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.

  • AMD Live and the connected home ten years later

    A decade ago I worked on AMD Live. A hodgepodge of hardware and software that provided media access where ever and whenever you wanted it.  Here is a short video that we made at the time to bring it to life. The idea was that AMD would be able to sell higher specifications of PC components into the home to act as digital hub. They wanted to push their Opteron server processors into the home.

    An engineer came in and spent the best part of a day setting everything up throughout the house prior to shooting the film. At the time much of the streaming boxes didn’t work as promised so some of the screen images were put in post-production. There was a mix of cloud services and home hosted content. At the centre was a PC running Windows Multimedia Centre. There was a raft of third-party apps needed as well

    • Network management apps
    • Video and image compression apps
    • Instant messaging (that wasn’t MSN or Skype – no idea why it was in the bundle)
    • TV tuner software
    • A music jukebox application
    • Network management
    • An AMD GUI which provided a 3D carousel effect and integrated web browser

    It was all a bit of kludge.

    Digital content was well on its way. Streaming technology was well known but unstructured. RealNetworks had been going commercially since 1997, but the playback quality was dependent on Internet network connectivity, We only started to see widespread DSL adoption from 2003 onwards in the UK. By the first quarter of 2003, DSL was enabled at 1200 of the 5600 telephone exchanges across the UK.

    Apple’s QuickTime streaming server was open sourced back in 1999; so if anyone wanted to set up a streaming network they had the technology to do so.

    Digital audio content prior to 2003 had largely been ripped from optical media or downloaded online via FTP, Usenet or P2P networks. iTunes launched its music store in 2003.

    From a standing start in 2002; by 2004, 5 million devices with a HDMI connection had been sold. The built in copy protection had been developed by an Intel subsidiary and was adopted by all the big Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers.

    By 2005, Apple had started selling iTunes movies and TV programmes  alongside its music offering that allowed sharing of an account on up to 5 concurrent devices.

    Apple launched its MFi programme in January 2005, which begat a raft of speakers and stereos with iPod connectivity in the home and the car.

    Sonos released its speaker system including a wi-fi mesh network and AES network encryption. Flickr had a well documented API that allowed for a fully functioning photo album and picture streaming which was used in early web 2.0 mashups.

    AMD Live was on the back-foot from day one. From a high end perspective of audio streaming Sonos had it locked down. For everyone else moving an iPod from room to room had the same effect.  Mini-video servers could be configured from mini-PC boxes, but they were only for the technically skilled. Even the Mac Mini launched in 2005 didn’t make the process much easier. The key advantage is that it could use iTunes as a video source and a playing software.

    Back then because it was US centric in its view AMD Live completely ignored the rise of the smartphone as a music playback device.  By 2007, Nokia launched ‘Comes With Music‘ which put mobile streaming in play. Apple Music and Spotify have now made streaming effortless. Video playback now comes from devices the size of a thumb drive. New intermediate screens from tablets to smartphones changed viewing habits and the PC has become redundant as the home hub for all but the most enthusiastic AV aficionados.

  • iPhone X launch + more things

    iPhone X launch

    In terms of the news agenda, the iPhone X launch dominated the news. I wrote about it here and here.  This image from the Chinese internet summed everything about the iPhone X launch up for me.

    Chinese reaction to iPhone X

    We’re in a place of innovation stuckness at the moment – we’re celebrating incremental improvements in user experiences on smartphones as transformational, they aren’t. This is a category challenge, not a vendor-specific one. Even infrastructure and component vendor Qualcomm is struggling to envision ways to move things on.

    I have been mostly listening to this playlist from this years Love International Festival

    And FIP Radio

    Japanese group meforyouforme combining traditional Japanese culture and dance with modern tap dancing FTW


    Hong Kong stars Donnie Yen and Andy Lau go back to the 1970s with Chasing the Dragon – a thriller based on real characters involved in drug smuggling and organised crime in the turbulent go-go economic boom of Hong Kong – Lee Rock (Lui Lok) was a corrupt policeman nicknamed 500 million dollar Inspector, who avoided corruption charges by moving to Canada and then Hong Kong. Crippled (or Limpy) Ho was a triad called Ng Sek-ho who rivalled the 14K triad group.  It is against the backdrop of the post-1967 riots economic boom which saw Hong Kong blow up in manufacturing and financial services. This brought rich pickings in corruption which led to the formation of the ICAC – the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

  • Voyager + other things

    Voyager

    Voyager probe – NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched some really cool posters to celebrate 40 years of the Voyager programme. You can download them here.

    The Voyager programme consisted of two probes that were launched in 1977. The original launch time was designed to take an advantage of an alignment of Jupiter and Saturn that would allow a fly by so that scientists could learn more about them. During the Voyager journeys the have revealed previously unknown details about  planets and their moves. We found out about Jupiter’s complex weather system and the complexity of Saturn’s rings. More related content here.

    voyager_modern_poster_27x39

    Skeletor

    Moneysupermarket nail it with this advert, I wonder if its any coincidence that Dirty Dancing has just arrived on Amazon Prime this month?

