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.

  • Autocorrect + more things

    I Invented Autocorrect. Sorry About That; You’re Welcome | WIRED – More than 10 years after the initial release of the iPhone, the state of the art now is much as it was then. Even with recent advances in AI and machine learning, the core problem remains the same: Software doesn’t understand the nuance of human communication. – autocorrect seems to have been poisoned by the data set used in its machine learning. T9 of yesteryear provides a better autocorrect experience. There is no easy fix for smartphone autocorrect woes any time soon

    Johann Rupert: the man on a mission to save Europe’s artisanal skills | How To Spend It – Concurrent with his observations about the speed at which new fortunes are made are his fears about the extinction of the middle class. “I don’t know where AI and machines are going to end up. But if we as humanity are going to preserve jobs and culture, we need to be smart.” He recognises that his success is “based upon people with culture and skills. And when their livelihoods are affected by machines, we’ve got to fight back.”

    Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption | Australian Government – Department of Home Affairs – no privacy, no secure crypto basically – UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and US are making a new push to come after cryptography in consumers hands. Interesting how little coverage that this has received until The Register pushed it

    The US-China Cold War is now playing out in Pakistan — Quartz India – Pakistan hopes that China and Saudi Arabia might offer the financial relief that would provide an alternative to the IMF and American pressure. Although this is not the kind of role that China wants, an IMF bailout would lead to a disclosure of the highly secretive terms of CPEC deals, leading to renegotiation or even cancellation and undermining Beijing’s geo-economic goals.

    Experts Call for Transparency Around Google’s Chinese-Made Security Keys – Motherboard – I was waiting for this shoe to drop. I would make more sense to do the assembly outside China with a Taiwanese supplier. This the approach that BlackBerry used to do with its devices prior to licensing its name to TCL. Apple has to do a lot of proprietary work and inspections to keep its devices secure and there is no sign that Google has done this

    Baidu launches EZDL, an AI model training platform that requires no coding experience | VentureBeat – interesting visual programming approach

    Chinese bike-share group Ofo sued for alleged $10m in unpaid bills | Financial Times – Shanghai Phoenix Bicycles, an old and venerable bicycle brand in China, has petitioned a Beijing court over an unpaid supplier contract worth Rmb68m ($9.9m) with a unit of Beijing-based Ofo, according to an exchange filing by Phoenix’s parent company late on Friday. 

    Ofo previously faced the threat of having 3m of its bicycles immobilised due to a dispute over alleged unpaid debts to a smart-lock producer, which had threatened to “freeze” the locks if it did not receive payment. Ofo said later the dispute had been resolved. 

    Peak Valley? – AVC – Fred Wilson makes the defence case for Silicon Valley….

    Watch the ‘Real’ Magic Leap Whale Take Flight in ‘Helio’ Web Experiment – Road to VR – hype versus reality

    With New London Store, Stüssy Flexes Its ‘Tribe’ | News & Analysis, News Bites | BoF – Stüssy’s brand identity is built on a “tribal ethos” that extends from its inner circle to its customers. Their stores function as community hubs where young (and not so young) shoppers gather. This fosters a strong, consistent, and authentic connection with clients. Essentially, wearing a Stüssy item allows customers to feel like they’re participating in something bigger and understand the brand’s unique appeal.. –  more related content here.

  • Knee surgery + more things

    What Does Knee Surgery Cost? Few Know, and That’s a Problem – WSJ – no idea of costs and processes – why things are done. The thing that concerns me more is that knee surgery (and other medical processes) need more sensitive work than what business transformation consultants brought to industry. Otherwise it will be kneecapping Belfast-style rather than knee surgery going on

    Struggling Chinese firms offloading assets means property bargains galore for foreign investors | South China Morning Post – Under Chinese law, overseas investors cannot directly buy assets in China. They either have to buy a stake in a company involved in a project, or acquire debt portfolios, mostly from one of the four main managers of distressed assets – a quick change in Chinese law could leave these investors screwed, this looks like a trap to me

    The psychology of popular media culture Twenge, Martin & Spitzberg – American Psychological Association – PDF white paper on trends in media use covering a 40 year period. More media related content here

    China is clear leader in the 5G race – Deloitte | Telecoms.com – interesting, but what about Korea, Singapore etc? I suspect that this is very China vs. US focus

    Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents – Foreign Policy – how the CIA will be able to build trust with agents in the future is going to be a challenge

    Adversaries Could Have Fiddled With US Satellites: DoD IG « Breaking Defense – Defense industry news, analysis and commentary – If Chinese and Russian spies have been doing their jobs well, they might well have been able to compromise some of America’s most important satellites, including the missile launch detection birds known as SBIRS.  A report out today from the Pentagon’s Inspector General says that Air Force Space Command’s failure to safeguard its supply chain means that “an adversary has opportunity to infiltrate the Air Force Space Command supply chain and sabotage, maliciously introduce an unwanted function, or otherwise compromise the design or integrity of the critical hardware, software, and firmware.”

    Macau: the incredible poverty at the heart of world’s richest place | South China Morning Post – the Gini coefficient must be higher than Hong Kong or the US surely?

    Exclusive: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger – sources | Reuters – The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance – not terribly surprising. If they manage to achieve this could the method be applied to Signal? Also would there be a precedent to break Apple’s resolve?

    How Björk robots influenced the way we think about the future. | Slate – continues a long patterN – Star Trek communicator and the cellphone, Minority Report and touch interfaces, Neuromancer’s influence on VR – there is a continual feedback loop. It is interesting how much recent sci-fi feels very much rooted in the present

    There’s one thing that some virtual assistants can’t do – understand an Irish accent – Independent.ie – or a regional British accent for that matter

    Robot to star in new Tony Kaye movie 2nd Born – CNET – looking forward to a new Tony Kaye film

    Y Combinator to Set Up China Arm With Ex-Baidu Exec as CEO – Bloomberg – interesting move, I met Yu back at Yahoo! where I found him to be highly strung

  • Samsung 5G + more things

    Internesting focus: Samsung 5G, machine learning and other emerging technology – Samsung pledges to invest $22B in AI, 5G and other emerging technologies – SiliconANGLE – plan to invest $22 billion in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence over the next three years. The effort will be driven primarily by the conglomerate’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd arm, which makes its popular mobile devices. Last quarter, the handset maker saw profits decline for the first time in nearly two years due to stagnating smartphone sales. Investing more in emerging technologies could help Samsung generate new growth on the long term – the Samsung 5G and machine learning problem is the Chinese government and the limitless resources it will put behind Huawei and their peers. More Samsung content here.

    Save Sarah Jeong! And Kevin Williamson, Quinn Norton, and Joy Reid Too | WIRED – my comment: I agree that Ms Jeong has a right to an opinion. She has a right to a bad day. However when she weighed into the Naomi Wu / Vice Media dispute; her contribution damaged some of the feminist and progressive viewpoints that she herself supports. As an international Wired subscriber I find it difficult to support her particularly aggressive form of American privilege. Ms Jeong used her skill in rhetoric to hide her lack of expertise in the legal and online social environment of China.

    ‘Hipster kryptonite’: will CDs ever have a resurgence? | Music | The Guardian – interesting read. I have listened to CDs and have them, but preferred to DJ with vinyl for tactile reasons. The article fails to ask whats next. We’ve got a generation coming through with Spotify with a more passive, casual relationship to music that we haven’t seen before. There has always been people who liked music but bought few if any recordings. We haven’t seen it on the scale that we see with the Spotify generation. Music becomes a utility like water, electricity or mobile data. Since music tends to be about playlists now the artist’s brand becomes less important. Festivals provide the buzz of live music for generation Spotify but they can dip in and out moving from one tent to another. They won’t support live acts in local concert halls, go to local clubs to support local DJs or have eclectic musical libraries

    The UK Top 40 will never be the same | British GQ – For a stream to qualify as a sale, it has to play for at least 30 seconds. Most listeners will abandon anything too jarringly different before then, so there’s an incentive for artists to draw on a small pool of bankable writers, producers and styles. “I call it the shit-click factor,” says Masterton. “If a record is too challenging, then people will say, ‘What’s this? It’s shit,’ and click onto the next one. There used to be room on the charts for something dynamic and exciting such as the Arctic Monkeys. I can’t see the circumstances right now where that could happen.”

