Category: Whacky Thoughts

I can be a futurist.  I see a future that our bodies will be repaired by robots of nano-scale in the comfort of our home, bulky televisions are things of the past and instead, we will have our own Eyeset (think headset).  Walking through the building entrances, office doors, and immigration checkpoints without the need of any physical identities because we will have a chip implanted inside our bodies.  Not a passive chip that tells the whole world who and where you are, but one that you can voluntarily set the privacy level.  Imagine no more forms filling in front of a counter and the customer service officer will be able to address you by name – because your name as broadcasted by your chip implant with your consent is shown up in the Eyeset she’s wearing. 

And I have more of such vision to share.  Just bear with me for a moment.

This was meant to be a nostalgic post, dedicated to the early Xers with a working title as “Of Chamber Music, 80s Computer Magazines, App on Tape, and Flash Today”.  But blogging is like a show biz.  Some titles may work, others may not.  And before I continue with my bizarre vision of the future, I wish to share with you where the idea of this post comes from and how it relates to my upcoming v-blog (that is if I’ve decided to continue writing this mini-series).

How time has changed, how time hasn’t.  Here are four random observations.

1. Closed to a century ago, the first radio show was aired.  People started to listen to music played on air.  Half a century prior to that, gramophone was made common to play recorded sound.  So what happened before 1870 in the era of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven?  If one wished to listen to the chamber music back then, I guess the only way is to listen to a live performance.  And if you were to come up to Beethoven, hand him a hearing aid, and tell him that you have a recorded copy of his Ninth Symphony with you, how would he have reacted?
2. Prior to the advent of Internet, no one would have thought that he or she could download a piece of information, rampantly copying and pasting to different places with a few clicks of a button.  Why do I say that?  As briefly mentioned in my upcoming v-blog, one memorable childhood moment that my dad and I did was to type in the programs or codes as printed on a computer magazine into our computer, line by line, character by character.  If we were careful enough with those incomprehensible codes, our computer screen would turn into some pretty evolving symmetric patterns in green pixels.
3. One decade is really not a long time, in a larger scheme of work.  But it is hard to imagine that DVD was not common back in the nineties, isn’t it?  I was an eager graduate ready to face the corporate world and in my hand, I had this installation tape.  A tape, you may ask?  That’s right.  It was a bulky one indeed.  One time, our clients flew in from France to view a demonstration of our back then state-of-art technology.  Their server in Paris dialed into our Singapore server for a connection and the sound of the dialing tone was so surreal, singing the tune of “From Paris with Love”.  Dial-up connection seems so ancient, looking back.  Anyway, our demo didn’t work initially.  We had to call our French clients back from the taxi stand after one magic touch of mine that made it worked, much like a football goal in the 93rd minute.  What did I do?  Don’t ask.  It’s technology.  When all fails, wash your hand and repeat the exact same step again.  It may work.  And I am not joking.
4. If you are curious, my upcoming v-blog is created using Flash.  It is a wonderful application that enables me to manipulate my video in a frame-by-frame, layer-by-layer manner.  Except, how time hasn’t changed.  As I spent the entire Sunday morning redoing, recreating an entirely same video from the old one that failed to be published, I felt as though I was transported back in my childhood moment with my dad and our 80s computer magazine, back in my early career days of application on tape.  Things just don’t work, for no apparent reason.  And after a few rounds of doing the same thing again and again, an unexplainable solution would emerge.  That’s technology for you; a bloody time sink; productive tools with unproductive results almost guaranteed.

How these random observations lead to my vision of the future, I shall leave it to you to connect the dots.  I love the Eyeset idea.  Think about a world with no more road signs, road advertisements, but instead, information is streamed onto your Eyeset in your native language real time, as you drive and as you walk.  Upon exercising your brain muscles – literally – detail information is shown.  Yes, turn left to the main street that leads to your destination.  But it will take you 10 minutes.  Alternative routes are shown with estimated time of arrival.  Special advertisements are lit up according to where you go and your profile.  Before you spit on the idea of advertisement, guess what?  They are the ones who are funding this entire world of virtual reality.

You don’t expect time changes everything, do you?

You think, characters will appear on the screen.  Say goodbye to computer keyboards.  And one last wild idea of mine to share with you.  I was used to walk pass a gym every working day when I headed home.  I saw athletes exercising on treadmills, on cycling machines.  Maybe like that famous sci-fi movie, humans are like batteries.  Gyms in the future will connect all these sport equipments into a power generator.  I mean, why waste the energy away?

PS. I change the timetable because the original plan was a bit too ambition.  Also, I have no sensing what the reception of this mini-series is so far.  Perhaps the theme is a bit too heaving for a twice a week rhythm.

My 1st v-Blog Mini-Series:

• Episode 1: A New, Shall I Say, Mini-Series and I’m Still Not Sure About It [Jun 8]
• Episode 2: The Coincidental Encounters and the Incidental Chain of Events That Leads to This [Jun 11]
• Episode 3: The Cycle of Learning and Sharing: Why Be a Caterpillar When You Can be a Butterfly? [Jun 15]
• Episode 4: Of Dr. Nanorobot, Human Power Plant, Chip Implant, Eyeset, and More [Jun 25]
• Episode 5: Storyboarding at 24 Frames per Second [Jul 9]
• Episode 6: Stripping My Own Song into Just Four Lines and an Orange Lit Valve That Glows Within [Jul 23]
• Episode 7: Little Mr. Sunshine: A Blog Is Not a Book Is Not a Movie [Jul 29]
• Episode 8: My First v-Blog: A History of Chips (That Matters to Me) [Jul 31]

One weekend, Cynthia passed me a newspaper cutting written by The Straits Times journalist Sumiko Tan on how her text message conversation with her friend inspired her to write an article on why some people tend to tell white lies to comfort others.  Sumiko was having lunch alone one day, sent a text message to her friend on how sad and lonely she felt, and her friend’s honest reply of “you have no friends, you are a sad person” made her wonder why he did not comfort her instead.  But of course, she knew he was telling the truth.  Truth hurts.

