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.

  • Predict ISIS attacks + more news

    How Traffic to This YouTube Video Could Predict ISIS Attacks – Defense One interesting, but is it actionable intelligence? This reminds me a lot of the term ‘chatter’ as used in the series ’24’. Or prediction markets, which may be better for financiers investing in related areas rather than providing something that the military and law enforcement can use effectively. For instance it would affect your stance on Insurance stocks and oil futures if you were able to predict ISIS attacks. More security related posts here.

    You can now hang out with Totoro and explore Studio Ghibli worlds in virtual reality | Rocket News 24 – indicates an interesting interplay between linear media and VR. Linear media storytelling sets the scene; VR allows you to explore it. I feel that we don’t ‘get’ storytelling in VR yet, having worked on a project for New Balance. This work by Studio Ghibli offers a complementary option that media companies could get onboard with

    Lenovo and Apple are fastest growing among India’s top 10 smart phone vendors | TelecomTV Insights – we’ll see how long this lasts, India like China is focused on domestic smartphone makers. I could see Apple appealing to elites like their peers globally, but the great bulk of handsets is going to come in at the bottom.

    brandchannel: The Language Of Now: Pepsi Kicks Off Global PepsiMoji Campaign – please millennials engage with our brand! To be fair PepsiCo have tried innovations for a good while. They were one of the first brands to use QRCodes for western consumers. Western consumer usage is only now starting to catch up with it a decade or more later.

    [Podcast] Tencent And QQ With Eva Xiao | Technode – great interview as a primer on Tencent. Tencent is one of the BAT of China. BAT stands for Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. The BAT are a set of companies with a similar position to what GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) have in the west.

  • Evolution of search

    Danny Sullivan did a talk a few years ago on the evolution of search, it’s worthwhile taking 9 minutes out as he plots it:

    Library/librarian – whilst web search has become ubiquitous there are still people graduating from library studies courses. The role of librarian still brings a lot to the table

    The electronic catalogue for library augmented the work of librarians and allowed library users to do at least some searches themselves

    LexisNexis database – proprietary business databases augmented the work of lawyers and financiers

    Yahoo! – created a curated guide to the nascent web. It started off as a list of links and then got categorised over time. It is surprising how long the Yahoo! directory lasted for into the age of search.

    WebCrawler – automated the process of finding websites and exploring their content which then opens up the door for modern search as we know it.

    Modern search engine progress can be seen as the rapid transition between pre-eminent engines in a relatively short time.  You also saw specialist tech companies like Inktomi sell web search hardware upon which media companies built their services. Yes, Google built the pre-eminent search engine, but it wouldn’t have been possible to keep going if others hadn’t come up with the crucial pieces of the online search advertising model. That’s why you see a transition from InfoSeek > AltaVista > Ask Jeeves > Google in the evolution of search. More posts on Google here.

  • WeChat payments + more things

    WeChat payments and wallet function brought to the international version of WeChat with its last version update, but I only noticed it this week. Does this mean that WeChat is now putting all the pieces in place before they get serious about an international market push? They are already trying to get foreign credit card merchants on board accepting WeChat payments to  provide extra convenience for Chinese consumers travelling abroad.
    WeChat wallet now for louwai
    TfL brought back its experiment for having people stand on both sides of the escalators. For those of us who live in London this is quite a change to our usual routine. We are used to standing on the right or moving along the escalator on the left. It caught me out the first time that I visited London.

    But TfL research found that you net out moving people more efficiently by encouraging everyone to stand. This allows a ‘denser’ escalator and better times clearing people off platforms.
    Stand on both sides - people living outside London won't realise what a paradigm shift this is
    A comparable shift would be say, New Yorkers suddenly becoming unfailingly polite and accommodating. I do quite like the ‘blue pill’ footprints that TfL use for signage on the escalators.

    Japanese producer TOYOMU reimagined Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo based on reviews and a list of the samples used. Japan hasn’t embraced streaming music unlike western lemmings music buyers. I think what he came up with is far better, see for yourself.

    Forthcoming Russian superhero film Guardians looks even more intense than the Night Watch and Day Watch films. Apparently the bear packs a chain cannon a la Jesse Venture in Predator.

