Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • WeChatlization

    WeChatlization is a term that I heard from Xinhua News journalist Wang Zichen. He shared the term on a stream of tweets that I have compiled into a quote below.

    If nobody has said this before, I am gonna coin the term WeChatlization: a growing number of Chinese public discourse is increasingly going – firstly if not exclusively – to the WeChat part of the Internet, at the cost of the traditional Google/Baidu searchable World Wide Web.

    The numerous and increasing amount of 微信公众号, called by WeChat itself as WeChat “Official Accounts” but in fact WeChat blogs, are gradually eroding the territory of traditional dotcom Internet sites.

    WeChat blogs are effectively not searchable via traditional search engines like Google or Baidu. So for the purpose of getting information, one gotta adapt to the change.

    Example No.1: the World Peace Forum starting today at Tsinghua University in Beijing doesn’t appear to have an updated dotcom, dotedu, or whatever site, but you will find the list of speakers at their WeChat blog

    Wang Zichen via Twitter.

    WeChatlization poses a number of challenges to the rest of the world and the open web. It makes information harder to find than the open web. It cripples opportunities for other Chinese information startups. Its not healthy, but then neither is Meta. Which brings us to our next point WeChatlization isn’t a new phenomenon. Prior to the open web taking hold there were closed communities on CompuServe, Prodigy and even AOL. For the duration of Yahoo! Messenger, there was a vibrant community underpinning the brokerage of oil to fuel ships.

    Outside of China you see media and communities that only exist, or publish first on Facebook. This is particularly true for lifestyle as well as current affairs based communities. Both of which are just as opaque to search engines as WeChat. Like WeChat, Facebook’s internal search mechanism leaves a lot to be desired.

    Prior to that there was a similar phenomenon with MySpace and Friendster. For many years after its peak in popularity, MySpace still hosted a vibrant community of HR professionals attached to the CIPD.

    You seem a similar phenomenon in AltspaceVR, a Microsoft owned VR social network that has hosted in-platform only business conferences. You have had similar kinds of happenings in games like Fortnite and both American electioneering and Hong Kong political protests happened virtually in Animal Crossing.

    All of this puts the communities under the arbitrary rules of the platform owner, be it the constraints that support an authoritarian government or a rapacious online advertising model. The ethics challenge the perception of open communications that these platforms allege to promise each other. More related content here.

  • Female voices impact + more news

    Pinay female voices power

    The Philippines’ secret weapon against Chinese incursions | The Economist – having women radio operators seem to be more successful and less likely to rise tensions, seems to be down to training and the nature of female voices. It reminded me of how early HCI experiments by DARPA found that jet fighter pilots responded best to ‘mature’ female voices on warning alerts. An interesting aside is that the radio altimeter on Airbus aircraft actually use an English mature male voice instead.

    Academic research gives us an idea of what kind of female voices are likely to be more effective. Maybe this authority is conveyed by the female radio operator training and the female voices selected by the Coastguard?

    Women with masculine voice are perceived to be more rational and persuasive than those with feminine voice. In addition, masculine voice is rated as more competent than feminine voice, regardless of the actual gender 

    It’s not What It Speaks, but It’s How It Speaks: A Study into Smartphone Voice-User Interfaces (VUI) by Jaeyeol Jeong & Dong-Hee Shin of Department of Interaction ScienceSungkyunkwan University, Seoul,Korea (2015)

    Other research suggested that a preference for female voices occurred over time, this might be due to technological change in voices. The heavily synthesised ‘Speak n Spell’ type voices were male, better technology allowed for great choices and detail in female voices to be conveyed.

    …the survey found that people preferred human-like, happy, empathetic voices with higher pitches. However, these preferences were not static; for instance, user preference for voice gender changed over time from masculine voices to more feminine ones. Based on these findings, the researchers were able to formulate a high-level framework to classify different types of interactions across various computer-based technologies

    The role of computer voice in the future of speech-based human-computer interaction – Tokyo Institute of Technology

    Other research that it is attitude rather than a female voice that matters. Which begs the question is it compliance to the radio operator training rather than a female voice that is more important in this context? Filipino culture has a certain amount of machismo and having female voices delivering the radio instructions might be a way around this dilemma.

