Energy has come to define our history over the past few hundred years. The industrial revolution was defined as much by the use of coal and steam power as it was by breakthroughs in technologies.
The industrial age was defined by the spread of electricity, electro-magnetic waves and the use of oil and gas in the energy mix.
Alkaline, dry acid batteries and rechargeable batteries liberated technology. Making it firstly luggable and then truly portable.
Without innovative approach in battery technology you wouldn’t have the ubiquitous smartphone. Nor would you have much demand for three wi-fi in coffee shops, or multi-screening.
Digital photography would still be more of a niche interest and there would be no Instagram or Tinder.
On the other hand you would be less likely to responding to emotional content on Twitter straight away, unless you were glued to your desktop computer or connected TV.
The aspiration for a low carbon economy is another aspect that affects energy and not just oil and gas. 99 percent of materials that we use, even for batteries and capturing renewable energy are not sustainable. Turbine blades are made from composite that eventually end up in a landfill site. Battery technologies rely on rare earth metals, lithium and nickel. They feature a polymer liner in lithium ion battery.
Energy is at the centre of the progress of innovation, design, climate change, consumer behaviour and even culture. Far more so, than people actually realise.
We tend to not pay attention to energy unless there is a problem. A power cut, a price jump at the petrol pump are the times when we notice.
Plenty have already covered the OceanGate Titan implosion in more detail. I will not repeat that work but wanted to bring to wider attention how marketers have jumped on the bandwagon. The following advert appeared in the print edition of the Financial Times, placed by Omega watches promoting their Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep series of watches.
‘Seamaster – Precision at every level’ next to a scale going beyond 6,000 metres.
Omega
I personally thought that the advert was too soon after the implosion for good taste. Although the watch community has seen a renewed interest in deep diving capable watches after the OceanGate Titan incident.
Young Japanese are craving fast fashion. What happened? | Vogue Business – it’s the economy stupid, luxury is less accessible. Secondly, much of the youth looks like Gyaru peaked in the early 2000s due to financial issues and things haven’t improved since. Shibuya subcultures were as dependent on the ability to spend as on youth creativity.
I was sparked to lead this post based on footage that I watched about a priest in South India with regards a robotic elephant. Robots in religion have taken off in both Shinto and Hindu ceremonies.
Japan
Academics have widely talked about how the Shinto-based belief system have aided Japanese societal acceptance of robots, in comparison to western society. Secondly, Japanese authors have been exploring what it means to be human and what kind of dilemmas and opportunities do robots and AI bring in a future society. Robots in religion are a natural extension of robots in society.
Buddhism leads the way
What’s less commented on is that Japan’s buddhist temples have been leading robots in religion. The reality is that many Japanese see Shinto and Buddhism as complementary in nature and get involved in both beliefs.
Japan has some unique religious challenges that are interlinked. Temples are struggling as less people are active in their religious practice, the factors for this decline is multi-factorial in nature.
A second challenge that as the population shrinks roles need to be automated. What started in factories is now impacting the food and beverage sector (vending machines and restaurant robo-serving staff), so it was only a matter of time that robots in religion would supplement the clergy.
India
In India robots in religion is about kindness and de-risking religious ceremonies. In South India elephants take part in religious ceremonies. However the conditions that elephants are kept in can be cruel in nature and even result in death. Secondly, elephants can unintentionally kill or injure people involved in a religious celebration. This report on NHK World shows how robots in religion have been adapted to Hindu needs.
Finally, the elephant robot is used in celebrations over a large geographic area and is easily transported around. Robots in religion are likely to make even more sense as India urbanises even further, as the benefits are amplified in the denser environment.
How confucianism, communism (in particular Stalin’s take on Leninism) and an accident of history has led to the nationalistic, fragile, insecure Chinese state with imperial ambitions we know today.
