Ged Carroll

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.

  • A fierce head cold & other aspects of my week

    My week had been truncated somewhat by a fierce head cold and am cranking this post out with less deliberation than normal due to a backlog of household chores that aren’t going to take care of themselves. Add to that a Lemsip induced haze to try and combat the fierce head cold and you see how the rest of this post will go

    Paul Armstrong shared this AR/VR example with me: Swedish creative agency Warpin posted a video of a H&M-commissioned experience for Magic Leap glasses. The concept looks like everything my cyberpunk fan brain would want; like being inside Max Headroom’s mind. I’d also imagine that it would be hellish for any length of time. More related content here.

    Warpin Media for H&M

    BBH came up with this campaign for Carabao energy drink. The ad is aimed at the Chinese market and asks the question ‘What fuels your fighting spirit?’. In western English – this would be closer to ‘what makes you resilient, or what gets you through?’. It’s pretty much the same question that any ad planner or creative in an agency has asked as they chug their energy drink of choice whilst working on a client pitch, or particularly tough creative brief.

    BBH Shanghai for Carabao

    ‘Dear young people don’t vote’ by Shokasonjuku is a great video highlighting the need for younger Japanese to get involved in the electoral process, if they want issues that they care about to be heard. Shokasonjuku is a production company set up by Nana Takamatsu – a Japanese comedian. Young people in Japan aren’t educated or engaged by the political process, something that Takamatsu wants to change.

    Shokasonjuku

    Martin Lindstrom on how data separates businesses from consumers and how ethnography can bridge the gap. It’s also interesting how he talks about small data; or what you and I would call qualitative data that leads to insight based on a human truth.

    Smart cart guides the visually-impaired around grocery stores | Trendwatching – so a beer brand comes up with a smart shopping cart, but is the marketing benefit to the beer brand anything other than ambient marketing? There’s nothing wrong in that of course, but the linkage that will be made with social purpose looks spurious at best. If you want to help people and you sell alcohol. Stop. Don’t enable drunk drivers, wife beaters and alcoholics.

  • Agnotology + more things

    Agnotology and Epistemological Fragmentation – Data & Society: Points – well worth a good read. Agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. This reminded me a lot of work that was done by large corporates on tobacco health and more recently on peak oil and climate change. More recently it seems to be culture and value related; where the results don’t fit the wider progressive view in academia. That too isn’t healthy. More consumer behaviour related posts here.

    WePresent – lovely creative brand building work by wetransfer and an amazing 404 error message page. Each of the works presented here are very thoughtfully curated for a creative audience. Its all amazing.

    Gigalife by Vodafone | FaceTime families: What 5G means for those who stay in touch by screen – not a lot, wi-fi and 4G is more important and perfectly adequate

    When manipulation is the digital business model – dark patterns as we call it in the trade (paywall)

    Facebook’s off-again, on-again affair with privacy – Axios – less of a pivot and more of a zig-zag. What appears to be apparent is that Facebook’s internal values are at odds with wider society and there won’t be any meeting of minds any time soon.

    Leo Burnett, Lucky Generals and Ogilvy decline to pitch for Audi – Leo Burnett London, Lucky Generals, Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi London and VMLY&R all declined to take part in Audi’s advertising review. Which is a pretty damning critique of either Audi’s pitch process, or their reputation in the UK as a client. Given how toxic Boots or Samsung are as a client, this is a pretty damning indictment of Audi as an organisation in the UK. This is a world away from when Audi’s Vorsprung Durch Technik ads went head to head with BMW in the 1980s and 1990s.

  • Is Brexit bad for Europe + more

    Judy Asks: Is Brexit Bad for Europe? – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – interesting take on Brexit from a US perspective. Is Brexit bad for Europe focuses on the EUs role on the world stage including regional and global security. According to my reading of Is Brexit bad for Europe there looks to be opportunities to grow in defence research and development and upgrade the economic performance of the EUs smaller nations.