    introvert participants rated the introvert computer voice as more attractive, credible, and informative, while the extrovert participants rated the extrovert voice more highly. Expanding on these findings, it was found that the personality conveyed by the voice was the dominant percept

    Voice as a design material : sociophonetic inspired design strategies in Human-Computer Interaction by Selina Sutton, Paul Foulkes and David Kirk of the University of York presented at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019). (PDF)

    The use of female voices in this way could be accused of playing to sexist tropes

    China

    Another day, another reminder of how Brand China has deteriorated – Fawning and complacent, the West has eased China’s path to power | The Sunday Times – while the statement is true, it also shows how much the tone has changed towards China amongst UK political elites

    China goes on the defensive as Covid vaccine diplomacy backfires | The Times – Beijing’s hopes of winning favour by helping the world’s poorer nations out of the pandemic have been hamstrung by questions over the efficacy of the jabs on offer

    Alleged assault on scientists overshadows China’s space race success | Financial Times – Police detained Zhang Tao, chair and party secretary at China Aerospace Investment Holdings, for his alleged attacks on Wu Meirong and Wang Jinnian last month, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. Wang and Wu had refused to recommend Zhang for membership of the International Academy of Astronautics, a Stockholm-based group that recognises distinguished scientists

    For China’s Business Elites, Staying Out of Politics Is No Longer an Option – The New York Times – The Chinese internet immediately savaged Didi and Ms. Liu — and then Mr. Liu. A hashtag, #Didiapppulledfromappstores, which was started by the official People’s Daily, was viewed more than one billion times over a 24-hour period on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Weibo users called Didi a “traitor” and a “walking dog of the United States.” They urged the government to also punish Mr. Liu for selling out national interests

    Underground front: the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong – Continuing to operate secretly in Hong Kong can only cause unnecessary discomfort. Hong Kong people already accept the CCP’s undoubted authority in leading the affairs of state. While the party appreciates that Hong Kong needs to function differently from the mainland, its basic instincts, which are Leninist in nature, make it difficult for the party apparatus not to over- extend its reach into the city’s public affairs. The sharpest point of departure between the party’s way and Hong Kong’s way arises from their different governing experience. (PDF)

    Consumer behaviour

    Japanese fax fans rally to defence of much-maligned machine | Japan | The Guardian – Members of the resistance said there were concerns over the security of sensitive information and “anxiety over the communication environment” if, as the government had requested, they switched exclusively to email. Japanese ministries and agencies use faxes when handling highly confidential information, including court procedures and police work, and the Hokkaido Shimbun said there were fears that exclusively online communication would result in security lapses

    Patriotism Abroad: Overseas Chinese Students’ Encounters With Criticisms of China – Henry Chiu Hail, 2015 – research on international education suggests that host country students’ lack of interest in talking to international students is a major cause of international student segregation. Some Chinese international students, however, complain that although host students want to talk with them about China, they often exhibit misinformed, prejudiced and offensive views of Chinese current events. This has occasionally led to tensions between Chinese international students and host communities. Drawing on interviews and open-ended surveys of Chinese students at an American university, this study shows a variety of positive and negative cross-national interactions and uses social identity theory to explain why tensions may arise. Negative reactions to hearing criticism of one’s home country are often motivated by concerns for status, loyalty, harmony, or utilitarian politics. However, fostering a common group identity and the perception of mutual benevolence among students from different countries can promote positive cross-national interaction. Furthermore, international students may learn more about democracy and human rights through observing the host society rather than directly discussing these topics with host country members – basically the delta between western perceptions of China, versus domestic Chinese propaganda is going to drive that wedge deeper. Universities have Chinese students purely for the money as there is minimal wider benefit to their domestic student body. Which begs wider questions about the purpose and morality of many western third level education institutions

    Culture

    Trese: the true crime and folklore behind Netflix’s… – The Face – it reminded me of the animated Blade series and Ghost in The Shell. The Philippines could be an anime powerhouse

    Finance

    China’s Big Tech Crackdown Puts Dozens of U.S. IPOs at Risk – Bloomberg – “The Chinese government could have stopped the IPOs from happening, like how they did with Ant,” said Sharif Farha, a Dubai-based portfolio manager at Safehouse Global Consumer Fund. “Instead, they allowed global investors to take pain, and consequently have broken trust with a lot of foreign investors. While we did not participate in any of these listings, we would imagine that several funds would consider exiting.” – it makes the Goldman Sachs ICBC deal look even more sketchy

    China Mulls Closing Loophole Tech Giants Use for U.S. IPOs – Bloomberg – on one hand I get it. Mainland Chinese are creating bubbles in areas like property and have poor returns because they don’t have stocks or ETFs that they can invest in. On the other hand this burns early stage foreign investors to the ground as they can no longer exit their money from China.

