It makes sense to start this category with warning. Marshall McLuhan was most famous for his insight – The medium is the message: it isn’t just the content of a media which matters, but the medium itself which most meaningfully changes the ways humans operate.
But McLuhan wasn’t an advocate of it, he saw dangers beneath the surface as this quote from his participation in the 1976 Canadian Forum shows.
“The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity. The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.”
McLuhan was concerned with the mass media, in particular the effect of television on society. Yet the content is atemporal. I am sure the warning would have fitted in with rock and roll singles during the 1950s or social media platforms today.
I am concerned not only changes in platforms and consumer behaviour but the interaction of those platforms with societal structures.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon: A complicated design legacy – A major part of design’s value proposition is the process. Designers identify problems to create solutions. Amazon, on the other hand, has often identified solutions before naming the problem. Sometimes that approach worked. But often, it didn’t. And it created an ecosystem with a surprising number of hidden costs. “Amazon will never be a design-led company. It’s evident in the quality of the products they ship. And although the design is still thriving there, I don’t believe it’s fundamental to the core DNA of the company,” says a former Amazon designer who worked closely with Bezos on several products. “Just because there’s ‘customer obsession’ doesn’t mean there’s an investment in quality and design rigor.”
Japan’s SBI plans Hong Kong pullout on concerns over security law | Financial Times – I was surprised Yoshitaka Kitao came out so unequivocally against the national security law with the statement that ‘without freedom, there is no financial business’ – most companies have pussyfooted around the issue, like they have done around Brexit. SBI are also reviewing their presence in London
StanChart tries to navigate moral minefield | Financial Times – really interesting read about he challenges that Standard Chartered is facing and how they are trying to manage them. It provides an unfavourable contrast for HSBC though both are a right mess
The UK is secretly testing a controversial web snooping tool | WIRED UK – police and internet companies across the UK have been quietly building and testing surveillance technology that could log and store the web browsing of every single person in the country. The tests, which are being run by two unnamed internet service providers, the Home Office and the National Crime Agency, are being conducted under controversial surveillance laws introduced at the end of 2016. If successful, data collection systems could be rolled out nationally, creating one of the most powerful and controversial surveillance tools used by any democratic nation
YouTuber Tom Scott delves into the marketing industry and laws that force influencers to declare ads. It is worthwhile watching regardless of how involved you are in marketing. Scott points out what he considers to be inconsistencies in the principles of when to declare ads. In particular, he focuses on the role of product placement in film and TV programmes and the way that is handled.
Future of
Wired contributor and author of What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly has spent the COVID lockdown putting together some great talks on YouTube on the future of different aspects of technological progress.
Kelly’s opinions are usually well thought out and the videos are better than sitting through a few conferences; especially TED conferences.
SolarWinds
World Affairs put together a great panel to discuss the recent SolarWinds hack and the impact it has had across both enterprises and governments.
Celebrity Zoom Bombing
I was listening to a podcast about a University of Sydney research paper on Zoom based culture building. TL;DR – it doesn’t work unless participation is truly voluntary. Most of them are painful. Lights and Shadows were commissioned to help help promote fun in a company corporate culture. Usually did creative events, but for COVID-19 they had to get creative in Zoom.
Somehow they managed to get celebrities, or convincing deep fakes to bomb existing Zoom calls.
Strong Enemy
The strong enemy is Chinese Communist Party-speak for the United States. China increasingly sees its relationship with the US to lead to eventual war. Xi Jingping has been talking more about the strong enemy in speeches aimed at the PLA to get them ready for inevitable conflict with the US. Sinocism has this great essay on it all.
Nexta media operation and its role in the Belarus protests was the main article in this weekend’s FT magazine.
FT magazine on Nexta
A few things about the article. The old maxim of ‘hearts and minds‘ is still true despite technology. Secondly, Belarus seems to view media and propaganda as a tactic rather than something strategic. This surprised me given that Belarus has always been authoritarian in nature and Soviet in terms of the way it operated. It is at odds with the way countries like Vietnam and China operate.
Finally, the irony that the smartphone is the instrument of protest. Nexta seem surprisingly well organised in a way that wasn’t seen with voices around the Hong Kong protests.
YouTube has a lot of digitised archive footage. First up is unused footage shot in 1962 filmed for a Pathé film This is Hong Kong.
The next reel was shot six years later. Again it was footage that ended up on the cutting room floor of Pathé. The footage was shot for one of its Colour Pictorial episodes. These were film magazines that screened prior to the main feature film in a cinema. Television would be soon squeezing cinema as the main form of video based news and documentaries.
Some of this footage was familiar to me from my times going and living in Hong Kong, whilst other aspects of it were unrecognisable. Both of these films reminded me of Miroslav Sasek’s book This is Hong Kong.
Japan
This footage is said to be taken in Tokyo, Osaka and the countryside in Japan during the 1980s. Though the airplane through bamboo scaffolding footage from 0.23 – 0.25 seems to have been taken on the run in to Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak airport. Some of it is beautifully shot.
