagination is cheap? It is just under-utilized.

Where have all the salesmen gone?

Algorithm rules. Pop-up ads and SEO.

Sales automation. Who needs a firm handshake, the smell of splash perfume and sincere eye contact!

Users know everything about the product and the industry anyway.

There is no need for more information. Only the recommendation part, which they rely on friends and families.

Strangers knocking on doors and pushing product don’t seem to work as it once did during the industrial era (Death of the salesman).

Willy Loman takes off his hat, and resigns to his fate. Ours is an age of logistic and automation. May the best route win.  User-generated content, user-interphase, user-comment. We call this empowerment. Democratizing the web.  Everyone logs in, surfs and is glued to the set.

And we barely scratch the surface. Since mobile penetration is faster than desktop’s, designers beef up mobile IP and liberate users from their “desks”.

First the “brick” phone, then the I-phone. We should hold memorials for boombox, Walkman, brick phone and mainframe computers. Products are smaller, cheaper, easier to ship. No manual needed. No demo. No need for salesmen. Click here, enter there, and UPS or FedEx will ship to your door (it started with Amazon, Ebay and Priceline until it grows on you). Or more conveniently, swipe your credit card, punch in the vending selection, and transact with a machine.

Every start-up now enjoys lower barriers of entry (open source software, cheaper hardware, increased bandwidth and labor surplus). San Francisco is witnessing a Renaissance: game companies, Twitter etc… Let’s play. Let the game begin.

Excuse me, I just got interrupted by an automated sales call by a machine. At least, it is accent-reduced. So the choice now is speech recognition or live, but from far off-shored call centers. Which one do you prefer? Can’t afford to send a rep. He would fumble despite having rehearsed his elevator speech. He already forgot how to tie a knot. It’s a lost art from a lost species. Where have all the salesmen gone? Long time passing.

 

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. ”

 

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…”

Internet intersects culture

In China,, teacher Ma was on trial for using the internet to recruit partner-swapping.

In Pakistan, they banned Facebook and then YouTube.

And in Iran, right after the election, they did not like Twitter.

Fast-pace technology collides slow-changing tradition.

As of this edit, Kenneth Cole (shoes-man) tweeted about “boots on the ground” as referring to to Syria’s dilemma.

No joking matter! But he did it on purpose to profit from planned controversy.

The gods must be crazy!

People feel invaded, and threatened (that life as they know it will forever be altered.)

Travelers kept saying that every time they are back to Beijing or Shanghai, they couldn’t find the same noodle shop.

It’s gone, and in its place, huge towers had been erected,in those spots.

If you looked at Miami in the old days, and Miami today, you couldn’t help but feeling the same.

Nobody seems to take full credit for the rise and roar of the internet .

Among the tech camp itself, mothers are eating their young.

Wiki displaced Britannica, Firefox took shares from IE.

Nokia got absorbed into the Office suites.

What we wear, eat and play might never be the same. They might not even be real (Samsung Swatch and Google Glass).

Back to teacher Ma. It’s not the internet. It’s his predisposition to activities that are shunned by most, with or without the internet.

Erecting urban towers, and putting some locks on the door doesn’t shut him

off from the larger Village of 1.5 billion or for that matter, 7 billion. Or let’s just for argument ‘s sakes, let Teacher Ma be the new Timothy Leary, then China will definitely need a lot of computing power for all those swapping and scheduling e.g. concubine.com recommends this xxx-pound lady, to schedule a meet at a local KFC, click here.

It’s exhaustive for them just to find one another in the big city (which noodle shop to meet at) to begin with. It’s open source on the internet, but still very much a closed society on the ground. Remember, Moore’s law only applies to chip processing speed, not to collective culture like in China, Pakistan, and Iran.

People there are still very much defined by a web of relationships i.e. son of so and so, daughter-in-law of Mr X etc… Change should start slow, let’s say to introduce Square Dancing, which allows for some partner swapping and swinging, then move on to Halloween Costume Ball . Then maybe, Farewell my concubines or Raise the Red Lantern, part II. Finally, comes consumer spending then Credit swapping, and Partner swapping (Ponzi).  The best case for Teacher Ma is to share a bunk bed with other inmates whose only wish is to someday have internet access.

 

C’est moi

Obviously French. Not too obvious that the “tutoye” is permeating a culture predominantly focused on the collective Nous.

Weeknight, karaoke with live accompaniment.

Weekends, professional singers, one of whom singer/owner I heard came back from France (probably under dual citizenship).

This is a hybrid of crowd-sourcing and the old Command-control stage craft.

It seems to work. The audience enjoyed themselves (who wouldn’t cheer for one’s own).

Healthy depressurization.

Outside, it’s still a boiler. 40 degrees Celsius. Bike traffic is everywhere including on the side walks at peak hours.

Inside, the roses keep coming (with VN money wrapped inside for the musicians).  I held the mike, and let myself go. The song brought me back to Art Sullivan time, when he was sooooo young and vulnerable. Adieu, sois heureuse, Adieu, et bonne chance.

I never wanted to say goodbye to my (younger) self. Still here, against the wind.

Wonder if they have the lyric for Bob Seger, husky, uncompromising yet lava-filled.

At C’est Moi, you sit among people who at least can carry a tune. No need to torture yourself elsewhere. The best of all, there are pros sitting there, very much like American Idol, cheering you on.

I haven’t heard a negative comment though. Only the Pavlovian roses for group therapy. C’est moi. C’est toi. C’est nous. Not dead yet!

You’ve got comment!

When lunching near Dulles Airport  years ago, we ran into some Teleglobe colleagues who had gone over to AOL.

Back then, I looked at those guys with a bit of envy. After all, we were just a voice backbone.

Those guys were in their honeymoon with Time Warner, both pipe and pipe dream.

Now, this merger has now been unraveled .

One thing has changed over this decade: customers can and will talk back, even from Dell hell.

We used to laugh at “voice mail jail”. Companies cannot afford a “taxi driver’s” attitude (Are you talking to me?).

Amazon rating, feedback loop, survey, independent research, mystery shopper, disgruntled employees etc…. The old untouched “suggestion box” is as outdated as the IBM Selectric typewriter.

Wiki everything. Google everything. Twitter everything. The many “faces” on Facebook. Many lives on Second Life.

Many files on Drop Box,  Amazon’ rent-a-server or Salesforce.com CRM. Modularity and virtuality are counter-trends of our disposable society.

At Teleglobe, that’s what we did: Rent-a-switch (telecom). International entrepreneurs only had to come with a willingness, a niche market and some upfront costs. The rest, from licensing to private billing, we handled.

It worked beautifully. And I know Cloud Computing will take IT investment to the next level, freeing up companies to soar, and expand side way or upward, without attending to the flickering lights in server farm.

The post-machine age (on-prem) has finally arrived. The unbundling of MS Office and many other packaged solutions. Pay per user. Companies can now launch seasonal campaign or handle a PR crisis with speed and less cost.

Bad news tends to travel faster than good.

You’ve got comment!.

First responder to those comments can reduce damage into dent, or turn negative into positive. Customers have always been Kings. It’s just that Kings don’t get to speak too often, until now.