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.
Interesting interpretation of the current approach to online harmonisation by the Chinese government. There is an opinion that China’s censorship mechanisms are somehow overwhelmed. I don’t think that this is the case at all. Instead I believe its part of their wider approach to online harmonisation – As Virus Spreads, Anger Floods Chinese Social Media – The New York Times – this isn’t a government apparatus operating from weakness but smart. Online harmonisation allows just enough venting to stop it boiling over into angry action but not enough for a Velvet Revolution. The clue is in the Chinese government’s own name for this process online harmonisation – to give a harmonious Chinese society
Nightmares on wax: the environmental impact of the vinyl revival | Music | The Guardian – digital media is physical media, too. Although digital audio files seem virtual, they rely on infrastructures of data storage, processing and transmission that have potentially higher greenhouse gas emissions than the petrochemical plastics used in the production of more obviously physical formats such as LPs – to stream music is to burn coal, uranium and gas – vegan vintage wearing gen-z will look back on streaming not only as a cultural disaster, but a planetary one. Streaming is the music industry analogue to restaurant’s plastic straws and styrofoam cups
23andMe lays off 100 people, CEO Anne Wojcicki explains why | CNBC – surprised to see market turn… – I was surprised to see this late 20th century version of a faddish product from the Sharper Image catalogue do so well for so long given the privacy implications of it
Is Singapore’s ‘perfect’ economy coming apart? | Financial Times – Mid-level jobs in manufacturing and multinational companies are disappearing and being replaced by technology and financial services roles, which are easier to fill with younger, more affordable migrants. Singaporeans like Aziz struggle to get back into the workforce. Only half of retrenched over-50s are re-employed full time within six months. Nearly three-quarters of people laid off in Singapore in the third quarter of last year, the most recently available data, were what the country classifies as professionals, managers, executives and technicians, or PMETs – I’ve been re-reading John Naisbitt’s Megatrends at the moment and its interesting how these classic knowledge worker roles have been disappearing – whereas just 30 years ago they were the future. It does make me a bit skeptical of the ‘every kid should learn how to code predictions’. The increasing consumer debt is another interesting aspect of this
IoT Trouble: The Sonos Example — And More – Monday Note – the recent Sonos issue is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, the basic IoT issue that older equipment on a network can block security updates to newer Sonos gear. The second aspect of this relates to consumer attitudes. Early Sonos sales positioned the equipment against traditional consumer electronics brown goods like Sony, Denon, Yamaha etc. As we can see from recent products, Sonos has moved away from hi-fi to convenience. This is probably why Sonos legal action against Alphabet’s Google Chromecast and Google Home became more important.
Nutella/Ferrero: nut fluster | Financial Times – In 2012 Ferrero agreed to set aside $3m to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by a California mother. She had been surprised and upset to learn Nutella was not a “healthy, nutritious” food. She was widely mocked – you could not make this up (paywall). More on FMCG as a topic here
What the Heck Does Luxury Mean Now? | GQ – a new and enticing definition of the word emerged with flawless-diamond clarity: big European houses hired a swath of truly cool designers who rewrote the rules of exclusivity and quality, breaking brands free from its tiresome cliches about who and what was indulgent, beautiful, and elegant. Figures like A$AP Rocky and Frank Ocean became the new doyennes of style and taste; Alessandro Michele, Virgil Abloh, and Kim Jones became worldwide superstars; and Supreme convinced a new generation that you could make inexpensive stuff with the rigorous sensibility of a fashion house. Things that were once secret became matters of global pop-cultural importance—a lot of people now follow the haute couture and menswear shows like others follow football
PopSockets, Sonos, and Tile Ask Congress to Rein in Big Tech | WIRED – it wasn’t until PopSockets agreed to spend $2 million on retail marketing that Amazon finally clamped down on the fakes and knockoffs. Amazon denies this, and says that worked “with PopSockets to address our shared concerns about counterfeit.”But there were still other problems: Barnett says Amazon frequently lowered the price of PopSockets products, and then expected his company to make up the difference—even though that was never part of their contract. Amazon would “dress up requests as demands, using language that a parent uses with a child, or more generally, that someone in a position of power uses with someone of inferior power,” Barnett wrote in testimony sent to Congress. Am I shocked that Amazon is playing hard ball in the way that everyone from Tesco to Wal-Mart have done? No. But the problem isn’t the tactics per se, but the scale at which Amazon operates. Also Tesco and Wal-Mart might try and tear your face off with look-a-like private label products, but they won’t intentionally cross the line into selling counterfeit products
Facebook apologises after Xi Jinping name translated as an obscenity – While China does not allow its citizens to access Facebook freely, the country is the company’s largest source of revenue after the US. Facebook is setting up an engineering team at its Asia-Pacific office in Singapore to focus on the lucrative Chinese advertising market, Reuters reported this month.
