Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • A laser cut record & things that made last week

    Laser cut record

    A frickin’ laser-cut record. How awesome is this? Back in the day there were efforts to use laser pick-ups to read vinyl records in a way that wouldn’t affect the records over time. Dragging a diamond tipped needle through a groove was viewed as destructive. The first prototype was demonstrated publicly in 1977.

    An American company called Finial demonstrated a commercial product. But its business no longer made sense and eventually the intellectual property was picked up by Japanese company ELP Japan. ELP Japan build laser turntables to order. The laser cut record turns this philosophy on its head. The record is no longer a valuable artefact, but something that can be replicated over and over again.

    A simple but delightful Japanese Vine. Simple but amazingly cute gerbil with a priceless reaction when its human stops stroking it. I remember petting the dog that I owned at the time and eliciting a similar reaction of why stop. This seems to be a reaction that’s hardwired in; a sudden stop in grooming by another might indicate that they sense danger and consequently I should be on alert.

    A totally awesome Japanese game for the Sony PlayStation featuring Godzilla and all manner of kaiju. The odd thing about this Bandai Namco game is that it is for the PS3 rather than the PS4 which is gaining the lions share of console sales. One can only guess that this was a project that massively overshot its initial launch date?

    A smooth jazz version of Van Halen’s Running With The Devil, which seems to use studio stems of this rock classic. It works amazingly well, which says a lot about Van Halen’s songwriting and general musicianship

    Finally a video of park life in Beijing. It is hard to emphasise the amount of smoking that happens in China, so this video shows you instead. More related content here.

  • Facebook engagement advertising fraud & things that made last week

    A nice video on how Facebook engagement advertising fraud works. The illegitimate way to buy likes from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.  But you see similar fake likes when you you use Facebook advertising. This can be seen in the behaviour of the lakers. The Facebook engagement advertising fraud is run by Facebook itself. More on Facebook here.

    As good as special effects get, this time lapse footage of the sun still amazes

    It is interesting how retail is looking to replace sales assistants. Nestle is rolling out SoftBank robots in Japan to sell cans of coffee. The robots are manufactured by a French startup that Softbank bought into. They are doing interesting things with these robots in Softbank mobile phone shops as well.

    Interesting idea by jam band Phish that combines a Disney sound effects album from the early 1960s with their live performance. First I am amazed that Disney hasn’t sued them into oblivion as they are very careful about their intellectual property rights and the way brand assets can be used. Secondly, it is an unusual direction for Phish to take as well.

    Phish are best known in the UK for being the inspiration behind the name of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream. They come out of the live tradition of rock with devoted fans that The Grateful Dead pioneered. Many of the younger Deadheads that I have known think that Phish are the closest to the real deal of seeing the Dead live before Jerry Garcia left us.

    Guardians of The Galaxy is rolling out on digital distribution, Blu-Ray and DVD in the US which seemed like a good time to highlight the many different ways of saying ‘I am Groot’ in different terran languages. I am not a big fan of the Marvel universe but I do like the tripped out kooky vibe of Guardians.

  • Modern cryptography + more things

    Modern cryptography

    Keeping Secrets — STANFORD magazine – great article on the origins of modern cryptography. Without Diffie and Hellman you wouldn’t have e-commerce, VPNs or secure messaging. Modern cryptography as we know it goes back to an academic conference at Cornell University in 1977. To learn more about this I can also recommend Steven Levy’s book Crypto, this covers Diffie Hellman right up to what we’d recognise as the modern web.

