By the 1980s, radio dramas were in decline. This is in stark contrast to the first half of the century when famous literary and comic book characters had their own shows which covered everything from science fiction and fantasy to crime and horror. Famous names like Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula, Batman, Superman, The Spirit, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade all appeared on radio. The Star Wars radio dramas started as a project to fire interest in the genre.
An academic at the University of Southern California looked to respark interest in radio dramas, using the local campus radio station to rejuvenate NPR Playhouse – the umbrella vehicle for radio dramas on the US National Public Radio (NPR).
These aren’t the droids you are looking for by Scott Beale
The university students moved on from adapting short stories and suggested adapting Star Wars. Director George Lucas was an alumni of USC and helped the production licensing the music and sound effects for a nominal dollar fee. The BBC helped out in return for broadcasting rights in the UK and some of the original stars including Mark Hamill signed on as cast members.
USC went on to dramatise two out of the three films from the original Star Wars trilogy. While they were originally multi-part series, an enterprising YouTuber has put them all together.
Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi: originally 6 episodes (1996) – made by HighBridge Audio instead of NPR or USC. HighBridge had distributed the previous recordings as a recording box set and when NPR and USC couldn’t make the recordings, they stepped in to do it instead.
The Star Wars radio dramas, alongside vintage recordings are enjoying a second life on YouTube in parallel to the increased consumer interest in podcast documentary dramas and Audible’s rejuvenation of audio books.
Jack Ryan final season
Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan franchise is probably the best adaptation that I have been. But all good things must come to an end and we are seeing the final season being rolled out. John Krasinski has arguably played the best version of the titular character and the writers have managed to modernise the show sympathetically. They have managed to make each season very relevant. This time Ryan is investigating a conspiracy of crime that might envelope the entire ‘black budget operations’ of the intelligence and defence communities.
The roads lead back to Myanmar via Shan State rebels and an NGO ostensibly set up to help victims of human trafficking. I look forward to seeing where the rabbit hole goes next.
Threads
I am on Threads – a new micro-blogging alternative to Twitter; so far it’s been underwhelming despite the rapid climb in new members. I am also on Mastadon and Post.News.
Godzilla Minus One
While American adaptions of Godzilla feel grandiose and bloated in nature, Japanese adaptions by Toho Pictures have managed to refresh and take an interesting new take on the titular character in Shin Godzilla. Godzilla Minus One changes things up by setting his rampage in a post-war Japan already devastated by the United States.
Four years ago I wrote about the Casio G-Shock GWF-D1000 Frogman, this post is about a much more humble member of the same family the Casio G-Shock GW6900. The GW6900 is an update of the classic Casio DW6900 shape. This gives it a button on the front below the watch face to turn the back light on, very similar to the later 9400 Rangeman series.
This makes it easier to light up than the original 5600 series G-Shocks and many of the other models including my beloved Frogman models.
No name
The GW6900 is much more humble. It has no name like other models. It’s cheap and ubiquitous in nature, being the ‘everyman’ of G-shock models. It has looks that while discreet feel like it was an artefact from a 1980s anime cartoon series with giant mecha, with its soft roundness and form follows function urethane armoured protection.
What changed to make the DW6900 series into the GW6900? Out goes the need to change the battery every few years. Instead you get solar charging and the use of radio signals set the watch with atomic clock accuracy.
Glow in the dark
Electroluminescent technology can trace its way back to work that GE was doing in the US during the early 1960s. GE was making electroluminescent dash instruments for Dodge Charger cars from the 1960 model year. Below is an example via Wikipedia taken by Jonathan Gibbs in a 1966 Charger.
Fastback Jon
With the GW6900, you still get the turquoise electroluminescent illumination that Timex first made famous with their Indiglo watches in the early 1990s. The reality was that electroluminescent thin film materials were becoming a thing and Sharp in Japan and Planar in the US were rolling out the display technology during the 1980s. But the glow still takes me back to early 1990s dark warehouses with sporadic bursts of these watch screens.
The case is unchanged as is the strap. A pleasing resin material that quickly adapts to the wearer over a few weeks and becomes smoother to the touch. It feels quite ‘dainty’ on the wrist compared to an Apple Watch or a modern sports watch, yet it’s been robust enough for use by law enforcement and the military, until smartwatches gradually took over. Now the G6900 and its ilk have been gradually replaced by the Garmin Tactix and Apple Watch Ultra models.
