Tag: Youtube

Whiter shade of HP

“The crowd call out for more…”

Procol Harum’s one-hit wonder, with his indelible organ solo, still mystified many on YouTube.

Legacy companies in a mature industry such as HP, have moved too far away from their roots,

hence, at great risk of being irrelevant or turning into wax (Icarus paradox).

In HP’s early days, Bill and Dave pulled together their resources, built their own road around the farm,

and of course, started to fill small orders for test instruments or whatever people wanted to trust them with.

Wall Street is still using HP calculator, a testimony to an American enduring icon.

I am a fan.

But so were many Pan Am loyal customers. They are the ones who, as of last night, watched Pan Am

the TV series. Vintage and nostalgic. A remembrance of time passed, American way.

The Economist’s winding topic “Is America a Third World Country” still sees people weighing in almost every day.

What used to work might not work again.

Not at today’s scale and speed.

With a bunch of acquisitions, most notably Compaq, HP exerted its reach beyond its core competencies and watered down its culture.

No more the old self-reliance, can-do attitude and (autonomy) tight-knit group (the original founders took yearly vacation together).

If only HP could recapture some of its former glory e.g. divided into start-up units w/micro-funding and yes, making engineering hip again (back to the garage).

It cannot put old wine in new wine skin, the way A Whiter Shade of Pale being played by a symphony orchestra.  Somehow, it gotta to be heard in its original unadulterated electric organ.

Ms Whitman will have to double up as a CCO, i.e. orchestrate  organic growth, and plant the seeds of self-disrupt (all the while, still getting paid $1). She did it with multiple sports. She might be able to pull this off again, after E-bay magic.

Nowadays, we feel disheartened with titles like “That Used to Be Us” .

It’s good that the incoming CEO had a taste of defeat, and spent some time at Valley’s most famous Venture group.

She is now tasked with rekindling the fire of rugged individualism, who once conquered the Wild Wild West, and

spreading it into the World Wide Web.

There will be many misses and a few hits. Most of all, she might have to live with one-hit wonder and try to milk it . It’s a long-tail economy which favors low-cost softwares, leaving hardware heavy weights like HP with grandfathered products.

With bold statements like “the importance for Silicon Valley, for the nation and the world”, our HP new chief has just put on more chips on her shoulders.

Just make sure the company keep its ink division. You don’t want a whiter shade of print coming out of my computer at home.

Web and Cable experience

In the early days of the Web,  I asked my friend what he did online.

The answer: ” I just browse from one magazine to the next (static), and listen to ethnic radio channels “.

This was pre-YouTube era.

We have spent an enormous amount of time curating content that is put out there: radio signals, spam mail, junk mail, DMs (Direct Messages), mobile spam, cable programs and channel surfing.

Clearly, whoever can invent a multi-platform  TiVo-like device will rule.

From Death of Distance to Death of Device (cloud computing and

“thin client” booths).

Of course, the counter argument will be, “but it ‘s the Googlization of everything” (including restaurant review and flight search).

The filter bubble! (seeing and hearing  only what we want to see and hear).

Forever “being there” inside an echo chamber, without a specter of  contesting or challenging view  points.

Can’t handle the truth, in my time or in your time.

Sink or swim in a digital deluge (the computer revolution has been diffused to the mass via trial-and-error). At least, before Cable, we got the big Three networks and a mass media audience for  Super Bowl, the Evening News and the Oscars.

Now, like my friend said, “just browse, from one paper to the next, and listen to one station after another”.

Quantity trumps quality.

Television finally faces serious competition from online media.

ABC World News got a new boss while Yahoo is looking for one (as of this edit, M Mayer is now a CEO).

Disney Channel replaces its CEO, while BoA is contemplating the same. James Carville advised the President to look for a new team.

Reshuffling the deck.

Rearranging our priorities (as new entrants alter existing choice architecture).

24/7 News cycle covering candidates recycled – Romney.

Financial pushes short sales,  hence, forces flash crash.

Airplanes keep pushing the limits. Hence, flight crash (Reno, then W VA).

NASCAR and NASDAQ always pushes the bleeding edge, the former claimed a few lives in Daytona, while the later crushed many dreams.

When it comes to choice, we have only a few : capital, land and labor.

