The age of "mobi-uter"

Seeing a couple of passengers browse the Internet using a netbook plugged with a “mobile connect” USB stick on the MTR yesterday, I told the companion travelling with me that if someone could make a mobile phone which can be enlarged into a netbook with the press of a button, he would be very rich. Reading a BBC article today, I realise that my wayward remark may not be very wide off the mark.

The article pointed to the future of mobile computing and quoted people from the mobile industry by saying that “the smartphone-personal computer boundary will get fuzzy". As Google boss Eric Schmidt said: "The smartphone is really not a smartphone. It's really a GPS device, it's a camera, and a video camera and a place that you can play games and you can browse, and oh by the way, you can make calls.”

Notice how he used the present tense rather than the future. Notice also how the writer concluded his article:

"My vision? Your phone will hide an extremely powerful computer and internet access base station. Thin sheets of roll-up electronic paper would replace your computer monitor and phone screens.

When I put this vision to the chief executive of a rapidly growing Asian phone manufacturer, I get a startled look, then a wry smile: ‘You should visit our labs, you will find that we've got something very interesting there.’"

The device I envisioned is probably already on the drawing board.

Is this a V or a W?

"Is this a V or a W?"

No, this is not a question about the Volkswagen logo. It's a rhetorical question Michael Geoghegan, group chief executive of HSBC asked when he talked about the economic recovery the other day.

His answer?

"[I think] it's the latter. [If I'm right], we have to be very careful we don't grow the balance sheet so far before the recovery has come, only to write it back into the impairment line later on. I'm cautious about growing too fast... I think it's very premature to conclude that there won't be another problem at some point in the next year or so."

Stephen Roach, chairman of Margan Stanley Asia shared his view. He said that it is unlikely the world will be problem-free next year, as this recovery is not strong enough to support the economy. "In a weak recovery, you don't really have much of a cushion to keep the economies rolling in the event [of] some type of a shock," Roach said. "There's a possibility of a relapse at some point."

And how about billionaire investor George Soros?

"The US has a long way to go," he warned.

Investors, take heed.

Clichés for sale

The quote “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” in yesterday’s blog was one of the clichés quoted by Randy Pausch in his book “The Last Lecture”. Randy Pausch believed that “the reason why clichés are repeated so often is because they’re so often right on the money”.

The other clichés he quoted are:
"Dance with the one who brung you.”
"Whether you think you can or can’t you’re right.”
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

The wisdom from these lines, and elsewhere in Randy Pausch’s book, is meant for his three children, whose growth he couldn’t get to see or support because of his death resulting from cancer. It is the legacy he would like to leave to them.

Maybe to us as well?

Was it just luck

Manchester United have done it again. The injury time goal helped them rescue a point and avoid a first home defeat against Sunderland in forty-one years.

Some people put this down to luck, as the equaliser was an own goal. Likewise, the last-gasp winner against Manchester City, scored in the sixth minute of injury time, was attributed to the referee’s favouritism (the extra time was supposed to be four minutes).

It pains me to say this, myself not a Scum supporter, but I have to honestly say that they have been able to pull off such late late winners and equalisers so often down the years that it is a big bias to put it down to sheer luck or some external factors. It is obvious that they have developed such confidence, self-belief and resolve that they are able to make the seemingly impossible happen. Such incredible late goals have literally won them titles, the most famous being the two last minute goals that overturned a one-goal deficit in the European Cup Final against Bayern Munich in 1999. But more importantly, that formidable reputation must have driven fear in their opponents’ minds and inspired similar successes in such tough situations. I would go so far as to say that the points they have won in those precious few last minutes have contributed to some of their league titles in recent decades.

While in some cases it did look like they were very lucky, as in yesterday’s match where the Sunderland defender was unable to get out of the way of an off-target shot and deflected it into his own goal, but as Seneca, the Roman philosopher said, "luck is indeed where preparation meets opportunity”. I happened to see those two comeback goals. The build-up was measured, self-assured and purposeful. Such confidence and discipline in the dying seconds had to come from great preparation.

For some, the moon is not full today

Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival. Along with the Lunar New Year and the Winter Solstice, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a day where Chinese families celebrate being together. As the saying goes, “may both the people and the moon be full” (no, no, they don’t mean the people should eat until their stomachs burst, although on this day people do feast).

But a six-year-old child I know cannot celebrate the festival with the whole family. His father has deserted the family and run away.

His mother is still holding back the cold truth, just telling him that his father is in China for a 10-day business trip.

This phone conversation I had with the boy this morning was quite heart-wrenching.

"Where’s your dad?”
"I have no idea. Mom said he’s in China.”
"When will he be back?”
"Seven more days. He’ll be away for ten days and three days has gone.”
"Has he called?”
"No, mom said where he is, there’s no phone reception.”
"Do you miss him?”
"I do. Yeah.”

It’s going to be a dark day when he has to know that what he is being told now is not the truth.

The moon maybe full today, but not for everybody.

An outlier's last lecture

"Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed… Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities – and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them…We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth… But they don’t. They are the products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky – but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”

The above is taken from the last chapter and the epilogue of Malcolm Gladwell’s book :Outliers”. It sums up what Gladwell thinks does and what does not contribute to the success of outliers.

Now let’s turn to another book, Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture”. Randy Pausch is of course the American university professor who gave a stirring last lecture before he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2008. Here is how Randy Pausch is introduced in the official website of his book:

“Randy Pausch was a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1988 to 1997, he taught at the University of Virginia. He was an award-winning teacher and researcher, and worked with Adobe, Google, Electronic Arts (EA), and Walt Disney Imagineering, and pioneered the non-profit Alice project. (Alice is an innovative 3-D environment that teaches programming to young people via storytelling and interactive game-playing.) He also co-founded The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon with Don Marinelli. (ETC is the premier professional graduate program for interactive entertainment as it is applied across a variety of fields.)”
Randy Pausch was well and truly an outlier. Both his last lecture and his book were about how he managed to achieve most of his childhood dreams. It is interesting how, reading his book, one can see that the circumstances which contributed to his success fits in nicely with what Malcolm Gladwell said in “Outliers”. Just look at these three sentences:

“I won the parent lottery.”
“I grew up comfortably middle class in Columbia, Maryland.”
“I live in the computer age and I love it here.”

For details about how crucial these factors were, watch Randy Pausch’s last lecture or, even better, read his book.

Ain't it cold enough today, so let it rain

I know I owe it to the National Day for the holiday I have today, but boy, how I wish for this 60th anniversary saga to be over. I’ve been sickened by the extensive media hype that has been going on in the last month or so. For this sort of propaganda which has been happening in China for 60 years to hit Hong Kong of this scale to be happening in Hong Kong whose media are supposed to have a free will is a perfect illustration of how the “One country two systems” pledge is working.

I always shudder at the patriotic sentiment that China is trying to instil in the people for a motive that is all too obvious, and I pity today’s generation of children in Hong Kong for having to be brainwashed like their counterparts in China. What is so ludicrous is that far from being foolproof, the messages being promoted are so often full of contradictions and fallacies. The only condition for such rubbish to work, and unfortunately it often seems to have worked in our culture, is that the lies have been told and repeated so often that eventually both the liars and the listeners become believers.

Nury Vittachi, my favourite newspaper columnist, asked the most fundamental question in his column yesterday: What exactly is being celebrated on October 1? This is a very thought-provoking question. To it I would add another two: Why should the day be celebrated? And why should it be celebrated the way they do?

As today’s Google logo shows, there will be fireworks displays. The last line of the song “He was me, he was you” springs to mind:

"Ain’t it cold enough today, so let it rain."