The main section of the display allows you to have have two time zones displayed and is generally glanceable. The night light works well, but the display can ‘wash out’ a little. Upgrading the light to an LED would provide a greater degree of contrast to make the watch more legible when reading with the backlight.
As for the three ring displays at the top of the watch display. The first gives you an idea of battery charge. The second gives you an indication if functions like an alarm or hourly chime is turned on and the third one visualises ten second segments for no apparent reason.
A simple watch
The GW6900 is a simple watch. It won’t make you more sexually attractive or boost your apparent status. It won’t keep you up with the latest online happenings. But it will keep on running even in the most arduous of circumstances and will tell you the time in the middle of the night due to it’s easy to find light button.
I am happy with a simple watch.
Watch ownership as a rite of passage
When I was a child, having your own watch was a right of passage similar to getting your first smartphone today. Knowing the time gave you more control over your life, pulling my phone out of my pocket to look at the time doesn’t scratch ‘knowing the time’ itch in quite the same way. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I can find smartwatches intrusive at times with their constant reminders and need to be charged.
But at the same time I want to know I have the time with just a twist of the wrist away.
After owning your first watch at school, the idea of getting an ‘adult watch’ was the next big thing: buying a quality watch for life.
COVID seemed to bring people back to owning a serious watch. Serious watches became more of a mainstream thing, although a good watch is now viewed as an investment opportunity, and luxury watch flipping a side hustle. Alongside these developments, watch robberies seem to have taken off, so a humbler watch seems to be a prudent measure when I am out and about in London.
The Casio GW6900 is the grey man of watches, tough enough for life, but tame enough to go unnoticed. It doesn’t hurt that it costs less than 100 pounds.
A story caught my eye in Hong Kong’s English language establishment paper related to Chinese bank risk. Goldman Sachs issued a report on (maybe) five Chinese banks, changing their ratings to neutral and sell. Eastmoney.com is a subsidiary of government newspaper People’s Daily, came out to stoutly defend the banks against concern about Chinese bank risk.
Ping An Bank and China Merchants Bank have the largest exposure to real estate, accounting for 8% and 6% of total assets which the report authors are flagging as a canary in the coal mine for Chinese bank risk
CMB real estate loans accounted for 5.61% of about of total loans and advances
Ping An Bank real estate-related business bearing credit risk totalled 322.093 billion yuan, also down from the end of the previous year, and if this is taken as the numerator and divided by its total assets of 5.456 trillion yuan, it yields a share of about 5.9% – interesting choice of wording
Overall, the non-performing rate of the mainland real estate industry is still in a period of accelerated exposure in 2022, and the overall non-performing rate of listed banks for public real estate continues to rise to over 4.3%
There was a reference to “Industrial Bank” that has “deteriorating assets and liabilities” – I think that this is Industrial and Commerce Bank of China better known as ICBC. ICBC is recognised as a systemically important bank
Systemically important bank means that Chinese bank risk becomes global economic risk. While it is state-owned (being one four original institutions that spun out of the Bank of China in 1979), it still exposes retail shareholders and bond holders around the world. Word on the grapevine is that a number of Goldman Sachs partners had long term holdings in ICBC for well over a decade, which explains the banks irrational exuberance for China AND means it would have been extremely hard for the analysts to name check ICBC in this kind of report. During the 2006 IPO, Goldman Sachs purchased a 5.75% stake for US$2.6 billion, this apparently was the largest sum Goldman Sachs has ever invested at the time.
ICBC. Foggy night. – QuantFoto released under a CC licence
Of course issuing this kind of report in China means that they can’t talk about associated Chinese bank risk. For instance:
Local governments depend on property development for their main source of revenue and have issued a lot of debt which they may now find harder to pay off resulting in further Chinese bank risk. Given that this is more directly linked to government, it may get less scrutiny
Finally China’s industrial and services economic growth seems to be an issue with youth unemployment running very high at 20%
Trying to get reliable economic data on China as the government data tends to ‘harmonised’. Part of the problem is the information that local governments provide the central government and part of it is central government choosing to ‘tell the best China story’.
