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.

New Power by Heimans & Timms

New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms was recommended to me by a friend of mine who works with a number of campaigning organisations. It took four years after it was published for me to take it down from the shelf and get stuck in.

Since then, we have had the Hong Kong protests, January 6 disturbances in the US Capitol building where both of their legislative houses operate from. We’ve also had movements around cryptocurrency and the infamous OneCoin scam.

The book promises to reveal:

How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World – and How to Make It Work for You
Front cover of New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms

Jeremy Heimans

Heimans is an ex-McKinsey consultant who now runs a social impact agency called Purpose. So one could think that New Power is basically part of Heiman’s marketing strategy. Make of that what you will.

Henry Timms

Timms heads up the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York and has been heavily involved in promoting philanthropic donations.

Old Power and New Power

Heimans and Timms provide a model for what they think old power is. A top down power structure, think everything from mainstream advertising, government responses to the COVID-19 epidemic, authoritarian regimes like China’s crushing of dissent or the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

By comparison, new power is participatory in nature and more of a peer to peer relationship. Examples include memes, crypto bros, the leaderless movement that fuelled the 2019 Hong Kong protests, support for populism and ISIS. ISIS recruitment is actually used as an example in the book.

How power works in our hyperconnected world

Heimans and Timms provide an analysis on the general thinking behind how campaigning works in a way that would be most familiar to anyone who has run a social media marketing campaign. I would describe it as a primer for typical corporate management types.

How to make it work for you

I personally think that this is where the book falls down. New Power isn’t replicable in the same way that a business process rengineering exercise might be. Sometimes these things take off, sometimes they don’t. They talk about some of the factors in the book, but movements often need a catalysing event like the recent apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang that sparked anti-zero COVID lockdown protests in China.

You can try and create a catalysing event, but too often it’s astro-turfing that no one ever sees, particularly if you are relying on a dominant platform algorithm. Your new power is actually reliant on old power held by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. Instead these platforms have been successfully mastered by authoritarian regimes including the Chinese government who manage to demonetise and have content taken down on western platforms.

Secondly, the authors try to claim showing a bit of moxie is new power. The example they give is a junior employee speaking to a senior executive that they manage to meet by chance.

Finally, the book lacks the intellectual rigour and scientific method of Mark Ritson or Byron Sharp’s work, instead relying anecdotal evidence, similar to Malcolm Gladwell’s body of work or Paul Polman’s Net Positive.

So, should you buy this book?

If you like TED talks model of learning a little bit about a lot of things and are reading for your own personal interest or to get a high level understanding of campaigning organisations might work, buy New Power. If you are thinking about changing your business into a more purposeful organisation, read this first instead (and its free).

You you can find out more about New Power here, find the rest of my book reviews here, and the books that I find most useful here.

December 7, 2022
Tectonic shift + more stuff
Tectonic shift

The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift
National Ocean Service of the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Zeitenwende

Olaf Scholz, Hamburg weiter vorn.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declaration of a zeitenwende or epochal tectonic shift following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part of this tectonic shift is Germany’s desire to become a security guarantor in Europe. A lot of coverage has focused on how far away Germany is from this aspiration in terms of military preparedness and over-reliance on the very countries likely to threaten European security.

In an opinion piece Chancellor Scholz asked a rhetorical question

How can we, as Europeans and as the European Union, remain independent actors in an increasingly multipolar world?
Scholz, O. (December 2022) “The Global Zeitenwende. How to Avoid a New Cold War in a Multipolar Era“. Foreign Affairs. United States

Scholz implies that the tectonic shift also adversely affects the United States efforts to jumpstart green industries and contain a globally more aggressive China. One could argue that Scholz’s approach is business as usual. For decades, large German enterprises have encouraged the government to work with authoritarian regimes, creating a Germany highly dependent on bad actors.

China

UK council rejects China’s plan to build new embassy in London – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – a few things went wrong here:
- China went after elites, but ignored the British public’s dim view of them and councillors who would be much more sensitive to Xinjiang problems
- The Manchester consulate incident damaged China more than they realised
- China isn’t likely to make profit on the site that they own any time soon
HSBC chief denies Beijing is behind Ping An push to split bank | Financial Times – that’s about as reassuring as the football club chairman saying that he’s got every confidence in the player manager after a string of home match losses

Finance

Credit cards as a legacy system – complaints about credit cards. The problem these arguments have is that credit cards work

Ideas

My cyberpunk city, my cyberpunk world – by Noah Smith – I read this and thought about my own experiences of Hong Kong

Indonesia

Indonesia set to penalise sex outside marriage in overhaul of criminal code | Reuters – the new code could be passed by as early as next week. The code, if passed, would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreigners alike, with business groups expressing concern about what damage the rules might have on Indonesia’s image as a holiday and investment destination. – the question is if this is going to take Indonesia on a similar path of economic stagnation as Malaysia has taken?