With Web and Cable, we got more access (Le Monde anyone?).

In Russia, they long for a return of the Soviet command and control style. At least, they got bread, albeit a long wait.

In short, freedom is frightening. Can’t count on that same Wikipedia page a few months from now.

Dynamic web.

When I bought the coffee-table book entitled “Knowledge”, I found that’s  printed in China.

Western Civilization, printed and shipped from China.

And I know before long, they won’t even print the revised version there. It will be online. For my friend to browse and sneak peek.

Amazon’s “puppy-dog” sales “Search inside the book” to “publish and read the entire content”. Penny talk extends from wireline to wireless phone, then onto Skype for free.

Too much democratizing of technology, and not enough in analog spheres (food, fuel, clothing and shelter) where scarcity still rules.

Steve Jobs’ is credited with saving the music industry (99 cent song).

The next century belongs to folks who can monetize and monopolize attention, influence and customer experience.

Gone were the days when companies could  just throw a bunch of channels or web pages at people, and hope it will stick (shotgun approach). Maslow says it best, “first survival and eventually self-actualising“. Using this need pyramid as framework,  we can see that we are still at the survival stage (of the data deluge).

But years from now, we will develop the capacity to filter and fashion the Web in our own image (hybrid between buffet style and a-la-carte). Like the proverbial Russian bread line, all it takes is the waiting (for more  mobile apps).  And my friend, the one I asked in the early days of Internet, the most patient person I have ever met, doesn’t mind waiting. Le Huffington Post, anyone?.

The future, never in past tense

Peter Jennings took a smoke break, his first in years, from 9/11 live coverage. It was the beginning of his end. The Canadian co-author of “The Century” must have studied the Wright brothers, whose invention could lift itself up into thin air albeit for just a few blocks. But he had never seen anything like the two planes that aimed low that morning.

In the decade since, from Steve Jobs (the I-series) to Steve Chen (Youtube),

from Facebook to Twitter founders, we have seen a new breed of inventors.

Instead of fixating on the hunt for an old man, wrapped in blanket with a remote control, watching makeshift propaganda videos of himself (BL), these digital natives followed the trail to the future.

They limit data transmission to short bursts (140 characters) or miniaturize play-back device (I-pod) while charging only 99 cents per song. Search has evolved from generic to semantic and shopping from global E-Bay to local (Zagat).

Rattled? Yes.

Deterred? Hardly.

Five stages of grief, processed in one fell swoop (in less than a decade).

What evil didn’t plan, was for the very invention in the West, be used against dictators in the MidEast.

(Arab Spring propagated and went tweet-viral in Egypt, birth place of caliphate).

You can take down a building, but not its blueprint.

Yes, there were people who ran down the stairs to safety, and stayed there in the past.

But there were also 343 heroes who ran up the stairs, 43 more than at Gates of Fire, to “fight (fire) in the shade” .

Just as the analog stairway (Encyclopedia Britannica, book stacks) shows the way down, the digital one (Wikipedia, Skype) points to “the sky is the limit”.

In the decade since, we have started “friending” each other, made possible by another Harvard drop-out, whether we were from NYC or not, just because we all share in a future, that will never be conjugated in past tense.

How I wish to have “followed” Peter Jennings on Twitter to read his post-9/11 reflections!

Starting a joke

50 years ago,  you would have been chased out of the pub had you painted these scenarios: the US can’t wait to open off-shored manufacturing centers, Gaga as a mermaid on wheelchair, and 90% of the population will shop at Wal-Mart, stocked with 99% Made-in-China merchandise. Dude, in the 60’s, we were living the American Dream.

No one would imagine just in 5 decades that we have debt ceiling; congress woman, shot, survived and stood up to cast her vote; (BL) got taken down while a Nordic Crusader took down people for their opposing view.

Not groovy man, you would say.

Like Austin Powers, you wake up, assuming gas stations still have full-serve (yes, but it’s the homeless man). Don’t you miss the bell and the man in clean Esso overall?

You could start a joke, but the joke was on you.

It doesn’t  take long for someone to ring the alarm bell (Putin called the US consumers “parasites”).

It’s like a line in Neil Young‘s album “I have been to Redwood, I have been to Hollywood…

in search for a heart of gold and I am getting old”.

