Ged Carroll

Category: jargon watch | 術語定義 | 용어의 정의 | 用語の定義

Jargon watch as an idea was something that came from my time reading Wired magazine. I found that in my work terms would quickly spring up and just as quickly disappear. So it made sense to capture them in the moment.

The best way of illustrating jargon watch is by example. I came across the term black technology through mainland Chinese friends. One of the key things that Chinese consumers think about technology products is the idea of ‘black technology’. This makes no sense to your average western reader. It equates to cool and innovative.

The term itself comes from a superior technology featured in a Japanese manga series plot. As an aside the relationship between Chinese and popular Japanese culture is becoming increasingly attenuated due to Chinese nationalism.

What might be black technology this year might be humdrum in six months as the companies quickly catch up. Black technology is a constant moving target, but generally its sophisticated and likely has a cyberpunk feeling to it.

I keep an eye out for jargon like this all the time, hence jargon watch. I find this content in my professional reading and in the sources that I follow online. What makes something worthwhile to appear here is purely subjective based about how I feel about it and how much I think it resonates with my ideas or grabs my attention. A lot of British youth culture doesn’t make it because it doesn’t have that much of an impact any more beyond the UK.

  • Omake + more news

    Omake

    Omake trends: Elle Japon x American Apparel – gives away headband with magazines. Omake pronounced ‘O-ma-ke’ means incentive. They have become a monthly magazine giveaway, particularly for fashion publications like Elle Japon. There is also a second series of magazines called eMook. An e-Mook is a brand lookbook for a season. People often bought them for the product give-away, A Bathing Ape popularised this idea outside Japan and their e-Mooks are sought after. People buy e-Mooks for the giveaway item rather than the content. Increasingly that seems to be the case with Omake as well.

    China

    FT.com / Comment / Analysis – China: Futuristic yet fruitful – interesting overview of the Shanghai expo

    Consumer behaviour

    Retailers Look to Profit From Last Century’s Styles – NYTimes.com – when you can’t trust the banks, the government, businesses and authority figures what can you trust? The past.

    Culture

    YouTube – chelskifl’s Channel – the seminal Pump up the Volume documentary which has interviews with the heroes I looked up to as a house DJ. Check out part three for the HotMix5 stuff. The WBMX sets of HotMix5 blew me away and fired me up to want to DJ house music

    Design

    Innovative Mayor Sam Adams Builds a Cleaner Portland | Fast Company – interesting use of mobile so that the public an report rubbish etc

    Nokia’s designs on Apple | FT.com – interview with Marko Ahtisaari. On privacy: “The industrial logic of every single social network is that those terms of service will be renegotiated very quickly.” On interface design “All the touchscreen interfaces are very immersive. You have to put your head down. What Nokia is very good at is designing for mobile use: one-handed, in the pocket. Giving people the ability to have their head up again is critical to how we evolve user interfaces.” No comments on why the N900 and N97 are the worst of both worlds – bring back the Communicator form factor

    Ethics

    Did Microsoft Hire Consumer Watchdog to Attack Google? | Techrights – really really stupid, surprised Frank X Shaw wouldn’t stomp on this practice if it turns out to be true

    Anti-piracy enforcers claiming to represent Microsoft used to shut down dissident media in former USSR – Boing Boing – quick denials in place otherwise this could have been a Yahoo! moment for Microsoft’s corporate reputation

    FMCG

    FDA Calls Marlboro Out on Creative Marketing of “Light” Cigarettes | Fast Company – I think the FDA is a bit out of whack here, although I can see where they are coming from in terms of trying to flatten the light message, for regular smokers the cigarette will be the same, same length, taste the same.

    Japan

    Big in Japan: Millions ‘Mumble’ on Twitter – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com – more unique users than Mixi

    Tokyo fishermen update seafood e-commerce site from their boats – Boing Boing – not surprising given that the Japanese invented JIT and lean manufacturing processes that they would extend it when the technology came available to their fishing industry

    Wired 9.09: My Own Private Tokyo – William Gibson on Tokyo

    Is it a good idea to kick those Downfall spoofs off YouTube? Perhaps not | Technology | guardian.co.uk – ironically exposes rights owners to legal issues

    Media

    France, the U.K. Take Steps Against Digital Piracy – WSJ.com

    Luxury

    Luxury market starts to evolve in China – hyperinflation for luxury lifestyles

    Online

    Yahoo wants to do what Facebook did, only slower – as the FT said: sounds familiar and unambitious

    Retailing

    FT.com / Companies / Retail – Gome reappoints ousted Bain directors – its like a tele-novella

