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.
Hana Kimura was a reality TV star appearing in a Netflix Japan show. She got a lot of unfair online abuse which contributed to her taking her life. Kimura was just 22 years old. YouTube user Nibota does a really good download on what happened. It mirrors experiences reality shows around the world seem to provoke in online behaviour. Hana Kimura worked in the entertainment industry as a wrestler and her death is indescribably tragic. More Japan related posts here.
Crowns & Owls
London collective Crowns & Owls shot this advert for Wieden & Kennedy Tokyo client Nike Korea. Entitled ‘You can’t stop us’ it symbolises ‘ the story of Shim Suk-hee; the gold medalist speed skater and national icon whose bravery in confronting her experience with systematic physical, sexual and mental abuse within 2019 South Korean sport’.
They actually built the tunnel inside South Korea’s largest indoor ice rink.
Yojiro Arai
Nescafé Hong Kong has a new animated advert for canned coffee. It was directed by Yojiro Arai, formerly of Studio Ghibli worked with a a Japanese team for the best part of a year to provide the authentic backdrop of Hong Kong and you can see it in the details, from the estate agent windows to the money plant in an office lobby. (H/T via the Mad Man blog (HK)).
Loewe
Lovely case study of an ad by luxury brand Loewe. This was a Christmas film without the cliches of John Lewis et al. It is an interesting mix of analogue skills which reflect the craftsmanship that luxury good brands like Loewe have in their DNA.
Jeremy Fleming, GCHQ
Jeremy Fleming, the current director of GCHQ gave a presentation for Imperial College and it is very similar to one he gave to the online version of the Cheltenham Festival. Unsurprisingly coronavirus offered an opportunity for hackers. It is interesting that he goes to talk about privacy and data protection on contract tracing apps. He doesn’t provide a concrete answer.
Fujitsu runs probably the world’s oldest working computer. I hear a lot of techies I respect like Grace Quek complain about the use of old languages like COBOL. Not even COBOL would run on the world’s oldest working computer. Lord only knows what they’d make of this electromechanical computer operated and maintained by Fujitsu. I love it, it reminds me of the community of tinkerers and engineers that have kept vintage trucks, tractors, trains and steam pumps alive. More over at the Asahi Shimbun here on the technician responsible for running the world’s oldest working computer.
https://youtu.be/24LZzvZhLIk
Via Fujitsu Japan
Large format high resolution displays are changing our environment and effects that would even astonish Blade Runner’s Rick Deckard. The COEX atrium in Seoul has a stunning installation by d’strict. A wave rolls around the screen. It offers an idea of the future potential of digital experiences in the real world.
Godspeed You Black Emperor is a 1976 16mm film following the adventures of a Japanese motorcycle gang, the Black Emperors. Groups like the Black Emperors went on to inspire Japanese streetwear designers like Neighborhood and WTAPS.
https://youtu.be/DoB6jooN19Y
Gilbert Shelton’s stoner comic series, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers is being adapted for television. Shelton satirised the establishment, drug culture and counterculture. Franklin, Freddy and Phineas are transported by the power of really far out weed from San Francisco in 1969, to the San Francisco of the present day.
The San Francisco of Google and Facebook is unrecognisable as the former world centre of counterculture. Cannabis is now legal, feminism has evolved so much as to become bewildering. Extreme gentrification has destroyed the San Francisco that they know and loved.
This pilot mini-episode has had a negative reaction, the wit isn’t as sharp as the books. But I am excited the brothers will be introduced to a new generation and hopefully inspire them to read the original books.
Mediatel: Mediatel News: From Pong to a multi-billion dollar media channel advertisers can’t ignore – Now that gaming is mainstream and likely to show further explosive growth the big question remains – is it an advertising medium, effectively a new channel for brands to reach consumers? – Mediatel has an event to sell so I will hold judgement over their yes. I want hard data. More on gaming related content here
I guess where I should start this post in OSS is by going back. This time 20 years ago, we were in a time of economic irrational exuberance so large as to be like a fairy tale in comparison to Brexit and the coronavirus.
Irrational exuberance
Everyone believed that the future was going to be rebuilding the catalogue shopping business online. Consumers would have a raft of choice.
Advertisers were going to swap print and TV advertising for banner ads. Something that looked like small advertisements on the pages of newspapers at the time. Because of this, online display advertising was over-priced and everyone was happy.
