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.
I have read a number of books on Silicon Valley, many of which allude to the impact of the beat generation and 1960s counterculture. Many of which tie it into the rise of what we now know as Silicon Valley. Roszak’s From Satori to Silicon Valleyis really an essay. In his essay is a deeply personal history of how the counterculture influenced Silicon Valley and then devolved into the yuppie culture of the 1980s.
The essay was originally written for a lecture to be given at San Francisco State University. I was particularly struck by a piece at the beginning of the book:
A few weeks before the lecture, a student in the Public Affairs Office at San Francisco State called me to arrange some campus publicity. He had a question from a student.
“Where’s Satori?”
“What?” I asked.
“Your lecture is called ‘From Satori to Silicon Valley,’ ” he explained. “I know where Silicon Valley is. But where’s Satori?”
“The Zen state of enlightenment … you never heard of that?”
“Oh. I never took any courses in Oriental religion “
I started to explain the term, spelling out its once obvious connection with the counter culture of the sixties.
This exchange was had by Roszak in 1985. My own views were rather different. For me the ideas that fired the counterculture revolution had a vibrancy that excited me. Yes hippies were a cliche, but they left a lot of concepts behind.
They had moved orientalism beyond interesting antiques to vibrant ideas. They had tried to marry libertarianism with utopianism that inspired early online culture. They had rooted down into the very nature of quality through metaphysics. This had inspired my wider view of things that gave this blog its name. In terms of eastern high and low brow culture and a holistic ‘renaissance man’ viewpoint.
Yet in that conversation, Roszak highlights the huge gulf that lay between the counterculture that had fuelled so much of Silicon Valley up until then and the new generation. A 30-something Steve Jobs would have choked with incredulity at that conversation.
Roszak’s work is credible because of his personal memories make it real for the essay reader. He was in the trenches shaping the brightest minds to find their way to Silicon Valley. This brings that transition into focus in a way that other authors such as John Markoff had been unable to do.
Roszak’s writing isn’t as witty or snarky as Robert X Cringely’s Accidental Empires.From Satori to Silicon Valley doesn’t try to build a mythologise around the messiness of the counterculture movement.
If you want to understand where technology is taking us (into a digital version of the robber baron gilded age) read From Satori To Silicon Valley. At 64 pages long and smaller than a typical paperback book it makes an easy read on the tube too.
James Earl Jones has one of the most distinctive voices in the entertainment industry as you can hear in this Sesame Street clip. You might recognise from his appearance in Conan the Barbarian film, but James Earl Jones has a surprising variety in his career across film, television and stage performance. James Earl Jones has done voiceover work for everything from Disney’s The Lion King to CNN station idents.
Hollow Spy Coins – talk about niche businesses, this is definitely on the long tail. You have to admire their dedication to engineering this.
Economics
Boomtown of Dubai feels effects of global crisis – International Herald Tribune – Until recently, credit in Dubai was growing by 49 percent a year, according to the Emirates’ Central Bank — a rate almost double that of bank deposits’ growth. That unnerved some bankers here, who felt it could lead to a collapse. “In the U.S., the challenge is about keeping the banks going,” said Marios Maratheftis, chief economist for Standard Chartered Bank. “Here, the economy has been overheated, a correction is needed, and it’s about making sure the slowdown happens in a smooth, orderly manner.”
Klein Verzet: Freaking doomed – the premise is that the demand for shipping of raw materials like coal, bauxite and iron ore have ground to a stand still and soon even the factories of China will be a lot quieter – so the economic outlook is nothing short of ammegeddon
P&G to launch washing gel that cleans at 15 degrees – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic – “According to P&G, Ariel’s Cool Clean campaign encouraged more than five times as many customers than normal to switch to low-energy washing programmes, with Ariel customers twice as likely as the average consumer to wash at a lower 30 degrees temperature (28% of Ariel customers in 2007 versus 13% of those using other brands). P&G has a partnership with the Energy Saving Trust, which encourages people to use energy efficiently and reduce their carbon footprints.”
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Data Debasement | PBS – cloud computing versus DBMS, interesting reading, I need to go back and look at it a few more times to understand it fully. But initial take is that parallel computing as well as parallel processing changes how computing works and databases have to be adapted (like Oracle’s Grid database concept from the tail end of the dot com era and cloud computing. It’s the failings of Moore’s law rather than progress that is driving this change
Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman – while I have sympathy for some of what Mr Stallman says, his argument misses the point about the benefits of social software. Open formats and APIs allow you to move from one service to another as needs must.
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Collateral Damage | PBS – interesting take on the mobile market, not one that I necessarily agree with, but interesting none the less. Cringely expect that Microsoft Windows Mobile software will fail and has some interesting ideas around the why. I think Microsoft has everything to play for with enterprise users and can leverage items like security authentication and Outlook email access – they might not be dominant but they could still be in with a shout
Beginning of end of megapixel marathon – Pixel count gives phones and cameras the ‘Dixons Factor’ – being able to be sold easily by some pimple-faced oik; but doesn’t mean you will have better quality pictures. I have a digital SLR which takes pictures at 5.1 megapixels and a phone camera that will do the same – no prize for which one takes the better pictures.
EitaroSoft is an interesting Japanese WeeWorld style avatar competitor but it is much more focused on gaming. EitaroSoft developed Japan’s first 3D engine with application software. It then developed a 3D avatar system based on its self-developed 3D technology. EitaroSoft made Japan’s first 3D avatar system for a mobile phone browser by using Ajax running in the browser. More here
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand – the vernacular of language changes all the time. English was spread around the world by a common culture but has been adapted in different ways. In addition, youth and minority cultures adapt it for their own use
How to
PR Skillsets of the Future – nice article by my old colleague Dan Young on how PR skillsets need to change in order to take account of technological and media industry changes
Feedtweeter – converted RSS to tweets for content syndication
Apple to .Mac Subscribers – Sync Bookmarks by Sunday – NYTimes.com – this is huge for Apple user experience. I use bookmarks to add functionality for my different Mac and iPhone accounts for instance my social bookmarklet, taking this away would hamper my productivity
EU stumbles on buying Microsoft alternatives – The European Commission, a thorn in Microsoft’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) side for its antitrust campaigns against the software giant, is falling short in its own internal attempt to promote Microsoft alternatives – this isn’t surprising. The open source community have failed with desktop Linux and Office type programmes. Google has managed to do better with web services based alternatives to Office in certain use cases. Munich city government have vacillated for almost a decade on using open source as Microsoft alternatives. Apple provides an OS, but has no Microsoft alternatives for Excel, OneNote or Visual Basic.
Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth – NYTimes.com – A squarer PET milk bottle with ridged sides allows thems to be stacked without a crate and packed 50 per cent more densely. They can be shipped on a pallet bound with cardboard and shrink wrap stacked several units high. Fewer delivery runs are required
Europe faces ‘inflationary shock,’ EU says – International Herald Tribune – it will hit the poorest people hardest. Inflationary shock has been prevented due to the rise of cheaper products available through the rise of globalisation. There are underlying pressures for inflationary shock on the demand side a big factor poor wage growth performance. On the supply side inflationary shock will be driven by the rising cost of property, healthcare and tertiary education
Coming Soon, to Any Flat Surface Near You – New York Times – they talk about the micro-projector being used by business travellers, but no discussion about home use. Big screens don’t fit all that well into smaller houses even if you can sell big LCD units out of ALDI