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.

  • World Creative Studio + more things

    Mood Swing Rebrand – World Creative Studio – interesting take on MTV’s rebrand in terms of approach to the communications challenge. What is even more impressive is that it is coming out of MTV’s inhouse World Creative Studio

    An Ad Executive Often in the Vanguard Peers Into the Future – The New York Times  – The one thing that’s kind of disturbing about all of this to me and potentially The New York Times is: Are we moving into a world where the dominant platforms of media consumption are basically getting close to a point where they’re blacklisting the monetization of news? It seems that there is no huge demand in Google’s program commissioning to commission news. I don’t see there’s a big appetite for Facebook saying, “We would like 20 news organizations to provide news bulletin programming for Facebook Watch.” We know there are dozens and dozens of news organizations around the world, or at least a dozen or two that include The Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, the BBC and so on, who are, for the most part, the keepers of truth in news and the people who keep the public informed. And it seems odd to me that if you have aspirations to take up a very significant part of the media consumption time of the public that you do not have an overt policy for the dissemination of news – actually its not odd at all if you look at consumer research about media

    Microsoft partners Publicis Groupe to develop Marcel platform | Marketing Interactive – will build and connect Marcel to its deep technology and AI capabilities, leveraging Microsoft Azure AI and Office 365

    Can This Brooklyn Entrepreneur Reinvent Public Relations? | Forbes – I am skeptical but interesting hypothesis PR disruption through SaaS

    Investing in Indonesia | Google Blog – getting a stake on Go-Jek

    7-Eleven Grabs A Cup Of The Coffee Market – YouTube – interesting how 7-Eleven is going after McDonalds

    Citizen Considers Broadening Appeal With $18,000 Watches – Bloomberg – interesting how wearables isn’t something that they care about that much

    When A Small Leak Sinks A Great Ship: Deanonymizing Tor Hidden Service Users Through Bitcoin Transactions Analysis – by Al Jawaheri, Al Sabah, Boshmaf & Erbad (Qatar University) (PDF)

    HNA ditches vanity purchases for Silk Road commodity deals to vie for Beijing’s support  | South China Morning Post – interesting bits here. Massive change in M&A strategy to align with government – but it makes me wonder how they are going to service a lot of their debt?

    Intel Warned Chinese Companies of Chip Flaws Before U.S. Government – WSJ – so basically Intel betrayed the US, Russia and most western governments, almost all its client base in the server market. It is a pity that Oracle and its SPARC business aren’t in a position to take full advantage of it, but Qualcomm might

    Why Americans see Buddhism as a philosophy rather than a religion — Quartz  – Suzuki regarded Kerouac as a “monstrous imposter” because he sought only the freedom of Buddhist awakening without the discipline of practice

    General and Surprising – Pul Graham – The most valuable insights are both general and surprising. F = ma for example. But general and surprising is a hard combination to achieve. That territory tends to be picked clean, precisely because those insights are so valuable.

    Cheap as hips: why Malaysia is the best place for Chinese to retire | South China Morning Post – interesting article, but what about the socio political aspects of living in Malaysia? Malaysian interpretation of Islam is moving closer to that practiced in the Gulf. This is exasperating the discrimination against Chinese and South Asian ethic origin Malaysians such that the country is suffering a brain drain More China related content here.

    Shanghai wants you … but can it really be as attractive to foreigners as Hong Kong? | South China Morning Post – Shanghai isn’t comfortable or attractive, Shenzhen might have more chance if it took on Hong Kong laws and systems

    The Follower Factory – The New York Times – this isn’t news

    Hedonism 1988 – amazing read by Phil Cheesman via our Matt

  • Dark Satanic Mills

    dark satanic mills

    Dark Satanic Mills immediately looked like the kind of graphic novel that I would like. I grew up with British dystopian science fiction with a fascistic bent. From the numerous franchises within 2000AD magazine to Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta.

    The tone of these stories was set by a UK dealing with:

    • Decolonisation and trying to work out its place in the world
    • Economic chaos due to inflation, a shrinking manufacturing base and globalisation
    • A battle of elites against working people
    • The rise of right wing populist nationalism a la Britain First
    • The rise of racism 

    It sounds rather similar doesn’t it?