In order to do these businesses, you needed a lot of servers and a lot of software. If you had the money you bought really good software and servers from Silicon Valley. Companies like Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics or Digital Equipment Corporation. These all ran variants of the Unix operating system.
If you were less fortunate you might be running on an Intel server running Windows NT, anything by IBM or repurposing a Mac from the design studio. The Mac made a surprisingly robust server solution mainly because the computer was so ‘dumb’. There wasn’t a lot that hackers could do to it at the time.
True hackers
People who were hackers in the truest sense realised that you didn’t have to pay for software to run on servers. If you knew where to go and had the right technical chops, you could have robust server software. You could end up paying good money to Microsoft and still need to use three times the amount of servers for a given load because Windows didn’t handle multiple threads as well. It couldn’t do as much ‘work’ as free software. You would get even more benefit if you were skilled enough to see how you could tweak it to meet your needs. Online communities also meant that you would find fellow travellers interested in similar tweaks and would collaborate with you.
A classic example of this would be Hotmail. Hotmail was founded on NetBSD servers and it took years for Microsoft to migrate away from it due to performance and scaling issues with Microsoft’s own software.
Yahoo! which used and contributed to various OSS projects including:
Debian Linux and later moved to an adapted version of Red Hat Linux
FreeBSD
PHP
A peer of Yahoo!’s founders David Filo and Jerry Yang, decided to make hacking together servers and web services easier for businesses and technologists. The founder was called Larry Augustin and the company he founded was VA Linux. VA Linux built workstations and servers for websites. VA Linux is now most famous for the largest opening day price increase on the NASDAQ; but they made seem really great computers.
For smaller businesses, a small start-up called Cobalt Networks came up with a relatively friendly server that could sit in the corner of an office called the Qube. This was popular in a number design offices as a file server and also ran numerous websites. As well as the cute form-factor, it made OSS more approachable for a lot of businesses and changed expectations about IT complexity.
Cobalt Qube
I was working on a mix of telecoms, enterprise and consumer technology clients. One of my clients . By the time I was working with VA Linux in April 2000, open source software (OSS) was a hot ticket. And both Cobalt Networks and VA Linux were at the forefront.
At this time OSS, in particular the Linux operating system was endorsed by IBM with a $1 billion investment in the community. This helped adoption by other large business technology companies including Oracle, SAP and Sun Microsystems.
Suddenly it was OSS everywhere. My client Palm was trying to move its photo-smartphone operating system to Linux underpinnings.
Where was Microsoft in all this?
Its hard to explain to someone under 30 how dominant Microsoft was a business at the time. They were steadily working towards a goal outlined by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in the mid-1970s
A computer on every desk, and in every home, running Microsoft software.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates, 1974 – 1975
Bill Gates wasn’t a cuddly billionaire who wanted to give the world toilets, but a dodgy looking technocrat who made Mark Zuckerberg seem human.
https://youtu.be/-hRUAdi3g5g
Microsoft had won the PC industry and was looking to extend itself into every aspect of business and home life. Microsoft injected investment into Apple at a time when the company was days away from bankruptcy. This made sense for a number of reasons:
The Apple Microsoft Office business was worth more than the investment into Apple
The deal allowed Microsoft to settle a number of patent disputes
It was a cheap distribution deal for the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser
The disappearance of Apple would have had serious issues in terms of antitrust regulation in the US into Microsoft’s core Windows business.
They’ve done a great job. They’re a company that’s done a great job. If you go back to 1997, when Steve came back, when they were almost bankrupt, we made an investment in Apple as part of settling a lawsuit. We, Microsoft made an investment. In a way, you could say it might have been the craziest thing we ever did. But, you know, they’ve taken the foundation of great innovation, some cash, and they’ve turned it into the most valuable company in the world.
Back then Bill Gates was the Mark Zuckerberg or the Sergei Brin of his day and even he almost missed the importance of the world wide web and the internet. Gates was paranoid about the next thing coming along and sweeping all his success away.
The internet represented one such threat.
Gates is as fearful as he is feared, and these days he worries most about the Internet, Usenetand the World Wide Web, which threaten his software monopoly by shifting the nexus of control from stand-alone computers to the network that connects them. The Internet, by design, has no central operating system that Microsoft or anybody else can patent and license. And its libertarian culture is devoted to open—that is to say, nonproprietary—standards, none of which were set by Microsoft. Gates moved quickly this year to embrace the Net, although it sometimes seemed he was trying to wrap Microsoft’s long arms around it.