    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little VIEs | Financial Times – not terribly surprising. VIEs are the vehicle that Chinese companies use to go public abroad

    Chinese companies listing in the U.S. like DiDi face audit concerns – Protocol – basically you don’t know what you’re buying

    UK advertising watchdog to crack down on misleading crypto marketing | Financial Times

    Hong Kong

    Vitasoy faces boycott in mainland China following stabbing in HK | PR | Campaign Asia – Following the incident, an undated internal memo was circulated among Vitasoy employees expressing condolences to Leung’s family. A translated version of the memo, which leaked onto Chinese social media, mentions that “human resources has contacted [Leung’s] family and will follow up and provide assistance when needed.” The internal memo proved controversial, as Chinese social media users accused the brand of condoning violence and defending anti-China sentiments. – the red guard are already here. This wasn’t an endorsement of his act, but sympathy with the loss and grief that his parents must be feeling as they try and make sense of his actions.

    Crypto Keepers’ NFT-Backed Drama Series Hatched by AMM Global – Variety – the production company spun out of Hong Kong’s Asia Television – a former free to air TV station. Meanwhile in the UK, I heard that a production company is looking for people how have lost the password to their cryptocurrency wallet.

    Ideas

    If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals – Kevin Drum ….Over the last four years, white liberals have become a larger and larger share of the Democratic Party….And since white voters are sorting on ideology more than nonwhite voters, we’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of “racial resentment.” So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us. 

    ….If Democrats elevate issues or theories that a large minority of nonwhite voters reject, it’s going to be hard to keep those margins….Black conservatives and Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do – well worth a more in-depth read

    Culture Wars are Long Wars – The Scholar’s Stage – Democrats under 40 take socialism very seriously. The Great Recession was their formative event; the old orthodoxy did not seem equal to the fear and heartache it caused. Thus, gradually, the younger cohorts have been won over to the socialist cause.5 All that keeps the socialists at bay is the power of their elders. That power cannot last. At some point in the next decade the transition point will arrive. Gradually will become suddenly, and America’s most popular party will be openly run by socialists – I don’t agree with a lot of the post, but it provides an interesting prespective

    Bristol Unpacked on whether white working class people are shut out of the equality debate, with Hartcliffe’s award winning filmmaker Paul Holbrook – The Bristol Cable – far too short a discussion session as podcast, it felt like they were just scratching the surface with this recording

    Erik Prince Had Pitched $10 Billion Private Army in Ukraine: Time – everything he does seems like it’s taken from the plot from William Gibson’s sprawl trilogy

    Innovation

    Institute for New Economic Thinking | How Intel finkncialised and lost its leadership in semiconductor technology – The root of Intel’s failure in organizational integration lies in the financialized character of a third social condition of innovative enterprise, strategic control. Accepting stock yield as the measure of enterprise performance, in recent years Intel’s senior executives who exercise strategic control have lacked both the incentive and, increasingly we would argue, the ability, to implement innovative investment strategies through organizational integration. 

    Executive stock-based pay, in the form of stock options and stock awards, has created incentives for Intel’s CEOs to do large-scale buybacks to give manipulative boosts to the company’s stock price. Table 3 documents the total compensation, including realized gains from stock options and stock awards, of Intel’s CEOs over the past three decades

    Ireland

    Irish Times under fire for page of China propaganda | Ireland | The Sunday Times – The newspaper, whose rate card sets a full-page colour ad at €34,000, ran the paid-for-content on page five of its news section under an “advertisement” heading last Thursday. The accompanying article by He Xiangdong, the Chinese ambassador, claimed the CCP enjoyed “solid” support from its people, and highlighted China’s vastly improved standards of living in recent decades – propaganda from draconian empires doesn’t go down that well in Ireland

    Luxury

    Supreme Italia Founders Sentences to Jail in Court | High Snobriety – this has been running for a long time. The key challenge was that they were headquartered in the UK. They could have got around this by being headquartered in a market that allows first registration as legitimacy for brands. More related content here.

