Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.

Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.

Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.

Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.

Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.

  • Lee Dunne + more things

    Lee Dunne

    How Lee Dunne challenged the depiction of working-class mothers | RTÉ – I originally didn’t know Lee Dunne as a novelist. Instead he was part of my childhood. Lunchtime listening when I wasn’t at school was Harbour Hotel, a radio soap opera written by Lee Dunne that gave a good sense of everyday life. The graininess of listening to the show on medium wave added to the experience. Dunne wrote each episode a bit like Roshomon, with each character talking about an event (like an argument) from their perspective. RTÉ’s obituary also focuses on Dunne’s social commentary literature that was banned by the Irish government in the 1960s through to the mid-1970s. Lee Dunne like James Plunkett wrote about the everyman. Plunkett’s work differed from Lee Dunne in that it had more of a socialist tenor to the content. Lee Dunne had particular success with his 1969 novel Goodbye To The Hill, more Ireland related content here.

    Beauty

    Shu Uemura to Exit Korean Market | BoF – Shu Uemura, a Japanese beauty brand owned by L’Oréal, is exiting the South Korean market in September after 16 years. While some speculate this is due to Korean consumer boycotts of Japanese products that began in 2019, L’Oréal states the withdrawal is part of a strategy to optimise its brand portfolio and respond to local market demand. Another contributing factor is likely the intense competition within the Korean beauty market. Shu Uemura currently operates over 70 outlets in the country.

    Five China market strategies that domestic brands do better than foreign brands | Daxue Consulting – I would add western brands rather than all foreign brands

    Consumer behaviour

    NewNew™ on the App Store – god this dark. In th sage words of Matt Muir – how else do you describe a new app, with significant VC funding, whose main purpose seems to be to allow ‘creators’ (we’ll come back to that word) to earn money from their ‘fans’ in exchange for letting said ‘fans’ determine the course of their life, in some sort of modern, ersatz version of The Diceman?

    How China’s online hate campaigns work – Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech – In today’s China, a nationalist campaign involves something far more complex than paying people to post scripted messages parroting Beijing’s line. The government has mastered the craft of influencing people’s genuine emotions and having these ordinary users do the trolling and doxxing — for free. Oftentimes, this means appealing to misogyny or chauvinism, something that virtually guarantees more clicks. Many videos and articles attacking Xu have tried to paint her personal life as promiscuous and delinquent. Web users have frequently called Xu a “female Han traitor,” a dog whistle that conflates concepts of chastity and national loyalty

    Europe

    Why Can’t Europe Cope With the Coronavirus? – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – EU states are too integrated to manage the crisis separately and not integrated enough to do so collectively, an inability to make rapid decisions, and a breakdown of trust between governments and the governed

    Ethics

    P&G reportedly testing Chinese workaround to Apple’s privacy changes | Marketing Dive – I find it hard to believe. if they’re seriously considering this, P&G have their head up their ass on ethics. They don’t need to do highly targeted marketing because Byron Sharp. This just looks like a waste of money

    Finance

    How China structures loans to become Africa’s “preferred” lender — Quartz Africa – Chinese contracts contain broad confidentiality clauses that stop borrowers from sharing details about the contracts, or sometimes even the fact that they exist. And with a confidentiality clause in every contract in the dataset since 2014, the contracts had become more secretive over time. Most of the clauses commit the borrowing countries not to disclose any of the contract terms or related information, unless required by law.

    Hong Kong

    The Rise and Decline of Hong Kong – From the British Colonial Era to the Chinese Communist Takeover | The Greater China Journal 

    Hong Kong’s electoral changes: the Communist Party is taking over | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – good summary of the different structures and challenges in the new Hong Kong ‘electoral’ system

    Hong Kong’s elites should think about an exit strategy – Nikkei Asia – The most serious concern for Hong Kong’s elites is the impact on their interests if China’s economic integration plan is fully implemented. Hong Kong’s tycoons may see this plan as a great opportunity and believe that their connections on the mainland will help them. But they may be in for a rude shock. Beijing wants to integrate Hong Kong’s economy not to enrich its tycoons, but to make the city’s economic future even more dependent on the motherland. In this process, Beijing would understandably give preference to mainland players, in particular state-owned enterprises, at the expense of Hong Kong’s businesses. – this covers all the reasons why I think Jardine’s pivot to Indonesia is smarter than Swire doubling down on mainland China