China’s ‘trinket town’ at heart of push for renminbi trade | Financial Times – Yiwu was one of the first cities in China to allow individual merchants to settle larger cross-border deals in renminbi. Most cities have an annual cap of $50,000. Given Yiwu’s reputation for cheap goods and flexible terms, helped by the fact that wholesalers do not pay either corporate tax or market rent, exporters have sufficient bargaining power to request settlement in renminbi. “When you have only one place to go to purchase something, the seller sets the terms on how transactions are settled,” said James Wu, a Yiwu-based furniture exporter who began demanding renminbi payments from Middle Eastern clients last year – the last quote is a great example of
Interesting video from NHK World on how temples are adapting to a lack of new attendees and priests. I am not sure whether this is down to demographic change or the secularisation of society
A Pokémon-Card Crime Spree Jolts Japan – WSJ – Japan has been staggered by a Pokémon crime spree. Stores are now paying for banklike security to ward off villains who go to extraordinary lengths, even rappelling down the side of buildings, to plunder Pokémon. Hosaka was working in senior care when he had the idea of opening a cozy card shop in the suburb of Machida where customers could mingle at tables. Instead, he says, the little cards, “have become like Rolex watches, gold, silver, platinum or used cars.” – It makes sense when you think of the cards being ‘real life NFTs’
Criminal Rolex Gangs and Traveling with Watches, Part I – WOE – crime affecting luxury consumption. Interesting that London is a crime centre is prominently name checked alongside Johannesburg, South Africa. This will impact luxury retailers, luxury travel and hospitality and auction houses
Luxury
Bay Area Lawsuit Alleges Man Spent $220,000 To Get A Watch He Never Got – there’s also the added complexity of Shreve recently losing its status as a Patek AD. The lawsuit brings some ten causes of action against Shreve, including breach of contract, intentional and negligent misrepresentation, fraudulent concealment, false promise, and unfair business practices, pursuant to California’s Unfair Competition Law – this was only a matter of time. Its the same in the UK
Ad agencies and clients clash: tension over transparency in fees, services | Ad Age – a talent shortage has left agencies without enough senior executives to service accounts. Combined, such factors contribute to what marketers see as an increasing lack of transparency. One executive who leads procurement across marketing and content for a major consumer goods company said the discounts and rebates that media agencies, in particular, get from a media buy have always been “murky,” but one area agencies have always been transparent in is breaking down their fees. The brand executive said auditors, working on behalf of the marketers, have previously been able to get agencies to disclose their margins, overheads and salaries without protest—it’s standard practice and allows clients to know they are being charged a fair price. But that’s starting to change, they said, having run into issues with getting shops to break down their fees in the recent agency review their company underwent
Media
This Year Next Year: 2023 Global Mid-Year Forecast – GroupM – calls the end of radio’s global growth story. Even taking into account streaming, WPP says that, globally, ad-supported audio has peaked. It will grow just 0.3% this year, says GroupM then “remain roughly flat over the next five years”. It’s about to join newspapers, magazines and broadcast television in a downward trajectory. GroupM also tackles the impact of AI on the industry. It reckons that within five years, the portion of “AI-enabled” advertising revenue globally will be worth $800bn. What is impossible to quantify is whether any of that is new money. Most likely, none of it. What is also impossible to quantify is just how dramatic the AI-driven reductions in cost of production will be. That sounds a relatively benign question until one realises that all those reduced costs are human jobs. GroupM identifies five key themes: Regulation (particularly around data privacy); connected TV (and an annualised 10%+ growth in the segment)’; AI “is likely to inform, or touch in some way, at least half of all advertising revenue by the end of 2023”; retail media to overtake TV by 2028; and “new business growth” (which sounds like the sort of thing an agency person would put in their predictions). Most importantly though, the GroupM outlook points to a more more significant factor. We’re at the end of a cycle that was defined by shifts between advertising channels, and then the disruption of Covid. “We are at an inflection point where the secular drivers of advertising growth above and beyond GDP growth are maturing, the pandemic upheaval is receding and the dynamic rise of digital advertising has slowed. This is the basis of our underlying forecast of mid-single-digit advertising growth over the next five years. However, the pervasive impact of AI on the world of advertising could change that.”
AI at Work: What People Are Saying | BCG – leaders love it, workers don’t. Businesses have only addressed the needs of leaders, which probably dialled up the anxiety with a sense that AI is something that happens to you and your career rather like a bad car accident
Beeper — All your chats in one app. Yes, really. – clients like Adium became less useful as Google and other services went away from common protocols and the IM giants AOL, MSN and Yahoo! disappeared. Beeper are trying to address this
The Threat of Decivilisation | Quillette – President Macron when having a Chatham House type discussion with sociology experts used the phrase processus de décivilisation – as a descriptor for the widespread civil and political unrest that has rocked France.
Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron
On the face of it, decivilisation is an appropriate term if Macron believed that there was something rotten at the centre of French society. But the phrase decivilisation is problematic and Macron has been capitalised by French on the political left.
Renaud Camus
The crux of the left’s criticism is a work by the author Renaud Camus. Camus became famous writing a book called Tricks about a series of up to 45 stories (depending which edition you read) about one-night stands he had travelling around the world as a gay man in the late 1970s. Decades later Camus became more famous for his contributions to ideas of the far right, notably the great replacement concept in reaction to increased immigration in France from former French colonies. While these works were published in French they were summarised for English readers in his book You Will Not Replace Us!
In his works he describes the gradual takeover of France as decivilisation.
The left
The left drew a line between Camus work and Macron’s phrase and assumed that it was a way to build a bridge to the resurgent far right in France.
The reality is more complex. The degree of change in French society has driven backlashes in French society, in a similar way that Brexit and small boat immigration did in the UK. The problem for the left is that these reactionaries would have been natural constituents of the left. The left, like in many countries, instead has pivoted to degree educated urban dwellers, abandoning the workers to the far right.
Is French society really breaking down?
It’s hard to tell whether ‘decivilisation’ is really happening. Civil disturbances tend to happen during times of economic unrest and in the past has been a reset. There is a body of opinion who believe that social media has its thumb on the scales, driving things harder and faster without a countervailing force to help balance things out over time, like happened in previous decades.
Japan Rail Companies Limit Train Passes Due to Chip Shortage – these stored value cards also allow consumers to buy things in combinis as well as travel. They are similar to Hong Kong’s Octopus cards. What’s happening to the chips through? Japanese YouTubers have published advisory videos around the debacle for tourists to Japan. It seems to be a drive towards registration as much as anything else
Cigars are still a thing. This looks like a feature length video produced in conjunction between the YouTuber and a cigar manufacturer.
Marketing
Multi-factored reasons in nature why campaigns seem to be working less well. We know that as campaigns have become more digital, campaigns have been less effective and marketers being less confident in their campaigns. Interesting the way brand building on digital is danced around. The channels often dont work and measures are BS only a technologist would love.
I spent part of the bank holiday weekend reading and finally managed to tuck into designer Bruce Mau’s signature book MC24. For those that haven’t heard of him Bruce Mau is a Canadian designer and academic. He founded a brand design agency: Bruce Mau Design which is now part of marketing combine Stagwell. His Massive Change Network (MCN) is in the transformation business similar to Stewart Brand’s Global Business Network (acquired by the Monitor Group now called Monitor Deloitte) and The Long Now Foundation. The philosophy of Bruce Mau and feels like it had been lifted from an amalgam of TED Talks. Bruce Mau believes in a sustainable future with techno-optimist bent to his views.
Bruce Mau, like Robert Greene has principles that seem to contradict each other. Publisher Phaidon have wrapped the hard back cover of the book in an iridescent satin fabric that a photograph doesn’t do justice to. Regardless of whether you think the book is a self-help bible, your creative muse, an objet d’art or something nice to thumb through on a Sunday afternoon Bruce Mau and his book MC24 are ideal.
China
Where China is beating the world – by Noah Smith – interesting article, although it lacks some nuance about Chinese development, consider it a starting point that you can explore in more depth from, rather than the full story
I have alluded to the impact of China’s new espionage law. VisualPolitik has pulled together a good video on how it’s being interpreted by multinationals, policy wonks and politicians. It will have precisely the opposite impact that China would like it to have on its economy.
Consumer behaviour
How many Britons agree with Andrew Tate’s views on women? | YouGov – so much in this. You also need to think about bias in questions, that its done online and the ‘you can think it, but you shouldn’t say it’ aspect of how Tate supporters might think about the questions
Interesting debate on how the ‘evangelical bloc’ has evolved over time from being primarily theological to being primarily political in nature.
