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.

  • Nexta & things that caught my eye this week

    Nexta

    Nexta media operation and its role in the Belarus protests was the main article in this weekend’s FT magazine.

    FT magazine on Nexta
    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.

    Most of the Belarussians will be using handsets based on technology from Google. Google doesn’t believe in privacy (apart from the privacy of its executives) and has a viewpoint of data that most authoritarian regimes would appreciate.

    Old Hong Kong

    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.

    Talking of Japan, ASICS have a shoes that reminds me of the bindings used to hold bamboo scaffolding together and the weaving of bamboo screens. Asics and a Japanese architect made a shoe inspired by bamboo weaving.

    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.

  • Clubhouse & things that caught my eye this week

    Korean American security researcher Brian Pak looked at Clubhouse and some of the findings were very interesting. Pak posted a full analysis in Korean here. The key takeouts for me where:

    Some (probably early adopter) Koreans have been buying used iPhones so that they can try Clubhouse, since the app is currently iOS only.

    The concept of an audio chat app that isn’t new. Pak identified Clubhouse’s key strength as having an intuitive UI/UX and a large number of participants from various backgrounds.

    I found it interesting that Pak felt there might be technical difficulties in having Clubhouse for desktop (macOS / Windows) or Android. I suspect that the reason was more about managing the scaling of the app.

    Clubhouse is a closer to a mashup than a ‘real app’. It’s voice functions are based on Agora, a Chinese provider. Most of the rest of the features are using the Pubnub communications service platform. The way protocols have been handled was highlighted as a security risk. Stanford Internet Observatory got into this in more detail here.

    I can also recommend this coverage about how Clubhouse usage has evolved in Hong Kong, China, Japan and Nigeria.

    There was a major fall of snow in the US last week. It unfolded as a catastrophe across Texas. NBC’s New York affiliate set up a live stream at New York’s Time Square. It is amazing to zone out and watch. It could be considered to another entry in the slow TV genre pioneered by Norway’s public broadcaster NRK.

    I watched Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out Of My Head last week and wanted to track down some of the films in it. Here are some of them.

    Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain was a film about opposition to the Japanese invasion of China. filmed during the pre-communist phase of China.

    Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy is a Communist propaganda film describing how a communist infiltrated a bandit gang and helped the communists to destroy them. It was apparently based on an incident that happened during the Chinese civil war. Like the other Communist films featured here, it is extremely stylised using Peking opera techniques mixed with ballet.

    A ‘slave’ girl on Hainan island runs away and joins a female group of communist soldiers who are fighting a local warlord in The Red Detachment Of Women. The film was made just prior to the cultural revolution at Shanghai Tian Ma studio.

    https://youtu.be/zoPM9d18e9o

    Finally The East Is Red is musical dramatising from the Chinese communist party perspective; the decline of the Qing dynasty through to the communist takeover.

    The original film was produced in 1965, right before the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The prologue seems to have been added after the ‘Gang of Four’ were put on trial. There is certainly a touch of the classic MGM musical to the production style, alongside Beijing opera and ballet.

    Filipino brand Jollibee did a pandemic themed Valentine short films which was really clever. All of the films were made by local directors and are emblematic of the COVID-19 experience. Tonally it hits the right spot for the Philippines. What might seem to be too cute and emotional for UK audiences resonates well in that market. Thankfully, it isn’t the tear-jerking emotional rollercoaster that Thai ads can take you on.

    I particularly like the second one because of the twist in the plot.

    Jollibee’s overall approach on brand as media makes sense when you think about the nature of the Philippines media market and the good number of diaspora that they need to reach.

  • User domestication

    User domestication was an interesting phrase that I noticed in an essay about the growth of WhatsApp. In the essay the author highlighted a number of factors in WhatsApp’s success:

    • Having a proprietary messaging client that didn’t support industry standards for messaging such as the XMPP protocol supported by Google Talk. (Google later abandoned the XMPP open protocol itself in favour of its proprietary Google Hangouts).
    • WhatsApp had a low learning curve of adoption through to a well designed user experience.
    • The user experience of WhatsApp was easy to learn
    • WhatsApp worked across both Android and iOS devices which helped its adoption through network effects

    This led to a number of things, which the author identified as user domestication factors:

    • A high level of user dependence on WhatsApp
    • No control over the software. (it can’t be modified, it prevents migration to another platform – a la Facebook and people’s address book)
    • Exploitation of ‘captive users’ who would find it difficult to resist

    If all of this sounds familiar, its because it was the Facebook playbook from the get-go. Like organising export of your address book from Yahoo! to Facebook, but not the other way around.

    Messing around with iPad
    Captured attention

    The author makes clear that WhatsApp is just an illustrative example.

    This probably explains why the essay doesn’t seem to match up with the WhatsApp story pre-Facebook. Founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum originally had a nominal subscription model. Acton went on to help set up the Signal Foundation, after leaving WhatsApp post Facebook takeover. His reason for leaving was concerns over the monetisation of WhatsApp by Facebook.

    But I think that there can be little argument that Facebook thought of WhatsApp as a user domestication opportunity.

    The relationship that the media industry has with consumers through the use of DRM (digital rights management) is a similar form of user domestication mentioned in his essay.

    Another example of this ‘user domestication’ in action is the apparent failure of Google’s search choice screen to have any effect on its monopoly market share in Europe.

    It differs from previous generations of technology lock-in exercised by the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Apple in that the costs of these obvious upfront. In user domestication, the costs are less apparent and the value extraction happens on an ongoing basis.