    Philippines

    Duterte’s Pivot to China Yet to Deliver Promised Billions in Infrastructure – Bloomberg – from a Chinese communist perspective, why should they? They aren’t that good at being good to their word. Secondly, they are likely to view the Duterte regime as a vassal state and are getting everything they want out of the Philippines anyway

    Security

    Update Regarding VSA Security Incident | Kaseya – over 1,500 companies affected

    Code in huge ransomware attack written to avoid computers that use Russian, says new report – which begs the following questions / hypotheses? Are they in cahoots with Russian government? Was it that they didn’t want their own lives disrupted? Or are they petrified of the Russian security services coming after them, but relatively sanguine about foreign security services and law enforcement

    Technology

    The AI Wolf that Refuses to Play the Game Goes Viral – Google Docs – surely an issue of game design in terms of the way behaviours were rewarded and penalised rather than machine learning?

    The Tech Cold War’s ‘Most Complicated Machine’ That’s Out of China’s Reach – The New York Times – a great profile of ASML

    Musk has ‘mesmerised’ UK over electric power, says JCB chair | Financial Times – there’s a lot not to like about Lord Anthony Bamford, but I agree with him on this. Companies like BMW managed to extend this to cars. Bamford should be pitching this where there are hydrogen power plans like ireland

  • Machine learning powered services + more

    Machine learning powered services

    Intelligent Relations – Matt Muir nails this in his take down of their machine learning powered media relations platform – Vapid, largely-pointless busywork which despite its almost universal lack of import is nonetheless treated by its practitioners as somehow REALLY VITAL and with a reverence normally reserved for stuff that matters rather than with the disregard appropriate for an industry staffed largely by double-figure-IQ morons. Anyway, that’s all by way of preamble to the introduction of Intelligent Relations, a new company which is set to make PR even worse if you can imagine it. Intelligent Relations (it sounds…it sounds like an escort agency for the sort of people who bother applying to Mensa, is what it sounds like) is PR, but with AI! That’s right, AI! The MAGICAL SECRET SAUCE that makes EVERYTHING BETTER and definitely isn’t a sign that someone is attempting to sell you some magic beans! Just listen to this – “GPT-Powered Outreach, 24/7 analysis of all relevant public event data to identify opportunities and pitch your company’s stories faster than the competition…Relentless customized global outreach based on AI-ranked relevancy to your brand. Generate responses that start, nurture, and build personal relationships with media influencers. Put your execs and your company in the heart of the conversation. No agency. You own your relationships – not your PR firm…Precisely worded campaigns, aggressively scaled with technology. Faster than humans, more personal than email blasts.” So, er, you are outsourcing the writing of pitch emails, and followups, to a machine? Have, er, you read any non-tweaked GPT-3 generated copy recently? – All of this stuff about machine learning powered media relations reminded me of the start of my agency career.

    I was working with an agency that was part of the Interpublic Group. We were riding the technology boom of the mid-to-late 1990s. This was a series of booms that were inter-related.

    • Telecoms boom, came from deregulation, the rise of data services, globalisation and the internet
    • Enterprise software boom driven by Moore’s Law, the ability to interconnect systems and exchange data at rates previously unseen. There was a strong incentive to replace old systems due to concerns about the millennium bug
    • Mobile boom as GSM networks and their CDMA equivalent democratised the mobile phone and allowed for nascent data services
    • The dot.com boom as companies built service layers over the top of data networks. Much of the ambition was way ahead of where technology was
    • Hardware boom. Businesses and consumers needed to get online

    Our CEO at the time Larry Weber came over to the office in Covent Garden, met clients and held court. He turns around to the junior staff and tells them how soon they won’t have to worry about manually contacting journalists or compiling status reports. Instead, the contact work will be outsourced to the Philippines (thanks to the telecoms boom). And data that was entered once in the company intranet WeberWorks would through the power of Lotus Notes be diced into the reports that the clients needed.

    WeberWorks in its first iteration was a proof of concept, not a viable product. Though I believe that the successor agency Weber Shandwick stuck with developing the platform.

