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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Faster Robots Demoralise Coworkers | Careers | Communications of the ACM – If you get the pace wrong would the effect of robots demoralise coworkers limit productivity? Is the future not robots augmenting coworkers, but replacing coworkers a more productive alternative. A Cornell-led team has found that when robots are beating humans in contests for cash prizes, people consider themselves less competent and expend slightly less effort—and they tend to dislike the robots – to be fair I’d expect to see something similar if the same person kept winning employee of the week. I know that workers on the line at Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port used to sabotage the robots on the line on a regular basis. This might phenomenon of robots demoralise coworkers be part of their motivation (along with laziness and malice)
Marbridge Consulting – China’s February 2019 Domestic Handset Shipments Down 20% YoY – 14.51 mln mobile handsets were shipped in China in February 2019, down 19.9% YoY and 57.4% MoM, according to new figures released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a department of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The significant month-on-month drop can be explained in part by the week-long Chinese Lunar New Year holiday towards the beginning of February. Of total shipments in February, 13.98 mln were 4G handsets, down 20.2% YoY, 37,000 were 3G handsets, and 0.49 mln were 2G handsets
Aging Millennials Soothe Themselves With Childlike Fashions – WWD – to try and hang on to youth. The attenuation of youthfulness is a cross generational phenomenon. For instance middle aged dads the still buy streetwear rather than Superdry, skate and go to gigs.
SXSW 2019: Virtual Cinema – JWT Intelligence – culture is still trying to adapt AR and VR. Whilst it has the energy of an early SIGGRAPH demo reel, I still think the storytelling aspect of things is struggling to find its legs
Patrick Pruniaux: “There Truly is an E-commerce Potential for Horology” | Luxury Society – Kering haven’t been particularly good at using Ulysse Nardin as a brand in China, but they are rectifying it now. Kering are looking to tap into ‘new’ watch consumers who can’t spend Rolex money on a watch, this position now looks more tenable since Apple has stopped going for the luxury sector with the Apple Watch
How to Create an Authentic Luxury Experience for Millennials | Jing Daily – if a luxury brand wants to entice today’s consumers, whether it’s in China or beyond, it needs to underscore its authenticity and relevancy. Powerful words, to be sure, but what does it mean to be authentic and relevant? For the moment, let’s start with the opposite. During many of my brand strategy sessions, I often hear the expression “they feel staged” when people describe brands that they would never buy. Needless to say, when brand feels staged, it is neither authentic nor relevant. The synonyms unnatural, deceived, cheated, and faked come to mind. In other words, a staged brand is bullshitt*ng their consumers.
Louis Vuitton Has a Michael Jackson Problem | Intelligence | BoF – LVMH invested significantly in Virgil Abloh to elevate its menswear line. However, the potential failure of Abloh’s Michael Jackson-inspired collection—whether due to pulled items or lack of consumer interest—is unlikely to significantly impact Louis Vuitton’s overall revenue, as men’s ready-to-wear is a small part of their business. The real concern for Louis Vuitton is protecting its brand reputation, which remains strong unlike some competitors who have faced recent social media backlash. This is especially crucial now, as consumers are quick to criticize any perceived missteps.
You May Have Forgotten Foursquare, but It Didn’t Forget You | WIRED – interesting how Foursquare went from being useful (I use it as spatial bookmarking, so that I can return to new places that I like) to where 2.0 middleware with a bit of ad tech creepiness thrown in for good measure (paywall)