A Memorial: Zhong Wen Hu

Zhongwen Hu

Zhongwen Hu lived a wholly remarkable life. He was born in 1937 and had a clear memory of a time before the communist revolution in China. His eldest son became an engineer, emigrated to Canada and now works for the auto industry in North America. His youngest son placed in Beijing body building championships, worked as a banker and professional photographer. Zhongwen Hu moved to Guyana, South America in 2010 and emigrated to the U.S., receiving his green card in Miami, Florida. Dad lived the rest of his life in San Antonio, TX. He traveled to AZ, SC, AL, NM, and LA. He left us in the summer of 2015, while his grand daughter, Ann, was still in her second trimester in my womb. He lived through the eight years of the Japanese army’s occupation of Bejing, great depression of China, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the modernization of China.

New view on the Thucydides trap

Much discussion about whether the U.S. and China are destined for war ignores classical Chinese strategic texts about playing the barbarians against each other for the benefit of China. The Korean Conflict may be the Chinese greatest accomplishment with regard to the Chinese methodology for waging war. To truly accomplish one’s objectives with the least amount of loss to the home country is the ultimate Chinese military strategic accomplishment. If it’s true that Mao engineered the Korean Conflict, the U.S. and China have been at war since before my mom was born.

What if? Mao manufactured the Korean Conflict?

A close reading of Kissinger’s On China includes solid data regarding the Chinese deception of Moscow. The Chinese Army was already marching south on the peninsula when Mao cabled Moscow to tell them the Chinese would not interfere in the war between North and South Korea. Moscow and Beijing both blame the other for having originated the idea of North Korea invading South Korea.

Kissinger documents Chinese history, philosophy and tactics which include playing the barbarians against each other and using chess-like or Goban-like political moves to diminish an enemy’s national funds, national clout and domestic popularity. Kissinger notes clearly that the real winner in the Korean Conflict was China. At the end of WWII, the two most powerful global forces were Washington, DC and Moscow. At the end of the Korean Conflict, both had lost considerable domestic confidence, national financial reserves, human lives and global confidence.

However, Kissinger stops short of blaming the creation of the Korean Conflict on Mao. If Mao was able to manufacture a global event that cost, by some estimates 3 million lives both civilian and military, it was his crowning achievement as the ultimate political manipulator. It’s hard to imagine from a JudeoChristian ethic that someone could care so little for human lives as to use 3 million people as pawns in a political maneuver. However, in the military strategic view of classic Chinese texts, rather than be a horrific violation of ethics on a near genocidal level, it could be viewed as a master stroke of genius.

Terrifying to think of, really.

Direct Democracy Regulatory Reform

I just wrote this for a university post and I loved it, so I thought I’d share it here.

How I got here

I love democracy. I want to further the cause of democracy by helping illustrate the specific realities of the United States of America, one of the most bodacious democratic experiments in human history. So, I became a government journalist and learned how to put words and photos in a weekly newspaper.

Then I realized that to write anything meaningful for those words and photos in the newspaper, you have to know stuff, a lot of stuff. I promised myself I would take at least one college class per semester, and I have since the early 1980s. I did more than 60 credit hours in search of a bachelor’s degree from more than a dozen different colleges and universities and finally cobbled it all together for a BA in Sociology from Chapman University. Then all but dissertation in the master’s degree from the American University in Cairo (Cultural Anthropology). Then an AAS in computer programming from Cochise Community College. Along the way, I have studied six languages, achieving scores of 3/3 in Spanish, 2/2 in Japanese, 2/2+ in Portuguese and 1+ in Arabic and Korean on the State Department evaluation system, which considers 3/3 equal to a native speaker who has a high school education. I have also studied my husband’s language of Mandarin Chinese.

But I also realized that college isn’t enough. So I read and read and read. I have read dozens of books on national histories, including the history of Chile in Spanish, and Egyptian and Japanese classic works of literature in translation, critical philosophers like Sun Tzu from China and my personal favorite, Plato. I wanted to put the world in context.

Since my earliest days, I’ve tried to find ways to cram more time into a single day or at least more information absorption. Reading a book is slow, cumbersome work. In the early days, when I took home less than a $1000 per month as a enlisted Marine in the 1980s, I would still spend as much as $100 for a book on cassette. I even went to the library to check out books on cassettes or DVDs and listened to them during commutes to work or while waiting for anything – a doctor, an airplane, whatever.

The first time I went overseas, I was limited to two pieces of luggage to sustain me for a year or two. My number one problem was which books to take. I couldn’t take my complete collection of the Encyclopedia Britannica Great Thinkers of the Western World, they were too heavy.