Innovation

Air Force Unveils New B-21 Stealth Bomber After Seven Years in the Making – Defense One

Luxury

Watchfinder Expands Pre-Owned Business with Third-Party Sellers – Robb Report and even Rolex is going into CPO market: Rolex’s Certified Pre-Owned Watch Program: What You Need to Know | Gear Patrol – allowing it to profit on the secondary market boom

Can NFT-based private clubs disrupt a centuries-old model? | Techinasia – this doesn’t even make sense

Online

Vietnam’s answer to Tencent, VNG, eyes overseas expansion after taking on Facebook at home | South China Morning Post

French Pornhub case shows how hard it is to regulate the internet | Financial Times

Twitter’s decline continues. I noticed this morning that Twitter allowed me to post the exact same Twitter post twice. That isn’t something that was possible previously and I could see how it could be used for nefarious reasons.

My twitter account this afternoon when I checked it

Quality

How Semiconductor Chips Changed the Driving Experience Forever – Robb Report

Retailing

Shein Confusion: The Fast-Fashion Giant’s New Resale Site Doesn’t Make Buying Easy — The Information – Annie tries out Shein Exchange, the e-commerce brand’s foray into the bustling resale market. On its face, the platform seems like a good idea, given the ongoing controversies over Shein’s cheap, disposable, landfill-clogging apparel. But there is something distinctly off about the brand’s effort to sell used clothes

Technology

Amazon to warn customers on limitations of its AI | Reuters

Amazon’s new AI tool may take over work from employees facing layoffs and buyouts – Vox – the tech giant has been working for at least the last year to hand over some of its recruiters’ tasks to an AI technology that aims to predict which job applicants across certain corporate and warehouse jobs will be successful in a given role and fast-track them to an interview — without a human recruiter’s involvement. The technology works in part by finding similarities between the resumes of current, well-performing Amazon employees and those of job applicants applying for similar jobs

Web of no web

EU throws party in €387K metaverse — and hardly anyone turns up – POLITICO
December 6, 2022
Michelin Snow Sock + more things

Michelin Snow Sock

The Michelin Snow Sock or to give it its proper name SOS GRIP(R) Evolution does a similar job to studded tyres or snow chains (often called RUD Chains after the German company RUD Ketten – a famous manufacturer of snow chains).

The Michelin Snow Sock looks much easier to store and fit than snow chains and is likely to be less damaging to road surfaces. This new Michelin Snow Sock seems to rely on the black bands across the face of the tyre.

A key difference is that snow chains can also be used in really muddy conditions and can be used to protect the tyres in hard surfaces such as quarries and mines – although this is usually the domain of a specialist product. You can’t doe these things with the Michelin Snow Sock.

Inspecting a car before purchase

Interesting tips on inspecting a car that you are interested in buying. Its interesting how democratised specialist tools have become.

Twitter

Professor Scott Galloway talks to Christiane Amanpour about the current economy and the rollercoaster moves at Twitter. My favourite quote from this, describing the recession as a ‘Patagonia vest’ recession affecting knowledge workers the most so far.

Junya Watanabe Menswear Fall/Winter 2022

I am about 10 months late to this, but Junya Watanabe did a menswear collaboration with Jay Kaye from Jamiroquai mirroring his mid-to-late 1990s style. Its a mix of indigenous wear that was popular from gap year students (or people who wanted that boho look), rave culture and Goa trance, sports wear and technical outdoor clothing.

Here is the mini video look book that Junya Watanable made for the menswear collection.

Here is the original video for Virtual Insanity

Behind the scenes on how the Virtual Insanity video was made. How the effect was achieved was quite surprising.

Shakatak

I didn’t realise how popular jazz fusion group Shakatak was in Japan. To me there where pre-house UK dance music. I found this Japanese festival performance by them.

The Tokyo Crossover Festival was was originally organised by the Kyoto Jazz Massive member Shuya Okino.