    Rock is the new jazz and vinyl’s misleading revival: 5 things I’ve learned as Guardian music editor | The Guardian  – Technology has vastly increased what record companies know about listeners and their listening habits, just as it has increased what newspapers know about their readers and their reading habits. And the results of this – on both parts – can be pernicious. At our end, it’s the reason why we get complaints about endless stories about Adele and Beyoncé and Kanye West. Why do we run them? Because people read them. Whereas very few people read stories about the latest underground band we want to rave about. And in music, that knowledge has resulted in commercial music, more than ever before, being made to a formula

    Tymbals – #edge @growth – interesting online tool

    ITV joins Hollywood giants to back video streaming service for mobiles | The Guardian – ok what am I missing here, streaming services are already on mobile and also offer side loading to deal with network quality issues

    Say Hello to the New Editor | The new Gutenberg editing experience – interesting changes that will make themes less rigid

  • The Internet of Stupid Things

    The internet of stupid things is a more charitable phrase for what many consumers call the Internet of Shit. Yes lots of products can be internet enabled, but should they be? There is a mix of challenges that result in products which fall into the following two categories:

    • Products that are internet enabled but shouldn’t be – the Happy Fork or the Griffin Smart Toaster being classic examples. I found the Griffin Smart Toaster particularly disappointing as the company’s products such as the PowerMate are generally really good. It doesn’t take the greatest imagination to see how a smart toaster could even be hacked; causing a fire – hence the internet of stupid things. Why do household appliances really need to be attached to technology. Teasmades woke you up and made a mug of tea for you to have first thing. This was a product that reached peak popularity in the 1960s and 1970s – well before cloud services.
    • Products that would be benefit from tech, but shouldn’t rely on the the cloud. I’d argue that Nest would fit in this category where cloud outages could have serious impacts on the consumer. American Nest customers have had some hard winter nights when their Nest control system went down due to cloud outages. There was no off-cloud or manual control mode that the Nest devices could take advantage of.

    It is interesting to see that Li & Fung (who are famous for global supply chain management provided to western brands and retailers) are involved in this video. It is also interesting that they are taking such a proactive view on experience design education.

    The qualitative design research Li & Fung did on skiing wearables for a client – made me wonder what value do Li & Fung’s clients bring to the table. More on design here.

  • Kevin King + more things

    Digital Chief Kevin King Quits Edelman After 14 Years – More recently, sources familiar with the situation also point to ongoing questions regarding the agency’s investment priorities. Famously, Edelman has hired more than 600 creatives and planners over the last three years, in a bid to better compete with agencies across the paid and earned media spectrum – I don’t know Kevin King, but I do know that he was a long term fixture at Edelman and helped build their digital capability. Kevin King will likely turn up at one of the new agency groups in the near future – Edelman non-compete clause allowing. More Edelman related content here.

    CSL on Fifa 19: not quite fantasy football but you can see why the China league is joining the EA party | South China Morning Post – unsurprising given the Chinese government’s aspirations for soccer and the domestic league. EA can’t ignore the size of gaming in China either

    Natural Cycles: ASA investigates marketing for contraception app | The Guardian – The Family Planning Association is also concerned about the app. A spokeswoman said: “The use of the word ‘certified’ suggests that there is independent evidence supporting these claims, whereas in fact the only evidence is from the company itself. It has amassed a vast database, which is very interesting, but that is not the same as verified independent evidence. – and there is the challenge of a blind faith in big data. If they get this wrong the individual consequences are huge

    The Troubled Quest for the Superconducting Wind Turbine – IEEE Spectrum – the interesting bit about about this is that in sea turbines aren’t considered instead of wind. Wind’s economics problem is their consistency, turbines are actually only doing work less than half them time – that’s the problem that’s driving size. If you put the the turbines in the water to take advantage of currents instead energy transference, more consistent power and size becomes a civil engineering problem like a dam rather than space programme style construction. How are super conductors supposed to even work?

    Britain’s Fake News Inquiry Says Facebook And Google’s Algorithms Should Be Audited By UK Regulators – if this goes through its the thin end of the wedge. The UK is much more beholden to commercial interests than even the US. The record industry the the English Premier League have managed to bring down the full force of government censorship with the Digital Economy Act. And both Facebook and Alphabet only have themselves to blame. China’s concept of cyber sovereignty starts to look prescient; and we all look as if we might be living in a darker world