Category: web of no web | 無處不在的技術 | 보급 기술 | 普及したテクノロジー

The web of no web came out of a course that I taught at the La Salle School of Business at the University Ramon Llull in Barcelona on interactive media to a bunch of Spanish executive MBA students. The university wanted an expert from industry and they happened to find me by happenstance. I remember contact was made via LinkedIn.

I spent a couple of weeks putting together a course. But I didn’t find material that covered many of things that I thought were important and happening around us. They had been percolating around the back of my mind at the time as I saw connections between a number of technologies that were fostering a new direction. Terms like web 2.0 and where 2.0 covered contributing factors, but were too silo-ed

So far people’s online experience had been mediated through a web browser or an email client. But that was changing, VR wasn’t successful at the time but it was interesting. More importantly the real world and the online world were coming together. We had:

  • Mobile connectivity and wi-fi
  • QRcodes
  • SMS to Twitter publishing at the time
  • You could phone up Google to do searches (in the US)
  • Digital integration in geocaching as a hobby
  • The Nintendo Wii controller allowed us to interact with media in new ways
  • Shazam would listen to music and tell you what song it was
  • Where 2.0: Flickr maps, Nokia maps, Yahoo!’s Fireeagle and Dopplr – integrated location with online
  • Smartphones seemed to have moved beyond business users

Charlene Li described the future of social networks as ‘being like air’, being all around us. So I wrapped up all in an idea called web of no web. I was heavily influenced by Bruce Lee’s description of jeet kune do – ‘using way as no way’ and ‘having no limitation as limitation’. That’s where the terminology that I used came from. This seemed to chime with the ideas that I was seeing and tried to capture.

  • February 2025 newsletter

    February 2025 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my February 2025 newsletter, I hope that your year of the snake has gotten off to a great start. This newsletter marks my 19th issue – which feels a really short time and strangely long as well, thank you for those of you who have been on the journey so far as subscribers to this humble publication. Prior to writing this newsletter, I found that the number 19 has some interesting connections.

    In mandarin Chinese, 19 sounds similar to ‘forever’ and is considered to be lucky by some people, but the belief isn’t as common as 8, 88 or 888.

    Anyone who listened to pop radio in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s would be familiar with Paul Hardcastle’s documentary sampling ’19’. The song mixed narration by Clark Kent and sampled news archive footage of the Vietnam war including news reports by read by Walter Cronkite. 19 came from what was cited as the average age of the soldier serving in Vietnam, however this is disputed by Vietnam veteran organisation who claim that the correct number was 22. The veteran’s group did a lot of research to provide accurate information about the conflict, overturning common mistakes repeated as truth in the media. It’s a handy reminder that fallacies and trust in media began way before the commercial internet.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    Strategic outcomes

    Things I’ve written.

    • Zing + more things – HSBC’s Zing payments system was shut down and was emblematic of a wider challenge in legacy financial institutions trying to compete against ‘fintech startups. I covered several other things as well including new sensor technology
    • The 1000 Yen ramen wall is closing down family restaurants across Japan. A confluence of no consumer tolerance for price elasticity due to inflation driven ingredients costs is driving them to the wall. Innovation and product differentiation have not made a difference.
    • Luxury wellness – why luxury is looking at wellness, what are the thematic opportunities and what would be the competitors for the main luxury marketing conglomerates be successful.
    • Technical capability notice – having read thoroughly about the allegations that Apple had been served with an order by the British government to provide access to its customer iCloud drive data globally – I still don’t know what to think, but didn’t manage to assuage any of my concerns.

    Books that I have read.

    • World Without End: The million-copy selling graphic novel about climate change by Jean-Marc Jancovici and Christophe Blain. In Japan, graphic novels regularly non-fiction topics like text books or biographies. A French climate scientist and illustrator collaborated to take a similar approach for climate change and the energy crisis. Their work cuts through false pre-conceptions and trite solutions with science.
    World without end by Jancovici & Blain
    • Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski. Yablonski breaks down a number of heuristics or razors based on psychological research and how it applies to user experience. These included: Jakob’s Law, Fitt’s Law, Hick’s Law, Miller’s Law, Peak-End Rule and Tesler’s Law (on complexity). While the book focuses on UX, I thought of ways that the thinking could be applied to various aspects of advertising strategy.
    • I re-read Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal. Eyal’s model did a good job at synthesising B.J. Fogg’s work on persuasive computing, simplifying it into a model that the most casual reader can take and run with it.
    • Kapferer on Luxury by Jean-Noël Kapferer covers the modern rise of luxury brands as we now know them. Like Dana Thomas’ Deluxe – how luxury lost its lustre Kapferer addresses the mistake of globalised manufacturing and massification of luxury. However Kapferer points out the ‘secret sauce’ that makes luxury products luxurious: the hybridisation of luxury with art and the concept of ‘incomparability’. The absence of both factors explain why British heritage brands from Burberry to Mulberry have failed in their current incarnations as luxury brands.
    • Black Magic by Masamune Shirow is a manga work from 1983. Masamune is now best known for the creation of Ghost In The Shell which has been turned into a number of anime films, TV series and even a whitewashed Hollywood remake. Despite the title, Black Magic has more in common with space operas like Valerian & Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières than the occult. In the book Masamune explores some of the ideas which he then more fully developed in Ghost In The Shell including autonomous weapons, robots and machine intelligence.
    • Doll by Ed McBain. Doll was a police procedural novel written in 1965 that focused on the model agency industry at the time. The novel is unusual in that it features various artistic flourishes including a model portfolio and hand written letters with different styles of penmanship. The author under the McBain pen name managed to produce over 50 novels. They all have taunt dialogue that’s ready for TV and some of them were adapted for broadcast, notably as an episode of Columbo. You can see the influence of McBain’s work in the likes of Dick Wolf’s productions like the Law & Order, FBI and On Call TV series franchises.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    Can money make you happy?

    Past research indicated that happiness from wealth plateaued out with a middle class salary. The latest research via the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania indicates that might not be the case instead, earning more makes you happier and there might not be a point at which one has enough. The upper limit on the research seems to have been restricted by finding sufficiently rich research respondents rather than natural inclination. As a consumer insight that has profound implications in marketing across a range of sectors from gaming to pensions and savings products.

    AgeTech

    I came across the concept of ‘agetech’ while looking for research launched in time for CES in Las Vegas (7 – 11, January 2025). In the US, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and American Association of Retired People (AARP) have put together a set of deep qualitative and quantitative research looking at the needs of the ‘aged consumer’ for ‘AgeTech’. AgeTech isn’t your Grandma iPad or your boomer CEO’s laptop. Instead it is products that sit at the intersection of health, accessibility and taking care of oneself in the home. The top five perceived age technologies are connected medical alert devices,digital blood pressure monitors, electric or powered wheelchairs/scooters, indoor security cameras, and electronic medication pill dispenser/reminders. Their report 2023 Tech and the 50-Plus, noted that technology spending among those 50-plus in America is forecast to be more than $120 billion by 2030. Admittedly, that ’50-plus’ label could encompass people at the height of their career and family households – but it’s a big number.

