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.

  • New Yorks information for Amazon + more

    New Yorks information for Amazon – crazy number of data points and a must see for any planner looking at campaigns targeting New Yorkers (PDF). From a more sinister point of view about New Yorks information for Amazon – it shows a corporate culture that’s out of control.

    Marriott Data Breach Is Traced to Chinese Hackers as U.S. Readies Crackdown on Beijing – The New York Times – The Trump administration also plans to declassify intelligence reports to reveal Chinese efforts dating to at least 2014 to build a database containing names of executives and American government officials with security clearances – (paywall)

    ‘Agencies are shitting themselves’: SCA dean Marc Lewis on tutoring for today’s ad world | The Drum One of the biggest pitfalls in the industry is “worshipping at the altar of wanky new tech”

    Just who is Huawei listening to? | Business | The Sunday Times – “In the event of an international crisis — say, if the Chinese were to invade Taiwan — if you own a fleet of thousands and thousands of routers, you can launch service-denial attacks on a massive scale,” said Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University. “You can potentially make the internet unavailable for days or weeks.”

    A bunch of millennials explained in a survey why they despise phone calls – BGR – basically poor social skills

    Researchers Found a Way to Shrink a Supercomputer to the Size of a Laptop | Futurism – interesting, though parallelism presents problems for software

    Honda, CalTech and NASA’s JPL might have a real alternative to Li-ion batteries – Roadshow – great opportunity in terms of energy density but copper and more particularly lanthanum are a materials supply chain bottle neck. One can see how China disrupted Japan’s access to rare metals years ago which affected the use of magnets in high-technology products

    The Chinese Social Network – Hacker Noon – the story of Pony Ma

    Jack Poulson, ex Google, says management obsessed with stopping leaks – Business Insider – indicating a crisis in culture and leadership. The way Google is dealing with it is by stopping people knowing about the issues

    More technology related content here.

  • Meng Wenzhou & things from last week

    Meng Wanzhou and China

    I’ve made a conscious decision to ignore Sabrina Meng Wanzhou and her forthcoming extradition to the US. I had met Meng Wenzhou when she was called Cathy. I also decided to ignore Starwood’s database of really private data allegedly being pwnd by Chinese intelligence. Unsurprisingly Brexit – which at the moment looks like an Austin Allegro hitting a brick wall at a moderate speed, collapsing like a crisp packet and killing its union jack clad occupants

    On to things that made up my week:

    Back in the day, consumer products brands used to do a lot of advertising to build brand equity. It is interesting that marketing thinking is starting to sway back to that being a good idea again. Reality check, it never was a bad idea, but marketers focused too much on short term effectiveness in isolation. Agencies were fine with this due to the profits available on digital media sales.

    An example of the power in brand advertising was work by McCann Worldgroup in Hong Kong for Nescafe Black. Which paid homage to a well known hair dye advert from the 1980s. Bigen hair dye went big on reach and repetition during the 1980s; its recall and memorability helps Nescafe’s ad work 30 years later. Actor Kenneth Tsang is probably not disappointed by the ongoing work either.

    This video on Amazon sponsored brands ad format reminds me a lot of the arbitrage opportunities that used to be common in early search advertising. It goes to underscore how much Amazon has taken away from Google et al in terms of product and shopping related searches.

    MIT released a video on how self driving cars can work on country roads (without the complex prebuilt LIDAR maps associated with current driverless cars efforts)

    Neopets was one of them child oriented social environments with games of a similar vintage to Habbo Hotel and Disney’s Club Penguin. It also has an odd startup story behind it. Watch the video and be amazed. More online related stories here.

    Wu-Tang Clan celebrate the 25th anniversary of their break out album 36 Chambers  with an appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk concert.

  • The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett

    The Dark Net had been sitting on my shelf for a while. Jamie Bartlett works at Demos, has written for The Telegraph and writes books looking at the intersection between radical politics and technology.

    The Dark Net provides an overview of how politics and social forces have adapted to the internet. Bartlett is largely non-judgemental. In some respects it seemed to a series of essays that followed the Mondo ethos of documentary media. Something that’s factual, yet chosen for shock or entertainment. This was especially popular in the 1960s as these films competed for audiences against early television programmes across Europe and the US in the early 1960s. 