How doctors buy their way out of trouble | Reuters – When federal enforcers alleged in 2015 that New York surgeon Feng Qin had performed scores of medically unnecessary cardiac procedures on elderly patients, they decided not to pursue a time-consuming criminal case. Instead, prosecutors chose an easier, swifter legal strategy: a civil suit. Qin agreed to pay $150,000 in a negotiated settlement and walked free to perform more cardiac surgeries at his new solo practice in lower Manhattan. Qin faced no judge or jury. He did not admit to wrongdoing. He maintained his license to practice. What’s more, neither Qin nor government officials were required to notify patients who purportedly were subjected to vascular surgical procedures they didn’t need. Those included fistulagrams to spot issues like narrowed blood vessels or clots, and angioplasties to open clogged coronary arteries. Within months of the settlement, a registered nurse working for Qin at his Manhattan practice alerted authorities that something seemed amiss. The nurse, who ultimately turned whistleblower, alleged to federal prosecutors that the surgeon was performing unnecessary procedures on patients, mostly elderly Asian and Black immigrants whose care was covered by the public programs Medicare or Medicaid. Prosecutors indicted Qin in 2018 on a felony count of fraud, which carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. But in 2021, in a deal brokered behind closed doors, prosecutors dropped that charge in favor of yet another civil settlement, court records detailing that agreement show. Once again, Qin kept his New York license to practice with no restrictions; a restricted license is one of the few ways the public can learn that a doctor has been disciplined for bad behavior. Qin agreed to pay a total of $800,000 in annual installments ending in December 2025, deposited with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. As an added penalty, he was banned from billing public health programs until February 2025
Their inability to live up to the past German reputation for quality
Chinese manufacturers at the low-end
German automobile makers struggles with software
Japanese and Korean car manufacturers challenging the luxury end of the market. I would rather have a Lexus LX than a G-Wagen. At the moment Lexus have had to shut down the list on the LX they are that oversold
Hong Kong
chanhiu design – really nice graphic design. I love their project reflecting on Hong Kong-made knock-off toys familiar to Hong Kong children as well as European children – where these toys turned up in markets during the 1960s through to the early 1980s. More here: Chan Hiu explores Hong Kong’s playful past – The China Project
Cayman Islands fights attempts by Singapore and Hong Kong to lure Asia’s wealthy | Financial Times – the sharp uptake of Singapore vehicles versus Hong Kong vehicles is very interesting – an order of 10x magnitude greater. Interesting implications for Hong Kong’s wealth management business and China’s efforts to prevent capital flight from Greater China. It also implies that Hong Kong hasn’t been as successful at attracting foreign funds for investment in China. So the Hong Kong pivot towards the Middle East investor makes sense.
Apple expanding supplier base in China, Southeast Asia, and India – the number of manufacturing facilities/locations of Apple’s top 200 suppliers grew in 2022 in China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and India. However, manufacturing facilities/locations in the US and South Korea have dropped from 72 to 62 and 42 to 36, respectively. The latest list shows that Apple’s supplier base in South and Southeast Asia is growing amid Apple’s diversification move. Meanwhile, Apple keeps expanding its reliance on China, a sign that Apple is likely to prepare for a decoupled global manufacturing ecosystem. Due to Apple’s change of methodology, disclosing only “locations” instead of “facilities,” the numbers of certain geographies, including Taiwan, cannot be compared historically. For example, Apple said that TSMC had five “facilities” globally in 2021 but had three manufacturing “locations” globally in 2022. The methodology change led to fewer listed manufacturing locations of Apple suppliers in Taiwan, from 72 to 41
Starmer’s Britain – Portland – Kier Starmer is considered to be the most likely prime minister after Rishi Sunak. In some respects this feels like 1996, all over again. The then Conservative government back then was buffeted by scandals such as the Arms to Iraq affair report, the BSE crisis and the slow drip of sleaze.
Depending when in 2024 the general election happens, we will have had 14 years of Conservative rule and the government has been dogged by scandal.
Rewind to 1996
Unlike Kier Starmer era Labour, back in 1996, Labour looked like a political party chock full of ideas. Will Hutton’s The State We’re In focused minds on what a future Labour government would look like and long term thinking. Tony Blair and the policy wonks around him seeded the media and academia around them with their new ideas. Blair even used a computer system to analyse Conservative parliamentary statements and gain the upper hand in prime minister’s question time.