It takes that long for a generation to process the stages of grief: imperial status right after WWII, to upheavals at home and abroad (assassination of the Kennedy’s brothers and the Diem’s brothers), to Cold War unraveling and Gulf War overstretched. Now, the hard cold reality of a dried credit market (consumer spending registered near zero growth) stands erect like a new Berlin Wall (East where 99 percent of us are living, and West, the other 1%). In Admiral Mullen’s words, “Debt is our greatest security threat.”

You could tell the 60’s Ivy League‘s kids were well-off e.g. bell-bottom pants and Indian-shirts, and all hair. At least, there was a middle class.

On some YouTube clips, you could still detect that the audience “tenue de soiree” to attend Francoise Hardy‘s concerts.(Tous les garcons et les filles): turtle-neck and leather jackets.

Most could afford a trip to Woodstock (which turned out to be free anyway).  And many if not all would take part in binge drinking before, during and after the football games. Senior panic was meant for landing a mate, not a job (now, it’s the opposite).

The future back then was in “plastic” (the Graduate). It was supposed to give rise to companies like 3M , but also, VISA and Master Card (both plastic).

Now, we have Tencent, and Facebook.

Apple’s war chest is larger than the US treasury.

What a joke. Who started it? Dr Evil calls a meeting: “Let’s hold the world hostage, for 2 Million”.

No wonder President Obama had to emphasize that the savings from the newly imposed 54-mile-per- gallon vehicles, would be in the range of 2 Trillion dollars, “with a T.”

50 years is not a long time, but it allows for many changes, exponentially. Don’t blame it on China (or Moore’s Law).

They didn’t even get started until 1979.

It’s a confluence of factors, mostly caused by the rise of the Rest intersecting the decline of the West. The best could happen to our Austin Powers is to step back into the time-machine, hoping for a better reentry point in the multipolar future.

Choppers that chop the seas

The news of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky passed away brought back a long time passing.

In my youth, the sound of hovering helicopters was as common as street vendors’ chants.

On the war’s last day, ambassador, flag, ground-keepers, pilots and anything that moved, tried to get out to International Waters . Buses, barges and yes, choppers.

Lone pilots angled and abandoned choppers, then swam for aircraft carriers.

Their last sortie. (Years later, I met a man in New Orleans who found work as a commercial pilot for an oil company, transferable skill set I would say).

But on that fateful day, the choppers chopped the seas. One helicopter force-landed and hit our barge’s sandbagged wall. The loosed blades then flew wildly toward our ship, the USS Blue Ridge. I lied head down but eyes glued to the scene of action. That same barge had been our home for the previous 24 hours. Floating barge and flying blades was my brush with war and death.

Words circulated that many, VP Cao Ky included, went to Guam, where they had erected tents for refugees. For us, who ended up in Wake Island, we spent a purgatorial summer (“Do you know, where you’re going to” theme from the Mahogany). One of our folk singers sang for free to keep up our morale. She just came up short of singing “by the  river of Babylon…there we sat down and wept”.

I overheard “Band on The Run” by McCartney  from the barrack next door.

Not sure that was fitting or insulting. After all, I have spent the last three decades and a half trying to live down deserter’s guilt.

On a recent trip to Vietnam, a drunk at the table even screamed in my face that I was no longer a Vietnamese.

The burden must have been heavier for those who had invested more in the conflict (Cold War, but hot spots) e.g. the likes of Premier Cao Ky.

Occasionally, the two sides – reconciliators and extremists – were still at it.

We should put on the Holllies’ He Ain’t Heavy.

That’s how it will end. And how everything eventually ends, with time. My narrative just happened to be accompanied by the sound of choppers normally associated with Vietnam. One thing VP Cao Ky showed us and the world, was that, despite the hefty death toll and billions of dollars spent on bullets and agent Orange (later, he was resettled in Orange County), one still needs to live out one’s life, flamboyant or faced down. Army divisions used to distinguish themselves by various colors of their scarfs (red for paratroopers, green for Green Berets, so it’s not unusual for pilots and stewardess to pick their colors as well).

When you are near death on a daily basis, the least you can do for yourself is to look in the mirror, and say “not today”.

