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.
The Exponential Era is a business strategy book published by the IEEE Press as part of its series on technology, innovation and leadership. David Espindola and Michael Wright work at Intercepting Horizons and advise at the University of Minnesota.
The book is a concise 182 pages including its index. It has a satisfying hard cover about the height and width of a paperback book. The book proportions reminded of many of the books that we used to have my secondary school’s library. It felt right in my hand. Its a small thing, but it matters.
The secondary school analogy goes further; the book summarises knowledge and makes it relatively easily digestible.
The Exponential Era includes:
The threat of platforms and their ability to disrupt market sectors
Why people find it hard to grasp the change brought about by the future
The book consolidates the kind of reading that people in technology and marketing would likely have read anyway. Chances are if you’ve already read books like Saving Big Blue, Measure What Matters, The Lean Startup and Zero to One, then The Exponential Era isn’t written for you.
Who should read this book?
Instead this book seems to be an increasingly diminished audience. A company too small for it’s management to have been lectured on disruption by McKinsey, Bain, BCG or Accenture. But still large enough to be concerned. Like McKinsey et al Espindola and Wright are looking to create disruption fear and sell their SPX methodology to re-engineer their business. I would have thought the c suite in most businesses would have at least done enough reading to have a high level understanding of the content in the book.
The book’s relentless utopian optimism reminded me a lot of business works from the 1970s to the dot com era. I think that The Exponential Era will be of most use to junior people at the start of their career looking for a primer rather than its intended audience.
Adobe is dropping PostScript Type 1 font support. Be prepared for the change – huge move, given the amount of time that PostScript had been at the centre of design and print. There must be brands out there still using Type 1 fonts for standard print design work that haven’t changed style in 30 years beyond a logo tweak. Without PostScript fonts you couldn’t have had the laser printer or modern design software tools
Business
Amazon Exploding Hoverboard Case Could Forever Change Company – Bloomberg – Last month, a California appeals court ruled that Amazon can be held liable, even though the seller stored and shipped the device itself. The decision sent shockwaves through the e-commerce world. Though it will probably be appealed again, the ruling raises the possibility that Amazon might have to exert more control over the activity on its own website. “Courts are rejecting the internet exceptionalism idea when it comes to a company like Amazon,” Agnieszka McPeak, a Gonzaga University professor, told Bloomberg Law. – It could also have implications for companies like Shopify
Why SoftBank’s THG deal has more questions than answers | Financial Times – What exactly the Ingenuity business does is something of a riddle: chief executive Matthew Moulding described it as a “social media influencer platform” but it also handles the prosaic business of logistics and translations for third parties launching in new markets – I don’t get The Hut Group (THG), maybe they’re bad about telling their story?
Luxury
Why Victoria’s Secret Body Positivity Spin Won’t Work in China | Jing Daily – Victoria’s Secret’s has a long history of glamorous supermodel perfection, therefore this choice is seen as inauthentic for the Chinese consumer and has left many citizens bewildered. Global brands need a localized approach in China, but one that resonates convincingly with the company – on Victoria’s Secret trying be more inclusive and body positive
I came across the bullwhip effect as a descriptor recently in discussions around the global chip shortage. Bullwhip effect is a concept that is well known in supply chain circles.
The bullwhip effect is also known as the Forrester effect. Disruption ripples back from the retailer, through the wholesaler, manufacturer, on to their suppliers and so on.
The usual causes for the effect are:
Demand forecast updating – this might be where a company might want to change their product mix to match consumer demand, if a product is very successful or grossly underperforms
Order batching – where members of the supply chain round up, or round down the quantity of orders. This happens with the periodic memory gluts or shortages affecting the technology sector
Price fluctuations – price discounts can encourage non-linear increases in purchases as it becomes worthwhile for customers to stock up, hedging against increased prices down the line. Oil reserves would be a classic example of this phenomenon
Rationing and gaming – buyers and sellers delivering over or under their order quantities. An example of this would be the actions of Enron in US electricity markets. This could be used in a positive way to promote changing the supply chain like renewable sources of electricity generation
What caused the global chip shortage that is driving the bullwhip effect?
There were three causes to the global chip shortage
Partial shutdown – The semiconductor industry went through a partial shutdown because of the COVID-19 epidemic. This meant that there was a smaller supply of chips.