Of course, books on cassettes or DVDs were lighter and if I burned them all onto a hard drive, lighter still. Then one day, I met audible and the iPod classic and my life changed forever.

I could keep a virtually unlimited number of books in my pocket, weighing less than my wallet. I could let the information, including foreign languages, streaming into my ears day and night, even while drifting off to sleep.

Then I saw a presentation with Jeff Bezos talking about the effects of dual modality. That reading the text of a book, something I often did when I wasn’t driving, while simultaneously listening to an audio version of the same book increased comprehension and retention. In a 2016 journal article, authors Rogowsky, Calhoun and Tall explain and explore the value of dual modality. (Rogowsky, Calhoun, & Tall, 2016)

My audiobook collection is just over 800 books, mostly nonfiction, scholarly and history with a smattering of classical literature and science fiction. According to the audible website, I’ve been a member since August 30, 2008. Amazon bought Audible in March 2008, so I’m guessing I was one of the first on the platform. The app on my current iPhone says I’ve listened to audiobooks for a total time equivalent to one month, 14 days, 15 hours and 12 minutes. However, this doesn’t track the fact that I can and do listen to my Amazon audiobooks on my Alexa Smart Speaker, on my government computer using Amazon’s website and from my laptop computer. In fact, I can access my audiobooks from pretty much any internet-based platform, including my daughter’s iPad. I wish the website tracked total reading time across all devices. I listen to audiobooks using my iPhone connected to CarPlay in my SUV but have to use an aux cable in my subcompact car because it doesn’t have CarPlay yet. I called BestBuy and learned they can install CarPlay in my car along with a rearview camera. I plan to get them both installed this winter in addition to buying the Alexa device for autos, one for each car. At that point, it won’t matter if I forgot the cable to connect my iPhone to CarPlay, my car will have a copy of my audiobook downloaded in a device and with WhisperSync technology, it will know where I left off reading on my Kindle or iPhone, so I don’t have to reread the material I’ve already consumed.

Since I’m in the news business, I want to know what’s going in the news, but I want serious news – markets, global events, world political changes, etc., not just the local weather and updates on social media influencers. So I have news apps installed on my cell phone that bring me reports on the Dow Jones, CNN Money, BBC, China Daily, Al Jazeera in English, Fox News, the Washington Post, NPR, CGTN (Chinese government official news channel), Reuters, AF Connect, Asahi Shimbun (the Tokyo daily), and Canberra News. These apps push information to me, scrolling across the screen with the latest in hot news from around the world, often telling the same story from wildly different angles.

According to an article in Political Communication by Zhongdang Pan, all parties, including the news media, politicians and lobbyists work to frame news in a light that best suits their goals. As such, reading diverse content improves topic comprehension and undermines the various authors hope to imprint on me a framing they prefer the public consume. (Pan, 1993)

Where I’m going

When the Air Force hired me as the chief of the public web in 2011, I panicked. I was, in my own assessment, in no way qualified for the job. I was not sufficiently tech savvy. This is why I picked up an AAS in computer programming. I asked my office to pay for a dozen courses in website design, website programming, Microsoft Access programming, and I read all the technology books I could find. Thankfully many if not most of them are available in an audible format.

I started to experiment. I bought programmable thermostats and a programmable vacuum cleaner robot. I bought a smart home security system with an online video camera and smart light switches and smart TVs. And of course, smart speakers. Two. Alexa and Google Home. I wanted to understand the Internet of Things, not just from Forbes articles and the like, although I read those too, but from a lived experience. (Morgan, 2014)

I wanted to understand exactly what the technology was capable of and where it could take us. With a background in sociology, I wanted to understand what would best serve the people and my first love, democracy. I realized voice user interface from smart speakers would smash the centuries-old hierarchy of knowledge that he who reads the most text on paper earns the most money and social clout. I wrote a blog about this idea. (Hu, 2018)

I realized that the extraordinary democratic experience we have had combined with the new crowd sourcing technology could create a reality from the fiction of a direct democracy. (Gardels, 2018) After a job interview with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Tax Bureau, which will most likely be responsible for drafting new regulations regarding recently legalized cannabis, I began developing a concept for an online platform to crowd source the development of government regulations. It is based on an idea cobbled together from Clay Shirky’s books Here Comes Everybody (Shirky, 2008) and Cognitive Surplus (Shirky, 2010). I realized that rather than spending copious hours of time for the limited 480-person staff that runs this remarkably small agency, we could build a website that collects regulation suggestions from the public, allows them to vote them up or down and comment on them. It should be able to allow them to mashup a proposal, meaning copy another citizens proposal and modify it sufficiently that it becomes a different legislative proposal. Then run the finalists through a set of government lawyers to vet them for consistency and publish.

