1 minutes estimated reading time
Horace Dediu on the transformation of the car into a smartphone. Turning a car into a smartphone isn’t a technology revolution that particularly excites me. I prefer things that can kill me to be using highly reliable real time operating systems with no real time network connectivity – if they have to run software at all. Former Thai finance minister Suchart Jaovisidha who was locked inside his BMW limousine by its onboard computer is a lesson to us all.
China Mobile 5G launch video is absolutely terrifying and probably the best advert for LTE that I’ve ever seen.
Consumer use case doesn’t seem to be that high on their priority. So there’s no downloading of Netflix style TV in a flash.
So what is the killer app? It isn’t autonomous cars, or life saving tele-medicine. But dystopian omnipresent Chinese security. There’s no way I’d be buying a Huawei 5G handset after watching this. It has extra resonance with the current ‘Be Water’ protests going down in Hong Kong. More wireless related posts here.
I am guessing that China Mobile won’t be handing out copies of Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Here some of the books main topics are discussed by Shoshana Zuboff, Carole Cadwalladr, Paul Hilder and Shahmir Sanni.
VCCP’s first campaign for Cathay Pacific is interesting. It has moved away from the professional business traveller to focus on the leisure travel market. This might be a bet on where the Hong Kong economy is going and a ploy to try and tap into the burgeoning Chinese luxury travel market. I suspect that a good deal of it is Cathay Pacific not being price and service competitive with the likes of Oatar Airways on premium long haul flights.
For me this was a generic ad highlighting Cathay’s overall service rather than the business class experience. which is wedged in awkwardly on the end.
Finally, Robin Sloan’s short story The Sleep Consultant | The Meteor – feels like as if William Gibson started writing for Monocle.