Hong Kong’s Industrial History : How Plastic Flowers Built A Global Metropolis – In the years after World War II, buying a bunch of plastic flowers was trendy, not tacky, and Li Ka-shing built their novelty into a business empire that now spans the globe – the Hong Kong manufacturing boom went on until the opening up of China. At this time Hong Kong was a more equitable society. The business entrepreneurs either pushed into China or deindustrialised and became Hong Kong property developers. As for plastic flowers, you often see them around you and don’t realise what they are. More on Hong Kong here
The durable history of Casio’s durable G-Shock watch – the company gets asked all the time about how it might create a smartwatch that lives up to users’ rugged expectations for its storied brand, but that any such product would have to be a G-Shock first. “I believe you can rest assured that it will be uniquely G-Shock in its form factor, unlike anything we have seen before.” If Casio carries its tradition forward, you’ll be able to read all about it—right on the face of the watch itself
Facebook does not understand the marketplace of ideas | Financial Times – The first critical flaw in Mr Zuckerberg’s thinking is the idea that the marketplace for goods is efficient without regulation. Much of the thrust of economics over the past half century has been to understand what regulations are needed to ensure that markets work. We have tort laws that ensure accountability if someone is injured and we don’t allow companies to pollute willy-nilly. We have fraud and advertising laws to protect consumers against deceptions — recognising that such laws circumscribe what individuals may say and publish – well worth reading the rest of the article (paywall)
How Loro Piana serves ‘nomadic elite’ with €7,000 cashmere coats | Financial Times – A recent report from consultants Bain & Co argued that new growth in the luxury goods industry was going to be driven by brands that go beyond just offering shoppers a product and were able to also provide a mixture of new experiences and ideas, and even provoke emotions
Jeff Staple On How Streetwear Set The Tone For Today’s Mainstream—And What To Expect Next – now, a single post can disrupt everything. A single verse from the right musician can kill off an entire brand. So the velocity at which retailers must adapt had to catch up. They could no longer wait for the Vogue “September Issue” or New York Fashion Week to see what was hot. It was blatantly obvious down to the exact number of “likes.”
Chow Tai Fook, Sa Sa closures deepen Hong Kong retail crisis | Campaign Asia – this is about deflating an overinflated retail and real estate economy. Its popularity was from the prevalence of adulterated products in China and the lack of sales tax in Hong Kong. Chow Tai Fook failed to look at international expansion and has no one to blame but its board of directors
Google acquires Pointy, a startup to help brick-and-mortar retailers list products online, for $163M | TechCrunch – built hardware and software technology to help physical retailers — specifically those that might not already have an extensive e-commerce storefront detailing in-store inventory — get their products discoverable online without any extra work – reminds me of the kind of thing you’d expect Tencent or Alibaba to do as China has led in O2O e-tailing. Pointy also fits into Google’s mission to organising all the worlds information. Over time, I can only see Pointy as being bad for retail margins.
The problem with the idea of Pointy is that it treats all stock as equal, in reality the cost of an item isn’t only its price. A point that Pointy misses. There are also transport costs, time and convenience costs involved. For a real world story indexed by Pointy, the consideration of being able to drive to a nearby story and get something immediately isn’t a factor. How does Pointy know about the hassle of that same trip if one has to walk there and back instead? Does Pointy consider how heavy or bulky a product might be?
Mediatel: Newsline: How the UK is quietly importing a sinister political phenomenon – “I have read so many predictions and trends about journalism in the past few weeks. The most significant trend, mostly unacknowledged, is that of politicians realizing they do not need to provide access or engagement with journalists, or even tell the truth, to be electable.” – where is this going?