    Ideas

    Zhang Baijia: Reflections on China’s Research on Frontiers and Relations with Neighboring States | 高大伟 David Cowhig’s Translation Blog – Hard intelligence is specific information; soft intelligence is the understanding that makes possible the interpretation of hard intelligence. I found this differentiation fascinating delineating information and knowledge

    Information security

    Israel Reportedly Behind Cyberattack That Caused Blackout at Iran Nuclear Facility – reminds me of the Tehran show on Apple+ about Israeli spec ops and hackers in Iran

    Apple Mail Zero-Click Security Vulnerability Allows Email Snooping | Threatpost 

    Media

    Cannabis streaming service sets debut date, program slate – The Third M – MM+M – Medical Marketing and Media – High Times meets NBC. What’s next Crypto News Network for the bitcoin and NFT fans?

    Retailing

    The great British retail reopening | Vogue Business – The 12 April reopening of all physical stores in the UK is an occasion for optimism, but it’s heavily laced with caution. “The big question is how much of the massive increase in total share of spend will online retain?” says Richard Hyman, veteran UK retail analyst. His rough estimate, he says, is about 85 per cent. “If online hangs on to a material portion of spend, then the cost of selling something in a shop will have gone up significantly.”

    Covid’s effect on Rodeo Dr, Oxford St, and Russell St retail closures — Quartz – worthwhile looking at for its retail information and its beautiful interactive design

    Technology

    Job search | Amazon.jobs – interesting job ads. Amazon is looking for a lot of product designers and software engineers to work on visual search and augmented reality as part of the ‘next generation of shopping innovation’ – I found this via the ex-Yahoo! employees groups on LinkedIn. Yahoo! had a large contingent of people working in areas such as image and video search that would be of interest to Amazon now. The team is based just down the road from Sunnyvale in Palo Alto

  • Platforms and information war

    Bill Bishop in his excellent newsletter Sinocism (paywall) asked some interesting questions about platforms and information war as part of an opinion piece covering a wider range of issues. It was a particular question that he posed about platforms and information war that got my attention.

    …if you believe that the PRC is engaged in a coordinated global information war to control the narrative about China and delegitimize the US and the West, should the US and other governments targeted in this campaign pay more attention to the use of social media platforms like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter in those efforts? If so how?

    Bill Bishop, Sinocism – Weekly Open Thread 2021 #10: Gratitude; Narrative control; Xinjiang and social media (April 2, 2021)

    I replied to Bill’s question; in his thread and thought I would publish my thoughts here in an expanded and hopefully better written way.

    In my response I decided to deal with the online / social platforms and information war head on. It is a problem that western countries have been wrestling with for a good while. Whether its:

    • State actors like China, North Korea or Russia
    • Political extremists on the right and the left including populism
    • Conspiracies: anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, QAnon, 5G causes COVID-19
    • Non-state actors: jihadist groups, ‘spontaneous’ Chinese Han nationalists

    On platforms

    The main platforms of concern are:

    • Alphabet (Google search, YouTube)
    • Facebook (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram)
    • Twitter
    • Bytedance (TikTok)

    For sake of convenience I am going to refer to Alphabet / Facebook / Twitter / Bytedance as AFTB for the rest of the article.

    All of the platforms are controlled by algorithms, but what does that really mean? The algorithms are created by technologists to:

    Surface content that the audience will want to engage with and make less visible content that is less interesting. Rather like an editor selecting articles in magazine. Algorithms are also used to select and match advertising with content. The algorithms incorporate feedback loops. Whilst they are created by technologists, they are in turn altered by audience behaviour over time. Descriptors like deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence are often used to describe the technologies supporting algorithmic selection. Popular media would conjure up images of sentient intelligent computers, but that isn’t really helpful.

    Instead I would like to draw on geography as a metaphor to describe what’s going on. Imagine a fissure in the earth opens up in the side of a lake. The water follows a natural path downhill, over time the water carves out a gulley, that becomes a river. It removes the top soil, taking it down to sea. Stones are tumbled and rubbed together by the flow of the river. They become smooth and lozenge shaped. The landscape directs the flow of the water and is acted upon by the water. The water’s effect becomes more pronounced over time.

    So it is with algorithms. They are created, they interact with the audience. Over time, their behaviour becomes affected by audience behaviour patterns that it experiences over and over again. The reality is that AFTB have power, but are also influenced by audience behaviours.

    Is the audience real?