It was April 2002. I was invited to the Future Jazz Festival held at Zagreb, Croatia. The well select lineup for this 3-days event was Victor Davies, Jessica Lauren, Rainer Truby, Azymuth, Zero dB and many more. The huge success all owed to Eddy & Duss and their incredible local support attracted 1500 enthusiastic people each day! Frankly, and forgive my ignorance, I was quite shocked. This was Zagreb, Croatia. The media that I was exposed to depict the negative image of an on-going civil war for all what I remember. Needless to say, I was inspired and at the same time wondered why Japan never had such festivals. Sure we have money-flowing mainstream Rock Festivals and Techno Festivals but nothing such as Deep House or Future Jazz festivals – which is surprising especially when Japan holds the biggest market share for such music. What is more depressing is that the “traditional” Jazz summer festival seems to be loosing its energy every year… I waited. I thought someone would eventually do the future-jazz festival here in Japan. There were few attempts but did not leave strong impact. Waited few more years…and thought it was time for me to take some action. I called it “Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival”! This is the first year and I am treating it as an introduction or presentation for the successful year to come. Therefore, it will not be a gigantic outside “typical” festival but the main purpose for this first festival is to cause Crossover Jazz awareness and for artists who have same music vision to gather together. Of course, I am aiming for the fan-pleasing exciting showcases. We have a good “crossover” jazz scene in Japan and I want the fans, all over the world, to know. In the future, the festival will feature artists from Jazz, Techno, Hip- Hop, House and the music will cross all over – the ideal festival that I keep visioning and working hard for! At the end though, all I want for everyone and myself is to…have a good time!
Shuya Okino (Kyoto Jazz Massive)

Internet explained in five levels of difficulty

I showed this to my Dad and he loved it. So I thought I would share it here too.

November 24, 2022
StetWalk
What is StetWalk?

StetWalk is a portmanteau of the editors term stet and walk. Stet means ‘let it stand’. An editor might mistakenly cross something out or suggest an amend. Writing stet next to it indicates that the want to rollback that change.

The term was popularised by US editor, Tanya Gold. Gold adopted StetWalk as a hashtag to describe when an editor (or writer) stands up from their desk and goes out for a walk to take a physical and mental break from staring at their screen.

How I came across StetWalk?

I heard about it from my friend my friend Siobhan who works as an editor of children’s and young adult books. Siobhan is typical of most freelance knowledge workers, probably spending far too much time hunched over a laptop working away.

StetWalk became a hashtag for writers and editors to normalise taking a break from their screen and getting a walk. They not only take a break, but normalise the act by sharing content about it on their social media.

Why do I care about it as an idea?

I think that there is a lot knowledge workers can learn from editors and writers.

Zoom fatigue

While we might not be in lockdown due to COVID-19 (at the moment at least), back-to-back calls on Slack | Teams or Zoom are now a normal part of our day. In an office you could get up from your desk or take a walk as the meetings set up are often a substitute for discussions that would have happened more fluidly. We lose the opportunities for breaks from the screen: a water-cooler moment, a cigarette break or a walk around the block that allows thoughts to come to the surface.

Economic impact

The causes of the ‘great resignation’ are multi-variant including chronic illness and fatigue due to long COVID, the challenges of employability that older workers face, but Dami Lee highlights a number of other work-related reasons including a sense of work life balance. Michael Page pointed out that remote work is also perceived as a benefit, but it also must have balance built within it.

Mental health is an issue

The agency that I currently work at has tactics in place to tackle mental health before it comes an issue and my boss is a ‘mental health first aider’. We have also contributed expertise to help charities looking to tackle mental burnout and health in other professions. I now have friends that talk openly about the challenges that they’ve faced maintaining good mental health.
This is in sharp contrast to when I used to work in the oil industry in which resilience was prized and sucking it up was the name of the game.

More related posts here.
October 27, 2022
Cockneycide
I saw a LinkedIn post being shared about Cockneycide – the decline of speakers of London’s traditional working class English dialect. Or as it was put to me: Cockneycide describes conscious or unconscious acts that wilfully deny the existence of a cultural group. Disclaimer – I consider it to be an inappropriate use of the -cide suffix, but for the rest of the article I am going to let it stand.

The organisation behind the post on Cockneycide is Grow Social Capital (GSC). GSC is a social enterprise focused on social capital in society and how communities and individuals can increase it. They look at things like the role of record shops as third spaces within their communities.

Are working class people racist?

The train of thought that got to Cockneycide started with an initiative called Cockney Conversations Month designed to celebrate Cockney heritage and pride stumbled upon on anecdotal feedback that some people perceive ‘Cockney’ as being a racist identity.