    It even has a negative impact on the supply side of the housing market for younger generations:

    The overwhelming majority (95%) of Americans aged 55 and older agree that aging in place – “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level” – is an important goal for them. This is up from 93% in 2023.

    The Mayfair Set v 2.0

    Spiv

    During the summer of 1999, a set of documentaries by Adam Curtis covered the reinvention of business during the latter half of the 20th century was broadcast. I got to discover The Mayfair Set much later on. In the documentaries it covered how the social contract between corporates and their communities was broken down and buccaneering entrepreneurs disrupted societal and legal norms for profit. There is a sense of de ja vu from watching the series in Meta’s business pivots to the UK government’s approach to intellectual property rights for the benefit of generative AI model building.

    It probably won’t end well, with the UK population being all the poorer for it.

    The Californian Ideology

    As to why The Mayfair Set 2.0 is happening, we can actually go back to a 1995 essay by two UK based media theorists who were at the University of Westminster at the time. It was originally published in Mute magazine.

    This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, TV programmes, websites, newsgroups and Net conferences, the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies. In the digital utopia, everybody will be both hip and rich. Not surprisingly, this optimistic vision of the future has been enthusiastically embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, innovative capitalists, social activists, trendy academics, futurist bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians across the USA. 

    It reads like all these things at once:

    • A prescient foreshadowing from the past.
    • Any Stewart Brand op-ed piece from 1993 onwards.
    • The introduction from an as-yet ghost written book on behalf of Sam Altman, a la Bill Gates The Road Ahead.
    • A mid-1990s fever dream from the minds of speculative fiction authors like Neal Stephenson, William Gibson or Bruce Sterling.

    What the essay makes clear is that Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison and Elon Musk are part of a decades long continuum of Californian Ideology, all be it greatly accelerated; rather than a new thing. One of the main differences is that the digital artisans no longer have a chance to get rich with their company through generous stock options.

    Jobsmobile

    Even Steve Jobs fitted in with the pattern. For a hippy he drove a 5 litre Mercedes sports car, parked in the handicapped spaces in the Apple car park and had a part in firing Apple’s first gay CEO: Michael Scott because of homophobia and Scott’s David Brent-like handling of Black Wednesday. It may be a coincidence that Tim Cook didn’t come out publicly as gay until over three years after Steve Jobs died.

    … a European strategy for developing the new information technologies must openly acknowledge the inevitability of some form of mixed economy – the creative and antagonistic mix of state, corporate and DIY initiatives. The indeterminacy of the digital future is a result of the ubiquity of this mixed economy within the modern world. No one knows exactly what the relative strengths of each component will be, but collective action can ensure that no social group is deliberately excluded from cyberspace.

    A European strategy for the information age must also celebrate the creative powers of the digital artisans. Because their labour cannot be deskilled or mechanised, members of the ‘virtual class’ exercise great control over their own work. Rather than succumbing to the fatalism of the Californian Ideology, we should embrace the Promethean possibilities of hypermedia. Within the limitations of the mixed economy, digital artisans are able to invent something completely new – something which has not beenpredicted in any sci-fi novel. These innovative forms of knowledge and communications will sample the achievements of others, including some aspects of the Californian Ideology. It is now impossible for any serious movement for social emancipation not to incorporate feminism, drug culture, gay liberation, ethnic identity and other issues pioneered by West Coast radicals. Similarly, any attempt to develop hypermedia within Europe will need some of the entrepreneurial zeal and can-do attitude championed by the Californian New Right. Yet, at the same time, the development of hypermedia means innovation, creativity and invention. There are no precedents for all aspects of the digital future. As pioneers of the new, the digital artisans need to reconnect themselves with the theory and practice ofproductive art. They are not just employees of others – or even would-be cybernetic entrepreneurs.

    They are also artist-engineers – designers of the next stage of modernity.

    Barbrook and Cameron rejected the idea of a straight replication of the Californian Ideology in a European context. Doing so, despite what is written in the media, is more like the rituals of a cargo cult. Instead they recommended fostering a new European culture to address the strengths, failings and contradictions implicit in the Californian Ideology.

    Chart of the month: consumer price increases vs. wage increases

    This one chart based on consumer price increases and wage increases from 2020 – 2024 tells you everything you need to know about UK consumer sentiment and the everyday struggle to make ends meet.

    Consumer prices vs. wage increases

    Things I have watched. 

    The Organization – Sydney Poitier’s last outing as Virgil Tibbs. The Organization as a title harks back to the 1950s, to back when the FBI were denying that the Mafia even existed. Organised crime in popular culture was thought to be a parallel corporation similar to corporate America, but crooked. It featured in the books of Richard Stark. This was despite law enforcement stumbling on the American mafia’s governing body in 1957. Part of this was down to the fact that the authorities believed that the American arm of the mafia were a bulwark against communism. Back to the film, it starts with an ingenious heist set piece and then develops through a series twists and turns through San Francisco. It was a surprisingly awarding film to watch.

    NakitaNakita is an early Luc Besson movie made after Subway and The Big Blue. It’s an action film that prioritises style and attitude over fidelity to tactical considerations. The junkies at the start of the film feel like refugees from a Mad Max film who have happened to invade a large French town at night. It is now considered part of the ‘cinéma du look’ film movement of the 1980s through to the early 1990s which also features films like Diva and Subway. Jean Reno’s character of Victor the Cleaner foreshadows his later breakout role as Leon. It was a style of its time drawing on similar vibes of more artistic TV ads, music videos, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice TV series and films Thief and Manhunter.

    Stephen Norrington’s original Blade film owes a lot to rave culture and cinéma du look as it does to the comic canon on which it’s based. It’s high energy and packed with personality rather like a darker version of the first Guardians of The Galaxy film. Blade as a character was influenced by blaxploitation characters like Shaft in a Marvel series about a team of vampire hunters. Watching the film almost three decades after it came out, it felt atemporal – from another dimension rather than from the past per se. Norrington’s career came off the rails after his adaption of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did badly at the box office and star Wesley Snipes went to jail for tax-related offences.

    The Magnificent Seven – I watched the film a couple of times during my childhood. John Sturges had already directed a number of iconic films: Bad Day at Black Rock and Gunfight at The OK Corral. With The Magnificent Seven, he borrowed from The Seven Samurai. It was a ‘Zappata western’ covering the period of the Mexican revolution and was shot in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The film did two things to childhood me: made me curious about Japanese cinema and storytelling. There are some connections to subsequent Spaghetti Westerns:

    • Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (shot in 1964 would borrow from another Akira Kurosawa film Roshomon)
    • Eli Wallach played a complex Mexican villain in both The Magnificent Seven and Leone’s The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.
    • The visual styling of the film is similar to spaghetti westerns, though the clothes were still too clean, Yul Brynner’s role as the tragic hero in black is a world-away from the traditional Hollywood coding of the good guys wearing white hats (or US cavalry uniforms).
    • The tight, sparse dialogue set the standard for the Dollars Trilogy and action films moving forward
    • Zappata westerns were the fuel for more pro-leftist films in the spaghetti western genre. While The Magnificent Seven still has a decidedly western gaze, it took on racism surprisingly on the nose for a Hollywood film of this era.