    Algorithms automate advertising. Online advertising was estimated to be worth 319 billion dollars in 2019 and expected to be 1,089 billion dollars by 2027. To give a frame of reference, in 2019 global advertising spend was roughly equivalent to the GDP of Singapore. By 2027 it will be greater than the GDP of Indonesia, the country with the world’s fourth highest population and largest muslim population. All of that money attracts serious efforts to defraud advertisers and platforms. Statista estimates that advertising fraud will be worth 44 billion dollars by 2022. A lot of that will be created by technology driven ‘fake’ audiences or bots.

    One of the main questions that platforms ask themselves is are their audience members real. A lot of efforts have gone into counteracting fake advertising audiences. Some of these efforts have also taken platforms and information war in the form of fake commenters and automated social accounts.

    This has given rise to mass organised real commenters, from influencers in WhatsApp groups arranging to like and comment on each others posts, to troll farms and self organised groups. State actors like Russia and China are known to have have both troll farms and self organised groups of the politically faithful working for them. A lot of the time, their comments aren’t designed to persuade other people on social media, but distract, drown them out or intimidate others. Their role is also designed to shape the algorithms that surface content.

    YouTuber talks about how his posts are commented on, demonetised and flagged for take down

    Platforms also use algorithms and audience participation as a first line of defence against inappropriate content. Chinese respondents have compiled a great deal of expertise in successfully flagging content for removal or demonetisation. Demonetising a video soon after it has been posted is particularly harmful for video creators as this is when they have their most views and greatest opportunity for ad revenues. Video views over time from posting have a a curve that steeply declines over time. Video channel view distribution roughly follows the long tail model with a a small amount of popular channels having an outsized audience and the bulk of the advertising anyway. This puts demonetised creators in a very precarious situation. It puts aggressors at an advantage in terms of platforms and information war.

    Creators dealing with this process will find the process very wearing even if they are one of the lucky few who has a creator account manager. The platforms can’t fix that without spending a large amount of money on real people, which would impact profitability.

    The exception to the rule would be TikTok which has more aggressive algorithms similar to what would be used on Chinese social platforms and actively filter controversial content. TikTok focuses on light entertainment and a good deal about this approach is because of its Chinese ownership. Douyin, the China-only version of TikTok is even stricter. The algorithms are supplemented by an army of a human censors. The other platforms have a wider remit.

    Content that works

    There have been leaps forward in understanding how to make more effective content and what app designs worked. The secret sauce is variable rewards. An example of this would be content associated with the QAnon conspiracy, each instalment is known as a Q drop. Some Q drops were big claims, others relatively small details.

    Nir Eyal’s Hooked is a book that covers this and is one of the more accessible of the of the advertising / marketing / product design-industrial complex works on this area.

    The difficulty changing platforms

    It is really hard to get platforms to do more than what they’re already doing through non-policy related means. A case in point would be studying Facebook’s recent history. The reason why Facebook was able to withstand large brand boycotts in 2020 was because they make their money from small companies around the world. A good deal of the business is small D2C (direct to consumer), gaming and major brands. Many of which are Chinese. Examples would be

    • wish.com
    • shein.com
    • Oasis games
    • Xiaomi
    • Vivo and OPPO (part of BBK)

    This layer of immunity is likely to be less pronounced but similar on Google advertising as well. As I write this, I can see that Air China is running Google advertising campaigns. They are in both English and simplified Chinese against a range of search terms.

    Secondly, social media platform changes wouldn’t be solved by policy alone. You’d need a reorientation of priorities in the boardroom, call it a higher purpose or patriotism in the broadest terms that hasn’t been seen in the US since the Eisenhower administration.

    You would need a mammoth tech revamp inside the platforms; a huge increase in human account management and intervention. For instance, it would mean YouTube having to shake up the pro-China (or Q-Anon) rabbit holes that are instrumental in attitudinal change.

    Deplatforming

    You would need to deplatform domestic advocates who are either paid, or are fellow travellers with groups using platforms for information warfare. I would imagine that you would have a lot of people baulking at that. In order to inoculate local populations of Russians or Chinese against use of their favoured platforms for information warfare, you would need to completely rebuild their native language media within western countries. In the case of Chinese immigrants and students, you would need to start filtering content on WeChat. That would be a major undertaking for any security service. WeChat could make that job a lot harder if they integrated encryption into the app for overseas users.

    You would need to deplatform foreign media organisations such as Russia Today, Global Times and CGTN.