It is underpinned by a an ambient track that works really well.
ASICS have put together a film to promote the shoe.
Berocca integration of radio and voice services
Finally Berocca did an innovative radio advert to take advantage of voice services as part of its radio advertising campaign. Alexa has a well documented API stack for building skills, which is what Berocca is encouraging consumers to use. I could see this happening more as Alexa is rolled out in automotive environments.
How Klarna’s pastel pink exterior began to crack | Dazed – Klarna isn’t new technology, its unsecured financing. Once you scratch beneath Klarna’s technology veneer you realise that Klarna is like pre-internet business like a shopkeepers lay away or the catalogue agents who used to work for Freemans and Littlewoods. Previously the catalogue companies were vertically integrated with retailing and consumer finance. Now Klarna does the unsecured consumer finance, de-risking the retail business. But this business model leaves Klarna with all the risks. Klarna also has age-old problems regarding fraud. I am also concerned about the consumer debt risk that Klarna represents.
Ex-officials, academics call for US to work with Europe to counter China | South China Morning Post – “A road map for US-Europe cooperation on China”, published by the Paul Tsai China Centre at Yale Law School on Wednesday, the experts said steps needed to be taken as an “urgent priority” in six key areas: trade, technology, human rights, climate, pandemic plans, and reform of international institutions
Dead poet rekindles cultural feud between South Korea and China ｜ Apple Daily – “There is general consensus that Yun is Korean and it is not in dispute,” he said, adding that “the Chinese hegemony is imposing its values on South Koreans.” – first trying to steal kimchi, now trying to steal Korean patriots; the Chinese government has no shame
The China challenge | Financial Times – the interesting thing is the way China is co-opting Goldman Sachs and others as a fifth columnist hook into the US until they have their digital currency ready to challenge the dollar as global reserve currency
Is The Role of Digital Becoming Obsolete Within Luxury Companies? – recent changes at the top level management at LVMH may signal a wider move within the luxury industry to move away from “digital transformation” and a shift towards a “total immersion” in their business.
Adam Curtis knows why we all keep falling for conspiracy theories | WIRED UK best read with The China model has come to America – Asia Times – Far too few Americans grasp the implications of such a view taking root among their own elite. Though more and more Americans are awakening to the challenges inherent in China’s growing economic, technological, and military capabilities, few understand the threat that China’s governing philosophy and structures pose to the US. – assumes that US philosophy will stand on its own merits, or in other words magical thinking or a blind spot
1 in 12 Irish people access radio on digital devices | RTÉ – About 8% of the population, or 330,000 people, listen each day using a digital device, the report found. Just under 5% listen via a mobile device, 2% on a PC and around 1.5% on a Smart Speaker and the remainder on a TV set or DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting). – 77% on FM. This makes sense given high car ownership, poor mobile coverage and slow progress of DAB head units in cars
China eyes ‘virtual production’ technique used in The Mandalorian to help local film industry catch up to Hollywood in visual effects | South China Morning Post – the scenes were not shot on location, on a movie set, or using a green screen. They were filmed in front of a giant LED wall display that could project an imaginary world as one that appears real to the audience. Known as “virtual production”, the digital background are generated in real time by a powerful computing game engine, allowing filmmakers to combine live-action footage with visual effects in real time. The technology could revolutionise filmmaking because real world settings can be replaced. China, with more than 20 billion yuan (US$3.1 billion) of box office revenue in 2020, is known for its theme parks across the country that double as locations for film shoots. In the town of Hengdian in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang, for instance, the so-called “movie city” built a replica of the Forbidden City for filmmaking
Facebook Meets Apple in Clash of the Tech Titans—‘We Need to Inflict Pain’ – WSJ – The war of words and ideas will ultimately play out in court, regulatory agencies and user decisions as both companies defend themselves against antitrust investigations. The potential regulatory settlements and legal decisions are likely to affect hundreds of millions of consumers’ phones in coming years. A Facebook spokeswoman, Dani Lever, said the choice between personalized services and privacy was a “false trade-off,” and that Facebook provides both. “This is not about two companies. This is about the future of the free internet,” she said, asserting that small businesses, app developers and consumers lose out under Apple’s new rules. “Apple claims this is about privacy, but it’s about profit, and we’re joining others to point out their self-preferencing, anticompetitive behavior.” – spoken like a true sociopath
I haven’t driven a BMW in well over 20 years, so Doug DeMuro’ update on the BMW brand was fascinating.
BMW Twitter account
The BMW brand issue hadn’t been on my radar until Doug DeMuro talked about it. A number of things seem to be happening with BMW.
The company’s customer base is predominantly gen-x and baby boomers; because their cars are expensive. For decade these people have been told that the BMW brand represents the ultimate driving machine.
An important part of the visual BMW brand: the design language that it is implementing on is problematic. In particular the ugly ‘beaver teeth grill. This is ironic given that an electric car doesn’t need a grill for its engine.
It didn’t help things that from a certain angle the rear of the BMW iX has a resemblance to the Nissan Juke.