    Watching it now as a more seasoned film watcher only sharpened my appreciation of The Magnificent Seven.

    Breaking News by Johnnie To feels as much about now as it when the film was shot 20 years ago. First time I watched it was on the back of a head rest on a Cathay Pacific flight at the time. Back then I was tired and just let the film wash over me. This time I took a more deliberate approach to appreciating the film. In the film the Hong Kong Police try and control and master the Hong Kong public opinion as a robbery goes wrong. However the Hong Kong Police don’t have it all their own way as the criminals wage their own information campaign. This film also has the usual tropes you expect from Hong Kong genre of heroic bloodshed films with amazing plot twists and choreographed action scenes along with the spectacular locations within Hong Kong itself. Watching it this time, I got to appreciate the details such as the cowardly dead-beat Dad Yip played by veteran character actor Suet Lam.

    Useful tools.

    Current and future uncertainties.

    current and future uncertainties

    This could be used as thought starters for thinking about business problems for horizon scanning and scenario planning. It’s ideal as fuel for you to then develop a client workshop from. But I wouldn’t use something this information dense in a client-facing document. You can download it as a high resolution PDF here.

    Guide to iPhone security

    Given the propensity of phone snatching to take over bank accounts and the need to secure work phones, the EFF guide to securing your iPhone has a useful set of reminders and how-to instructions for privacy and security settings here.

    Novel recommendations

    I got this from Neil Perkin, an LLM-driven fictional book recommendation engine. It has been trained on Goodreads (which reminds me I need to update my Goodreads profile). When I asked it for ‘modern spy novels with the class of John Le Carre’ it gave me Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, Chris Pavone’s The Expats and Chris Cumming’s The Trinity Six. All of which were solid recommendations.

    Smartphone tripod

    Whether it’s taking a picture of a workshop’s forest of post-it notes or an Instagrammable sunset a steady stand can be really useful. Peak Design (who were falsely accused of being a ‘snitch‘) have come up with a really elegant mobile tripod design that utilises the MagSafe section on the back of an iPhone.

    Apple Notes alternative

    I am a big fan of Apple Notes as an app. I draft in it, sync ideas and thoughts across devices using it. But for some people that might not work – different folks for different strokes. I was impressed bu the quality of Bear which is a multi-platform alternative to the default Notes app.

    The sales pitch.

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my February 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into March.

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

    Get in touch if there is anything that you’d like to recommend for the newsletter.

  • Technical capability notice

    The Washington Post alleged that the British government had served a technical capability notice against Apple in December 2024 to provide backdoor global access into encrypted Apple iCloud services. The BBC’s subsequent report appears to support the Post’s allegations. And begs philosophical question about what it means when the government has a copy of your ‘digital twin’?

    DALL-E surveillance image

    What is a technical capability notice

    A technical capability notice is a legal document. It is issued by the UK government that compels a telecoms provider or technology company that compels them to maintain the technical ability to assist with surveillance activities like interception of communications, equipment interference, or data acquisition. When applied to telecoms companies and internet service providers, it is usually UK only in scope. What is interesting about the technical capability notice allegedly served against Apple is extra-territorial in nature. The recipient of a technical capability notice, isn’t allowed to disclose that they’ve been served with the notice, let alone the scope of the ask.

    Apple outlined a number of concerns to the UK parliament in March 2024:

    • Breaks systems
    • Lack of accountability in the secrecy
    • Extra-territoriality

    Tl;DR – what the UK wants with technical capability notices is disproportionate.

    Short history of privacy

    The expectation of privacy in the UK is a relatively recent one. You can see British spy operations going back to at leas the 16th century with Sir Francis Walsingham. Walsingham had a network that read couriered mail and cracked codes in Elizabethan England.

    By Victorian times, you had Special Branch attached to the Metropolitan Police and related units across the British Empire. The Boer War saw Britain found permanent military intelligence units that was the forerunner of the current security services.

    By world war one the security services as we now know them were formed. They were responsible to intercept mail, telegraph, radio transmissions and telephone conversations where needed.

    Technology lept forward after World War 2.

    ECHELON

    ECHELON was a cold war era global signals intelligence network ran by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US. It originated in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, the ECHELON project became formally established in 1971.

    ECHELON was partly inspired by earlier US projects. Project SHAMROCK had started in 1940 and ran through to the 1970s photographing telegram communications in the US, or transiting through the US. Project MINARET tracked the electronic communications of listed American citizens who travelled abroad. They were helped in this process by British signals intelligence agency GCHQ.

    In 2000, the European Commission filed a final report on ECHELON claimed that:

    • The US-led electronic intelligence-gathering network existed
    • It was used to provide US companies with a competitive advantage vis-à-vis their European peers; rather like US defence contractors have alleged to undergone by Chinese hackers

    Capenhurst microwave tower

    During the cold war, one of the main ways that Irish international data and voice calls were transmitted was via a microwave land bridge across England and on to the continent.

    Microwave Network

    Dublin Dame Court to Holyhead, Llandudno and on to Heaton Park. Just next to the straight line path between Llandudno and Heaton Park was a 150 foot tower in Capenhurst on the Wirral. This siphoned off a copy of all Irish data into the British intelligence system.

    Post-Echelon

    After 9/11, there were widespread concerns about the US PATRIOT Act that obligated US internet platforms to provide their data to US government, wherever that data was hosted. After Echelon was exposed, it took Edward Snowden to reveal PRISM that showed how the NSA was hoovering up data from popular internet services such as Yahoo! and Google.

    RAMPART-A was a similar operation taking data directly from the world’s major fibre-optic cables.

    US programme BULLRUN and UK programme Edgehill were programmes designed to crack encrypted communications.

    So privacy is a relatively new concept that relies the inability to process all the data taken in.

    Going after the encrypted iCloud services hits different. We are all cyborgs now, smartphones are our machine augmentation and are seldom out of reach. Peering into the cloud ‘twin’ of our device is like peering into our heads. Giving indications of hopes, weaknesses and intent. Which can then be taken and interpreted in many different ways.

    What would be the positive reasons to do a technical capability notice?

    Crime

    Increasing technological sophistication has gone hand in hand with the rise of organised crime groups and new criminal business models such as ‘Klad’. Organised crime is also transnational in nature.

    But criminals have already had access to dedicated criminal messaging networks, a couple of which were detailed in Joseph Cox’ Dark Wire . They use the dark web, Telegram and Facebook Marketplace as outlets for their sales.

    According to Statista less than six percent of crimes in committed in the UK resulted in a charge or summons in 2023. That compares to just under 16 percent in 2015.

    Is going after Apple really going to result in an increased conviction rate, or could the resources be better used elsewhere?

    Public disorder

    Both the 2011 and 2024 riots caught the government off-guard. Back in 2011, there was concern that the perpetrators were organising over secure BlackBerry messaging. The reality that the bulk of it was being done over social media. It was a similar case with the 2024 public disturbances as well.

    So gaining access to iCloud data wouldn’t be that much help. Given the effort to filter through it, given that the signals and evidence were out there in public for everyone to see.

