Ged Carroll

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  • To kill the truth by Sam Bourne

    To kill the truth is very much a book of our time. It explores the power of historical records, the alt-right and technology. The plot opens with a very current battle between ‘woke’ academia meets the polo-shirted, tiki torch-bearing far right. A former academic has gone to court in order to dispute our understanding of the slave trade and create a revisionist history.

    Historical records and accounts were picked apart to cast sufficient doubt on them. By using this legal standard record-by-record the mass of evidence is ignored. The truth becomes lies, rather like social political discussions over Brexit and Trump’s election.

    Untitled

    Then key establishments of historical record start to burn down around the world. Online repositories from websites to Google are brought to their knees by hackers. Into this mess steps a smart wonkish protagonist Maggie Costello. Maggie is tired of the political machine and gets pulled back in. Soon she suffers from online identity theft.

    Taking one side Costello’s gender for a moment. Costello feels familiar. This is partly because she is so similar to Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Smart bookish heros who could see what the establishment couldn’t.

    The second parallel to Clancy’s work is that characters are secondary to the big ideas and technical wonders. And here lies the book’s achilles heel. Costello has obviously beeen developed as a smart vulnerable ‘woke’ hero. But she feels like a cardboard cut-out rather than a believable character. The androgynous nom-de-plume Sam Bourne hides the identity of Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland. His wonkish credentials created a great high concept, but he hasn’t managed to create a character that we can root for.

    Enjoy the exploration of big contemporary issues, just keep our expectations low on the character development.

  • CNY 2019 – year of the pig

    CNY 2019 is the Chinese new year of the pig! The pig is the last animal in the 12 year cycle of the Chinese horoscope. People born in the pig year, would need to be careful this year according to tradition. The reason is that they offend Tai Sui, the god of age in Chinese mythology, and so have bad luck. I have been struggling to finish a project so haven’t managed to update here as much as I like. Hence a special post now:

    Proctor and Gamble’s Pampers brand focused on the stress that parents go through in order to get home for new year.

    Singapore’s POSB – a local bank took a more multi-cultural approach that reflects Singapore’s celebrations of Chinese new year. In tonality, you see similar work from other major Singapore brands like Singtel who talk about traditional ‘good Singaporean’ values. Fair play to POSB for providing a more diverse casting.

    Malaysian telco Maxis came up with this take for CNY 2019. This looks like it is referencing the god of good fortune and Chinese tradition. In terms of style, there is more than a touch of Stephen Chow type humour from his early Hong Kong films in this Maxis advert. Hong Kong’s film heritage still has an oversized influence.

    China’s national television network CCTV held its annual new year’s gala. This was the most spectacular part of the three hour show. The CCTV new years gala is a must watch event for mainland Chinese and their diaspora around the world. I know of Chinese students who gather together and watch the New Years gala together. The camaraderie of friends fills some of the void of not being home with the extended family of parents and grandparents. More China related content here and more on CNY 2019 here.

  • 3 year phone contracts + more things

    Paying for Keeps | CC Insight – 3-year phone contracts will suppress smartphone market even further, that includes 5G handsets (the why 5G in a handset is a whole other question). 3-year phone contracts will also likely encourage SIM only shopping. More wireless related content here.

    MOFT – World’s First Invisible Laptop Stand – of course early laptops had more opportunity to do ergonomic design which isn’t available when you fallow Apple’s ‘size zero’ design ethos. My first laptop an Apple PowerBook 165 had small rotatable legs. I am surprised that class action suits aren’t a thing due to RSI and carpal tunnel syndrome on modern laptops. The ergonomic information required to make the case for MOFT has been available for decades

    Uncover Harassers – rage as a plug-in. Surprised that there isn’t a UK version for gammons and remoaners respectively. Download this plug-in to optimise you’re being triggered. I get where they coming from but I can also see the downside of it as well

    The Facts About Facebook – WSJ – Zuckerberg’s op-ed falls flat with WSJ subscribers. A lot of people have written out how this back end binding of the services is as much about fending off coming regulation as anything else. Think Internet Explorer and Windows when Microsoft were taken to task. Read also Opinion | Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Be Your Ghost Writer – The New York Times – funny but true, love the VCR analogy (paywall)

    I Bought a Fake Canada Goose Jacket on Amazon – The Atlantic – Amazon is full of fake stuff. There doesn’t seem to be a vendor quality control facility on Amazon Marketplace

    Global mobile ad spend set to tip TV in 2019 thanks to programmatic boom, and 5G boost – a 5G boost really?