That today finally came for him, at age 80, and as fate would have it, resting in peace near South China Sea. But for many of us, “band on the run”, we live on to be memory keepers, story tellers and hopefully history-makers. It’s interesting to note that the younger generation tends to be more careful and conservative (model minorities) while their predecessors lived their lives in flying colors (go on YouTube, and click on any bands of the 60-70, like Chicago), least of which, a purple scarf, from a former Vietnamese pilot. Band on the run. Leader of the band dies today. The music, however, plays on. War and Peace. Dogmatism and pragmatism. Man and machine, romantic and robotic, pilot and chopper, laid to rest at Vietnam War epilogue. For me, not today. Not yet.

Someday, they will excavate in the South China Seas, and find hundreds of choppers, one of which without blades. Further excavation on the outer ring will find millions of skulls (boat people). They are all there, hidden underneath, but, still served as reminders of the long Cold War that took its heavy toll both in men and materials (choppers).

Ole friends as mirrors

We finally met, at Starbucks. 3 classmates. 39 years and a huge ocean in between.

We could have just waited. Starbucks is opening up in Vietnam soon.

But there we were: the skinny, the fat and the ugly (me).

Past, present, past. Time interlacing.

No preset agenda. No chronological order, or Robert’s rules of order.

Not a multi-level recruiting session. Just a Jr-high get-together after 4 decades apart.

My daughter works at State. My son got eye problem etc..

Me? I am fine. Just can’t help observing, taking it in and connecting the dots. For instance, I don’t think the richest 1% read latest non-fiction about their own exploitation in “the Age of Greed” etc..They are too busy living it.

Or, the failure of “strategic hamlets” during the war (as revealed in the now-declassified Pentagon Papers) has unintended consequences in the rise of Vietnamese women in the manicuring industry (if you zoom out 40 years).

Lately, the only tree I see growing, is Dollar Tree.

In fact, America needs to grow money on tree.

Back to seeing ole friends. They kept looking at me, I them.

We served as mirrors to one another.

No, I don’t touch the guitar any more.

Nothing to scream about,not at this age, not at this time.

I am not Rod Stewart or Barry Manilow.

Those guys got good mileage.

Every one got their 15 minutes.

On YouTube or otherwise.

(picture of a couple kissing during the Vancouver riot went viral).

Make love, not war.

Google it, tweet it, “like it”, +1 it.

Electronic communication in abundance, yet we lost touch, almost 40 years until a high-tech friend started our Yahoo group to mend bridges.

So, via group-mail, attachment (photo), google map, 3-G mobile phone, finally, we meet over coffee and where else but Chinese buffet.

I told you, it’s the age of electronics and globalization.

We could have waited for Starbucks to come to Vietnam.

We could have just stay put.

Hold it. Build it. They will come. As they have always.

Columbus dispelled the myth that the Earth was square.

But once proven his point, he set out to claim the Earth his spoil.

Gun and steel, plus a lot of germs.

Or, the opposite, agent Orange, to defoliate and deform everyone in its path.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110617/ap_on_sc/as_vietnam_us_agent_orange

I am glad my friends are all right.

The one who was a bit on the wild side, got a daughter who did him proud.

The one who was on the quiet side, can’t wait for me to come and visit again.

I wonder how many social web I have missed out, due to war and its hidden costs.

Yes, we are alright, but the 4 decades in between have just been a big hole. So big that it could hold a 7,000-page Pentagon Papers , or a life-time of loss.

This side of doom

Doomsday prediction did not materiale.

On this side of doomsday, Southeast Asia is no longer a war zone. It’s the new fun zone (with young and upcoming demographics).

LinkedIn IPO gone through the roof while IMF Chief couldn’t check in at any hostel in NY (I did not mis-spell “hostel”). Whether you live in flood zone or dictator zone, mobile coverage is ubiquitous.

I can’t remember a time when we are required to get up to speed so quickly, from theology of rapture to sustaiability issues, from Bush tax cut to Obama’s TARP. We need to survive information glut.

All this makes the break-up of the Soviet Union (into different nations states with new names) a walk in the park. Even with public figures who still command some staying powers: Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, will soon join the baby boomers’ mass retirement.