    Finally, there would need to be eye-watering punitive damage done to corporates who acts as apologists for these countries. This would need to be multilateral. So the US should be prepared to blow up Facebook and Goldman Sachs, the UK HSBC and Germany Daimler-Benz or Deutsche Bank. They would need to pick a side.

    Given the heavy involvement of large corporates in setting policy, that’s quite a conundrum. More related posts here.

  • Beauty calendars of China + more things

    Chinese beauty calendars

    How China’s Beauty Calendars Defined an Era’s Aesthetics | SixthTone – the history of China’s beauty calendars is the history of China opening up and closing back down again. The beauty calendars aren’t high art or pornography like the Perelli calendar of old. But for the time, they were at the bleeding edge of changing social norms after Mau. The calendars declined when the Xi administration stopped state owned enterprises giving or receiving calendars.

    Business

    ‘Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism’: a book by Angela Zhang | Chillin’Competition – fascinating read on Chinese corporates the Chinese antitrust system

    Consumer behaviour

    Children Beating Up Robot Inspires New Escape Maneuver System – IEEE Spectrum – children are monsters at times. Really interesting article

    Legal

    Former Tencent employee ordered to pay US$167,000 for breaching non-compete pact after joining TikTok owner ByteDance | South China Morning Post – shocking. I hope ByteDance are picking up the tab for him. I am surprised that he lost, generally these contracts are hard to enforce. Secondly, the case wasn’t in Shenzhen where Tencent would win because that’s where their headquarters are, but in Beijing. Finally, the damages were surprisingly high

    Luxury

    Queen of the Night: One-of-a-Kind Porsche Taycan 4S Artcar by Richard Phillips Blossoms in Switzerland | Automobiles | RM Sotheby’s – Sotherby’s sees this as a direct line descendant of Janis Joplin’s painted Porsche 356; but given that this a brand art collaboration I see it more as a copy of the BMW Art Car project

    Why Gold Watches Are Increasing in Value and Demand – Robb Report – more of a opinion piece on why gold watches are have never had a better change of success than now due to increased market share

    Information security

    The UK Is Trying to Stop Facebook’s End-to-End Encryption  | WIRED – THE UK IS planning a new attack on end-to-end encryption, with the Home Office set to spearhead efforts designed to discourage Facebook from further rolling out the technology to its messaging apps. – Unsurprisingly Patel is using child molestors as its excuse. No words about how metadata and good police work can get around the limitations of encryption. When you take this in account with the new police bill going through parliament, it all looks exceptionally authoritarian in nature

    Suspected Chinese spies cover tracks in efforts to breach Vietnamese government | CyberScoop – more security related content here.

    UK

    Elite wars – The Ruffian – I understand why campaigners and commentators are upset by Sewell’s tone and by the over-managed press launch. But loudly complaining about this kind of thing while refusing to engage constructively with the arguments of the report seems irresponsibly trivial. After all, what’s at stake here is far more important than a dispute between elites over tone, terminology and media management. Everyone is in agreement that racism is a serious problem in Britain. Shouldn’t we focus our disagreements on what to do about it? – well worth reading the whole article and the reports that it links to. The Conversation covered most of the opposing views high points here: Race commission report: the rights and wrongs | The Conversation 

  • The split economy

    Split economy

    The split economy is used a term differentiate from the sharing economy. I first heard of it on the Robin Hood Snacks Daily podcast. The sharing economy has been discussed ad infinitum and is very popular. It encompasses high growth businesses like AirBnB, Uber and DoorDash.

    The split economy is used to differentiate itself from the sharing economy. They have some elements in common. Like the sharing economy, the split economy focuses on maximising the utilisation of assets. The difference is that the consumer isn’t paying for a just a service, but also fractional ownership of an underlying asset.

    An example would be fractional ownership of sports cars via ‘clubs’ :

    • Curvy Road
    • AutoXotica
    • Exotic Car Share

    Fractional ownership of art:

    • Feral Horses
    • Masterworks
    • ArtSquare.io

    None of these are necessarily ‘new’ business ideas, but they are now starting to get heat behind them.

    Pacaso

    Snacks Daily discusses a company called Pacaso. Pacaso buys high end properties and then divides it up into fractional ownership. They then charge a management fee to configure the home with personal pictures, a full fridge, fresh laundry and extensively cleaned. Its a sophisticated boutique experience, that is cheaper than full ownership, but with all the practical benefits.