Back to the present
Kier Starmer and the modern day Labour Party isn’t the Labour of 1996. There isn’t the buzz of modernity about them. There is no vision thing at the moment. They are defined by not being the tories. Public Affairs specialists Portland have tried their hand at kremlinology to paint a picture of what a Kier Starmer-led government is likely to look like, should it get into power.
A number of people who contributed were veterans of the Blair – Brown administration. They recognise that Kier Starmer and colleagues are likely to inherit a country with problems across the economy, public services and infrastructure. The Kier Starmer administration is unlikely to share the globalist viewpoint of Tony Blair, partly due to decoupling and partly due to Brexit.
All of which makes the Kier Starmer five missions for a Better Britain look like a pipe dream without several back-to-back terms in government.
Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 – with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off.
Make Britain a clean energy superpower – to create jobs, cut bills and boost energy security with zero carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net zero.
Build an NHS fit for the future – that is there when people need it; with fewer lives lost to the biggest killers; in a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer.
Make Britain’s streets safe – by halving serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest levels, within a decade.
Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage – for every child, by reforming the childcare and education systems, raising standards everywhere, and preparing young people for work and life.
Kier Starmer needs his own version of The State We’re In as just under 70 percent of the British public surveyed are neutral to being in disagreement about whether they understand the current Labour vision for Britain.
Can Chinese Payment Apps Gain Traction Globally? | ChinaFile – Chinese fintech companies and their super-apps will still revolutionize global finance. In this excerpt from his book The Cashless Revolution: China’s Reinvention of Money and the End of America’s Domination of Finance and Technology, Chorzempa explains why Chinese fintech has thus far struggled to gain a foothold in the international market, but will likely inspire other companies to replicate the fintech super-app model in their home countries
People too tired to lead healthier lifestyles, UK survey finds | Health | The Guardian – A survey has found that tiredness is why 35% of people don’t make the changes to their diet and physical activity levels that would help them close the gap between good intentions and concrete action. The results, from a YouGov poll of 2,086 UK adults for the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), illustrate the barriers many people face in their desire to adopt and stick to healthy habits. When asked what was stopping them from eating more healthily and exercising more often, 29% of men and 40% of women cited “feeling too tired”
The Lost Planet of Hong Kong | Newsroom – This just in from Hong Kong. Its chief executive has corrected the language of a journalist for asking a question at a press conference about the pro-democracy protests of 2019: “First of all, it is not [called] the 2019 protests. It is the black violence.” And: a 23-year-old has been charged under the Beijing-imposed national security laws for allegedly “intimidating the public in order to pursue political agenda”. He was attempting to stage a protest, otherwise known as a black violence. Also: a satirical cartoonist has been sacked after a government official complained about a drawing that mocked local elections, and his books were removed from libraries. When approached by the last signs of independent journalistic life in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Free Press, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department commented, “Books that are suspected to potentially violate national security law will be immediately removed for review.”
Young women in South Korea are live-streaming their suicide attempts | The Economist – the South Korean government announced its fifth “Master Plan for Prevention of Suicide”. Mental-health check-ups will now be available every two years, rather than every decade. Beyond that, the plan proposes different approaches for the young and old respectively. (Over-70s have the highest suicide rates in Korea.) For women in their 20s and 30s who live alone, South Korea will make available more counselling and therapy
The Rise of Generative AI Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT — Information is Beautiful and How Kevin Kelly is using AI in his creative process | Dropbox Blog and Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey? | The New Yorker – as A.I. becomes more powerful and flexible, is there any way to keep it from being another version of McKinsey? The question is worth considering across different meanings of the term “A.I.” If you think of A.I. as a broad set of technologies being marketed to companies to help them cut their costs, the question becomes: how do we keep those technologies from working as “capital’s willing executioners”? Alternatively, if you imagine A.I. as a semi-autonomous software program that solves problems that humans ask it to solve, the question is then: how do we prevent that software from assisting corporations in ways that make people’s lives worse? Suppose you’ve built a semi-autonomous A.I. that’s entirely obedient to humans—one that repeatedly checks to make sure it hasn’t misinterpreted the instructions it has received. This is the dream of many A.I. researchers. Yet such software could easily still cause as much harm as McKinsey has
What actually represents good taste and good style was discussed in this old show from the 1970s, which makes an interesting perspective to reflect on.