    Luxxury releases Greg Wilson remixes of the their track on yellow vinyl, have a preview of it here. I am a huge fan of Luxxury and the lush nu-disco products that he manages to come up with.  More Luxxury sounds here.

  • renaissance chambara retrospective

    renaissance chambara retrospective – whilst looking at something else I decided to do an animated GIF showing what my blog had looked like in various incarnations over the years.

    I didn’t even remember a few of the designs in the finished GIF.

    Disappointingly flickr doesn’t host animated GIFs so had to use another service instead.
    renaissance chambara since 2004

    make animated gifs like this at MakeaGif

    Before there was the website this was a contributed strand to an online community founded by Tony Perkins who had previously founded Red Herring magazine. Red Herring was one of the go to media for the original dot.com boom and bust. The site ran on a CMS called Netmodular and provided a community experience somewhat like Facebook, but more specialised.

    The AlwaysOn Network went through a number of changes. So I decided to strike out on my own with my writing. This was partly precipitated by my playing with platforms to work out how they could be useful for clients.

    I eventually went with Blogspot because it was free and had a good community at the time. The platform was easy to use and customise (in a similar manner to the way MySpace or Bebo were later on). Eventually, I wanted something that felt a bit more professional and the website moved from Blogspot to WordPress on Yahoo! Small Business Hosting.

    I chose Yahoo! Small Business Hosting for my first WordPress blog because I got a staff discount.  This decision was disastrous. I lost a good deal of my content, which I tried to recover via the Google cache and was partially successful. I then moved on to Media Temple as my hosting provider.

    The design of the site changed a bit over time, partly because the themes that I used were no long being updated from a technology point of view. I was very influenced by Derek Powazek’s approach to blog design with a single column of content.

    It turns out that doesn’t completely break down when you go through the site using a mobile device. Anyway that’s the renaissance chambara retrospective. Let’s see what the next 13 years of blogging will bring…. More on the transitory nature of the web here.

  • Old mix I’d done

    Digging through my digital archive I came across an old mix CD I’d done.

    Two Technics SL-1200 decks, vinyl records, a no-brand mixer with bass and treble levels on each channel that I had picked up at Maplins (think Radio Shack in the US) and a HHB CD-R 800 recorder to take it down in one take.  (For hi-fi heads, the CD-R 800 was made for HHB by Pioneer based on the respected Pioneer PDR-99. The differences were in the rack mount capability on the HHB in place of the wooden side pieces, HHB branding and some additional balanced connections on the back for recording in a studio.)

    It was sent out and given to friends as a CD in an A3 sleeve that folded down to CD size designed by Stephen Holmes at bloodybigspider.

    Track listing (as best I can remember) – if you recognise any of the other tracks let me know so I can plug the gaps

    1. Unfinished Sympathy (Nellee Hooper club mix) – Massive Attack. I am a great believer in starting with something people know. I prefer the Nellee Hooper mix over the more famous Paul Oakenfold mix of Unfinished Sympathy
    2. Reality (main vocal version) – DJ Spinna featuring Rich Medina
    3. Marscarter (BLHIII original) – Bernard Leon Howard III. A really nice track on the Tweekin label which I really liked. BLH didn’t release anything after this 
    4. Inspirations From A Small Black Church On The Eastside Of Detroit – Moodymann. I loved this track but wasn’t sure how to use it. In the end I just threw it in
    5. Unlabelled white label
    6. City People (Migs Dubpusher Rub) – Miguel Migs
    7. Jazz 2 B U (Johnny Fiasco’s after midnight mix) – Chris Simmonds
    8. Saxomus Bill – Jay Tripwire (you can find this on Beatport as Saxamus Brown – presumably because the original namechecks Bill Clinton)
    9. Hypnose (Tony Hewitt remix) – Phil Weeks
    10. Unknown white label
    11. Unknown white label
    12. My Dusty 303 – Dano – it manages to do acid house in a way that allows room for all the instruments to ‘breath’
    13. I go back (main mix) – Harry Romero featuring Robert Owens. Both are great in their own right but together this becomes phenomenal
    14. The Love Scene (Henry Street remix) – Joe – this is a remix of an R&B track that I hadn’t heard of. I like the way its built into a dreamy track, ideal for finishing this mix on.

    More culture related topics here.