    MoneySuperMarket – Dirty Dancing from Blink on Vimeo.

    Acid Test

    Who knew. Red Hot Chilli Pepper makes acid tracks, some of it is pretty darned good. Back in the late 1990s, you had a surprising group of bands who dipped their toe in the water, either through their choice of producer or pseudonyms like Acid Test. Tears for Fears had Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams that was released as a white label without their name on it with a remix by Fluke. The Cult experimented with techno remixes of She Sells Sanctuary.

    Banjo covers

    Slipknot covered on banjos with a great video. The acoustic instrument works surprisingly well for Slipknot and the down-home gothic vibe is very in keeping with them.

    Don Dayglow

    I’d been listening to the sounds of Don Dayglow aka Adam Hignell who specialises in post-disco remixes similar to Luxury but with a little more funk in the mix. Hignell has only released his recordings on digital formats so far. When he isn’t doing Don Dayglow project he works as a sound engineer. More on Don Dayglow at Discogs

    SaveSave

  • KFC China virgin mojito + more

    KFC China virgin mojito

    KFC China launched a virgin mojito drink with a 1960s feel to the ad. Its a bit of an odd product for KFC, even in China particularly with its positioning against drinking. Quite how the product development process and consumer insight worked to produce it is beyond me. Beautifully produced advert

    Great documentary on Sterns Music (of Sterns Edits fame). The vastness of Sterns Music library is astounding. Sterns Edits did to African and Brazilian music what Razor N Tape have done to disco music more recently.

    High Snobriety have done their first documentary. It looks like the kind of thing I would expect from Vice. Given High Snobriety’s streetwear literate audience I was surprised at how ‘basic’ it approaches the topic.

    Korea’s historic fashion industry, its association with replicas since the days of Daper Dan and the retail infrastructure stifled by chaebols are issues. But streetwear couldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the Korean textile industry – Daper Dan connection.

    The market in Korea reminded me very much of the ‘snide’ garments that were popular in the UK scene through the 1980s and 1990s.

    On a secondary note the size of the YouTube video embed was restricted to 560 pixels wide. Not sure why that was. I look forward to seeing more material by High Snobriety on Korea’s fashion industry moving forwards, particularly if local brands can get on the K-pop train.

    William Gibson: ‘I Never Expected to Be Living in an American Retro-Future’ – Motherboard – William Gibson critiquing Trump administration era America. This probably also explains why Gibson’s writing has become nearer term and has an apocalyptic focus in the Jackpot Trilogy

    Cities and Memory: global collaborative sound project – Cities & Memory | Field Recordings, Sound Map, Sound Art really nice project correlating field recordings by location. It would also be useful for open source intelligence outfits like Bellingcat.

  • Logic gates + more things

    Logic Gates Under (Air) Pressure | Hackaday – I remember seeing fluidic logic on a packaging production line for motor oil back when I was a teenager. By this time the line was reasonably old, micro-processor controls were becoming the norm, and it broke down on a regular basis. The Palmers who owned the factory knew my Dad, which is how I got to see it. They used to pack small volume SKUs for Shell at their own factory; when the oil company pulled the contract their business closed. Logic gates whether they are electronic or pneumatic are the basic aspects of computing. In this case the pneumatic logic gates would be used for automation. Though pneumatic logic gates have been increasingly replaced by simple embedded electronics to complex industrial computers

    Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) Firmware Decrypted | Hackaday – “Imagine the Secure Enclave as a vault. Apple hung a big, dark curtain over it to prevent anyone from even seeing the vault. Now, that curtain has been opened and people can see the vault. The vault, however, is still locked as securely as ever.” However we don’t know who else has got this far already, and we certainly don’t know if other actors have managed to find vulnerabilities in the code. More security related content here.

    China Tech Workers Wanted: Women Need Not Apply – WSJ – Parents often tell their daughters they won’t be good at math or physics or coding. And just like in the U.S., some Chinese companies are reluctant to hire or promote women because of concerns about pregnancy and child rearing, employee advocates say. About 20% of engineers in China’s internet and telecommunications industries are women, according to Boss Zhipin, a Beijing-based online recruiting company. And there’s a pay gap as well. Women were paid 30% less than men in China’s internet industry last year, ranking among the most discriminatory lines of work with medicine, media and entertainment, according to Boss Zhipin, which surveyed more than 365,000 pay samples nationwide – (paywall)

    Interim Report Q2 2017 (OMX:MAERSKA) – In the last week of the quarter we were hit by a cyber-attack, which mainly impacted Maersk Line, APM Terminals and Damco. Business volumes were negatively affected for a couple of weeks in July and as a consequence, our Q3 results will be impacted. We expect that the cyber-attack will impact results negatively by USD 200-300m.” – shipping titan Maersk talks about how malware has affected its business

    The First True Multi-User Holographic Table Has Been Built – ExtremeTech – cool as fuck

    Producers, Songwriters on How Pop Songs Got So Slow – Rolling Stone – Paul Oakenfold et al who tried unsuccessfully to slow acid house down to 98bpm was just 3 decades too early