    Culture

    The Brain Dump | Motherboard – new Bruce Sterling story

    FMCG

    Li Ka-shing turns up heat on food investment with vegan cheeseburger | WantChinaTimes – interesting investments in food technology

    Luxury

    Intel Reveals Details of MICA Smart Bracelet – Personal Tech News – WSJ – interesting that they chose Opening Ceremony as their collaboration partner

    Media

    Why podcasts are suddenly “back” – Marco.org – they never went away. The challenge previously had been creating a suitable financing model for podcasts. We’ve ended up with a number of routes:

    • The content loss leader for platforms – Joe Rogan’s buy out by Spotify
    • Patreon donations and merchandise – Cocaines & Rhinestones podcast
    • Radio show style sponsorship – the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway
    • Radio style adverts – The Economist podcasts

    Technology

    Non-Microsoft Nokia launches Android N1 tablet with Foxconn — GigaOM – interesting move that could put Hon Hai on a path to becoming a brand in its own right. Hon Hai has encouraged migrant workers leaving to set up franchise electronics stores in the past, which would be their distribution network in China. The big question is how much brand equity amongst consumers is left in the Nokia name?

    China’s global internet conference excludes many of the industry’s biggest players | Quartz – why would western internet companies bother going? They are effectively shut out of the Chinese market. Network software and equipment makers have even less incentive as China seeks to undermine stands norms for their own ends

  • Dreadzone at Under The Bridge, Stamford Bridge

    It has become a tradition that my friend Simon and I meet up to catch Dreadzone on their annual tour last Friday. Simon had come in from Saudi Arabia so its a pretty big deal for us. This was the first time I had been to a gig at Under The Bridge. The space is a purpose-built live venue under the stadium where Chelsea play.
    Dreadzone at Under The Bridge, Stamford Bridge

    It is the most comfortable venue that I have been to. Molton Brown products in the toilet, spotless facilities, comfortable seats and a stand-up area in front of the stage. There are screens all around the venue to allow you to follow the gig and a great sound system.

    Dreadzone put on a great gig, lower energy then previous gigs I had seen them at, but still a great performance. The location of the venue brought out a really mixed audience. Friends and family of the band, long-time Dreadzone fans, middle class professionals with fading celtic tattoos, elderly punks and older mods. I suspect that there were some locals as well, nice young things who looked rah.

    The gig seemed to be supporting the reissue of Dreadzone’s album Sound, which is due to be repressed on vinyl. It is interesting that Sound isn’t snared up with a record label. I presume that the band own the masters and are consequently in control of their own releases. Sound was released in 2001, six years after their breakthrough album Second Light. It is designed more as a record to be taken as its whole, rather than a series of more accessible songs. Different genres flow through the album and it works as a live playlist. Although they did make sure to put in some crowd pleasers as well. More events here.

  • Laura Branigan & things from last week

    Laura Branigan

    Laura Branigan and a remix of her 1984 hit Self Control was my soundtrack of this week. It’s available as a free download. Laura Branigan was covering an Italian record recorded earlier in the year by Raffaele ‘RAF’ Riefoli. The RAF version had a heavier baseline to it than the Laura Branigan version. It was remade by Harold Faltermeyer, who had worked with Giorgio Moroder on Donna Summer’s Bad Girls. Both the RAF and Laura Branigan versions were popular songs as part of the Balearic scene.

    Modern dance and digital art

    I love this modern dance performance that integrates with a digital experiential artwork

    UNION

    I have been working long hours on a new business pitch over the past couple of weeks and this video by Canadian agency UNION resonated more than it probably normally would

    John Lewis

    The John Lewis ad sparked a discussion in our team today, was it just excessively twee or really bad? I am inclined to go with really bad. John Lewis don’t seem to have learned from their previous years adverts that get picked apart for some form of offence.  Previous years were accused of animal cruelty – with the family dog left in the kennel, despite harsh winter conditions. This year you have a child that largely seems neglected by his mother. If you’re a certain age being a latch key kid was a way of life. But nowadays it would be enough to spark an intervention by child services that may result in the child being taken into care. This article by the BBC shows how latch key kids are frowned upon, despite acknowledging that a good deal of this down to a ‘moral panic’.

    CBS News

    Finally CBS News new 24-hour streaming news channel is the closest manifestation to TV advertising on the net I have seen. There is no clickthroughs or interactivity. However with the rise of the likes of the Apple TV may make this a more sensible option.