The new actors on the scene will not take their public place, but will move onto virtual space (Farmville by Gaga and fireworks by Perry). It’s getting too crowded to actually compete in physical sphere, so we move on to virtual space (Kevin Kelly) where we can upload our “most outrageous marriage proposal ever” etc…The margin of acceptance is higher and the price of public humiliation lower.

This side of doom is quite accommodating: anywhere from child-rearing for gay couples to all-naked gym.

If we live in the most tolerant country on Earth, and still be jolted by change, how much more can citizens of Arab Spring be still and “watch the train go by”. 7 billion people living in jet age and internet time – discounted firewalls by political dictators and mind control by cult leaders – negotiate change, either by osmosis or by being active (open universities at MIT or TED talk online to help you “be all you can be” in your own time). I can’t wait to get up every morning, doomsday or not. Prophets (false or true) come and go. But in our internet age, we should reserve our judgement until all facts are in and not jump into conclusion for just one tweet.

3D and 4G

At the most elementary level, we got the chip set.

That is about to change, from “flat like a sheet of paper”” to 3D chip, announced Intel (which made Applied Materials jump to its 3.9 Billion acquisition of Varian Semiconductor to keep pace).

Our world is about to change once again, not to the tune of 10 Billion by 2100, but 10 Billion people communicating at the speed of thoughts. At this rate of growth, we can see 3D printing soon to be a norm.

You think that self-check-out at Wal-Mart is bad. Think again. Someday, we might end up ordering an item, only to have it print out at home (watch out UPS).

We’ve got “make your own stuff animal” stores and self-serve ice-cream machines.

Our homes are about to become mini-factories, and stay-at-home dads, in-sourced blue-collar workers (Dad, I want fresh bread. Dad, please squeeze the OJ. Dad, grind the coffee beans, please).

It’s only fitting that the last known WWI vet died leaving behind a changed world.

The US itself, in order to stay in the lead, will have to become world incubator of innovation and ideas.

CNN’s United States of Innovation (51 ideas from 51 states).

Think heat-sensor technology, facial recognition, speech recognition, drone, SPAM prevention, social marketing, Facebook/Skype , Utube and YouTube. None had been around when Bill Gates penned “At the speed of thoughts” (as of this edit, MSC announced it would buy Skype at the tune of 8 Billion dollars).

Now we have professors talking about $300 houses for the bottom 2 Billion (the last time, they couldn’t make a $300 computer). Incidentally, the Hyundai’s Excel got its start in the US at the price of $5,000 where the Nano’s starting price is.

To sustain innovation, we need clusters (and luckily, from the trajectory of history, our times seems to be one of those according to Steven Johnson in “Where good ides came from”). Clusters such as Seattle, San Francisco and Austin.

A little dose of music, art and literature, mixed with a heavy dose of tech, geeks, and flower children (rebellious streak).

Ironically, people who are into their own world (eccentric) are not people who can soup up for a fund-raising session with VC’s.

For now, commoners like me can’t wait to see what comes out of 3D chip set and 4-G broadband.

When all those dark fibers got lit up, and cloud servers turned on , let the show begin.

Like Back-to-the-Future scene, we might get blown away. I suspect that won’t be the case. Change will come sporadically, with an app peppered here, and a tweaking there. Before we know it, we can design and print our own T-shirts at home.

That’s  what makes Chinese authorities awake at night. What are they going to do with the over-invested infrastructure we now call, world factory. And all the men, unemployed, then, already experienced a bite at the proverbial apple (the middle-class life style). History always reserves its best twist of plot for the end. I wish I be around to witness it, like our WWI last known pilot. RIP man of the greatest generation who lived and fought in a pure mechanical universe. We all need to have 2-D chip before 3-D, PSTN before Skype. “Hello, if you hear the sound of your own recording, you are on, for free”.

Easily swayed

According to social scientists, any two people are only separated by 6 to 7 degrees of connection. Last week I put it to test.

Surely enough, the quake victims in Japan somehow are separated from me by only three degrees. My niece’s friend had relatives who fled Japan and came to stay with them. Two short introductions and a short ride stand between us.

We are living on a planet of 7 billion people, 2 of which are online.

The cumulative brain powers are enormous. For the first time, it seems as if a lot of things are now made possible, from wikipedia to wikileaks.