    22 years later and agency life faces much the same problems, except an algorithm is touted to replace Filipino call centre workers in this scenario. What does machine learning powered media relations have that a Filipino call centre doesn’t? How will the PR profession grow when the on-ramp for people to learn how it works is now taken over by a machine learning powered media relations service instead?

    A lot of PR technology is based on the expectation that (machine learning powered) content will be fed into a media sausage factory and coverage will come out. But relationships are important, as journalists get hundreds of pitches and press releases per day.

    Consumer behaviour

    Phoenix eyes’ on catwalk of mainland academy’s fashion gala draw fire for insulting China ｜Appledaily – Some netizens accused the university of humiliating China after a video of the event on YouTube showed that most of the models either had an eye shape known as phoenix eyes, or were using eyeliner to present the same appearance. The eye shape, which is identified by a slight upward lift at the outer corner of the eye, is considered a desirable facial feature. However, some people regard it as a harmful stereotype reinforced by Western culture and the fashion industry. One influential blogger on Weibo, China’s dominant social media platform, said that because this look conforms with the stereotypes of ethnic Asians it carries a meaning of serious humiliation – this might be what passes for woke in China. The story was originally published in the English version of the Apple Daily Hong Kong on June 21, 2021 three days before the paper closed down. I have linked to to a Wayback Machine archive of the article.

    Political trolling twice as popular as positivity, study suggests – BBC News – unsurprising as taps into system 1 thinking

    Economics

    Competition and concentration | Financial Times – The 1980s financialisation of the US economy created a mindset that manufacturing did not matter — and that it should therefore be shifted to lower-cost labour markets. The high value-added stuff, including R&D, would remain onshore. It didn’t turn out like that. Like any other activity in life, manufacturers learn by doing, which means that the most effective innovation usually takes place alongside production. That’s why so many of America’s most impressive companies, including Intel, shifted a lot of their R&D to China – great take on globalisation here. It also gives a sense of where the FT’s view is on the process

    Private equity ‘raid’ on UK companies sparks furious row in City | Financial Times – best quote in the comments ‘The British should be relieved to have their assets stripped by relatively familiar, relatively transparent organizations. It may be the Chinese next.’

    The Evolution of Corruption in China | Foreign Affairs – corruption comes in distinct flavors, each exerting different social and economic harms. The public is familiar with three main types. The first is petty theft: police officers shaking down people on the street, for example. The second is grand theft: national elites siphoning off massive sums from public treasuries into private accounts overseas. The third is speed money: petty bribes paid to regular officials to bypass red tape and delays and grease the wheels of bureaucracy. All three types are illegal, vociferously condemned, and rampant in poor countries. But corruption comes in another, more elusive variety: access money. In this kind of transaction, capitalists offer high-stakes rewards to powerful officials in exchange not just for speed but also for access to exclusive, lucrative privileges, including cheap credit, land grants, monopoly rights, procurement contracts, tax breaks, and the like. Access money can manifest in illegal forms, such as massive bribes and kickbacks, but it also exists in perfectly legal forms – I was thinking of the favoured firms during the British empire and the chaebols during the Park presidency in South Korea. The chumocracy of UK politics is closer to speed money

    Ideas

    Digital Addiction Hunt Allcott, Matthew Gentzkow, and Lena Song (NBER.org working paper) – Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are addictive. We develop an economic model of digital addiction and estimate it using a randomized experiment. Temporary incentives to reduce social media use have persistent effects, suggesting social media are habit forming. Allowing people to set limits on their future screen time substantially reduces use, suggesting self-control problems. Additional evidence suggests people are inattentive to habit formation and partially unaware of self-control problems. Looking at these facts through the lens of our model suggests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use. – or in other words social media is like big food, the illegal drugs industry, alcohol, tobacco and gambling (PDF)

    Innovation

    Losing sight of the Future – Noahpinion – interesting article but the author forgets about energy density as an issue in their own predictions whilst mentioning it as a flaw in prior ones

    Marketing

    The fashion marketing shake-up: As Instagram, Facebook costs surge, where next? | Vogue Business – marketing inflation is hitting the fashion industry as platform and influencer costs surge, but sales don’t. More online related content here.