    It felt like some of the content was put in to spice book up, which is the reason why I thought it was similar to Cavara, Prosperi and Jacopetti’s film Mondo Cane 50 years earlier.

    Libertarianism was beneficial to the early web:

    • Privacy infrastructure including strong cryptography. This enabled everything from e-commerce and banking to secure communications. This has built new businesses, made banking and share dealing more convenient and helped protect people from authoritarian regimes. The downside is that it also makes criminal activity harder to detect than in the clear communications, but then so does a hand passed note with paper and a pencil
    • Fighting surveillance legislation – unfortunately authoritarian regimes caught on fast the potential of the web, so their efforts have been uneven

    The Dark Net shows how the libertarianism that spawned the early web has:

    • Weaponised social interactions as the network of people online grew massively
    • Driven extreme marketplaces, due to the lack of regulation and lack of similar values with early netizens
    • Drove the development and adoption of cryptocurrency. More accurately facilitated the adoption of cryptocurrency. A lack of trust in offline institutions like banks and governments accelerated the adoption of cryptocurrency as a store of wealth
    • Facilitated reinforcing communities to encourage suicide, racial hatred and eating disorders

    More security related content here.

  • 2018 Chinese consumers insights + more

    Who is winning more 2018 Chinese Consumers? – Global site – Kantar Worldpanel – top line is that western FMCG brands are growing 2018 China consumers market share at a slower rate than their local competitors. Any of them that banging on about 2018 Chinese consumers as a strategic market long term have another think coming. Expect these Chinese brands to go after emerging markets in Southeast Asia and Africa later on. More on consumer behaviour here.

    Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the Collapse of the Tech Mythology – The Atlantic – opportunity for public affairs and public relations industries

    Chart: Is TV’s Reign Nearing Its End? | Statista – the conclusion on this is a bit off base. What is TV? Is it the TV set, is it broadcast infrastructure or is it passive content consumption. IPTV is an extension of TV rather than something new. Is there really that much difference between Amazon Prime and cable TV or nowTV. Is Netflix that much different to HBO? Broadcast networks (terrestrial and satellite) cover more of the population in most western countries than mobile networks, or wired broadband. The technology moves a lot slower which makes have a TV that will last a decade or more an attractive proposition. By comparison my parents have an iPad that is six years old and Apple no longer supports

    Cognitive Training Does Not Enhance General Cognition: Trends in Cognitive Sciences – bang goes a parents excuse for more gaming

    Two great articles on the Dolce & Gabbana Chinese adverts and how it all blew up

    LinkedIn cuts off email address exports with new privacy setting | TechCrunch – interesting move. Especially given that LinkedIn had complained about Facebook doing a similar tactic. Web 2.0 data portability is dead and buried according to LinkedIn. The fit with Microsoft becomes apparent.

  • Cringely Red Hat analysis + more

    I, Cringely Red Hat takes over IBM – I, Cringely – interesting Cringely Red Hat analysis. The IBM buyout of Red Hat is about cultural rejuvenation. In return, Red Hat gets scale. More related content by Cringely on IBM here. Red Hat is one of a few businesses that have managed to build themselves on open source and have a success exit. Open Source Software is a difficult category to build a successful enterprise of business of the ilk of Red Hat.

    iOS vs. Windows – Input and Office – Radio Free Mobile – no real surprise here. One only has to go back to the late 1970s / early 1980s experience of the HP 150 mini computer with a touch screen to see the productivity issue that the Microsoft Surface represents. Keyboards work, and they work better now that more people are reasonable touch typists. When you pair them with a GUI, you want the cursor to be controlled from close to the keyboard. You’re more likely to have touchpads rather than touching the screen. Tablets are still interesting as consumption devices, the question is what the market is?

    Oath will soon be rebranded as Verizon Media Group – The Verge – what is more interesting is how Verizon changes management approach (presumably after losing Tim Armstrong). It no longer feels ‘media industry’. It is interesting that Verizon has put its own name on the business. If it fails it will adversely affect the corporate brand. Oath gave them a bit of brand space. More related content here.

    Snapchat Lenses are coming to the desktop and Twitch streams | TechRadar – integration with Twitch will fuel further speculation on an imminent Amazon buy-out, even though it doesn’t make that much sense on paper. Twitch does start to look as if it has similar capabilities to Chinese live streaming social selling platforms.