Thang Nguyen 555

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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.…

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  • 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.…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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.…

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  • 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…

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