    North Face Owner Pulled Xinjiang Criticism, Then Reinstated It – WSJ – VF Brands struggling to navigate divergent Chinese and western markets. Its not been a good week for VF Brands as the Futurelight logo court case with Futura is bring a lot of unwelcome attention to the North Face brand and may blow on to its Supreme brand.

    McDonald’s, Wendy’s Cut Back Value Meals, Focus on Pricier Food – this is partly inflation. But I think that they are working an angle to squeeze premium burger brands: Five Guys, Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), Byron Burger and similar

    Retailing

    S.Korea retailer E-Mart buys eBay’s S.Korean business for $3 bln | Reuters – purchased by Shinsegae – part of Samsung chaebol

    Technology

    Panasonic defends $7bn Blue Yonder deal after questions over price | Financial Times – interesting that Panasonic bought Blue Yonder. Blue Yonder is a supply chain software provider

    Wireless

    EE to reintroduce Europe roaming charges in January – BBC News – EE, which is part of BT Group, previously said it had no plans to reintroduce roaming charges in Europe. – No plans meant that they didn’t have their act together at that time, typical BT in other words

  • Chanel + more news

    Chanel

    Chanel invested $1.1 billion during a pandemic. Here’s where and why | Vogue Business – new client-facing tools like concierge shopping services and an app linking existing clients with fashion advisors, store upgrades, including the purchase of its New Bond Street store in London, a new fashion, watches and fine jewellery store in Beverly Hills planned for next year, a new Paris manufacturing hub for artisans called 19M, creative collections and an ongoing commitment to sustainability – Chanel has been making some smart moves, when most other brands; even luxury ones were hunkered down. Chanel is looking to come out of the blocks strong. The new manufacturing hub is going to drive innovation and creativity at Chanel for years. The new Chanel French manufacturing facility is a world away from Burberry and Balenciaga manufacturing in China. I think that the Chanel investment in real world retail indicates the continued importance of experience in luxury retailing. It is also interesting that Chanel wasn’t making moves into casual luxury a la Kenzo, Dior or Louis Vuitton. This Chanel development will be worth keeping an eye on.

    Consumer behaviour

    George Packer: The Four Americas – The Atlantic – the sunny narrative of Free America shone on, its policies eroded the way of life of many of its adherents. The disappearance of secure employment and small businesses destroyed communities. The civic associations that Tocqueville identified as the antidote to individualism died with the jobs. When towns lost their Main Street drugstores and restaurants to Walgreens and Wendy’s in the mall out on the highway, they also lost their Rotary Club and newspaper—the local institutions of self-government. This hollowing-out exposed them to an epidemic of aloneness, physical and psychological. Isolation bred distrust in the old sources of authority—school, church, union, bank, media. – this is a really great read

    Government, which did so little for ordinary Americans, was still the enemy, along with “governing elites.” But for the sinking working class, freedom lost whatever economic meaning it had once had. It was a matter of personal dignity, identity. Members of this class began to see trespassers everywhere and embraced the slogan of a defiant and armed loneliness: Get the fuck off my property. Take this mask and shove it. It was the threatening image of a coiled rattlesnake: “Don’t tread on me.”

    Social class in America – Noahpinion – worthwhile reading alongside George Packer’s essay

    Why “lying flat,” a niche Chinese millennial meme, alarms Beijing — Quartz – Chinese youngsters, or in general the working population, have experienced huge societal and political changes in the past nine years, [leading them to realize] that there is neither the possibility for initiating a revolution nor the freedom of expression. Under such a condition, lying down has become the only option,” Wu told Quartz.

    Why I Have 75 DVDs and Blu-Rays on Top of My 5 Streaming Subs – As a Reddit user named Ben, who goes by Cinema Adherent and says he’s collected 5,000 discs, told me recently, “With services like Netflix you are always at the whim of whatever they could license for the cheapest this month. Good luck finding what you want to watch when you want to watch it.” – its the same with streaming services. I have a mix of discs and streaming subs too

    I think that this is the interesting start of something: How Secondhand Clothes Sellers Are Driving Conversations Around China’s Recycling Economy

    Culture

    [Letter from Los Angeles] The Anxiety of Influencers, By Barrett Swanson | Harper’s Magazine – this reads more like something in a Cory Doctorow short story than real life. But its real life