Nissan Juke 1.6 Advance 2017 by RLGNZLZ
It has at least an internal perception that it has lost its BMW brand mojo as there is a slow steady move away from the internal combustion engine.
If you look at other YouTube automotive channels, BMW seems to be having reliability issues with its current cars and the repairs are expensive to do. Back in the early 1970s the BMW brand was tarnished with negative perceptions about the cars being rust buckets and the company managed to lick that. The current engineering problems sound more complex.
All of this makes the BMW brand sound more difficult to fix than being on the socials and being up to date with their yoofspeak.
Canada concerned as Hong Kong starts to force dual citizens to choose status – The Globe and Mail – individuals who declare themselves Canadian could now lose their residency rights to live in Hong Kong.“It’s the beginning of the end for people in Hong Kong with Canadian status,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland. The policy on dual citizenship stems from a 1980 law in mainland China that was then applied to Hong Kong when the United Kingdom handed over the city to Beijing in 1997. “The law was on the books for years but it wasn’t always enforced,” Mr. Kurland said. – interesting move
The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy – Atlantic Council – single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping. China has long had an integrated, operational strategy for dealing with the United States. The United States has so far had no such strategy with regard to China. This is a dereliction of national responsibility – interesting read. Right on with its diagnostics, but off base with its proposed solution. The west thought that Xi was a moderate when he came into power. He has extended his loyalists in every aspect of the party. The Jiang Zemin faction of the party, which would be an alternative aren’t liberal; they used the army to put down student protests in 1989.
Commission chief tells charities not to be ‘captured’ for politics | Charities | The Guardian – Charities that support politically or culturally contentious causes should expect their charitable status to come under regulatory scrutiny even if they are acting within the law, according to the outgoing chair of the Charity Commission. The Tory peer Tina Stowell, who is stepping down after three years in the post, warned charities against being “captured” by unnamed people who wish to push a partial view of the world and use charity platforms to wage war on “political enemies”. – this is going to be interesting
Looking downstream – Tortoise – as a long time netizen I am less certain that regulating platforms for content will work and worry about the precedent it would set for authoritarian regimes. Should OTT platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime carry news? Here my first question is how do you define news? Should they do real time news reporting, probably not even if they could. Should they do current affairs analysis – they already do if you look at the kind of documentaries that they have. I think that there should be real questions about those documentaries in terms of quality and bias? While we’re on about documentary making, surely the BBC could be doing more work with Adam Curtis or Bellingcat and have those people training the documentary film makers of tomorrow
Liu Yifei Announced as Face of Louis Vuitton China | Radii China – LVMH betting on woke western liberals not being their customer base and choosing polarising star. It also shows how far Fan Bingbing’s star has fallen since her tax troubles. Crystal Liu was the protagonist in the car crash live action version of Mulan. She’s also not as beautiful as Fan Bingbing
How Europe Became a Model for the 21st Century – DER SPIEGEL – Despite its long list of crises in recent years – including the most recent vaccine snafu – the European Union has become a global pacesetter. Its laws and regulations have established global norms. This has made the bloc a 21st century model. – I agree with the direction of this article, even if some of the examples could be debated
Silicon Valley’s iron grip on venture capital is slipping — Quartz – the shift to smaller tech hubs that’s been going on for years is set to move even faster, according to Stanford. “The pandemic has thrust the VC ecosystem into new territory where Zoom meetings and alternative deal sourcing methods reign supreme,” he wrote in an analyst note. “This shift has, at least somewhat, leveled the playing field for investor attention…Over Zoom, it doesn’t matter if the company is in the same building, city, state, or country.” – no credit given for the dissipation technology start-ups to places like Singapore and Shenzhen. For instance, social darling Clubhouse is based on Chinese voice technology. But there’s also a bigger issue about the decline in hard innovation which is easier to do in a tight cluster. Since its no longer happening, the cluster makes less sense. More on innovation here.
Bases for Trust in a Supply Chain – Lawfare – With a supply chain attack, there is a potentially long delay between the introduction of a vulnerability and its exploitation. In addition, infiltrating a supplier generally requires a well-resourced adversary and interaction with that supplier. So compared to the alternatives, preparations for a supply chain attack take longer and have a higher risk of discovery. The risks of discovery can be reduced, however, if inserted vulnerabilities resemble ordinary flaws and, thus, the malicious intent is disguised. The digital systems on which individuals and nations increasingly depend are large and complex, so today they are likely to be rife with vulnerabilities. Many of those vulnerabilities will be known, some unpatched, and others easily discovered by analysis. In short, such systems are easy to compromise.
Russian hack brings changes, uncertainty to US court system – new rules for filing sensitive documents are one of the clearest ways the hack has affected the court system. But the full impact remains unknown. Hackers probably gained access to the vast trove of confidential information hidden in sealed documents, including trade secrets, espionage targets, whistleblower reports and arrest warrants. It could take years to learn what information was obtained and what hackers are doing with it – you can’t hack paper