Thirty years ago, I gave up my summer in between school years to do relief work. The only resources at my disposal was an address book of friends from college and a roll of stamps. I copied fund-raising letters, sent out to my “network” and waited for donation. Quite a risky adventure, both on the funding side and visa turn-around time. But we pulled it off. The summer turned out to be a highlight of my life.

If we had the online resources as currently available, we would probably have uploaded a Youtube clip of boat people cramped and confined in Hong Kong prison facilities, women who were raped and turned cannibalistic to survive….

You know the drill. My contention is, we are now resource-rich, but are we becoming more compassionate ? In other words, does the good-will increase proportionately with the tools to express it? Or precisely because of information-overload that led to compassion fatigue?

To sell something people need and want is easy. Costs vs benefits results in change (buy).

To sell an idea that people can become their better selves requires enchantment.

People died in mass protests (herd instinct) or annual Run-of-the-Bulls (even cheese rolling downhills). But to spare a change for the guy holding the homeless sign takes a lot more. He will need to sing and dance. He will have to put on an act of desperation before the lights turn green.

We act differently in public vs in private.

When survival instinct kicks in, self-preservation is above all else.

Multiply that 7 billion times. Then we get the picture of state of the world.

How does the quake in Japan affect our lives: a lot. Someone relates to someone who knows my relatives is suffering. He/she is doubling up in a house near ours.

Then the Toyota dealers in town won’t get foreign parts etc… Go Hyundai, this is your chance in this no-hire-no-fire economy. Sometimes people change because they are forced to, not because they would like to. But change is as sure as the sun that rises tomorrow. You don’t see it because you are not 30,000 feet above ground. Those who are at the executive level know to expect change, prepare contingencies for it, and profit from it. Same crisis, but it is danger to some and opportunity to others. We will learn to make use of the Web from sharing cute kitten clips to vendor’s immolation clip. Welcome to the age of participation/consumption. It’s never been more exciting and dynamic than time present, when both push and pull technologies are vying for our attention, swinging and swaying our votes and demanding our devotion. Hold on to your wallet while keeping an open mind, to quote Buffett.

the dot connector

I am referring to Dr Rustum Roy of Penn State whom I met almost 4 decades ago.

I knew then just as I know now that he was ahead of his time. He pushed for integrated studies in Science, Technology and Society.

He showed up at a demo of  hologram which is now being worked into 3-D Telepresence. Along with his wife and colleagues from all over the world, he quietly developed Material Research Lab up the hill near Beaver Stadium.

But his most enduring and endearing influence on my life was that of his house church. The Sycamore Community signed on to be my sponsor to provide some  cushion from “culture shock”. (On the way to University Park, we even stopped to pick up a hitch hiking student, who looked like he just had  lunch at “Alice Restaurant”).  I was “clueless” among the giants. On one Wednesday night, I even strummed my guitar and had them join me in a chorus to Carpenters‘ “Sing” (the group went in circle and each “shared” something).

Dr Roy did not do too badly I might say.

But in looking back , I realize how my new beginning served the group right: they rediscovered their reason for getting together: to reach out to the downtrodden and focus then on the second “S” of his life work (STS).

I forever remain in their debt for my start in Happy Valley. The warm clothes and warm reception have been ROI’ed multiple times. And in the tradition of “integrated” studies, I have tried non-stop to connect the dots as I recognized them. But for every two dots I could connect, Dr Roy probably did ten or a hundred times as much. He acknowledged in his last interview on YouTube that these new technologies can now liberate “useful science” for the mass. Sort of “unchained melody” used to be confined in the “Vatican” of Science.

His sons were with hair down to their knees when I first met them.

And that how cool a scientist family could get to be. Between them, father, mother (a whole biography on her own) and sons, I don’t think that family let any revolution go unnoticed.

He was last quoted on yahoo as saying “I felt chilled down my spine” when the lab uncovered that salt water could conduct electricity. I would too if I had been there and witnessed the experiment.

But for all the white papers and honors he deservedly received, he remained a dear fellow sojourner, one who came before me as a Penn Stater albeit of a different kind not degree.

For “We are” and forever will be, Nittany Lions, lurking with inquisitive minds, while letting no dots go unconnected.