Unusual increase in demand – Home working drove an increase in demand: increased sales in PCs, wi-fi routers, external hard drives, mice, keyboards, printers and so on. There was also a corresponding increase in home entertainment as consumers upgraded smart TVs, Apple and Roku set top boxes. This all coincided with the launch of the next generation of gaming consoles by Sony and Microsoft – which can usually drive a squeeze on their own
Supply chain disruption – A fire in Japan at Renesas Electronics. A trade war affecting Chinese semiconductor manufacturers. Freezing winter weather in Texas disrupting employees and their businesses. Now there is a drought in Taiwan affecting TSMC – the world’s largest semiconductor foundries
OrCam Read – Transform the Way You Read – YouTube – I watched this video and wondered if this was a sign of failure in the education sector in terms of literacy. As far as I can tell, OrCam is a dedicated OCR appliance that reads back the text to you. In essence it is playing the same role as a scribe to a medieval lord. I suspect that OrCam is a product looking for a market and this is a skewed pitch
Are some personalities just better? – All-blues might really be happier and healthier. If so, it could a result of late modernity, or it might have always been true. Still, that doesn’t mean that evolution will favor all-blues, or that all-blues are “more successful”
How the U.S. Government Can Learn to See the Future – Lawfare – Research over the past decade funded by the U.S. government demonstrates that “keeping score” by quantifying the probability that a potential event will or will not happen leads to improved forecasting accuracy. This is especially true when that scorekeeping is paired with training to reduce cognitive biases, as well as tools that combine the forecasts of many people together, harnessing the “wisdom of crowds.” These methods are not just for carnival games and stock trading. They can provide clearer insight on national security questions – it looks like prediction markets might be getting their time in the sun again
Security
Sweden drops Russian hacking investigation due to legal complications | The Record by Recorded Future – Swedish government dropped today its investigation into the 2017 hack of its sports authority, citing the legal constraints that would have prevented prosecutors from charging the Russian hackers responsible for the intrusion, which officials claimed were mere pawns operating on behalf of a “foreign power.”
Standard Chartered to cut branch network in half – Standard Chartered is to reduce its global branch network by half to around 400 to cut long-term costs after the UK bank reported a stronger than expected first quarter profit. The Asia, Africa and Middle East-focused lender, which had as many as 1,200 branches worldwide in 2014, said today it will shrink the network to a third of that total as it also gives up office space worldwide – this move by Standard Chartered seems to be a short term move to try and please investors
Consumer behaviour
Sex sells: China farm region becomes ‘lingerie capital’ | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – around 2013, volumes soared as younger Chinese consumers began discovering their sensuality, Lei said. Most buyers are now between 22 and 25. Initially, loose-fitting, not-too-revealing designs were favoured in China. Today, semi-transparent, “body-hugging” numbers dominate
Why are South Korea’s young men turning against Moon Jae-in and his ruling party? | South China Morning Post – Unpopular housing policies and a backlash against Moon’s perceived ‘feminist’ agenda has seen support for his Democratic Party administration collapse among Korean men in their 20s and 30s. Not so among young women, however – meaning victory for the opposition is far from guaranteed at the next presidential elections set for March 2022
Glancing at your phone quickly prompts other people to do the same | New Scientist – Such a rapid, automatic response is probably due to people mimicking each other without realising it – what scientists call the “chameleon effect”. While such mimicry is thought to have evolved in human societies to help people bond with each other, mimicking mobile phone use might have the opposite effect, says Elisabetta Palagi at the University of Pisa, Italy. “We have a need to follow the norms imposed on us by people around us, to [match] our actions with theirs in this automatic way,” she says. “But smartphones can increase social isolation through interference and disruption with real-life, ongoing activities.” – digital yawning
Economics
The panopticon of Germany’s foreign trade: New facts on the first globalisation, 1880–1913 | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal – The history of globalisation is usually told in two parts, separated not only by two world wars but also by changes in technology, institutions, and economic logic. This column reconsiders that narrative. Using detailed new evidence on Germany’s foreign trading practices from 1800 to 1913 (the ‘first’ globalisation), it finds that most growth took place along the extensive margin, while 25–30% of trade was intra-industry. If the first globalisation saw substantial heterogeneity within countries and industries, it may be time to re-think the ‘classical’ versus ‘new’ trade paradigm
Pandemic propels Thai mom with ‘nothing to lose’ into internet pornstar | Coconuts Bangkok – And when the internet sees a woman posting sexy nudes, it usually assumes she does porn. At first Fernie hated those insinuations. She felt insulted and would block anyone called her a “porn star.” But it eventually wore her down and, in the way of internet grooming, became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy as the messages kept pouring in. “When I got them that frequently, I started to think of them as compliments,” she said with a giggle. “Then the thought of, ‘If I sell nude pics, I might as well sell porn,’ came to my mind, because they’re similar anyway.” More content related to adult entertainment here.
Toyota will showcase its hydrogen-powered Corolla at Super Taikyu event – Toyota is definitely thinking about a hydrogen future due to the limitations of lithium ion battery cars. Motorsport is where a lot of research and development happens for car and commercial vehicle manufacturers