    Huawei/Edelman Relationship Ends Before It Starts | Holmes Report – very interesting reading and the optics are pretty bad for Huawei.

    Xiaomi Mijia laser 4K projection TV goes on sale for 14999 Yuan ($2210) – Gizchina.com – who has clear space for a 100 inch screen to be thrown up on a wall?

    China has a special passport for its elites—like Huawei’s detained executive — Quartz – the smoking gun that connects Huawei to the government in the way that the company has always denied. I was really surprised that more hasn’t been made of this story. A P series or ‘Public Affairs’ passport is a non-diplomatic, but otherwise VIP passport for party officials and others who are very tightly involved with the Chinese government. It is the smoking gun that links Huawei and the Chinese government in a way that hasn’t been previously done and shreds a lot of Huawei’s counter arguments

    Tencent, NetEase Shut Out Again in New Batch of Games OK’d by China – Variety – “Given the current speed of new game approval, the backlog of games waiting for licensing, and the government’s stricter control over game content, we estimate it could take two to three years before the Chinese games industry stabilizes,”

    ‘They need the scale’: DTC brands like Peloton and Chewy are buying more TV ads | Digiday – because TV advertising still works

    WSJ City | Russia accuses Facebook Twitter of failing to comply with data laws – surprised more countries aren’t Balkanising personal data storage

  • DLD 2019 & things that made last week

    Scott Galloway presented at DLD 2019, Munich this week. DLD is a German version of Paddy Cosgrave’s Web Summit. You get attendance from the EU, the German government and German banking and industry as well as the tech sector. For those that don’t know him, Scott Galloway is a business professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the founder of L2 Inc. which was recently acquired by Gartner.

    funicular freak – amazing Tumblr account, words that I don’t often have in the same sentence any more

    7 of the Cutest (and Smartest) ‘Year of the Pig’ WeChat campaigns | Jing Daily  and here is how you can get it wrong. The flexibility of the WeChat platform for marketers is something that western social platforms can learn from. In terms of the content, Gucci consistently manages to come up with the right product designs and content for WeChat around lunar new year.

    Chloe managed to do a good job using celebrities in their campaign. It was interesting that they collaborated with an Indian artist Rithika Merchant, rather than a Chinese artist for the New Year designs.

    I had another late addition to my collection of the best Chinese New Year creative. Heineken did a Chinese New Year advert for the Singapore market. But its not on their social feeds so I can’t share it. I presume that the content must be a TV only campaign.

    Starbucks opens interactive coffee sanctuary in Bali as tribute to Indonesia’s Arabica coffee | The Drum 

  • Things that I am reading at the moment

    Out of Control by Kevin Kelly

    Out of Control by Kevin Kelly

    I have been a subscriber to the US edition of Wired magazine for longer than I care to remember. We’re living in a different time now and the future that Wired features isn’t as thrilling as it once was. Kevin Kelly was one of the founding editorial team and still contributes. He also helped found The WELL and The Whole Earth Catalog. I like to revisit his 2010 book What Technology Wants every so often and have decided to delve into his back catalogue. I can remember skim reading Out of Control the first time around. Its a great read now that I am going more slowly, but like New Rules for the New Economy it informs as much with what it got wrong as what it got right. Technological progress has a weird pattern of looping around on several attempts before becoming an everyday product, so the ideas may have new life yet.

    How Brands Grow: Part 2: Emerging Markets, Services, Durables, New and Luxury Brands by Sharp and Romaniuk

    How Brands Grow: Part 2: Emerging Markets, Services, Durables, New and Luxury Brands by Sharp and Romaniuk. Part 1 is more famous for the impact it has had in consumer marketing. I have been working on a business-to-business project and have been thumbing through this, but probably not as enthusiastically as I should do. That reflects more on me than the book.

    To Kill The Truth by Sam Bourne

    To Kill The Truth by Sam Bourne. I received a galley copy of this book, it’s my current leisure read. Historians are being killed and historical records destroyed in the combustible environment of white nationalists and the alt left. The book is very now and its engaged me so far.