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.

  • Christina Xu on Chinese UX

    About Christina Xu

    I’ve been a big fan of work by Christina Xu for a while now and this presentation is a great example of her research. She has worked as an ethnographer for a range of clients including Daimler Benz, VF Corporation (the people who who own Timberland, North Face and Supreme) and Spotify. This presentation on Chinese UX in action is well worth bookmarking to watch it if you don’t have time now. Save it and watch it during your lunch break.

    Key takeouts

    • Etiquette about the order of proffering versus scanning a QRcode to exchange (WeChat) contact information
    • Digitisation of red envelopes drove take up in mobile payments
    • Great examples of online to offline (O2O) interaction in processes and services that are continually expanding.  
    • Driven by ubiquity of mobile phones 95.5 phones per 100 people with a number of people using two phones
    • Users across ages and demographics
    • Mobile adoption is coming on top of a rapid industrialisation. People are getting used to a whole much of stuff at once. Interesting points about the lack of social norms or boundaries on the usage of online / mobile service in the real world. I’ve seen people live their online life in the cinema there are NO boundaries as Christina says.
    • Mobile payments came up the same time as credit card payments
    • Population density on the eastern seaboard of China. Density has helped delivery services and high speed public transport
    • DidiChuxing allows for tailored surge benefits for drivers rather than search-and-forget version on Uber
    • WeChat commerce doesn’t facilitate international shipping
    • Westerners build messenger experiences for scale with automation, Chinese look for bespoke customisable ‘squishy’ experiences down to western interpretation of convenience. Chinese convenience is an absence of ‘nuisance experiences’ – real world interactions help prevent friction. Or is it culturally sanctioned ‘nuisance experiences’ that deals with differing experiences

    More related content here.

  • Mick Jagger + more things

    It’s quite rare for someone who has had as as long a career as Mick Jagger to still do relevant material. His double A side single featuring England’s Lost is an exceptionally political track featuring Skepta. The last track from similar artist would likely be Pink Floyd’s The Wall. This Mick Jagger song wouldn’t sound out of step with The Stone Roses or The Charlatans and the video with Luke Evans performance is amazing.

    Omega seem to have spent most of the summer dwelling on the NASA Apollo programme heritage of the Omega Speedmaster with launches happening around the world including PR people in faux spacesuits for photo shoots and socialite cocktail parties.  The excuse is the 60th anniversary of the Omega Speedmaster’s launch in 1957. They’ve supported it with a scripted film using brand spokesperson George Clooney talking with Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin as ever is awesome.

    60 years of production makes the Speedmaster a design classic. At the time of the Speedmaster’s launch Omega would have been a more bankable name than Rolex. That seems surprising now given Omega’s move more towards the fashion end of the market. There is a great interview at The Peak Magazine; with Peter Chow the recently retired veteran salesman at The Hour Glass in Singapore. The Hour Glass is a famous watch retailer that has attracted the world’s richest customers.

    “You could buy a manual mechanical watch with a fine Swiss movement for S$20 plus,” Mr Chong says. The well-known brands then were Titoni, Titus, Movado and Cyma. “Omega was the best, not Rolex.” Mr Chong quit his job in 1959 and with S$6000 from savings and loans, opened a shop in Bukit Panjang. But within three years, poor sales drove him out of business.

    Omega was the best was something I heard from my parents, though I had partly put this down to both of them having had Omegas – which they bought for each other when they got married. This piece of wisdom had been passed down to my Mum from my Grandad who owned neither brand. In fact I don’t think he owned any kind of watch at all.

    Northampton’s most famous son, author Alan Moore Interviewed by Greg Wilson and Kermit – real name Paul Leveridge from the Ruthless Rap Assassins and Black Grape. Interesting dissection of modern counterculture and the general sense of ennui.

    I am addicted to videos about mesmerising manufacturing processes and vinyl records. This video combines both of them. The hipster movement has done more than drive up the cost of avocados and gentrification. We’ve seen vinyl manufacturing plants revived and thrive. Over time the machinery has needed to be modernised, this has meant modern manufacturing techniques (like SCADA controllers) have been melted to post-war industrial technology. Anyway enough of my blathering check it out.

    My week was soundtracked by this epic mix of Herbie Hancock tracks.

  • Rosemary Smith + more things

    Rosemary Smith is a 79 year old Dublin woman who owned her own driving school. But from the 1960s through the 1970s Rosemary was one of the world’s foremost rally drivers. With the right support, Smith could have done so much more. Part of her problem is that motorsport is still a very privileged sport. Renault decided to put Rosemary Smith behind the wheel of a single seater racing car. Rallying and racing are different disciplines, but Smith still had some of the magic as you could see in this video. More Ireland related content here.