    Japanese comic riles China’s nationalists for giving revered Mao a zombie look｜Appledaily – The offending images were created in the third episode of Arakawa’s “Raiden-18” series. Mao, a former leader of the Communist Party, came across as a corpse that had a spell stuck to his forehead saying “where are the toilets,” comic illustrations circulating on the web showed. It appeared that Arakawa, who had visited China before, had created a satire to bemoan the lack of public toilets in the country. – this is brilliant

    Ideas

    How Xi’s China came to resemble Tsarist Russia | Financial Times – the last ruling Communist party of a major country has morphed into a conservative reactionary party bent on preserving the power of state capitalist elites and advancing a distinctly 19th century form of ethno-nationalist imperialism – true, but this would sting in China

    Intellectual property

    Kiwi wars: the golden fruit fuelling a feud between New Zealand and China | New Zealand | The Guardian – “It’s very naive,” says Gao. “You are relying on local authorities to protect your interests. And if they don’t, what do you do?” It is clear that the cultivation of Sungold in China is happening with the tacit permission of local governments, he says: “Such large-scale growing … it’s not individual.” Beijing may feel a degree of pressure to protect its global image, but state and local government officials are far less likely to be driven by China’s international obligations or reputation, he says. “Local government officials do not care,” he says. “. They don’t care about a free trade agreement between New Zealand and China. You have very little leverage to really get local authorities on your side, because they are not on your side. They are on the side of local growers.” – New Zealand’s China policy failure in a microcosm

    Media

    Behind the scenes at China TV: soft power and state propaganda | Financial Times 

    Mediatel: Mediatel News: The week in media: only one winner from the GBNews ad boycott – the aggressive and bullying manner in which campaigners have urged brands to boycott GBNews is worrying. Such fanatical behaviour has become an unhealthy feature of social media – ever quicker to blame and punish, but ever slower to be considerate and patient. 

    While many brands quickly pulled their ads off GBNews in response to the boycott, one advertiser had the bravery and integrity to say no to these demands and explain why. 

    The Co-op – hardly a bastion of “hate” given its longstanding associations with community organisations, education and the Labour Party – already had a policy in place after consulting its members about its advertising approach. 

    It made a statement reminding us of its approach and its three principles: 

    • We will not seek to affect the editorial independence of publications or channels; 
    • We will not undermine the commercial value of our society for our members; and 
    • We will ensure our values and principles are clear and undiminished regardless of surrounding content. 

    How refreshing that a brand was able to show a) it has already been thinking about this issue for a while; b) it took full responsibility for placing the ad on GBNews; and c) it has a clear regard for the importance of news media and a diversity of opinions

    Zhihu’s refreshing perspective on Gaokao & behind China’s cravings for vegan meat – Zhihu is a Q&A platform, not a million miles away from Quora in terms of depth and breadth of content. I am not sure how this Zhihu content will be seen by the party

    Security

    China links pose a threat to academic freedom in Britain | Financial Times – UK universities don’t seem to feel any societal obligation to the UK beyond existing and carrying on growing. They have expanded campuses into China. They benefit form ‘brand UK’ but feel no obligation to it. Rather like multinational companies before them. Universities have no shareholders to be beholden to, unlike Apple or similar.

    UK universities freed of societal ties have become rational creatures. Overseas students pay more money than British equivalents. There is an active incentive to not have British youth. Add in the fact that universities have a lot of real estate investments to support and you can understand why foreign students are much more desirable for these institutions from a financial point of view.

    There is a wider question over why universities seem to have a luxury pricing model, with the cost of education climbing much faster than inflation – yet if you look at universities the whole non-tenured academics mess you have to ask where did the money go. This happening in both the US and UK. Finally, what’s going to happen when the UK has as poor a bench of university graduates and post graduates as it has had for the past few decades in vocational education?

    More than a billion data items stolen in Alibaba leak｜Appledaily – more security related content here.