When Cynthia passed me the article, she said, “I like Sumiko Tan.  She always writes something I can relate.”  And it suddenly hit me, I too want to write something that my regular readers can relate (or try writing at least).

One fine afternoon during lunch, one colleague of mine said to me, “You can be so easily impressed by people.  I mean, you are so optimistic.”  Her comment puzzled me initially and I queried if there is anything wrong feeling that way about others.  We didn’t reach any conclusion.

That little incident took me back to the time when I was first given the opportunity to lead teams.  I have had this belief that everyone has talents.  Finding the right set of motivations, to me, is the key to unlock these precious talents from the people around me.  This notion seems to work fine but it doesn’t necessarily translate to results.  A few years later, I met one mentor of mine who taught me: exploit one’s strengths, not weaknesses.  At that time, it was quite an eye-opener because unlocking one’s talent is one thing, apply that to yield desirable results is another.

This little revelation changes the way I manage people.  On one end of the equation are the tasks at hand, on the other end of the equation is a set of talented skills the team has.  Any gap in between would have to be filled in by the untapped talent of the existing team (through training for example) or a new hired resource.

But why stop at the team level?  Why not apply the same observation to our bosses and beyond?  I mean, they all have their ins and outs and why not recognize their weaknesses and work with their strengths?  I don’t know what your working environment is like but nearly all the places I have been to, I have met some co-workers who spend much time thinking and bitching about their bosses, their departments or projects, the organization, the government, the planet, and etc.  Most of the claims I have heard are taken out of context or formed due to a lack of an appreciation of a bigger picture.  Some claims are factual but I usually find that the constructive views resulting from these facts add more values to our lives instead.  I guess we all bitch either publicly or privately at times (to bitch is human?).  But dwelling on so much dark energy that consumes us doesn’t seem healthy to me.

This blog entry is not about them.  It is about how you can perhaps change the world when faced with adversity as described above.  After years and years of sitting through all these bitching sessions – which I have tried to avoid by all means if I can but you know how it’s like when you are stuck in a meeting room, a lift, or a team lunch or drink appointment – I can loosely categorize the active contributors as: the Egoist, the Skeptic, the Victim, and the Follower.

You can easily spot the Egoists from the crowd.  Nothing or no one is good enough for them, except a rare few.  They see all the flaws around them so much so that they forget that they are not that perfect either.  The only way to defuse the situation is to gain their respect and slowly influence their point of views.  This certainly takes time because most likely, you are not good enough for them either.  You will need a lot of patience or to wait for some humbling situations to occur.  People do change, given time.  Orchestrate some opportunities if you can to accelerate the process.

The Skeptics doubt people and beliefs in general and it is a darn hard job to sell the vision of the future or to convince the ‘invisible’ ability of our leaders to them.  Any plan that is to come, unless hundred and one percent proven, are plans that may not succeed.  Any one who advocate these plans – our bosses most likely – are not the ones to be hundred percent trusted.  In any given day, it is of course good to put on the caution hat to anticipate some of the foreseeable challenges ahead.  But to face with the Skeptics who constantly wear that hat could be tiring to some of us.  Worst of all, Skeptics are usually part of the team that can influence the outcome and we know no one wants to be proven wrong.  So, go and guess the results yourself.  Proving them wrong would not work because it only takes one incident of shit hitting the fan when they turn around and say, “See I told you so”.  I guess one way is to constantly remind them how the situation has improved over time (averaging the occasion shit hits the fan situations) and hope that they are less vocal about their thoughts and to put them into something more constructive instead.

The Victims are the one who think that the whole world is acting against them.  Bosses are there to give them a hard time and everything is beyond their control.  To help the Victims – which is a lot easier than dealing with the Egoists and Skeptics I must say – is to rebuild their confidence and self-worth.  Let them know that while many things in life are beyond our control, there are more we can influence.  The frustration is of course more often then not, the Victims keep slipping back to the victimized mode and you find yourself repeating the same advice again, again, and again.

The Followers don’t necessarily have strong views about persons or situations in general.  They feed on what others say and help fueling the entire bitching session by agreeing with the points in totality.  Without them, the emotions wouldn’t rise high and the fists wouldn’t hit the sky.  So what shall we do with them?  Absolutely nothing because once you perform the heroic task of neutralizing the Egoists and the Skeptics and the Victims, there will be nothing left for them to follow.

The question is: why do you even bother to neutralize the situation?

Yes, it is much easier to avoid getting involved with all these bitching sessions.  However, if you have a stake on the team and if you do care about some of them as friends, indifference is probably a less desired strategy.

At least, morally speaking

PS. The above is a picture taken from my cubicle.  Unfortunately, the sea view is behind where I sit.