Expect China to increase solar panel dumping due to massive over-capacity. In addition these panels seem to be of low quality with a lower than expected panel life. Given the challenges that the Chinese are experiencing recycling the materials, they represent an environmental problem with a substantial risk of pollution.
Beyond belt-tightening: How marketing can drive resiliency during uncertain times | McKinsey – interesting read that’s about 50 percent right, probably too much of a bottom funnel focus and a more critical consideration of the marketing technology stack McKinsey are about 50 percent right. One thing that they haven’t done is leverage the marketing science research supported by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising on relative marketing spend and relative impact on market share. Also in-house agencies have serious problems due to cultural issues in clients.
The Eagles Announce ‘Final’ Tour Dates – Variety – following the lifecycle of their customer base. The Eagles attitude to covers, remixes and sampling always sat badly with me which is why I never bought any of their music new. I am sure this tour will keep them wealthy for the rest of their lives however
Interesting YouTube clip about how open source software is being used to extend the lives of Nissan Leaf electric cars. It raises interesting points for consideration about the right to repair debates that have been happening in areas like agricultural machinery through to Apple smartphones.
The devil is in the details of the claims and the research with regards ChatGPT driven trading. TL;DR ChatGPT didn’t trade any better and ChatGPT 4 did worse than earlier versions, implying random chance rather than ability
SCSI was a huge part of my early computer life. It was the way my Mac connected to external hard drives, printers, optical scanners and early optical drives.
Sun Microsystems computers used SCSI to and powered the dot com boom.
SCSI still lives on as a software layer in enterprise computer systems connecting storage together. It even exists within the USB mass storage device class.
SCSI is a reminder that technology is often build of layers of older technologies.
The slow death of downtown San Francisco | U.S. | EL PAÍS English – San Francisco’s problem is now as much reputational as it is economics now with the city labeled as being in a ‘doom loop’. Much of the blame seems to sit with the city administration under Mayor London Breed.
Great summary of the current state of rare earth metals processing. China appreciated the strategic nature of these materials before everyone else did and has been prepared to tolerate a high degrees of pollution in processing to build a monopoly.
Online
Skype was a thing in the early 2000s. I knew companies that used it in a similar way to FaceTime now. I used it for conference calls and video calls with friends around the world. I had completely forgot that eBay had bought Skype, I could only remember Silverlake acquired it and then sold it on to Microsoft.
I was sat thinking about a client project the other day. I was using Miro as a way to articulate my thoughts into something that the creatives could work with. As I stared off at a Post-It note on my wall that made up part of the prototype the idea that the tools are changing sailed in and sat at the front of my thoughts. I became deeply uncomfortable.
At a conscious level I know that technology and the tools that I use based on it are changing all the time. But what made me more uncomfortable was a deeper shift in the model of how the tools interacted with me and where the control sat. Sometimes it feels as if we longer use them, instead they use us. To what end has never been clearly articulated.
This quote from my first agency boss describes the nascent online landscape of the late 1990s:
After 50 years of radio and TV pushing marketing messages at people, it took technology to turn it around so that people pull in the information they want. Today’s new consumer has a cultural comfort with interactivity that just keeps building on itself, and it’s all because the technology is finally where it needs to be to let them do it.
I just couldn’t imagine the same thing being said about the experience of most netizens in our social platform dominated world today. The tools are changing, they now use us more than we use them.
I was particularly struck by this statement quoted in a BBC article and attributed to Thomas Bangalter
“Daft Punk was a project that blurred the line between reality and fiction with these robot characters. It was a very important point for me and Guy-Man[uel] to not spoil the narrative while it was happening.
“Now the story has ended, it felt interesting to reveal part of the creative process that is very much human-based and not algorithmic of any sort.”
That was, he says, Daft Punk’s central thesis: That the line between humanity and technology should remain absolute.
“It was an exploration, I would say, starting with the machines and going away from them. I love technology as a tool [but] I’m somehow terrified of the nature of the relationship between the machines and ourselves.”
A couple of my friends had home computers that were used as glorified games consoles. There was little technological value in playing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon or Frogger using the rubbery keyboard of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. My school had a computer lab with three seldom used BBC microcomputers and I had one lesson on using Excel during my time in school. This all meant that I really came to computing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was a self taught Mac user. From someone who was used to hand writing or typing documents, cut-and-paste was a radical new way of creating a document.