    The big challenge for the police was marshalling sufficient resources and the online narrative that took on a momentum of its own.

    Paedophiles

    One of the politicians strongest cards to justify invasion of privacy is to protect against nonces, paedos and whatever other label you use to describe the distribution of child sexual abuse images. It’s a powerful, emotive subject that hits like a gut punch. The UK government has been trying to explore ways of understanding the size of abuse in the UK.

    Most child abuse happens in the home, or by close family members. Child pornography rings are more complex with content being made around the world, repeatedly circulated for years though various media. A significant amount of the content is produced by minors themselves – such as selfies.

    The government has a raft of recommendations to implement from the The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. These changes are more urgently needed like getting the police to pay attention to vulnerable working-class children when they come forward.

    Terrorism

    The UK government puts a lot of work into preventing and combating terrorism. What terrorism is has evolved over time. Historically, cells would mount terrorist attacks.

    Eventually, the expectation of the protagonist surviving the attack changed with the advent of suicide tactics. Between 1945 and 1980, these were virtually unheard of. The pioneers seem to have been Hezbollah against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

    This went on to influence 9/11 and the London bombings. The 9/11 commission found that the security services didn’t suffer from a lack of information, but challenges in processing and acting on the information.

    More recently many attacks have been single actors, rather than a larger conspiracy. Much of the signs available was in their online spiral into radicalisation, whether its right-wingers looking to follow the example of The Turner Diaries, or those that look towards groups like ISIS.

    Axel Rudakubana’s actions in Southport doesn’t currently fit into the UK government’s definition of terrorism because of his lack of ideology.

    I am less sure what the case would be for being able to access every Apple’s cloud twin of their iPhone. The challenge seems to be in the volume of data and meta data to sift through, rather than a lack of data.

    Pre-Crime

    Mining data on enough smartphones over time may show up patterns that might indicate an intent to do a crime. Essentially the promise of predictive crime solving promised in the Tom Cruise dystopian speculative future film Minority Report.

    Currently the UK legal system tends to focus on people having committed a crime, the closest we have to pre-crime was more intelligence led operations during The Troubles that were investigated by the yet to be published Stalker/Sampson Inquiry.

    There are so many technical, philosophical and ethical issues with this concept – starting with what it means for free will.

    What are the negative reasons for doing a technical capability notice?

    There are tensions between the UK government’s stated opinion on encrypted services and the desire to access the data, outlined in Written testimony of Chloe Squires, Director National Security, Home Office.

    The UK Government supports strong encryption and understands its importance for a free, open and secure internet and as part of creating a strong digital economy. We believe encryption is a necessary part of protecting our citizens’ data online and billions of people use it every day for a range of services including banking, commerce and communications. We do not want to compromise the wider safety or security of digital products and services for law abiding users or impose solutions on technology companies that may not work within their complex systems.

    Extra-territorial reach

    Concerns about the US PATRIOT Act and PRISM saw US technology companies lose commercial and government clients across Europe. Microsoft and Alphabet were impacted by losing business from the likes of UK defence contractor BAE Systems and the Swedish government.

    The UK would likely experience a similar effect. Given that the UK is looking to biotechnology and technology as key sectors to drive economic growth, this is likely to have negative impact on:

    • British businesses looking to sell technology services abroad (DarkTrace, Detica and countless fintech businesses). They will lose existing business and struggle to make new sales.
    • Britain’s attractiveness to inbound investments be it software development, regional headquarter functions or infrastructure such as data centres. Having no exposure to the UK market may be more attractive to companies handling sensitive data.
    • You have seen a similar patten roll out in Hong Kong as more companies have moved regional headquarters to Singapore instead.

    The scope of the technical capability notice, as it is perceived, damages UK arguments around freedom-of-speech. State surveillance is considered to have a chilling effect in civilian discussions and has been criticized in the past, yet the iCloud backdoor access could be considered to do the exactly same thing as the British government opposes in countries like China, Hong Kong and Iran.

    Leverage

    The UK government has a challenge in terms of the leverage that it can bring to bear on foreign technology multinationals. While the country has a sizeable market and talented workforce, it’s a small part of these companies global revenues and capabilities.

    They can dial down services in the UK, or they can withdraw completely from the UK marketplace taking their jobs and infrastructure investment with them. Apple supports 550,000 jobs through direct employment, its supply chain, and the iOS app economy. In 2024, Apple claimed that it had invested over £18 billion over the previous five years.

    In terms of the number of people employed through Apple, it’s a big number, let me try to bring it to life for you. Imagine for a moment if every vehicle factory (making cars, tractors,, construction vehicles, race cars and wagons), parts plant, research and development, MOT station, dealership and repair shop in the UK fired half their staff. That is the toll that Apple leaving the UK would have on unemployment.

    Now think about how that would ripple through the community. Less goods bought in the supermarket, less pints poured in a pub or less frequent hair cuts given.

    Where’s the power in the relationship between the tech sector and the government?

    Precedent

    Once it is rumoured that Apple has given into one country’s demands. The equivalent of technical capability notices are likely to be employed by governments around the world. Apple would find it hard not to provide similar access to other 5is countries, China, India and the Gulf states.

    Even if they weren’t provided with access, it’s a lot easier to break in when you know that a backdoor already exists. A classic example of this in a different area is the shock-and-awe felt when DeepSeek demonstrated a more efficient version of a ChatGPT-like LLM. The team had a good understanding of what was possible and started from there.

    The backdoor will be discovered, if not by hackers then by disclosure like the Capenhurst microwave tower that was known about soon after it went up, or by a Edward Snowden-like whistle-blower given the amount of people that would have access to that information in allied security apparatus.

    This would leave people vulnerable from around the world to authoritarian regimes. The UK is currently home to thousands of political emigres from Hong Kong who are already under pressure from the organs of the Chinese state.

    Nigel Farage

    From a domestic point-of-view while the UK security services are likely to be extremely professional, their political masters can be of a more variable quality. An authoritarian populist leader could put backdoors allowed by a technical capability notice to good use.

    Criminal access

    The hackers used by intelligence services, especially those attributed to China and Russia have a reputation for double-dipping. Using it for their intelligence masters and then also looking to make a personal profit by nefarious means. Databases of iCloud data would be very tempting to exploit for criminal gain, or sell on to other criminals allowing them to mine bank accounts, credit cards, conduct retail fraud.

    Vladimir Putin

    It could even be used against a country’s civilians and their economy as a form of hybrid warfare that would be hard to attribute.

    Xi Jinping

    In the past intelligence agencies were limited in terms of processing the sea of data that they obtained. But technology moves on, allowing more and more data to be sifted and processed over time.

    What can you do?

    You’ve got nothing to hide, so why worry? With the best will in the world, you do have things to hide, if not from the UK government then from foreign state actors and criminals – who are often the same people:

    • Your bank account and other financial related logins
    • Personal details
    • Messages that could be taken out of context
    • I am presuming that you don’t have your children’s photos on your social media where they can be easily mined and fuel online bullying. Your children’s photos on your phone could be deep faked by paedophiles or scammers.
    • Voice memos that can be used to train a voice scammer’s AI to be good enough
    • Client and proprietary information
    • Digital vehicle key
    • Access to academic credentials
    • Access to government services

    So, what should you do?