Headliners: Bill Gates. – Time magazine. December 25, 1995
OSS represented a second such threat. Microsoft’s sales of enterprise software for businesses and other organisations was a high margin business. OSS was a threat to that business. Back in 2001, I started working with colleagues at an agency who were asked to deposition OSS products and the the underlying legal agreement (the GPL).
I was asked by my colleagues to write a briefing document of what OSS actually meant. It didn’t g0 down that well as it outlined the challenge of assailing an idea and a committed community. That didn’t stop our client Microsoft trying, mostly at the C-suite and policy level.
Decoding Xi Jinping’s Speech at the World Health Assembly – The Diplomat – The main target of Xi Jinping’s speech is the “global South” and, more specifically, the African continent. The terrain lost in Western democracies amid the pandemic will be hard to win back. However, in terms of global influence, the role of the global South and Africa is vital for China. There also, the image of China has been severely damaged. For the first time, African ambassadors to the PRC had to write a joint letter to protest how African residents were being treated in the PRC
Investigating China: COVID-19 and the CCP – The Diplomat – capitalizing on the growing crisis in the United States and Europe, the official media in China has been trumpeting China’s purported success in controlling the disease. China has also sent medical missions to countries such as Italy. Sending medical missions abroad had been a strategy the PRC used during the Cold War to promote a new international order: a “people’s revolutionary movement” against colonialism, imperialism, and hegemonism
Mixed reactions to current brand comms | YouGov – With the large number of brands clearly defaulting to the ‘all in this together’ message, it’s worth asking: ‘How well does this actually align with their brand values and how they are responding to the current crisis?’ Our research shows that 43% of Brits agree that brands/companies’ current messages and advertising are inauthentic. This figure increases to 52% of males (vs 35% of females). Furthermore, half of respondents (50%) disagree that brands/companies are putting their employees and their customers first and before the company and its profits.
The Crypto Price-Innovation Cycle – Andreessen Horowitz – crypto winters tend to indicate that like AI approaches before it, its not ready for adoption as a technology / use case. Success hasn’t really been in banking or logistics, where’s the adult entertainment play (which drove a lot of other technologies from 16mm cinema film to VHS and web video)
Thailand’s travel industry readies for relaunch | Financial Times – really interesting design hacks being deployed by the Thai tourism industry. It would be great if this positively moves the needle on Thailand’s reputation as a destination for miserly backpackers and adult entertainment
China’s ‘OK Boomer’: Generations Clash Over the Nation’s Future – The New York Times – China’s baby boomers, born in the 1960s and 70s, experienced a period of great opportunity, similar to American boomers post-WWII. After decades of political unrest and poor economic management under Mao Zedong, China was opening up, leading to abundant jobs and affordable housing. While the government maintained political control, society became more receptive to new ideas and access to information, including international websites, was available. This era offered a promising future.
In stark contrast, China today is very different, especially for Generation Z (those born after 1990). The economy recently experienced its first contraction since the Mao era due to the coronavirus pandemic, with unemployment estimated at 20%. Additionally, housing in major cities is now largely unaffordable for Gen Z, mirroring challenges faced by their counterparts in cities like New York and San Francisco.
Merkel cites ‘hard evidence’ Russian hackers targeted her | AFP.com – German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her deep distress over evidence of Russian cyberattacks against Germany, stating that these actions undermine her efforts to improve relations with Russia. She described the attacks as “more than uncomfortable” and warned that sanctions could be imposed if this malicious activity continues. Merkel also highlighted that German intelligence services have consistently reported Russian hackers attempting to spy on German lawmakers and politicians.
Troy Hunt: The Unattributable “db8151dd” Data Breach – interesting, looking at the headers, it looks like a wider scrape from multiple sources. It connects multiple social platform profile IDs alongside real world address data. Possibly a large CRM breach???
The report, confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials, claims that China threatened to withhold cooperation from the WHO’s coronavirus investigation if the agency declared a global health emergency. This is the second such report from a Western intelligence service, and it’s expected to worsen already strained relations between the United States and China concerning the pandemic, which has caused 280,000 deaths worldwide, with a quarter of those in the U.S.
Even if these allegations are not entirely accurate, their dissemination is negatively impacting the relationship between China and the U.S.
The VR winter — Benedict Evans – we haven’t worked out what you would do with a great VR device beyond games (or some very niche industrial application), and it’s not clear that we will. We’ve had five years of experimental projects and all sorts of content has been tried, and nothing other than games has really worked. Hell, even adult entertainment has worked as a driver
