Inside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of Workers – The New York Times – wants to remake them into loyal blue collar workers. Where this gets interesting is with China’s belt and road neighbours like Kazakhstan who have families that span the borders. China’s muslim minorities push has a wider impact in the region. There is likely to be careful consideration of what is going on with the muslim minorities by Mongolia and South Korea in particular. As they will be concerned with their ethnic brethren across the border.
‘Social Mentality’ Report Reveals Telling Trends in Happiness | Sixth Tone – Chinese people are fed up with what they perceive as a reckless lack of concern for their privacy. Over 90% of nearly 3,200 people surveyed last year said they were worried about third-party companies leaking their personal data, while just 10% said they were “very optimistic” when it came to trusting such companies
China’s impending Minsky moment | Financial Times – China’s debt-to-gross domestic product ratio is more than 300 per cent and continues on a dangerously upward trajectory. The Chinese authorities are aware of the situation and the risks but they continually refrain from acting with the necessary force. They are concerned that actions to confront rising domestic debt will constrain economic growth. They are wrong in believing there will ever be a good time to curb financial excesses, as they fail to comprehend that delay now will make action in the future harder and costlier
Great video that explains Chinese boomers quite nicely
Volkswagen Beatle – after seven decades Volkswagen is finally saying goodbye to its most iconic vehicle. It seems the Beatle won’t make it into the electric future of Volkswagen.
Visual Futurist – Syd Mead
We lost visual futurist Syd Mead at the end of 2019. Mead was best known now as the stylist on Blade Runner, but had worked for a number of US corporates including Ford and US Steel. He’d also done work for NASA.
Even if you don’t know Mead, you’ve likely seen his work. Or the stuff influenced by his work.
My first reaction on hearing the news is that fate is cruel. Mead has left us, but in his place we have Elon Musk.
Animal thoughts
Ze Frank for Audible on animals thoughts for Christmas. Animal thoughts for Christmas reminds you of how alien our rituals must seem to our pets. The random associations that they will likely form with things like tinsel. The cat going on about tree torture is the best part of it. But the inner trips of cats on cat nip comes a close second.
Connected restaurant
Three Ireland have executed on an idea I investigated back in 2005 for Motorola. Back then it was a lot harder to get the bandwidth and screens to do it. We were also thinking on a bigger scale, connecting Trafalgar Square with public spaces around the world. Three Ireland made the venue more intimate. It was a lovely to see the creative wrapper that Three Ireland put around it that resonates with Irish households around the world.
Sesame Street
Sesame Street characters do impressions of each other. I know that some characters might be voiced by the same actors and wonder if that what was going on here. I am constantly amazed by the timelessness of the Sesame Street franchise.
Treasure hunt as defined by NPD is the process of consumers bargain hunting. It might be discounted pricing on items or looking for substitute pre-owned products.
Sale
Discounted items used to be seen in the retail trade as the preserve of older consumers alongside couponing. But as empirical experience going along to discount outlets show bargain hunters reach across social classes, income levels and age groups. Discounted products accounted for 3 percent growth in retail, even while retail declined by 1 percent overall in the last quarter.
There hasn’t been as much of an exploration into whether its the discounts that people want or whether its the thrill of the hunt itself, especially when Google makes it much easier online.
As for pre-owned goods, whilst NPD thinks that this is a millennial trait – vintage clothing stores, crate digging for records and and eBay are evidence that this trait isn’t new. I was reminded of being told that the collective memory is about eight years or so. So this explains how trends come back and get regurgitated or remixed by trendspotters and agencies.
Admittedly the motivation that they are ascribing to vintage shopping by millennials and gen-z adds environmental aspects to vintage consumption. (Though is probably quality aspects as well as apparel globalisation and fast fashion have gone hand-in-hand in the demand for heirloom design).
China Inc. goes global. Transnational and national networks of China’s globalizing business elite: Review of International Political Economy: Vol 0, No 0 – The article finds substantial transnational linkages between the globalizing Chinese business elite and the corporate elite networks of Western globalized capitalism – through corporate affiliations and policy-planning affiliations. At the same time the analysis reveals the strong ties of the Chinese state-business elites to the party-state. Rather than presenting an outright threat to the liberal order and the corporate elite networks at its core, or indicating a co-optation scenario, the article finds evidence for a more hybrid scenario in which China as a corporate actor within the liberal world reveals its two faces: partially and pragmatically integrating and adapting to the liberal modes of networking, while simultaneously holding on to its distinctive state-directed capitalism and the (Party) direction this entails – China Inc. challenges the meaning of what the private sector means. Even private enterprises have a communist party cell who take direction from the state. This direction may be against their shareholders interests. Combine this with the lack of transparent audits for China Inc. companies with foreign listings and you have a toxic brew. More business related content here.