    Here’s some starting suggestions:

    • Get rid of your kids photos off your phone. Get a digital camera, have prints made to put in your wallet, a photo album book, use an electronic picture frame that can take an SD card of images and doesn’t connect to the web or use a cloud service.
    • Set up multi-factor authentication on passwords if you can. It won’t protect you against a government, but it will make life a bit more difficult for criminals who may move on to hacking someone else’s account instead – given that there is a criminal eco-system to sell data en-masse.
    • Use the Apple password app to generate passwords, but keep the record off them offline in a notebook. If you are writing them down, have two copies and use legible handwriting.
    • You could delete ‘important’ contacts from your address book and use an old school filofax or Rolodex frame for them instead. You’re not likely to be able to do this with all your contacts, it wouldn’t be practical. If you are writing them down, have two copies and use legible handwriting.
    • Have a code word with loved ones. Given that a dump of your iCloud service may include enough training data for a good voice AI, having a code word to use with your loved ones could prevent them from getting scammed. I put this in place ages ago as there is enough video out there on the internet of me in a public speaking scenario to train a passable voice generative AI tool.
    • Use Signal for messaging with family and commercially sensitive conversations.
    • My friend and former Mac journalist Ian Betteridge recommended using an alternative service like Swiss-based Proton Cloud. He points out that they are out of the legal jurisdiction of both the US and UK. However, one has to consider history – Crypto AG was a Swiss-based cryptography company actually owned by the CIA. It gave the intelligence agency access to secure communications of 120 countries including India, Pakistan and the Holy See. Numerous intelligence services including the Swiss benefited from the intelligence gained. So consider carefully what you save to the cloud.
    • if you are not resident in the UK, consider using ‘burn devices’ with separate cloud services. When I worked abroad, we had to do client visits in an authoritarian country. I took a different cellphone and laptop to protect commercially sensitive information. When I returned these were both hard reset by the IT guy and were ready for future visits. Both devices only used a subset of my data and didn’t connect to my normal cloud services, reducing the risk of infiltration and contamination. The mindset of wanting to access cloud services around the world may be just the thin end of the wedge. Countries generally don’t put down industrial and political espionage as justifications for their intelligence services powers.

    What can criminals do?

    Criminals already have experience procuring dedicated secure messaging services.

    While both dark web services and messaging platforms have been shut down, there is an opportunity to move the infrastructure into geographies that are less accessible to western law enforcement: China, Hong Kong, Macau or Russia for instance. A technical capability notice is of no use. The security services have two options to catch criminals out:

    • Obtain end devices on the criminal:
      • While they are unlocked and put them in a faraday cage to prevent the device from being wiped remotely.
      • Have an informant give you access to their device.
    • Crack the platform:
      • Through hacking
      • Setting the platform up as a sting in the first place.

    If the two criminals are known to each other a second option is to go old school using a one-time pad. This might be both having the same edition of a book with each letter or word advancing through the book .

    So if you used the word ‘cat’ as the fourth word on line 3 of page 2 in a book you might get something like 4.3.2, which will mean nothing if you don’t have the same book and if the person who wrote the message or their correspondent don’t use 4.3.2 to signify cat again. Instead they would move onwards through the book to find the next ‘cat’ word. A sleuthing cryptographer may be able to guess your method of encryption by the increasing numbers, but unless they know the book your feline secret is secure from their efforts.

    NSA DIANA one time pad

    Above is two pages from an old one-time pad issued by the NSA called DIANA.

    The point is, those criminals that really want to evade security service understanding their business can do. Many criminals in the UK are more likely to rely on a certain amount of basic tactics (gloves, concealing their face, threatening witnesses) and the low crime clearance rate in the UK.

    Instead of a technical capability notice, these criminals are usually caught by things like meta analysis (who is calling who, who is messaging who, who is transferring money etc.), investigative police work including stings, surveillance and informers.

    Why?

    Which begs the questions:

    • Why Apple and why did they choose to serve it in December 2024?
    • What trade-offs have the UK government factored in considering the potiential impact on its economic growth agenda and political ramifications?
    • The who-and-why of the leak itself? Finally, the timing of the leak was interesting, in the early days of the Trump administration.

    I don’t know how I feel about the alleged technical capability notice and have more questions than answers.

    More information

    European Commission Final Report on Echelon  and coverage that appeared at the time of the report’s release: EU releases Echelon spying report • The Register

    Patriot Act und Cloud Computing | iX – German technology press on the risks posed by the Patriot Act

    US surveillance revelations deepen European fears | Reuters – PRISM negatively impacted US technology companies

    NSA’s Prism surveillance program: how it works and what it can do | guardian.co.uk

    The strange similarities in Google, Facebook, and Apple’s PRISM denials | VentureBeat

    Tech Giants Built Segregated Systems For NSA Instead Of Firehoses To Protect Innocent Users From PRISM | TechCrunch

    Computer Network Exploitation vs. Computer Network Attack | Schneier on Security

    EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM TO THE INVESTIGATORY POWERS (TECHNICAL CAPABILITY) REGULATIONS 2018

  • Zing + more things

    Zing

    HSBC’s Zing shuts down. It didn’t manage to compete effectively against Revolut and Wise. Zing provided cheap foreign exchange. On the face of it HSBC had a number of use cases in its main retail banking markets that would have made sense.

    Hong Kong:

    • 7+ percent of the population are expats. This has been pretty constant over previous decades, though people are constantly coming and departing. A big group of these communities are domestic workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. All of whom would benefit from cheap foreign money transfers.
    • Like other developed Asian countries, many young Hong Kongers study abroad. Having a way to cheaply transfer money to and from Hong Kong would be useful for this second group.
    • Finally Hong Kong has a diaspora, with families being spread across the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

    UK:

    • 30+ percent of Londoners were born outside the UK. Overall, the UK had ethnic minorities which make up 8 – 10 percent of the population. Many of them have multi-generational links with their homelands.
    • The NHS in particular has a large proportion of skilled foreigners working for them from Filipino intensive care nurses to Greek X-ray technicians.

    Zing decided to launch only in the UK. Despite HSBC’s footprint, it didn’t grab the visibility or market share achieved by Revolut or Wise. It also failed to make money and HSBC seems to have taken a shorter term view to succeed or quit compared to its startup competitors. One could charitably view Zing as a correct view of the ‘fast failure’ model, if learnings from it are taken from it by HSBC and applied effectively.

    Zing shutdown

    Zing is emblematic of Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma where established companies lose market share as they fail to disrupt themselves to compete against new upstart businesses.

    Financial innovation is hard. Barclays closed down their mobile payment system Pingit, NatWest stepped back from its digital bank offering and Vodafone has struggled to expand M-Pesa.

    Beauty

    SkinGPT – hyper-realistic skin simulations powered by GenAI

    China

    US TikTok ‘refugees’ make surprise move to China’s ‘RedNote’ | FT – Xiaohongshu’s technical team were not ready for the complexity of a western audience. What’s interesting is that the move was a political statement to US politicians and a tacit rejection of Meta’s competitor platforms very soon after their ‘pivot to free speech’.