The media stereotype of a right wing racist in the UK is usually working class heritage and are often portrayed having a Cockney accent. The reality of race and working class culture is more complex as London’s history from the Battle of Cable Street onwards shows.

National Trust Nazis

Oswald Moseley wasn’t working class and neither is Nick Griffin. Secondly, London has its share of what a friend calls ‘National Trust Nazis’. People who look middle class in their Barbour jackets and ‘National Trust’ enamel badges who feel its perfectly acceptable to tell people of colour in West London to go back home from where they came from.

The racist working class stereotype was seen by the group to reinforce discrimination and polarisation as even informing bad policy. One such policy that they consider to be bad is the Mayor of London’s Cultural Strategy which ignored accent bias as well as aspects of London’s indigenous culture. Apparently it doesn’t mention Cockney once.

Systemic working class discrimination?

As described Cockneycide is a microcosm of a wider pattern in the UK. GSC have done some research into identity and accent is bundled into this.

The numbers suggest a decoupling from mainstream culture of working class communities, of which Cockneys could be considered to be one of many alongside Scouse or the different variations on the Midlands accent. There is a decline in across the UK in regional accents being mentioned in printed texts over the past five years. Cockney with a decline of 3% does comparatively well compared to Brummie with a 10% decline and 15% for Scouse.

The factors causing this are likely to be multi-factorial in nature:
- A century of mainstream media from the talkies, radio, television and voice services will all have an impact on language. Just in the same way that my childhood Irish accent was ‘run over’ by the Merseyside environs where I spent a good deal of my teenage years
- Local population change. Within my lifetime accents have changed in areas were I lived. The small town of Neston on the Wirral used to have locals who spoke with a hint of the Midlands in their accent. Many were descended from miners who had moved up to the town during the 18th and early 19th centuries ago to mine coal seams. A former colleague from when I started work pointed out that the ‘nasal’ Cheshire accent of Ellesmere Port had changed in the space of a generation to a Liverpool accent
- There aren’t featured in a positive light in the media, in London or Liverpool there aren’t news presenters with strong local accents. While we are seeing more people of colour represented in the media, there are challenges based on class.
- A wider alienation of working class communities by elites. Part of this is down to the academisation of political thought focused on social justice over economics, rather than social justice and economics. Political parties and academics left working class and working poor communities behind way before these communities pivoted more towards reactionary politics
Londoners or cockneys?

I might be considered to be a Londoner. Like just under a third of Londoners, I am not British. The part of my childhood that I spend in the UK growing up was not in London, but I have had my home in London for about half my life now.

The reality is that my identity is complicated and multi-layered. My passport says that I am Irish, my accent is Northern but it would take a discerning ear to place it back to the Merseyside of my teen years where my Irish accent was overwhelmed by the Liverpudlian accents around me. I had a sense of being part of an outside group in Merseyside living in an Irish household and spending the other part of my childhood with relatives on the ‘family’ farm that my cousin now looks after.

I see my accent as something that happened to me like puberty rather than as part of my identity. My accent softened as I worked with colleagues from around the world and even spent time working in Asia.

It has been made clear to me that certain opportunities weren’t available to me due to cultural fit – aka I didn’t sound right, which again emphasised the ‘otherness’ of a perceived working class background.

Have I been in London long enough to be considered a Londoner, let alone a Cockney. Is my identity itself an aspect of Cockneycide?

The new Cockney and Estuary English

A good deal of indigenous Londoners that could have called themselves Cockneys were moved out beyond London in the post-war reconstruction period. There was also continual waves of immigration into London from my own people (the Irish), people from Commonwealth countries and Europe that continues to this day.

As far back as 1995 we were seeing academic literature on the new Cockney and how the accent and identity attached to it evolved. As the population spread out from London, so did the accent, admittedly changing and becoming what David Rosewarne called ‘Estuary English’ in 1984:

a variety of modified regional speech. It is a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum with RP and London speech at either end, ‘Estuary English’ speakers are to be found grouped in the middle ground.
David Rosewarne

Rosewarne’s point about change and evolution is interesting. Is it an aspect of what GSC consider Cockneycide? As Brexit showed us, more reactionary politics tended to show up in populations who were concerned by the rate of change in their communities. It is also easy to see how Cockneycide could be seen as yet another anti-neo liberal fear of change.

More information

Original LinkedIn post
April 16, 2022