    The Sedgwick brothers Dark Satanic Mills fits right into this very British genre of graphic novels. The illustration style is similar to the stark black and white kinetic styles of 2000AD or Moore’s From Hell. It should be of now surprise that the jacket copy was written by Pat Mills of 2000AD. It almost felt like the baton was being passed on to the next generation.

    The book has a premise that is similar to the body of work in 2000AD. It taps into Moore, channeling not only V for Vendetta, but also his love of mysticism.

    William Blake’s Jerusalem and The Bible fit into a post-apocalyptic backdrop. Blake fits the bill perfectly: his association with the English identity often misused by ‘patriots’, his innate distrust in systems and of organised religion make his words the ideal foil.

    The heroine Charlie is a dispatch rider who ends up in possession of a manuscript that will expose the populist government and the religious zealots it uses as a paramilitary force.

    The religious zealots called the Soldiers of Truth are a chimera of Britain First and the droogs in Kubrick’s film adaption of A Clockwork Orange.

    Charley ricochets around an England where rational thought, tolerance, logical analysis and experts are enemies of the state. It echoes Michael Gove‘s

    “I think people in this country, have had enough of experts.”

    Without giving too much more away, the story finishes in an ambigious way leaving Charley and the authorities open to a future largely unwritten. Again the ambiguity of a post-Brexit future is an obvious analogy. The fact that Dark Satanic Mills was published in 2013 makes it feel curiously prescient: a parable for our times.

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  • Connie Chan + more things

    I love Connie Chan blog posts and presentations. In this talk she covers how Asian applications manage to squeeze so much more features into their apps than their western equivalent to provide a fuller eco-system of services that she terms super-apps.

    Connie Chan isn’t only smart, but manages to talk about Chinese eco-systems in a simple coherent way, which is an art in itself. More Connie Chan related content here.

    Interesting couple of articles on the user behaviour associated voice command enabled speakers – Alexa and Google Assistant have a problem: People aren’t sticking with voice apps they try – Recode and Alexa, We’re Still Trying to Figure Out What to Do With You – The New York Times – (paywall) – the low hardware price seems to be encouraging trial but that’s about it for now

    Nike footwear supplier Yue Yuen to make HK$6.7b from retail arm’s privatisation plan | SCMP – it makes sense given the rise of e-commerce in China

    The staggering scale of China’s Belt and Road initiative – Axios – scale of ambition is impressive but one also needs to think about maintenance. A lot of British laid railway and roads no longer exist due to a lack of maintenance after they left

    Why we post – Interesting UCL project

    For These Young Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley Is, Like, Lame – WSJ  – for most of the 18 entrepreneurs and investors, and especially for those in their 20s and 30s, last week’s visit largely failed to impress. To many in the group, northern California’s low-rise buildings looked shabbier than the glitzy skyscrapers in Beijing and Shenzhen. They can’t believe Americans still use credit cards and cash while they use mobile payment for almost everything back home – not terribly surprised. Silicon Valley is no longer the place ‘where wizards stay up late’. Agencies work harder than their Bay Area tech clients and it is full of hubris

    The Fall of Travis Kalanick Was a Lot Weirder and Darker Than You Thought – Bloomberg – actually I am not that surprised

    Luxury is thriving in China again, thanks to millennials — Quartz – Chinese millennials start buying luxury younger, and they buy high-end products more frequently, the firm says. (It undoubtedly helps that they have more spending power than previous generations did at their age.) What they’re buying is also different. Bain surveyed about 500 Chinese millennials and found their interests leaned toward casual and street-inspired fashion – Supreme rather than Prada, put into context here

    Luxury Daily | Rimowa undergoes rebrand – on the cusp of their 120 years in the business, reminds me of all the metal stamped information on each case

    Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Using page speed in mobile search ranking – makes total sense

    Readiness for the future of production | AT Kearney for World Economic Forum – interesting assessement

    Global expectations for 2018 | Ipsos – what the world thinks will happen (PDF)