The government agency will significantly reduce its workload. It will completely change the equation of the public comment period. And the remarkably enthusiastic producers and consumers will have a direct say in how their world is governed. Direct democracy has always seemed like a little piece of mythological fiction from ancient Greece at a time when people were in no way equal.

I’m excited by the idea that I might be able to use technology to help my country create a system that allows the general public direct access to policy making. Of course, first, I have to get hired. Still, regardless where I go, I’m always looking for ways to bend the technology to my ambitions, which as one previous supervisor wrote in my annual review, “is more for the organization and humanity than for herself.”

Bibliography

Gardels, N. (2018, October 5). Direct Democracy: Renovating Democracy from the Ground Up. Retrieved from Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/10/05/direct-democracy-2/?utm_term=.0f0049366d52

Hu, C. A. (2018, November 9). New Literacy: Eulogy for Gutenberg. Retrieved from Charlotte Ann Hu: https://charlotteannhu.com/2018/11/09/new-literacy-eulogy-for-gutenberg/

Morgan, J. (2014, May 13). A Simple Explanation of the Internet of Things. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/05/13/simple-explanation-internet-things-that-anyone-can-understand/#206d2edb1d09

Pan, Z. (1993). Framing Analysis:An Approach to News Discourse. Political Communications, 55-75. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/45567926/Pan_Kosicki_1993.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1542319483&Signature=IZRHRLe2lmUemWF2UnoDaUmxzsg%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DFraming_Analysis_An_Approach_

Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tall, P. (2016, September 1). Does Modality Matter? The Effects of Reading, Listening, and Dual Modality on Comprehension. SAGE, 6(3), online. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244016669550

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: A Perigee Book/Penguin Group.

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive Surplus. New York: A Perigee Book/Penguin Group.

New Literacy: Eulogy for Gutenberg

I haven’t yet seen any news reports or research or thought leadership books by techies about the impact of smart speakers on the fundamental structure of our social fabric. I think Alexa is a technical revolution as radical as Gutenberg’s press.

In 1436, Johaness Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, created the printing press. Before then, all texts had to be laboriously copied by hand. Corresponding this critical new technology, born in Eisleben, Germany, in 1483, Martin Luther disrupted religion by translating the Bible and removing control from the hands of the clergy. Since that time, the ability to read text on paper has largely determined economic potential and earning capability in the job market.

Right now, in 2018, there remain some 20% of the world’s population who are illiterate. Others born or who later became blind or severely sight impaired have also been limited in their economic potential due to their inability to access information.

Alexa and other technologies like her, Siri and Google Home, but more importantly, the computing power that has made text to speech and speech to text capability possible will make reading letters on paper altogether irrelevant with regard to accessing information.

I read a book by Microsoft MVP Ben Clothier who explained how to integrate Access and Sharepoint nearly 10 years ago. He seemed at that time to be the only person in the world who knew how to do what we wanted to do with our information. I reached out to him on the web and he said he worked for a consulting firm. I reached out to them and contracted him to help our project. I also contracted two American sign language translators because this brilliant expert was severely hearing impaired and had very limited sight. I offered to pick him up from his home on my way to work, because I learned from a tour at the Lighthouse for the Blind that getting to work every day is one of the biggest challenges in a car culture like ours for sight-impaired professionals.

Centuries or even decades ago, Ben would never have been able to access all the knowledge that put him at the top of his specialty. While limited options were available, like braille, few of the worlds books were available in braille. Because of the digital revolution, information is now available to almost anyone and the final wall is coming down with voice user interface.

At the end of this holiday season, some 50% of American homes will have a smart speaker. Amazon’s website likens it to Star Trek ship communication technology. Ease of use has never been more fluid. No manual required. Even my two-year old can activate Alexa, although she has yet to correctly format a request to get a response. Alexa’s ring turns blue, delighting my toddler when she says, “Alexa.” Amazon just announced Alexa is available in Mexico.

Once this technology is available worldwide and once the world is online, Gutenberg will finally be truly just a note in the history books. The world he created of text will no longer determine one individual’s economic potential by serving as the only path to knowledge and information and ultimately professional expertise.

I have long loved books, and I will miss Gutenberg dearly. Still I can see that Alexa joins the Internet as the most powerful flattening forces of my lifetime.