Having my own Mac and printer helped me get through my degree relatively stress free compared to my peers who largely relied on the University’s computer and printing services facilities.
Over the time I have used computing, I’ve noticed that technology tools are changing and not for the better. Computers were seen to be personally empowering and enabling. This age of computing is encapsulated by a phrase attributed to Steve Jobs about the Mac being ‘a bicycle for the mind‘. Steve Jobs also used the analogy of a computing appliance and used both Cuisinart and Sony product philosophies as exemplars for the Apple II and Mac.
In many respect, this was similar to the vision that Stewart Brand had for the ‘back to the land’ hippie movement bible The Whole Earth catalog. The subtitle of the catalog was ‘Access to Tools’. The tools in question were an assortment of recommendations including books, maps, garden implements, specialised clothing, woodworking tools, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers, and personal computers.
Mother of All Demos
Throughout his life Brand has had a knack of being at the right place and at the right time. Including help facilitate Doug Engelbart’s ‘Mother of All Demos‘ – a public demonstration of prototype technologies that mapped out our digital age. Being in the audience for the Mother of All Demos must have been mind-blowing at the time. For an audience that would have found computer terminals transformative, there would have been a realisation that their tools are changing right in front of their eyes.
Cuisinart
Mac Classic
The rounded edges and corners of the Apple II’s plastic case was inspired by Cuisinart, as was the Mac Classic’s ‘sit up and beg‘ stance. The idea that the the Mac was a ‘computing appliance’; something that just worked. For IT professionals of a certain age who had invested in Microsoft skills, this was mistaken for the Mac being a ‘toy’.
Before the web, this led to a religious type split. I have been a proud Mac user since 1989, which gives you an idea on where I sat. The IT professionals did not believe in personal user empowerment, but they would also struggle with the way tools are changing now as well. The thinking of these IT professionals can be seen in the clunky experience of using SAP enterprise software today.
The overlooked HyperCard
Some of the tools were brilliant ideas but didn’t get widespread adoption. My personal favourite of software in this category would be Apple’s HyperCard. HyperCard was a framework that allowed you to build processes from an address book or digital brochures to mind-blowing experiences and even running factories.
For example, Northwest Airlines managed their entire plane maintenance management programme using HyperCard. Nabisco ran at least one factory using HyperCard as an enterprise resource planning platform.
HyperCard was ‘No Code Tools‘ before the founders of AirTable or Zoho Creator were even born.
Danny Goodman who wrote a lot of the guides to HyperCard, went on to write some of the best books for programming assorted web and mobile technologies from JavaScript to iOS development.
This empowerment extended to many web technologies and web services. Email, forums and chat apps radically changed business and personal networks. It was now easier to access information and expertise. The late 1990s and email saw increased worker collaboration across offices and departments. You saw services like Yahoo! Pipes provided to ‘power-user’ consumer netizens during the Web 2.0 era. RSS newsreaders like Newsblur do a similar job, as do social bookmarking services like pinboard.in.
Modal interfaces and software buttons
When electronic products first moved into the home they had mechanical buttons. Buttons limited functionality, but allowed for the creation of highly intuitive products. Buttons have since been proven to be faster and safer to use automotive applications than touch screens. The use of touch screens being driven as by the car manufacturers marketing department. Logic controls were buttons connected to servos that provided a slimmer finish, a more sophisticated looking product.
Depending on the device they also allowed for the use of software.
But sophistication gave way to confusion as buttons often had to do multiple jobs and use a modal interface. I spent a good deal of my childhood programming my parents video recorders and setting the time on their digital watches and clocks in the home and the car.
Modal interfaces have their place. During my time as a student I worked for MBNA in customer service roles. The modal interface of the CardPac software allowed me to move around a customer record much faster than a point and click ‘windows type’ application. This was particularly important handling stressed customers who have been waiting to speak to a customer services rep in a phone queue.
I would switch into edit mode and quickly tab through fields of data faster than scrolling down and hunting and pecking with a mouse and cursor.
It’s not so much fun if you make one error programming a mid-1980s video cassette recorder and have to go cycle through the rest of the process to go back to the beginning and start again.