    The techlash against Amazon, Facebook and Google—and what they can do – A memo to big tech – reading Scott Galloway The Four at the moment, it seems to be the zeitgeist

    Snap confirms reports of up to 24 redundancies in a bid to ‘scale internally’ | The Drum – no, it doesn’t make any sense to me either

    RA: Moodymann: A Detroit enigma – via our Jed

    Huawei – Really Convincing Story, Not. | Radio Free Mobile  – this means that this feature (RCS – Rich Communication Services), like its AI assistant, AI chip and its now commoditised imaging offering will be unable to generate any differentiation for Huawei in its devices. This leaves it exactly the same boat as all of the other Android handset makers who differentiate purely on the basis of hardware

    APAC ads fail at integration, says Kantar Millward Brown study | Marketing Interactive

  • Fieldnotes & other things

    Fieldnotes

    Chad Dickerson’s Fieldnotes – Fieldnotes is an email newsletter from one of the key people during Yahoo!’s web 2.0 geek golden age and former CEO of Etsy. Chad Dickerson was in charge of Yahoo!’s Brickhouse incubator and the Yahoo! Developer Network. He then went to be the CTO of Etsy and was then promoted to CEO. Dickerson came from a background in technology for online media, having worked at CNN, Salon.com and InfoWorld before Yahoo!

    Shipping time lapse

    This is the second time lapse film I’ve seen done by an officer on a ship. I get it. No internet would give you a lot of time to put the film together. It opens up a world that I had only heard of from people older than me who had served on ships when westerners were sailors. I love the way clouds boil away, time lapse allow you to better see the liquid nature of clouds.

    20 choice edits and reworks

    Greg Wilson put together this mix of his favourite edits that had been done in 2017. Everyone of them are are an amazing track. Wilson was one of the original resident DJs at the Hacienda. He was the first UK DJ to be seen scratching on TV. He took a break from DJing and returned later to both DJing and production. Wilson is one of the pioneers in the nu disco movement.

    LV Pass Apple Messenger icons

    Louis Vuitton’s LV Pass app did some really nice integration with Apple’s Messenger stickers. It is based on Jeff Koons artworks and the iconic Louis Vuitton brand. More related content here.

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    Switch off for the holidays

    Fair play to Nokia for running this campaign on their website over Christmas. They realise that consumers are over connected and need a screen break, so they have been encouraging consumers to switch off and connect in real life for the holidays.

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  • Darude & other things

    Darude  – Sandstorm

    Vice are running a series on classic EDM (heart sinks) but the first is Darude – Sandstorm. Lets not even get into the music taxonomy Vice are using…

    Darude – Sandstorm is interesting because the catchy hook is straight out of the Stock Aitken and Waterman playbook, complete with a key change. It sounds timeless, it could have been from any time from the early 1980s onwards – since it fits in with records like Rofo’s Theme. It is also surprisingly simple which is why it became endlessly memeable.

    The back story of how Darude – Sandstorm took off is fascinating.

    VR in jail

    Re-entry into society is astonishingly difficult for criminals that have completed their prison sentence. Its not only that businesses are reluctant to employ convicted criminals, but that life has changed. Imagine going into jail before the internet and coming out today. You might know about the changes, but knowing isn’t the same as experiencing them.

    Secondly, interacting outside is different to jail. You don’t have opportunities to prepare for the transition. And that’s where the Colorado correctional facilities use of VR comes in. Convicts can experience scenarios and learn from the experience.

    Scott Galloway on 2017

    Scott Galloway summing up 2017 at hyper speed.

    [Bonus posting] Predictions for 2018 | The Daily | L2 – Scott Galloway and the team have some ballsy predictions

    How Rega makes turntables

    The team at The Vinyl Factory put together videos on how Rega make turntables…

    How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers

    How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers. McIntosh Labs have been producing amazing hi-fi for over seven decades, with a design language that hasn’t changed that much over the years. It is really impressive that McIntosh Labs have been competitors like Bob Carver come and go. It’s also impressive that McIntosh Labs still make their products in the US.

    Have a great start to 2018.