    Economics

    Gen Z Americans are leaving their European cousins in the dust | FT

    Energy

    Toyota rethinks its bet on hydrogen | FT – renewed focus on commercial vehicles that will help drive the build out of hydrogen infrastructure.

    Gadget

    Honda, Sony launch Afeela with microLED external display | EE News Europe – showcased at CES

    Vintage | Hi-Fi News – modern reviews on classic hi-fi models that give you a realistic understanding about how they compare to the current state-of-the-art. A number of the pieces come off much more favourably than I was expecting.

    Obsolete Sony are doing a great job at documenting Sony’s history:

    Ideas

    Kameron Hurley: There Have Always Been Times Like These – Locus OnlineHard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom. –Ursula K. Le Guin

    Luxury

    ISSUE #1 — ARTSUMERISM – Power Dynamics by COPE – massification of luxury goods might have taken the artisan out of luxe. But has enabled it to develop an art collaboration somewhere between patron and influencer relationship.

    Marketing

    Interesting contrast between Ivy Yang’s A 2025 PR Playbook for an Unpredictable World – by Ivy Yang and Edelman’s Trust Barometer hand wringing around a crisis of grievance – 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Reveals High Level of Grievance Towards Government, Business and the Rich.

    Kantar Media to be sold to US investment firm for £820m

    Materials

    Shoemaking experts Rose Anvil interview Fitasy on the advantages and challenges of using additive manufacturing for shoes. Fitasy provide a more realistic perspective on the circular economy benefits of filament printing at the end of the interview.

    Media

    It’s Time to End our Subscription Addiction | Futureproof News – the Substack economy can’t scale.

    Advertising folk, Britain’s young news readers are not all like you – The Media Leader

    Online

    About-Face(book) | Spyglass – MG Seigler covers the journey of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg

    Meta puts the ‘Dead Internet Theory’ into practice – Computerworld – Computerworld on Meta’s AI social media profiles designed to have personalities.

    Google’s mobile search results are dropping the ‘breadcrumbs’ from URLs – The Verge

    Will Video Kill the Audio Star in 2025? | Vulture – I find it a bit odd as an idea, but then I do listen to a lot of talking heads YouTube channels without looking at the participants such as TLDR, Chip Stock Investor et al and much of the CNBC content I listen to is an audio track from their TV feed.

    Technology

    ‘ChatGPT’ Robotics Moment in 2025 | AI Supremacy – this is a very software orientated look at things. Lights out factories have been pursued for decades. A big limitation is the physics governing strain wave bearings, which affects size and loads that can be managed. Much of the innovation has been in software until hardware can catch up.

    UK’s elite hardware talent is being wasted. | Josef – this reminds me a lot of working in the chemical and petrochemical industry at the start of my career. When enough people opt out the capability collapses in on itself.

    Daring Fireball: Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber

    Web of no web

    Tiny chip could offer spectral sensing for everyday devices | TechXplore

  • January 2025 newsletter

    January 2025 newsletter introduction

    Welcome to my January 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 18th issue. As a child 18 represented experiences denied. 18 and R18 in the UK and Ireland is broadly equivalent to Hong Kong’s ‘category III’ or the US R and NC-17 ratings. This was prior to the Marvel universe infantilising adult cinema.

    12 jade zodiac

    18 is considered lucky in both Chinese culture and numerology. Talking of lucky, January 29th sees the lunar new year, which will be the year of the snake. According to Chinese horoscope, so 2025 should be a good year for my Chinese horoscope sign in terms of professional and financial areas. Here’s hoping.

    New reader?

    If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here

    Strategic outcomes

    Things I’ve written.

    • Japan Re-Emerges + more things – if nothing else visit this post for Ulrike Schaede’s talk on Japan’s reinvention over the past four decades.
    • Interpublic acquisition by Omnicom – a slow read, rather than a hot take. It got a bit of traction when I published it thanks to Stephen Waddington for sharing it on his Facebook group House of Marketing and PR
    • Foreign workers + more stuff – a mix of stuff from around the web including a documentary on how Filipino, Indonesian and Burmese domestic workers in Singapore have banded together to found a mutual support community around a shared love of roller-skating.
    • CNY 2025 – a round-up of ads and observations in the run up to the year of the snake. I haven’t written this as an article on LinkedIn this year, as LinkedIn’s video embed function no longer seems to work properly in articles.

    Books that I have read.

    • I managed to finish The Peacock and the Sparrow – IS Berry drew on real-world events such as the Arab Spring political movements and the Fat Leonard scandal to provide a story that moves between Bahrain to Cambodia and back. There was also a universality to the book, for instance it captured that worst excesses of the expat experience that resonated with my own experience and was something I sought to studiously avoid when living in Hong Kong. I was surprised that the book implies that the post-petroleum phase of Bahrain’s development, seemed to happen so abruptly. This was at odds with the gradual decline in petroleum production that we’ve seen in North Sea oil production and mid-west oil fields prior to fracking. Bahrain is a former petro-state that has now pivoted to Gulf area tourism and related services industries.
    • Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway. I am skeptical of works that look to fill in the universe created by a deceased writer. Christopher Tolkien’s efforts were as much an academic study of JRR Tolkien’s archive curated for the completist reader. Ian Fleming’s James Bond franchise was overrated when he was still alive. It didn’t merit the ten authors that have worked on expanding the book canon to date. John Gardner’s own enjoyable character Boysie Oaks, (similar to Len Deighton’s protagonist in The IPCRESS File) was overshadowed by Gardner’s stint writing Bond books. Nick Harkaway’s book pleasantly surprised me. Harkaway’s real name is Nicholas Cornwell and he was the son of David Cornwell aka John Le Carré. He literally and figuratively grew up as his father wrote the great George Smiley trilogy (Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People) and the BBC adaptations. Karla’s Choice feels and reads ‘right’ and slots neatly into the Le Carré lore. I can highly recommend it as a read. Despite it being a period piece, Russia’s resurgence gives it a strong sense of zeitgeist.
    Palo Alto
    • Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris. Harris’ book is curate’s egg. On one hand it’s is a politically left polemic by the author on how the world is based on slavery, genocide and other forms of exploitation – which manifested in the authors trauma of a privileged upbringing in Palo Alto. Amongst all this Harris manages to write a Bay Area history that surfaced nuggets that I didnt know from the range of previous books on the area that I had read. Included in them is quotes from Silicon Valley pioneer Wilf Corrigan on offshoring chip manufacturing and packaging. It’s an oddity. If you like left leaning political theory, or a history of technology buff who is prepared to wade through the editorialising it might be worth your while.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    The Sun Also Rises, But Not on Magazines

    There are times when you reach a personal tipping point in your view on something. It can feel shocking, nauseous in a visceral way. I have only been there a few times.