    He Warned Apple About the Risks in China. Then They Became Reality. – The New York Times – At one point, the Chinese government asked for the computer code underpinning the security of iPhones, according to a former Apple executive familiar with the request. To comply, Apple would have had to create a so-called back door for the Chinese authorities to bypass an iPhone’s security, similar to what the Federal Bureau of Investigation had asked for in 2016 — and Apple rebuffed the request. In China, Apple also pushed back and persuaded the government that it didn’t need the data, according to the executive. – instead, all Apple China customer data in iCloud is on Chinese government company servers

    Taiwan

    CTL fined over faulty beneficiary disclosure: FSC – Taipei Times – what’s interesting about this story is the connection to Xiao Jianhua. Xiao was snatched and smuggled out of his apartment in the Four Seasons in Hong Kong back in 2017. Xiao hasn’t been seen since, but has been rumoured to be ‘helping‘ authorities unwind his business Tomorrow Holdings. Using one of his companies to do secret Chinese state work isn’t beyond the realm of possibility

    Techno-optimism

    Theses on Techno-Optimism | LibrarianShipwreck 

    THE CCP’S NEXT CENTURY Expanding economic control, digital governance and national security | MERICS – (PDF). What is apparent is that China’s communist party is betting on techno-optimism. Technology and innovation becomes distinctly political, which explains everything from Huawei to politicians deciding which mathematics lecturers get tenure in Chinese universities.

    Technology

    It will be interesting to see how Khan’s appointment will lead to lasting change amongst ‘big tech’ companies – the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google), Apple and Microsoft – Tech antitrust pioneer Lina Khan will lead FTC, reports say – The Verge 

  • Hawker markets & things this week

    Hawker markets

    Eating out is an important part of life in many Asian countries. Cheap eats in Singapore are provided by hawker markets. Imagine Asian street food, if it was run by Germans. They had a similar tradition to hawkers called da pai dang (大牌檔). But the Hong Kong government has slowly squeezed them out and there are now less than 25 left. Instead I used to usually go to small hole in the wall restaurants. Da pai dang are treasured by Hong Kong citizens; hawker markets are treasured by the Singaporean people and their government. Singaporean channel Our Grandfather Story put together a video on how to support offline hawker markets. Its also a great critique of online food services.

    MiniDisc

    Sony’s MiniDisc format was a fascinating format. Friends of mine used it to record DJ mixes as it gave better quality than cassette taps. But it never beat out the humble compact cassette as a universal media. I went from cassette tapes to recordable CDs. MiniDisc operated in an interesting technological and temporal space.

    It is a very cyberpunk retro-futuristic looking media. The optical disc in the protected diskette case. If you wanted data safe, secure and offline, then this form factor looks sensible. And Sony’s Blu-Ray in a diskette is used for archiving purposes today by Sony and Panasonic under the format name Archival Disc.

    When I look at the MiniDisc, I think of dinky portable player / recorders that were almost like the watch-makers art. If it hadn’t existed, anime and manga artists would have created it as a fictional device.

    It had a second life as a pre-iPod format that offered the shareability of cassette mixtapes.

    The secret life of MiniDisc in Japan is fascinating. All of the above factors and more are featured in this documentary.

    Apple Daily

    Hong Kong’s national security police arrested senior journalists at the Apple Daily.

    Hong Kong police arrest editor-in-chief of Apple Daily newspaper in morning raids | Hong Kong | The Guardian – Steve Li Kwai-wah, head of the police’s national security division, said there was “very strong evidence that the questionable articles played a very crucial part in the conspiracy, which provided ammunition for foreign countries, institutions and organisations to impose sanctions,” adding that those arrested played “a very important role” in their publication. The articles reportedly date back to 2019. Authorities have made repeated assurances since the implementation of the controversial and wide-ranging national security law in June 2020 that it was not retroactive.

    They seized journalist computer hard drives, money and materials. The Apple Daily team didn’t let that hold them back and live-streamed the publication of their early edition of Friday’s paper.

    Hong Kongers came out to support the newspaper, queuing and buying multiple copies of the Apple Daily paper at news stand as soon as the early edition was published.

    They have an English language version of the Apple Daily paper here and I urge you to consider subscribing via the Apple app store or the Google Play store.

    You don’t have to subscribe because the Apple Daily is the lone free voice in Hong Kong media; universally disliked by those in charge (and many who wish they were in charge). You can subscribe for Chinese and Hong Kong coverage that you wouldn’t otherwise see in English language media. Such as Alibaba’s Taobao e-commerce platform having over a billion data records taken. A huge hack not mentioned elsewhere yesterday in the media.