Make your China marketing pop with these pop culture tips – POP MART: the designer toy market in China is booming. Not that surprising given historic popularity in Hong Kong and Japan – in many respects culturally China is a laggard
Framed — Pixel Envy – three paragraphs in and it is already setting up the idea that personal privacy and public safety are two opposing ends of a gradient. That’s simply not true. A society that has less personal privacy does not inherently have better public safety; Russia and Saudi Arabia are countries with respectable HDI scores, brutal censorship and surveillance, and higher murder rates than Australia, Denmark, France, and the United Kingdom
Sugar Bear’s Don’t Scandalize Mine was a go to record for me, but I’ve never seen a music video of it until now
What Does Taiwan’s Public Think About Election Interference From China? – The Diplomat – hyper-polarization in views between DPP and KMT supporters highlights the difficulty in addressing cybersecurity and China more broadly. To reach a consensus requires first acknowledging and disrupting the echo chambers in which disinformation campaigns thrive, then the government must implement election transparency policies to more easily expose disinformation efforts. However, with increasing animosity between parties, this consensus may be hard to reach. Citizens may also be concerned that any steps the government takes are limiting their freedom of speech or other rights (paywall)
Try as It Might, Germany Isn’t Warming to Huawei – The Diplomat – Highest on their list of concerns has been the risk of exposing the future German 5G network to large-scale espionage and data theft on behalf of corporate and political actors in China. In recent years, Germany’s intelligence agencies have reported a steady increase in Chinese government-directed espionage and hacking activities against German targets, primarily with the aim of acquiring corporate secrets. China is now considered the source of the majority of cyberattacks against Germany. In 2019, some of the largest German companies confirmed that they had been targeted by a new wave of cyberattacks that likely originated with the Chinese government. During a parliamentary hearing on the issue of Huawei in October, Thomas Haldenwang, the president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Bundesverfassungsschutz), claimed that Chinese espionage and cyberattacks have been expanding into more and more sectors of the economy and the state. According to Haldenwang, while Chinese cyberattacks in Germany were previously focused primarily on private corporations and technology
China Manufacturing:”Elvis Has Left the Building” | China Law Blog – “China’s rising costs, tricky regulations and increasingly unstable geopolitical situation are forcing more manufacturers to move production elsewhere” and we should expect this exodus to gain speed in 2020, “despite the prospect of a minor US-China trade truce.”
Bose and HERE Fuel AR Experience Innovation By Combining Location and Audio Technologies – Semiconductor Digest – HERE Technologies, a global leader in mapping and location platform services, today announced a collaboration with Bose Corporation to jointly enable their respective developer communities to deploy augmented reality (AR) location applications and services. This collaboration gives HERE developers access to the Bose AR platform and spatial-audio capabilities, and extends the HERE platform, positioning and mobile SDK location technologies to developers building audio AR applications and experiences. – ok so turn by turn direction or tourist style apps probably. The most interesting thing for me was that Bose AR isn’t just the audio enabled frames but recent noise cancelling headsets as well
SPH print newspaper ad sales dive 20% on year | Media | Campaign Asia – Singapore Press Holdings, the parent company of The Straits Times, Lianhe Zaobao, and other news publications, saw overall revenue drop 3.8% in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 – interesting acceleration. Part of which is down to media agencies making more money from digital and some due to changing consumer habits. I’ve started taking a print newspaper subscription again as I value the juxtaposition good print design can bring
NYT: Russian hackers successfully targeted Ukrainian gas company Burisma – Axios – Public awareness of the Burisma hack cuts both ways politically. For former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, it means document dumps could happen at any time, with accompanying media frenzy and potentially damaging revelations. For the Trump campaign, it means that any such revelations will come pre-tainted with a Russian label
John Lewis marketing boss Paula Nickolds departs before starting | The Drum – Anusha Couttigane, principal fashion analyst at Kantar, said that whoever takes the lead will need to rethink its long-running, and arguably tired, festive advertising strategy which has relied on blockbuster, tear-jerker creative to encourage shoppers into stores. “John Lewis needs to continue evolving its digital marketing efforts. While the company’s Christmas mascot, the accident-prone dragon Excitable Edgar, was warmly received, the debut of the brand’s Christmas advert is simply not the event it once was,” – quite a burn right there.
Sonos hits Google with lawsuit over wireless speaker patents – “Google has been blatantly and knowingly copying our patented technology” for years. Sonos and Google collaborated in 2013 to add the Play Music service to Sonos speakers, and more recently, the two worked to bring Google’s digital assistant to Sonos speakers, alongside Amazon’s counterpart, Alexa. “Despite our repeated and extensive efforts over the last few years,” Spence told the Times, “Google has not shown any willingness to work with us on a mutually beneficial solution. We’re left with no choice but to litigate,”
With nothing to lose, loners build future in China’s hollowed-out north – Reuters – “Social classes are fixed,” Li said. “The poor can never achieve anything. When you encounter problems, if you can solve it, great. There’s not much you can do otherwise.” – interesting consumer comments that explain the slow down in China’s economic growth
Dark Patterns after the GDPR: Scraping Consent Pop-ups and Demonstrating their Influence by Nouns, Liccardi, Veal, Karger and Kagal – The results of our empirical survey of CMPs today illustrates the extent to which illegal practices prevail, with vendors of CMPs turning a blind eye to — or worse, incentivising —- clearly illegal configurations of their systems. Enforcement in this area is sorely lacking. Data protection authorities should make use of automated tools like the one we have designed to expedite discovery and enforcement. Designers might help here to design tools for regulators, rather than just for users or for websites. Reg- ulators should also work further upstream and consider placing requirements on the vendors of CMPs to only allow compliant designs to be placed on the market. (PDF)