    With the dot com boom it was talking with financier at an incubator fund sometime in April 2000. Pegasus Research’s iconic quantitative research on ‘burn rates’ had been published a month earlier and had started to become more known if one read around enough. So I asked him how they thought that they would be making money and his response was:

    Ged, I am really surprised that you asked me that. Don’t you realise, we’re trying to move at ‘internet’ time. We’ll think about monetising it later on.

    With some notable exceptions like Monocle magazine, print media has been struggling.

    Wired Jan / Feb 2025

    Over the Christmas period I was reading the January / February 2025 edition of Wired magazine (published by Condé Nast). Right from unwrapping the magazine from its postage packaging something felt wrong. The magazine felt light; very light. Thankfully the print stock and graphic design was up to its usual standards. So I did a quick page count and noted the number of advertisements in the magazine.

    • 88 pages
    • 5 adverts from paying advertisers
    • 3 adverts from Condé Nast
    • 1 advert for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The advertising space might have been donated by Condé Nast

    I was alarmed at the decline. Seeing declining magazine media spend on slide ware is different to feeling it happen on a publication that you loyally subscribe to. Thankfully my other usual print magazines Monocle and Japanese style magazine HailMary don’t seem to have had a similar exodus of advertisers yet. But it put me on alert about the precarious health of magazine print adverts as a medium. Creative magazine print done right can provide experiences that TikTok can’t.

    • Think about the size of visual real estate
    • The tactile experience of the page which helps with memory formation
    • Being able to smell a product fragrance on the page
    • Sampling opportunities
    • The ambient reach of re-reading or being left in a shared environment
    • Creative offline to online linkages

    For the right brands it offers targeted upper funnel experiences that can then be reinforced digitally.

    Which brought me to Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises as I groped around in my head trying to find the words to explain what was happening to magazines as a advertising medium:

    “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

    “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

    The value chains driving the creator economy.

    I spent some time during Christmas reading Influencer marketing unlocked: Understanding the value chains the paper was written by 15 academics following the 12th Triennial Invitational Choice Symposium held at INSEAD’s Fontainebleau site. Having worked on influencer campaigns on and off for the past two decades I was curious to see what progress had been made in the thinking underpinning influencer marketing.

    Measuring ROI is still complex, as are the challenges that influencers face balancing ‘editorial’ integrity with promotional content.

    Brands continue to struggle with measuring ROI beyond short term metrics and puts a focus on engagement. Metrics on long term impact (if any), sales and profitability are insufficient. The authors recognised that there were gaps in proving causation between engagement and sales or long term brand equity.

    There is still work to be done understanding the marketing impact of influencer marketing on both influencer and brands including:

    • Customer acquisition, retention and lifetime value
    • How can authenticity be maintained in paid promotions

    There is still the tension between brands need to qcquire and develop customers vs. influencers own need to cultivate ‘follower equity’. Influencers also depend on their relationship with the platforms they exist on, which can snuff them out if they no longer fit the ad revenue created vs. the revenue the influencer gets through promotions. Platforms boost influencers until a certain point and then limit their reach to maintain control.

    China’s ‘closed loop’ ecosystem was considered to be more effective. This is platforms such as Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese market twin) and Pinduoduo aka ‘together, more savings’ seem to do better due to tight integration between content and commerce. Then there is the live-streaming business which is basically QVC on social media. TikTok and Instagram Commerce are still playing catch-up. Chinese influencers are thought to have a lifecycle of up to five years, which is why MCNs use an ‘idol’ development model.

    Creative consistency

    Creative consistency was one of 2024’s marketing efficiency tenets thanks to research conducted by System1. System1 studied how consistency affects creative quality, stronger brands and greater profits.

    When comparing the most to the least consistent brands, analysis found that a higher proportion of consistent brands reported larger sales value gain, market share gain and profit gain.

    Chart of the month: decline in digital health investment

    The FT published an article just prior to JP Morgan’s annual Healthcare conference. The article put some sober perspective on the current state of investment in digital health innovation.

    Investment in digital health

    Things I have watched. 

    E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial – I hadn’t seen ET since I watched it as a child in the cinema. Watching it again as an adult was like watching a different film. From the atmospheric introduction prior to the stars cape onwards, it felt emotionally heightened, with more of a direct line back to Spielberg’s earlier Close Encounters of The Third Kind in terms of look-and-feel. There were references that I didn’t get at the time (for instance takeaway pizza and Reese’s Pieces weren’t really a thing in the UK). I got to appreciate Spielberg’s use of distraction, light and colour grading as an adjunct to storytelling. Finally, the shameless product placement surprised me. 1980s America was a very consumerist society with ultra-processed food that would cause convulsions in The Guardian newsroom – but the product placement was far less subtle than modern Korean dramas. I could see why Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces got an apparent sales uplift from the film.

    Bangkok Dangerous – A Thai take on Hong Kong’s ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre emblematic of John Woo films. The directors Danny and Oxide Pang are better known for horror film The Eye. Bangkok Dangerous feels more alive than its Hong Kong peers thanks to Danny Pangs editing and Oxide Pang’s over-saturated colour grading. The brothers careful use of cinematography, inventive storytelling and sparse dialogue make this debut film film feel so polished. Finally, the brothers manage to make city the star, in a similar way to Wong Ka-wai’s films in Hong Kong.

    Persepolis – A film adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel published in two volumes Persepolis and Persepolis 2. Persepolis tells the story of Marjane’s life from childhood in Paris and pre-revolutionary Iran, how she experienced the revolution. She was sent away by her upper middle class family to Vienna for secondary school. Afterwards she went to university in Iran, was treated for depression and attempted suicide. The story ends as it began with Marjane returning to Paris. The film is true to the graphic novel in terms of style – think a modern-day Tin Tin. Like the book, the story is an emotional rollercoaster ride. It’s subject matter feels equally relevant now, as is did when Satrapi originally wrote her story.

    Useful tools.

    Advertising awards list

    Probably not that useful for me at the moment, but The Thought Partnership have put together a list of awards listed by entry deadline covering the whole of 2025, which should be handy for advertising, marketing and public relations agency marketers.

    Adobe Acrobat Pro alternative

    Adobe Acrobat Pro is a useful piece of software, but it’s not worth almost £20 / month. PDF Reader Pro gives you a lifetime licence for the same functions for a one off payment of $25.

    Long term tracking

    Use Apple AirTags but have battery charge anxiety because you forget when you put the battery in? I know I did for the one in my travelling IT kit bag. And I found a solution. Elevaton Lab’s TimeCapsule 10-year battery case. its a two-piece black plastic slap held together by screws. Inside a couple of Duracell AA batteries will give a decade of operation for your AirTag. Sparingly use a little bit of gasket maker on the two halves seams and LocTite Threadlocker on the screws gives you a nigh indestructible tracking module.

    The sales pitch.

    I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.

    More on what I have done here.

    bit.ly_gedstrategy

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my January 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into the year, and for those of you celebrating the lunar new year on January 29th 恭喜發財 (Gong Kei Faat Choy).

    Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.

    Get in touch if there is anything that you’d like to recommend for the newsletter.

  • Foreign workers + more stuff

    Foreign workers

    Foreign workers in Singapore parlance are people who come from around Southeast Asia and South Asia to do blue collar and pink collar jobs in the city state.

