Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Heirloom Design

    Saul Griffith in a presentation he gave as part of the Long Now Foundation talked about the environmental impact of our stuff. The possessions that we own make up about a quarter of our lifetime carbon footprint. The way to reduce this is to have stuff that lasts longer, and that we want to keep longer. From this came the idea of heirloom design.

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    It isn’t new, Sotherby’s and Christies have made very good businesses selling old stuff, Patek Phillipe talks in advertisements as the watch-owner not actually being the owner but the custodian to pass the timepiece on to the next generation and Rolex has an excellent reputation for taking lifelong care of watches it sells.

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    So its a new framing of an old idea, it has been adopted by some eco-conscious businesses such as Howie’s Hand-Me-Down range: a set of bags and a jacket that are so well made and so durable that you want to keep them for their natural life. The examples that are given are a Montblanc pen and a Rolex watch; both of which require considerable upfront investment as well.

    Dieter Rams

    However design also has a case to play in this: look at the prices on eBay for a genuine Charles Eames recliner, or any of Braun’s consumer electronics offerings; classic cars fetch a far higher premium than their newer, more sophisticated cousins because of their styling.

    A second factor comes into heirloom design: design for servicing. Pretty much every part on my Technics turntables are replaceable, contrast this with the Denon DVD player I had which I had spent similar money on, yet the manufacturers couldn’t repair as they didn’t have the parts; or my Nokia E90 communicator which would have cost more to repair than two new Nokia E-series phones. Nokia’s Vertu phone range with their over-engineered cases and dealer-replaceable future proof guts may be the way forward.

    The personally most ironic thing for me is that my Dad has bemoaned the quality with which things have been made for the past 30 years and is a staunch believer in progress through industry may finally have something to agree with the environmentalists on.

    A number of brands practice heirloom design already but don’t shout about it:

    Suggestions from a quick poll I did on Twitter included

    • Bialetti with their user serviceable coffee pots
    • Caterpillar
    • Timberland
    • BMW – they certainly have the service network and they have built up a reputation for having a good build quality
    • Kenwood – the shortwave radio and communications manufacturers
    • TAG (presume they meant TAG Heuer) – not too sure that I would agree with this one, or some others suggested such as Apple, Panasonic and Sony; at least in their consumer goods especially with Panasonic doing away with the 1200 series of turntables
    • DEWALT
    • Dyson
    • Le Creuset
    • Mag Instrument Inc. (Maglite torches)
    • The North Face
    • Stanley Hand Tools
    • Aga
    • Herman Miller – particularly the Aeron chair
    • Cyrus Audio
    • Stokke prams, car seats and other stuff for early childhood
    • Tumi luggage

    Kudos in no particular order to Ruby Quince, Ana Mangahas, Becky McMichael, Stephen Holmes, Tom Wynne-Morgan, Robin Clark and Abigail Harrison for their heirloom design suggestions.

    Which brands do you think represent great heirloom design? Feel free to leave a comment. More design related posts here.

  • Who is your city? by Richard Florida

    Richard Florida is famous for his works on the rise of the creative classes. Who is your city? is an exploration into how clusters develop wrapped up under the guise of a self-help book. The book was recommended by a friend to mine who has been studying architecture and urban design. Florida looks at the characteristics of different cities (predominantly in North America) and explores factors that attract people at different life stages. You can see similar patterns in China around the rise of Shenzhen as a new city in the space of a few decades, or the way London draws talent from across the rest of the UK across various creative services.

    Flordia provides some of the starting points to the age-old regional planning question ‘How do we make another Silicon Valley in <insert region name here>?’ by listing some of the factors involved. There is an interplay between planning and organic effects. Korea is currently facing these challenges as it tried to have Sejong City meet its full potential

    Unlike many books he hasn’t fallen into the classic bad science trap that correlation and causality are the same thing. For instance: whilst no two neighbouring countries with a McDonald’s restaurant may have gone to war, that doesn’t make Ronald McDonald a prime candidate for the next United Nations secretary general.

    The book is interesting in the way that a Malcolm Gladwell book is interesting; I would prefer for Richard Florida to surface more of the modelling and research that went into Who is your city. The book is a serious academic piece of work that is devalued by reducing it to dinner party talking points. The section of questions at the back seem logical enough for someone thinking about relocating, there is no rocket science in them. At the end of it, I was left wondering how much utility did Who is your city? have for the average European or Asian reader? More book reviews here.