    Pacaso

    Back in the day, Pacaso would have been described as a timeshare business. However the reputation of timeshares has been tainted by high pressure selling and criminality. Split ownership allows Pacaso to put distance between the timeshare sector and itself. It allows the business to ride the coat tails of valuations enjoyed by sharing economy companies.

    More similar posts here.

  • 2021 blogs that inspire me

    I wrote a blog post back in February 2014 that highlighted 40 blogs that inspired me, revisiting this post I decided to write about 2021 blogs that inspire me. But first how did the original list hold up in 2021?

    Original list in 2021

    Name / CategoryDescription
    Analysis 
    Wall Street Journal Corporate Intelligence blogNo longer exists, the link defaults to the Wall Street Journal front page.
    Edge Perspectives with John Hagel– No longer exists
    Monocle MonocolumnMonocle has kept the archive online, but the Monocolumn is no longer updated. It has been abandoned in favour of the Monocle Minute
    Organizations and MarketsOrganizations and Markets have their archive online but wrote their last post in 2016, ten years to the day when they first started writing posts
    Asia 
    AnalectsThe Analects last post was in November 2014
    Asia blogThe Asia Society have a blog which alternates between amazing photography from the region and analysis pieces with an academic / think tank type feel. It is still maintained
    Asian Security BlogStill sporadically posted to by Robert Kelly a Korean-based professor of international relations, it has some interesting posts analyzing the complex relationships across APAC. In 2017, became better known when his children gatecrashed a television interview he was doing via Skype with the BBC
    Bytes of ChinaNo longer available
    China Real TimeThe blog has disappeared and now diverts to the WSJ’s Asian news section.
    ChinaTechNewsChinaTechNews seems to have stopped at the end of 2020
    Hong Kong HustleStopped in 2017, but the archived posts are still available
    Jing DailyAll things luxury sector related in China.
    Jottings from the Granite StudioNow diverts to Jeremiah Jenne’s personal site
    May DailyMay Daily no longer exists
    Scene AsiaNo longer exists, instead it diverts to the WSJ home page
    Business 
    Andy KesslerBlog of the business author and former Wall Street analyst, mostly just posts the copy from his Wall Street Journal articles there now.
    Bronte CapitalAustralian authored blog with some interesting analysis on some of the business stories of the day with a very strong focus on US companies
    Strategyprofs.netThe archive is still available. The last post was written in 2016
    Union Square VenturesA mix of curated content and original analysis by staff from a New York-based venture capital firm
    Design 
    Cool ToolsKevin Kelly’s website which is a spiritual successor to the Whole Earth Catalog.
    designboomGreat new product site which cover product design to architecture products, handy to look through for inspiration
    DezeenSimilar to designboom but more focused on architecture
    IDSA Materials and Processes SectionNo longer active
    Thinking and SharingHasn’t been updated since November 2020
    Ideas 
    BBH LabsRandom assortment of posts from the innovation team at BBH, always something to think about
    ExcapiteIdeas of exploration in the network economy
    PARC blogBlog no longer active
    Insights 
    CEB Iconoculture Consumer Insights BlogMerged into GartnerGroup’s other blog posts
    Creative Culture InternationalNuggets of consumer behaviour insights from around the world
    GfK Insights BlogGlobal market research agency posts based on some of the research they carry out, has a mixed bag of content
    The comScore Data MineNo longer active
    WPP Reading RoomNo longer active
    Online 
    China Internet WatchThink Techcrunch for China
    China Social Media blogNo longer active
    Facebook Developer BlogLess of a pleasure, more of a professional necessity to try and keep with up with the latest developments on the Great Satan of social
    Technology 
    FluxxNo longer running a blog
    Infinite LoopArs Technica’s Apple-focused channel, quality analysis
    Michael GeistCanadian expert on intellectual property and online privacy. Blogs analysis with a North American focus
    Tech-On!Blog no longer published in English
    The WirecutterA ‘best of ‘ website that looks at different technology categories

    What surprised me about the 2012 list is how many blogs covering different aspects of China in terms of the technology scene, culture and online life have disappeared or stopped being updated. Despite the fact that now, more than ever, they are needed.

    Major media outlets have walked back from building blogs based on interest areas or personalities ( like a traditional newspaper columnist).

    By comparison, I have a compiled an exemplar list of inspirational 2021 blogs. I look at more but that would be ludicrously long to compile.