    Westbam featured in a short film talking about how he started off and the intersection of music and culture in Berlin during 1989. It is hard to  comprehend how West Berlin with its cheap accommodation at the time became a hot bed of art and culture in Germany during the 1980s. The constant cold war threat gave art a space to flourish

    American Petroleum Institute has put together a video reminding the public of all (ok just a small amount of) the stuff that oil actually goes into. When Teslas rule the roads, we’ll still need oil. If you’ve painted a room in your house, or built an Ikea Billy bookcase; you’re been handing a product made with oil. Pharmaceuticals are based on oil, so are many medical devices.

    The sound track of my week has been various mixes from DJ Nature

    Campfield Futon – Snow Peak – I love the design and quality of Japanese outdoor brand Snow Peak. The Campfield Futon is an amazingly flexible piece of furniture that would be great outdoors or in an apartment. There is a lightness to Snow Peak design that is fascinating. It is more similar to the design approach of Norman Foster than the technical outdoor approach of Arc’teryx and The North Face.

  • Blade Runner 2049 & other things that made my day this week

    A new Blade Runner 2049 trailer, the suspense is killing me regarding how Blade Runner 2049 will stake up against Ridley Scott’s original film. Blade Runner was the last truly great analogue film and yet it is still difficult for digital to surpass the originals visual impact.

    McDonald’s seems to be going hard on supporting national service in different countries. Here is the Singapore treatment for the ‘Nasi Lemak’ burger. There is also a coconut pie (a bit like the fried apple pie), Cendol McFlurry (presumably containing green rice flour jelly and coconut ice cream) and a Bandung McFizz (rose syrup flavouring). It would be hard to get more Singaporean.

    In Korea, they are giving free meals to conscripts whose parents can’t visit them and providing a special menu in the Seoul Station branch so that parents travelling to see their sons in the early hours of the morning by train could have something more substantial than the breakfast menu.

    In both cases, it’s a canny move to catch families at a crucial life stage.

    Great radio adaption of Lem Deighton’s Ipcress Files – slightly different to the Michael Caine film version you may have seen which deviates from the book (I am guessing due to budget considerations)

    Why do graffiti writers get sent to prison for so long? | Dazed – On the same day that known graffiti writer Vamp was sentenced to 3 years for vandalism, a BBC presenter, Stuart Hall, was given 15 months for the sexual assault of 13 young girls over 20 years, between the ages of 9 and 17 – hard questions indeed.

    Chinese digger company LOVOL had mandarin pop act Chopstick Brothers, dance troop and a wheeled loader dance along to their hit ‘My little Apple’ at a trade show (i’m guessing in China). It takes the showmanship that JCB has employed and takes it to a higher level.

  • Vivienne Wei + more things

    Vivienne Wei

    WeChat consumer perspective  by Chinese video blogger Vivienne Wei. Vivienne Wei put together this great video about how WeChat is the Swiss Army knife of apps in China. It is a great consumer perspective on how WeChat works.

    Carl Jr resets

    Carl Jr is a casual eating restaurant chain in the US. It is owned by the same people who won Hardee’s. Carl Jr is known for producing frat boy / brogrammer-friendly adverts like these

    Wiser heads seem to have prevailed in the marketing department, so they came up with this ad to press reset using humour rather than the indignation of political correctness

    Vice, New Balance and footwork sub-culture

    Vice and New Balance have put together a documentary on the Japanese adoption of the footwork sub-culture. Japan has a history of adopting a subculture (like dancehall) and elevating it. Chicago’s footwork skills look like they are getting the same treatment

    Godzilla

    The King of Monster Island Godzilla is back in an anime film. The plot looks like Avatar – humans coming to wipe out planet for commercial / political benefits. Of course all of that plan will go to shit when they find out the inhabitants aren’t lanky blue people but the original kaiju bad boy and friends.

    Baby Driver

    I got to see Baby Driver. It is a curious mashup of a couple of film genres

    • 1980s style films popularised by John Hughes.
    • 1990s to the present day gritty heist films

    I was also reminded of the Tony Scott film True Romance

    The iPod Classic makes a come back in the film in a spectacular way, expect a minor cultural backlash against ‘radio’ as music service currently popular. Personally curated, shareable music and physical artefacts come to the fore. (Though I still can’t see young men proudly carrying rhinestone encrusted pink iPod Classics just yet). More related content here.