    In a number of Asian countries including Hong Kong and Singapore; Filipino and Indonesian workers came to care for old people at home, look after children and conduct household tasks.

    This group of foreign workers freed up middle class married women in Singapore and other countries to participate more to their economy, capitalising on their education and ability to earn more in fast-growing economies. They had higher levels of workforce participation than their female counterparts in Japan and South Korea.

    foreign worker philipppines

    The Philippines relies almost five-fold more on remittances for its GDP than similar countries like Indonesia.

    What’s less reflected upon is the social upheaval and challenges that these foreign workers face in their new homes. They are in a different culture, away from friends and family as a support network. They have tremendous pressure to remit as much money as possible home.

    They only have each other to rely upon. This skate team is just one of the activities that foreign workers do. From informal gatherings with friends to sophisticated beauty pageants, volleyball and basketball leagues. More Singapore related content can be found here.

    Beauty

    China’s beauty market is a sight for sore eyes | FT – The brand keeps prices of its products, from face powders to creams, closer to those of premium international brands, in line with L’Oréal’s Lancôme and Shiseido’s Nars. The rise of a domestic premium brand points to a significant shift in mainland shoppers’ buying habits as well as highlighting improvements in the quality of domestic products

    Business

    Business execs just said the quiet part out loud on RTO mandates — A quarter admit forcing staff back into the office was meant to make them quit | ITPro

    China

    Impatient for tech breakthroughs, the Communist Party is pushing aside private initiatives | Merics – the government is trying to pick winners and backfill the funding gap left in the VC industry which has declined over 40%.

    China’s long view on quantum tech has the US and EU playing catch-up | Merics – China sees quantum technology as pivotal in global science and technology (S&T) competition and has stepped up government spending on scientific and industrial development to about USD 15 billion.

    Consumer behaviour

    Paper People | Yun Sheng | Granta – virtual dating simulators and virtual love. Japan leads where the aging world is likely to follow

    2024 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights – young people (gen-Z) make the highest traffic.

    Gen Alpha report: Teens see Starbucks as the new Venmo – Fast Company – equivalent to rounds in a bar.

    From like to love: understanding why consumers fall in love with some products | Kearney

    Culture

    Y3K: Futuristic fashion trend sweeps China | Jing Daily – Inspired by AI, VR, and the metaverse, and propelled by K-pop idols and Korean brands, Y3K is rapidly gaining popularity among Gen Z. – very William Gibson ‘Burning Chrome’ era

    Economics

    Diverging demographic destinies: Cars and the middle class | WARC – According to Pew, the American middle class has shrunk significantly in the last few decades. The top 20% of earners now take more than 50% of aggregate income because theirs has grown faster. 88% of Americans have less than $2000 in their checking account and 50% have less than $500 in savings. The average cost of a new car in 1984 was $6000 and the average household income was $27k. Today average household income is $80k [Fed] but averages conceal the widened gap between maxima and minima: the median income per person is around $35k [Census]. The average price of a new car is almost $50k, which is surprising enough that CNN wrote an article about it. They explain that “much of the reason Americans are paying nearly $50k for a car is that automakers decided to go all-in on expensive cars. The more they charge for a car, the more money they make off it.” 

    Whereas forty years ago an average new car cost about a fifth of an average annual salary, a new car is now prohibitively expensive for most. That’s why Americans have a record $1.6 trillion of outstanding car debt and delinquencies are rising.

    What the Bubble Got Right | Paul Graham

    2025 AI & Semiconductor Outlook | Fabricated Knowledge – early indications for an economic downturn?

    Energy

    Is China’s “peak coal” just spouting emissions? | Too Simple, Sometimes Naive

    Hong Kong

    Asia’s Walled City: The Erosion of Transparency in Hong Kong | International Republican Institute – interesting report, particularly some of the knock-on effects for sectors such as public affairs professionals, financial analysts and being able to do due diligence on businesses.

    Japan

    FirstFT: Nissan and Honda hold talks about a merger


    Biden’s Move to Block US Steel Deal Is No Way to Treat Japan – Bloomberg
    In the executive order preventing the deal on spurious national security grounds, staffers for President Joe Biden appeared to accidentally copy-and-paste the title of a previous presidential order — one ordering a Chinese crypto mining company to vacate property near an Air Force base. The left the Nippon Steel directive entitled: “Regarding the acquisition of certain real property of Cheyenne leads by MineOne Cloud Computing Investment.”

    Luxury

    Interesting research from two sources that don’t quite square with each other. Walpole’s The State of London Luxury 2024 report came out and painted a rosy picture about the ultra high end aspect of the London property market. Meanwhile over at the FT, Why London’s property market is stagnating points at the same end of the market as being moribund in nature.

    United States Luxury Fine Jewelry Market Expected to Reach USD 24,374.3 Million by 2034, Driven by Sustainability and Personalization Trends | Future Market Insights. – The luxury fine jewelry market in the United States is poised for steady growth, with the market size expected to reach USD 17,353.6 million in 2024. The market is projected to continue expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.5%, reaching USD 24,374.3 million by 2034

    Marketing

    Ipsos In Talks To Acquire Kantar Media | Media Post Agency Daily

    Full article: Infusing Affective Computing Models into Advertising Research on Emotions | Journal of Advertising Volume 53, 2024 – Issue 5: Computational Advertising Research Methodology – academic study to look at the kind of research techniques that the likes of System 1, iPSOS and Kantar use in assessing advertising

    Ageism in advertising: AI and layoffs exacerbate the issue | Ad Age – baked in (but largely incorrect) perceptions about ‘not being able to use AI’ and reducing headcount is crippling the existing DEI dumpster fire in the advertising industry.

    Media

    Jellyfish Launches Share of Model™ Platform, First-to-Market Solution to Track How LLMs Perceive Brands, Products & Services – Marketing Communication News – Share of Model™ Platform – a first-of-its-kind solution that enables companies to analyze how different Large Language Models (LLMs) perceive their brands, products and services. Critically, the new platform can identify whether or not brands are optimizing their digital presence enough to prompt coveted recommendations from Gen AI models such as ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s Llama, when people tap into them for guidance.

    The Media Mix Navigator tool

    Retailing

    Foot Locker hit by slower spending and NIKE ‘softness’ | WARC | The Feed

    How WhatsApp for business changed the world – Rest of World

    Security

    Romania blames Russia for election meddling | FT

    How Chinese Hackers Graduated From Clumsy Corporate Thieves to Military Weapons – WSJ

    How macOS has become more private – The Eclectic Light Company

    Afgantsy Redux: How Russian military intelligence used the Taliban to bleed U.S. forces at the end of America’s longest war

    Technology

    Intel on the Brink of Death – SemiAnalysis & The Death of Intel: When Boards Fail – by Doug O’Laughlin. This interview with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, back when he was the project manager for the Intel 386 processor. In retrospect, Gelsinger’s return as CEO could be seen as an Intel C-suite cargo cult hoping for 386-like success again.

    Telecoms

    U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid cyberattack | NBC News

    Web-of-no-web

    Top secret lab develops atomic clock using quantum technology – GOV.UK