  • Google Wave

    The office that I work in has been abuzz about Google Wave and Becky has been gently badgering me to air my thoughts on it. I have been reluctant to give a definitive judgement on it, as I believe that like Twitter; it’s true utility may not become apparent until there are a critical amount of users on it.

    It used to be that device manufacturers created a gizmo but the software on the device was the killer application (for instance the Apple II and VisiCalc, the Macintosh and Aldus PageMaker or the iPhone and 60,000+ applications), with the web the utility and the killer application is the network of people on there.

    Google Wave001

    Google Wave does herald some changes in the web which may require consumers to alter their behaviour.

    But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, what is Google Wave anyway?

    Wave is a personal communications and collaboration tool. Say what? Google has looked trying to innovate by bringing together elements of different tools which are currently used by the members of the public to varying degrees: e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networks.

    When you use it, the bits that are immediately obvious are the instant messaging platform and the ability to share video clips.  The interface isn’t as easy to use as other Google products like GMail so its questionable whether it will eventually find widespread consumer adoption in its present form. It is interesting in that it shows Google’s thinking about web communications.

    The biggest aspect from my perspective is the move from the real-time web to what I term the ‘thought-time web’. When you are typing via instant messenger you don’t display your message until you press return on a conversation. With Wave people can see your message as you type, if you’re like me you work out the structure of what you’re going to say in the dialogue box, editing as you go with cut and past. So having this transparency on your message creation may not be that good an idea.

    With Wave you would have to use another editing programme and cut-and-paste into the Wave dialogue box in order to get the same functionality in message writing. this means that they can jump in at any point in the conversation and it also means message trails will become less meaningful as you can’t see the order in which responses happen against each other in the same way as IM.

    A secondary aspect to this is what I think of as transient data. Think about it in terms of these two hypothetical scenarios:

    • A vulnerable 12-year old is taunted by members of her class who write in a message of hateful language about their weight or colour and then cut-and-paste homework-related dialogue in over the top and hit the return key. The abuse happens in real-time with no apparent evidence that the child can point to in order to get aid from parent or school
    • A consumer is looking for information about a camera, the customer services representative types in the specification of the model that the consumer wants at a too-good-to-be-true price and then cuts and pastes and presses return on a completely different, less favourable offer for the same price. The consumer doesn’t have a leg to stand on

    Contrast this with the current culture of email and Facebook where is there is an evidence or document trail that the victim can use for recourse. The social aspects of thought-time communications a la Google Wave haven’t been fully understood yet and society’s way of dealing with the challenges are likely to take years to iron out.

  • The Playful World by Mark Pesce

    The Playful World was written by Mark Pesce. Pesce was an early pioneer of the web. He was instrumental in bringing a 3d interface to the web through a standard called VRML. This was an early attempt to provide the kind of immersive ‘matrix’ experience envisaged by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson in cyberpunk literature. Were a digital double of the real world (or more likely a more attenuated digital version) provides for interactions in the virtual realm.

    Since then he has been applying his ingenuity and enterprise to academia  and futurism for the past decade and a half.

    The Playful World was written about a decade ago, yet was very prescient of today’s cutting-edge web and related technology trends:

    • Augmented web – the web provided a data overlay of the real world with applications like locative digital art and turn by turn directions for navigation. Putting this inside glasses rather than on a screen would mirror some of the human computer interaction work done since the 1960s for fighter pilots.
    • The web of things – items become intrinsically linked to the web with all the security risks that entails as well.
    • Custom manufacturing – smaller production runs, intellectual property becomes more important than manufacturing scale. Globalisation gets transformed. Waste could be reduced, though that would be affected by the kind of prototyping one goes through printing items in 3D printing from an existing file.
    • Gaming – lean forward entertainment becomes more immersive, though a lot of the growth in gaming has already happened

    Pesce knits his experiences together into an engaging narrative that would brings all of it together for the reader. If you want to get where things are going I recommend you have a read of Pesce’s book. You can find more book reviews here. More related content here.