Impostor Syndrome from Luxury Consumption | Journal of Consumer Research – research proposes that luxury consumption can be a double-edged sword: while luxury consumption yields status benefits, it can also make consumers feel inauthentic, producing what we call the impostor syndrome from luxury consumption. As a result, paradoxically, luxury consumption may backfire and lead consumers to behave less confidently due to their undermined feelings of self-authenticity. Feelings of inauthenticity from luxury consumption may arise because consumers perceive luxury as an undue privilege. These feelings are less pronounced among consumers with high levels of chronic psychological entitlement, and they are reduced when consumers’ sense of entitlement is temporarily boosted. The effects are robust across studies conducted in the lab and in field settings such as the Metropolitan Opera, Martha’s Vineyard, a luxury shopping center, and the Upper East Side in New York, featuring relevant participant populations including luxury target segments and consumption contexts including consumers’ reflections on their actual past luxury purchase
How Much Are Cars Spying On Their Owners? – Slashdot – On a recent drive, a 2017 Chevrolet collected my precise location. It stored my phone’s ID and the people I called. It judged my acceleration and braking style, beaming back reports to its maker General Motors over an always-on Internet connection… Modern vehicles don’t just have one computer. There are multiple, interconnected brains that can generate up to 25 gigabytes of data per hour from sensors all over the car… Most hide what they’re collecting and sharing behind privacy policies written in the kind of language only a lawyer’s mother could love… The Tesla Model 3 can collect video snippets from the car’s many cameras. Coming next: face data, used to personalize the vehicle and track driver attention… Coming 5G cellular networks promise to link cars to the Internet with ultra-fast, ultra-high-capacity connections. As wireless connections get cheaper and data becomes more valuable, anything the car knows about you is fair game. GM’s view, echoed by many other automakers, is that we gave them permission for all of this… Five years ago, 20 automakers signed on to volunteer privacy standards, pledging to “provide customers with clear, meaningful information about the types of information collected and how it is used,” as well as “ways for customers to manage their data.” But when I called eight of the largest automakers, not even one offered a dashboard for customers to look at, download and control their data…. GM’s privacy policy, which the company says it will update before the end of 2019, says it may “use anonymized information or share it with third parties for any legitimate business purpose.” Such as whom? “The details of those third-party relationships are confidential,” said GM spokesman David Caldwell.
Catalyst and Cohesion – Worms and Viruses – If there is one word I would use to describe what makes an Apple-like experience, it’s “cohesion”. Any Apple enthusiast is aware of the company’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). The Macintosh has had one since 1984. iOS has had one since the launch of the App Store in 2008. Even WatchOS and tvOS have their own versions. Apple has had opinions about building cohesive user experiences for as long as Apple has been building user experiences – the context dependence of each platform is what makes ‘building once, running many places’ so hard for all but the simplest widgets
China’s $1.3tn global spending spree will collapse, says top US official | Financial Times – China’s international investments were “100 per cent” like a house of cards because of “debt overload, poor infrastructure, bribes [and] lack of transparency”. “Everything comes around, it’s only a matter of time. It was only a matter of time before WeWork came around, right?,” Mr Boehler said, referring to the distressed office rental start-up that unravelled this year. “We have to be there as an alternative because I could see China take down a whole bunch of emerging countries . . . there will be more and more cracks and then the glass will break,” he added – but who will be carrying the can for China Inc. if this happens?
Debenhams sparks fears as it seeks fresh rent cuts | Business | The Sunday Times – The retail chain is said to be targeting a further 25% reduction on about 20 stores in exchange for scrapping break clauses in the leases. The move has sparked panic among some property owners, who have sounded out rival Mike Ashley about taking on the sites when the break clauses become active
Machines for emoting, is the problem of our internet in the palm of our hands? Over the past few years the sentiment towards the internet has changed dramatically.
Before the internet
Going back to the 1960s, my parents told me about the ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ signs. These were found in many British towns at the same time that hippies were advocating peace and love. And when Enoch Powell made his rivers of blood speech; 70 percent of British people surveyed agreed with him.
Real world media and underground subcultures traded blows over racism at a slower pace. Though many of those blows were real.
Is it the internet?
This is no longer the information superhighway of Al Gore. The reasons for the changes aren’t obvious. One popular narrative is that algorithms are to blame. It is common to hear that narrative in news media.
But academic research suggests that it isn’t ‘radicalisation’ by algorithms isn’t true.
Is it the devices we use?
There were smartphones before the iPhone. They were made by numerous companies including Nokia, Palm, SonyEricsson, Panasonic and even Microsoft (who partnered with a number of manufacturers). In Japan, NTT DoCoMo put the ‘smart’ in the network through iMode rather than building a mini-PC in the phone itself.
Smartphones had initially started with business users and gradually broadened its base. Quite early on, phones focused on social functions, a classic example would be Danger’s Sidekick model which was designed for messaging. Nokia first popularised the app store and security signed apps that Apple and Google built upon.
The move to the ‘pictures under glass’ interface that we now know from Android and iPhone devices coincided with a surge on social.
Social media existed before 2010, but not as we now know it. Few of us had smartphones in 2009. Facebook’s active user base has grown sevenfold over the past 10 years, and there simply aren’t enough people for that to happen again. Instagram and WhatsApp were both launched about a decade ago, and swiftly absorbed into the mother of all social networks. As for Twitter, let me simply note that Donald Trump only started tweeting in earnest in 2011.
Did the pictures under glass metaphor and apps designed to utilise it make social too easy to share? It allows people to emote. From mild emotions usually expressed with emoticons or GIFs to visceral anger that seems to flood Twitter – there seems to be evidence of correlation if not causality. So how can design slow the hose pipe down to encourage more considered responses?
If that’s the case then user experience design has to play a part in resolving some of the worst issues online, given that people can’t seem to be able to respond appropriately by moderating their behaviour.