    2021 blogs that inspire me

    Name / CategoryDescription
    Analysis 
    Marginal RevolutionEconomics blog of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both of whom teach at George Mason University
    Naked CapitalismNaked Capitalism is an educated critique of post Reagan / Thatcher Chicago School of economics
    Global Risk InsightsA mix of current affairs and economics from an international team of policy wonks and economists
    LawfareCurrent affairs analysis in association with the Brookings Institute
    ProMarket A curated newsfeed of articles on the intersection of technology, policy and economics
    VoxEUEU focused policy blog under the auspices of the Centre for Economic Policy Research
    Asia
    Asian SentinelAsian Sentinel is edited by a couple of veteran Asia based journalists. The content comes from a number of experts in the region in specialisms such as finance, economics and policy.
    Chosun IlboEnglish language Korean newspaper
    Hong Kong Free PressThe Hong Kong Free Press is an English language online-only new site focusing on Hong Kong
    MetropolisEnglish language online magazine focused on life in Japan – culture rather than policy and news
    Jayne StarsEnglish language blog that collates Hong Kong celebrity news from Cantonese language media. It is was important for me to keep an eye on this when working in Hong Kong. It is also a good way to track the slow death of the Hong Kong domestic media industry.
    Nippon.comOnline magazine ran by the Nippon Communications Foundation
    PingWestChina-based English language site that specialises local technology sector news
    SoraNews24English language version of a Japanese news site that focuses on ‘fun, weird, and intriguing news from Asia, particularly Japan’. It has some great Japanese consumer insight content including retail experiences
    South China Morning PostThe South China Morning Post historically was the paper of record for Hong Kong. It’s medium-to-long term usefulness looks in question with the National Security Act and the Chinese government pressure for Jack Ma to divest media ownership
    Tech in AsiaEnglish language site that is focused on the South East Asian and East Asian technology sector 
    What’s On WeiboEnglish language site that provides insight into the top stories and memes trending on Chinese social media
    The Wire ChinaSubscription-based online Chinese news magazine covering business, policy and economic issues
    HKU Legal Scholarship BlogHong Kong University faculty of law blog on local developments
    Design
    Cool Hunting A mix of the unusual and cool from around the web
    Cool ToolsKevin Kelly’s website which is a spiritual successor to the Whole Earth Catalog.
    designboomGreat new product site which cover product design to architecture products, handy to look through for inspiration
    DezeenSimilar to designboom but more focused on architecture
    Core77Curated design and architecture
    Retro To GoProducts with a retro design and sensibility
    1Granary A magazine focused on profiling designers and artists
    ColossalColossal in their own words – “an international platform for contemporary art and visual expression that explores a vast range of creative disciplines.” 
    Design milkAn online magazine and e-commerce site focused on modern design
    DexignerOne of the OG design blogs started back in 2001
    Retro To Go Retro To Go curates vintage and new products that are retro influenced product designs
    Ideas
    Ad AgedGeorge Tannenbaum is a 40 year creative veteran in the advertising industry. His blog is a mix of smart thinking and ranting about ageism and other isms in the ad industry (there’s a lot of them to rant about)
    AeonAeon is a smart digital magazine run along the same principles as PBS or NPR in the US
    BaekdalManagement consultancy type content on the media industry, primarily aimed at publishers, but useful for ad people like yours truly
    Clot MagazineAn online magazine about art that uses ‘science’ as its media – full of interesting curios
    Creative Culture A mix of academics and consultants covering a wide range of cultural issues. I am never sure what I’ll find here, but it’s seldom dull.
    FuturismCuration of interesting stuff
    Hello FutureFrance Telecom has a blog about the bleeding edge of technology. Alongside the usual 5G flag waving you’d expect from a major mobile network operator there’s some thoughtful content
    Kellogg InsightArticles from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Many of which are well written
    KnowledgeArticles written by INSEAD teaching staff and alumni 
    Union Square VenturesVenture capital fund who write about some of the thinking that underpins their investment themes
    Yale University Press BlogA blog that covers the central ideas in the books that they publish. The articles go from current affairs to art, history and science.
    Technology
    Radio Free MobileDespite the name, covers technology and does some interesting business analysis. I really like the way everything is delivered in succinct bullet points
    Semiconductor DigestSemiconductors are the most overlooked, yet important part of technology today. Well worth keeping up with the latest developments here
    Chilling CompetitionAnalysis of the intersection between legal and technology, with a particular focus on anti-trust and competition law
    Tech.euEurope based technology and innovation news