  • New approach to China + more

    New approach to China

    Official Google Blog: A new approach to China – According to Google, IP theft from Google and Gmail being hacked prompted a new approach to China. That’s very reasonable on the face of it, especially given that the IP theft also affected several other companies as well. However Google is uniquely placed to take a new approach to China because it has lots of rewards and few downsides. Such as the fact that Google is under pressure in the US and not doing terribly well in the Chinese market due to credible local competition. Or as another outlet put it Google: Revenues From China Are ‘Immaterial’ | paidContent

    Consumer behaviour

    A Few Good Kids? | Mother Jones – interesting how marketing data is being used. It seems that more work needs to be done on the creative and the approach

    If Your 9-Year-Old Doesn’t Have a Cell Phone, He’s Not Socializing Enough – Fast Company

    What Do Baby Boomers Want From Technology? – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – some interesting progmatic attitudes to tech

    Media Cache – TV Still Has a Hold on Teenagers – NYTimes.com – Forrester survey of European teens. Conventional media still consumed

    Design

    Snow Peak Official Website – cool Japanese over-engineered camping stuff, love their Baja table out of solid aluminium and titanium cooking ware.

    Hacking with Style: TrueType VT220 Font – I remember this font from my time at Corning Optical Fibres using the plant DEC VAX which provided my first email account

    Economics

    Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy. – By Daniel Gross and Win Rosenfeld – Slate Magazine

    Asia leading the way | Economist.com

    FT.com / World / Comment – Washington adapts to eastwards power shift

    FMCG

    Taste the Rainbow: Cigarette Makers’ Colorful Answer to FDA Packaging Regs | Advertising, Branding, and Marketing | Fast Company – tobacco companies use visual cues to make up for not being able to bill cigarettes as light, mild or low tar.

    How to

    Sleep success: How to make ZZZs = memory – life – 26 November 2009 – New Scientist

    Ideas

    Edge In Frankfurt: THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE by Frank Schirrmacher

    How reputation could save the Earth – opinion – 15 November 2009 – New Scientist – at first when I read this headline I thought someone in corporate communications had been going full belt at the magic mushrooms again. Instead the concept is a kind of green whuffie

    FT.com | Warfighting: The US Marine Corps on agility – interesting take on dealing with chaotic times

    Innovation

    Apple Patent Application Could Presage Thinner Devices – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

    London

    FT.com | Olympics likely to harm UK tourism

    Luxury

    Cartier drops prices to woo young | The Japan Times Online – interesting move. I remember Armani doing a similar kind of thing with Armani Xchange in the early 1990s, it will be interesting to see the effect that it may have on the Cartier brand

    Media

    FT.com / Media – Disney boss tells Hollywood to rewrite script – internationalise content rather than assume a global media culture, develop online delivery platforms, cut costs, consolidate media franchises

    Online

    FT.com / China – Beijing tightens internet controls – “The internet is developing quickly, there are many loopholes in social management and maintaining social stability faces unprecedented new challenges,” said Meng Jianzhu, public security minister. “We must establish a comprehensive prevention and control social security system that covers the internet and the real world.”

    Retailing

    Retail outlook: Discounters best poised to thrive – USATODAY.com – US is seeing discounters thrive as well

    Security

    FT.com / UK – Watchdog probes sale of mobile phone records – take T-mobile’s licence away and shut them down

    Software

    Microsoft’s Future, Beyond Windows 7 and the PC – NYTimes.com – I can’t believe that the New York Times published this piece on Microsoft. Waggener Edstrom and Frank Shaw must have hit the roof when it came out. The mantra for Microsoft as a client is no surprises, I would be surprised if anyone walked willingly into this piece which eviscerates the corporate reputation

    Apocalypse Then: a two-part series on the lessons of Y2K. (1) – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine

    FT.com / Technology – Chinese court rules against Microsoft – infringed Zhongyi Electronics property rights.

    Technology

    The BBC is encrypting its HD signal by the back door | Technology | guardian.co.uk

    Cloud computing: Clash of the clouds | The Economist

    E.U. Takes More Time to Review Oracle-Sun Deal – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com – I hope that Sun Microsystems finds a safe harbour at Oracle

    The Digital Economy Bill is legislatively flawed | Left Foot Forward – piece that I co-authored with my pod neighbour Nick

    Web of no web

    AR to Realize World of Science Fiction — Nikkei Electronics Asia — November 2009 – good overview of augmented reality

    Wireless

    Daring Fireball: Oh Joe You Didn’t – interesting take on is or isn’t Apple earning more money on handsets than Nokia story that been doing the rounds on Twitter over the weekend