    Security

    UK MPs call for ID cards and surveillance, but demand privacy for themselves – Boing Boing – looks like the Digital Economy Act has brought a whole pile of tech politics out of the bag

  • Naked official

    When I discovered the idea of the naked official I was pondering the similarity that the Chinese have with the Irish. In both cases immigration is part of their psyche. Reading an article in Sina.com, I was reminded of one particular tranche of Chinese immigration. The immigration that happened prior to, and after the handover of Hong Kong. A number of rich and middle class families chose to move to Canada and other countries. The families lived in places with large existing Chinese communities like Vancouver and the patriarch would often commute to do business back in Hong Kong. These commuters were nicknamed astronauts because they spent so much time in the air.

    Chinese space heroine

    A trend for the families of Chinese officials to conduct a similar kind of transplanted lifestyle has spawned a new term of naked official. A number of officials whose families had emigrated abroad (presumably beyond the reach of the state) were subsequently convicted of charges relating to them abusing their position. Naked officials are considered to be suspicious of preparing a bolt-hole abroad. Although moving abroad is a widely held middle class Chinese aspiration.

    More China related topics here.

    Kudos to Xinhua via Sina.com: China keeps a watchful eye on officials with family members living abroad

  • 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.

  • Nowism

    Trendwatching.com came up with an interesting concept of nowism. Nowism is a change in the state of mind of young consumers. It is a move away from certain product categories and rites of passage into adulthood.

    Definition

    Trendwatching describes it as:

    “Consumers’ ingrained* lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

    Perversely nowism comes out of the age of abundance that we live in (even in the recession). Young people do struggle with certain aspects of adult life like putting down roots and getting on the property ladder. Otherwise this relative economic abundance has a flip side: possessions are no longer status symbols. Instead they can viewed as a gilded cage – restricting consumers from having experiences. We can see this is in the developed world with some interesting changes on consumer patterns:

    Just 40 years ago, the pony cars of the Ford Motor Company and others blew open the young US car market with the Ford Mustang sports cars and the Ford Bronco off road vehicles that were the forerunner of today’s sports utility vehicles (SUVs). Comparing the Mustang design to Toyota’s Scion and you can see this move away from status and freedom through motoring to pure utility. Nowism gets into the industrial design form and function are unadorned. More information here. More posts about the latest trends here.

  • Choice Blindness

    I’ve always wanted to understand how consumers don’t have a higher level of dissatisfaction when they go home with the supermarket’s own brand goods as a mistake instead of a branded product with the apparent answer being choice blindness. It was neatly captured in culture with Bruce Springsteen’s song 57 channels and nothin’ on. (This is the the reason why Tesco, ASDA et al will often have rows of branded goods in the middle of similar looking own brand products, the own-brand products have a higher profit margin for the supermarkets).

    New Scientist talks about the phenomena in Choice blindness: You don’t know what you want by Lars Hall and Petter Johansson (April 18,2009):

    …in an early study we showed our volunteers pairs of pictures of faces and asked them to choose the most attractive. In some trials, immediately after they made their choice, we asked people to explain the reasons behind their choices.

    Unknown to them, we sometimes used a double-card magic trick to covertly exchange one face for the other so they ended up with the face they did not choose. Common sense dictates that all of us would notice such a big change in the outcome of a choice. But the result showed that in 75 per cent of the trials our participants were blind to the mismatch, even offering “reasons” for their “choice”.

    We called this effect “choice blindness”, echoing change blindness, the phenomenon identified by psychologists where a remarkably large number of people fail to spot a major change in their environment.

    I find it facinating that people will even justify their ‘wrong’ decision. Is this just academic? No, it has a major commercial impact which is why many retailers have look a like brands to take advantage of choice blindness. This lead to a court case between ASDA and McViities biscuits over the look a like brand Puffin.

    It is at the centre of dark patterns for in-real-life retail. Search in e-tailing acts as a neat filter. But not every retail experience can be satisfactorily transferred online. Secondly promoted items on Amazon and eBay as examples can be as disruptive as retail tactics that take advantage of the phenomenon.

    There is a big question so far unanswered about how ethical is retailers use of choice blindness as a tactic. With carefully designed packaging are consumers being deceived? McVities might well believe so. The question of whether consumers are the injured party is more complex. If you ask a consumer that has bought a private label brand, they are likely to post rationalise their purchase rather than experience cognitive dissonance.

    So its not the same level of disappointment experienced when one is ‘bait-and-switched’ a real product for a counterfeit purchase. But does that somehow make it more honest?

    More consumer behaviour related content can be found here.