You also started to see software defined buttons. This appeared on machine tools and music instruments first. If there was ‘Mac like moment’ for software defined switches, it was the launch of the first commercially successful digital synthesiser: the Yamaha DX-7.
The Yamaha DX7 was so powerful, yet challenging to use – that a veritable cottage industry of books and tutorial videos like the one above. One of the most prominent manual writers was Lorenz Rychner, who wrote guides for various Yamaha electronic instruments as well as later Casio, Kawai, Korg and Roland instruments that was inspired by the Yamaha DX7. Eventually when personal computers became used in music production, Yamaha DX7 editing software appeared as well.
Getting these electronic instruments to work saw a new artist credit appear on albums and singles; that of MIDI programmer. In the 1980s, the audio tools are changing, but experts are required to get the most out of them due to software defined buttons. Apple took this to its natural extreme with a MacBook Pro model that replaced function keys with a touch screen that changes controls based on what software programme is being used at a given time.
Pictures under glass
Technology allowed the entire display surface to become software defined buttons, directly with your fingers. This robbed people of the tactic feedback of a button, knob or lever to create a phenomenon of ‘pictures under glass‘. This changes our relationship between our tools and how we interact with them. It also opened up new ways of interaction.
Swiping and gestures
Korean smartphone manufacturer managed to reduce the kind of gesture tracking that was previously in living rooms with Sony EyeToy series of devices controlling a Sony Playstation of Microsoft Kinect into a smartphone handset.
Pantech’s Vega LTE smartphone allowed control at a distance. This was based on technology from eyeSight to do gesture controls.
Within applications, dating app Tinder created gestures that became ‘common language‘ – to swipe left as in reject an option. But the very gesture of swiping left was part of gamification as the tools are changing from working for us, to us working for them. They are no longer tools of personal liberation in terms of ideas and thinking.
Digital drugs
Captology to captured users
To talk about how tools changed and became items of personal enslavement one has to back to the late 1990s. B.J. Fogg is a combination of media theorist and technologist with a doctorate in communications and heading a behavioural design lab at Stanford University.
The insight that B.J. Fogg had was that with the right design cues, computers could become ‘charismatic’ in nature. They could manipulate behaviour. Professor Fogg converted his doctorate paper into a new discipline that he called ‘captology‘ ( from computers as persuasive techologies). By 2003, Fogg had realised that some of the methods had negative impacts on users. He flagged ethical use to his own students and in his book Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.
Unfortunately, a number of Fogg’s students and readers took these unethical tactics into Silicon Valley businesses and used them as ‘growth hacks’ for brands as diverse as Tinder (swipe right) and Robinhood the stock trading app that gamified transactions. This was the dark side of ‘move fast and break things’ mentality prevalent in Silicon Valley at the time.
Other’s like Fogg’s student Tristan Harris saw what was happening and were horrified. Harris went on to co-found The Center for Humane Technology – an organisation raising awareness of the problems and holding the organisations to account.
Addiction
What was then termed internet addiction or video gaming addiction was by recognised as an issue by both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Chinese government. As far back as 2006, China estimated the number of addicts in its country as numbering 2 million children and young adults.
Psychoactive tools
Modern technology didn’t bring a distortion of reality on their own. Regulation and media owners have a lot to do with it. The origin of the modern ‘filter bubble’ was said to be syndicated talk radio host Rush Limbaugh as media regulations were relaxed. This allowed media eco-systems to be created that catered to left wing or right wing views. There was no longer a common view, which people could hold different opinions over, but ‘the truth’ and ‘alternative facts’
“You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts,”
Kellyanne Conway quoted in The Atlantic magazine
A combination of societal isolation, reductive algorithmic models, bad actors and dark pattern designs leave users more vulnerable in the online world. Machine learning and internet content allow for the creation of an overwhelming amount of content.
Whole worlds can be created. This means that there is no social glue of common experiences. There is no consensus and technology enables the bar bell.
Being boring
So enough about digital drugs. Let’s back to something more boring. In the appropriately titled essay The Future is Boring by Eliane Glaser published by Monocle in its Monocle Companion Volume 2: 50 essays for a brighter future; the author discusses the pointless rituals of techno-capitalism. The reason for these pointless rituals is often that the tools are changing, providing useless digitally mediated services and access that is ultimately unfulfilling in both form and function.