    More information

    WhatsApp and the domestication of users

    WhatsApp founder Brian Action, says Facebook used him to get its acquisition past EU regulators | Techcrunch

  • Signal messenger + more things

    Signal privacy orientated messenger

    Signal has become a popular messaging clients among my contacts for privacy orientated messaging. I’ve shared this guide a number of times, so I thought I would share it here. More on Signal messaging here. I use Signal on my phone and my desktop computer, both of which are an integrated experience.

    Innovation

    FISCAL YEAR 2020 a great report by the UD Department of Defence – a U.S. business climate that has favored short-term shareholder earnings (versus long- term capital investment), deindustrialization, and an abstract, radical vision of “free trade,” without fair trade enforcement, have severely damaged America’s ability to arm itself today and in the future. Our national responses – off-shoring and out-sourcing – have been inadequate and ultimately self-defeating – punchy, but I don’t see much attention being paid to it (PDF)

    The Times view on institutions’ ties with China: Academic Decoupling | Comment | The Times – overall change in UK stance across elites

    Germany to help Europe invest ‘billions’ in chip manufacturing 

    Quad’ nations sign up for meta think-tank to advance ‘Techno-Democratic Statecraft’ • The Register – Universities and think tanks from Australia, the USA, Japan, and India have come together in a new group that together hopes to advance discussions on the intersection of information technology, regional security, and internet freedom. Dubbed the “Quad Tech Network”, the group is managed by the National Security College at The Australian National University, an organisation backed by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

    Technology

    China issues new anti-monopoly rules targeting its tech giants | Reuters – interesting how the global temperament turning against technology and e-tailing

    China Blocks Clubhouse App After Brief Flowering of Debate – The New York Times – At times, the conversation went off the rails, as when one man who identified as Taiwanese chimed in to curse out mainland Chinese people, before quickly signing off. But for the most part, users said that the app’s use of moderators and real-time voice sharing promoted a civility and intimacy lacking on other popular social media platforms like Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. – interesting given its reputation for racism and sexism

    Clubhouse is now blocked in China after a brief uncensored period | TechCrunch – they were a bit slow, obviously some of China’s project Golden Shield people need to reflect on their shortcomings.

    Brexit

    PRWeek poll: A third of PR businesses predict Brexit revenue hit | PR Week – “First, whereas previously the UK would always be the gateway for new entrants to the European market, we’re now seeing Germany emerge on par as the primary entry point. Historically, Germany would almost always be the secondary priority after the UK, then followed by France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. “Second, we’ve seen clients proactively ask to have multinational teams lead their account in Europe, as opposed to the traditional approach of having a UK-led European approach. In our mind, this is because the UK no longer has the same authority to lead. “This is one of the softer impacts of Brexit in terms of the UK’s perceived influence and leadership in the region.” Mark Pinsent, managing director of The Hoffman Agency Europe, has also noticed a trend for UK-based clients to “explicitly tell us that they’re keen to be positioned as European companies rather than UK”. “That can be tricky if they’re headquartered in the UK [or] don’t have a significant presence on mainland Europe,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see whether, over time, the UK becomes less of a priority market for international businesses looking to market in Europe… certainly for UK-founded start-ups, I could see it accelerating their need to have EU-based businesses.” – the psychology of the UK’s diminished image is fascinating

    Culture

    Kaffeine | Rave culture and specialty coffee a comparison – nice verbal history of the Australian wave of London specialty coffee shops. It is interesting to see how specialty coffee went mainstream over time

    Luxury & streetwear

    New Balance wins $3.9m in damages from China logo copycats | Financial Times – The two defendants, Fujian-based footwear maker New Barlun and its distributor Shanghai Shiyi Trade, have expanded quickly in China’s smaller cities and sold knock off shoes at below half the price of New Balance. – Damages are still pretty low, only 2.5m pounds or so

    Luxury’s Involvement in Resell Could Be the Beginning of the End – I had written about peak streetwear a while ago

  • Golden bull & things that caught my eye this week

    Digital golden bull at Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur & Chinese new year

    The golden bull in question is on the digital screens of Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pavilion is an upscale shopping area and the animation was designed to tie into the year of the ox in the Chinese lunar calendar.

    The golden bull is supposed to be auspicious and is seen to break through the coronavirus that affected 2020.

    https://youtu.be/llFkwcAlFSk
    Pavilion Kuala Lumpur

    The golden bull execution is very similar to an installation done by a Chinese property developer that I found earlier this year. Both rely on corner screens and on understanding the viewing angle of pedestrian footfall streaming past the animation.

    Following on from my post collating adverts celebrating Chinese new year last week, Radii China had some additional suggestions that came out after I had written my original post. Let’s hope that 2021 lives up to the auspicious promise of the golden bull.

    Design & culture

    The Royal Shakespeare Company is looking at using a virtual set for a performance based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. RSC’s Dream will be performed live from March 12 – 20, 2021. It shows how the arts are looking to adapt to a COVID world and experimenting with cutting edge technology.

    RSC – Dream trailer

    My friend Arun has released a COVID inspired track available for purchase from Underbelly Music on Bandcamp. Check out the accompanying video here.

    Coffee Hype x Underbelly

    This weekend I will be watching the latest Adam Curtis documentary series – BBC iPlayer – Cant Get You Out of My Head it’s the only thing that I bother watching on the BBC now.

    Consumer behaviour

    Really interesting drill down into the American middle class by the Brookings Institute that came up with some concerning findings. I am slowly working my way through The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J Gordon and much of this Brooking Institute findings fits in with this.

    Brookings Institute Middle Class Monitor