    5G Deployment State of Play in Europe, USA and Asia | European Parliament ITRE Committee – interesting snapshot on 5G adoption across the EU (PDF)

    Microsoft worked with Chinese military university on artificial intelligence | Financial Times – US worried about dual use of the technology (paywall)

    Toyota will put Tundra, Tacoma trucks on a single platform, report says – Roadshow – interesting that Toyota is embracing the Volkswagen Group approach to vehicle engineering. I didn’t realise that Toyota no longer sells the Hilux in the US, apparently its because it isn’t big enough

    Panda TV’s demise makes way for gaming giant Tencent to dominate live streaming too | SCMP – China’s Twitch goes under, leaving Tencent to dominate live streaming too. This reinforces the oligarchy running China’s online sector from financial services and e-tailing to gaming and media

    DJ Craze: “Sync is your friend… embrace technology” – News – Mixmag – wow, controversial. This is the reformation of the DJ world. The problem with these things is that once people know the button is there new DJs will skip the valuable learning process of beat mixing

    Facebook ‘morally bankrupt pathological liars’, says NZ privacy commissioner – AdNews – 5 I’s pattern starting to emerge on Facebook. You take this stance with the UK’s proposal to treat social networks as publishers and Australia’s daft views on crypto. There are lots of reasons to criticise Facebook, but this isn’t one of them. Instead its cynical pandering to the populist political peanut gallery. More related content here.

  • Chinese typing + more things

    The complexity of Chinese typing. Chinese typing relies extensively on predictive text technology. It is even more problematic that Chinese people are forgetting what some characters look like. The idea of memory trade-off is interesting. It is also worthwhile considering when one thinks about Chinese internet behaviour and the popularity of gaming (because chat can be a pain)

    Meet Liam. He has 5000 Instagram followers, but no pulse. | Campaign Asia – Nikuro is Japan’s first male virtual influencer. A 3D computer-sculpted head mapped onto to a live-action body, he seeks work “in the fields of music, fashion, and entertainment, where he will be involved in the production of a wide range of content as a multimedia producer”, according to the company, which also mentions using AI to create innovative content – digital influencers won’t misbehave, have a me too moment or be arrested for a criminal offence.

    An amazing looking Mac-based desktop phone. This was an Apple prototype from 1993. Eventually things went the other way and phones were integrated into computers. This was from back when people were starting to think about VoIP services and Novell Networks integrated telephony solutions. And that’s before we even get to smartphones.

    The quaint industrial case design is classic early 1990s Silicon Valley chic. You can also see aspects of the thinking of General Magic’s connected devices in this computer. More design related posts here.

    Kantar Media has done some qualitative research on consumer attitudes to marketing, media and advertising. You’ve got three reports that are free to download: Dimension 2019 | Kantar 

    Finally: TODAYonline | LVMH shares hit record high as China demand boosts luxury group – luxury is still on a bit of a screamer in China. And this is despite economic growth halving year on year since Premier Xi took power, a clampdown on corruption and gift-giving.

  • UN Huawei + more things

    UN Huawei must be given equal opportunity to bid for 5G business | total telecom – Houlin Zhao, secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union, told reporters from Reuters that 5G security remained of paramount importance but that there was no evidence to suggest that the use of Huawei’s network equipment should be restricted – the hasn’t read the UK government report on Huawei security flaws – the coincidence that Mr Zhao is Chinese is overlooked in the article. This also ignores issues around Huawei software engineering across its product range of network equipment with extensive backdoors built in that Huawei refuses to remove. The UN Huawei statement highlights the declining trust in UN bodies that have undergone state capture by China. More related content here.

    Apple’s Computer Vision Team is working on using Depth-based Touch Detection for Games & Virtual Keyboards – Patently Apple – depth based touch detection is important beyond the Minority Report style virtual keyboard interface. It could allow Apple engineers to design completely new ways of processing locative and contextual information mapped on the real world. It also means that we’re likely to be doing embarrassing gestures in the future. We will be closer to the idea of a web-of-no-web where the boundaries between the real world and the digital world are blurred and in some cases merged.

    Burger King under fire for ‘racist’ Vietnamese chopsticks ad | The Drum – really surprised Burger King made this mistake so close after the Dolce & Gabbana China debacle. One key consideration is that Yum Brands China that owns Burger King and KFC in China is a completely separate business. So Burger King might not be a truly global learning organisation. This happened in one of Burger King’s smallest markets – New Zealand is which is probably why it managed to sail under the radar of global brand vetting until it was too late.