Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • Wonder Girls

    The Wonder Girls caused me to reflect on pop music as a business. We are so used to manufactured pop music artists by the likes of Tom Watkins, Stock | Aitken | Waterman and more recently Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment. Some of these groups like Wham, Kylie Minogue and Take That had international success. We have gotten used to the dominance of western international recording artists.

    Wonder Girls Daum

     Wonder Girls Korean fan site.

    It is this heritage that makes the Wonder Girls phenomena: a Korean girl-band managed by a Korean team getting a Billboard top 100 hit all the more remarkable.

    Wonder Girls MySpace

    Wonder Girls MySpace page

    That kind of success takes more than talent and good looks – the world music industry is littered with talented beautiful failures. The Wonder Girls are creatures of the internet age, they started off conventionally enough in South Korea and then used their South Korean fan base to spring board into the US marketplace.

    There were two parts in this story which made a great use of social media:

    You could argue that they are a part of the ongoing Korean Wave: a rise in popularity of Korean music, television and film culture which has swept Asia and started to gain popularity in the west like the Japanese film, manga and anime industries before it.

    Wonder Girls Facebook

    Wonder Girls Facebook page

    However where the group breaks rank with the Korean Wave is in the proactive targeted nature of their marketing; which is more reminiscent of aggression and entrepreneurship of the Japanese car, camera and consumer electronics industries which shook things up in the 1960s and 1970s. More related content here.

  • Data that matters

    Data that matters has impermanence – One thing that springs up periodically is how older electronic data becomes harder to access.

    Apple font pack disk from the mid 90s

    Whether its floppy disks that are no longer readable or optical disks which have become corroded through chemical reaction over time electronic data is generally impermanent.

    I lost a substantial amount of the posts on this blog two years ago when the server I used over at Yahoo! Small Business hosting went into meltdown 90 per cent of my blogging output between December 2006 and January 2008 disappeared. I managed to recover 10 per cent of the content from the Google cache of my blog.

    However it isn’t only digital artifacts that are at risk. I was going through bags of old papers and found my old P60s some of which could no longer be read since they were printed on thermal paper and my first payslip which was barely readable.

    my first proper pay slip

    This was from my first full-time job cleaning and repairing equipment that was rented out to building contractors including lawn mowers, concrete mixers and Makita power drills.

    You can also see paper go yellow from the acid used in its manufacture as well as fade from the carbon paper print.

    I had obviously put it away to keep it for posterity, but I decided to keep it in the cloud as I figure that it might last longer that way now. Though your guess is as good as mine. The thermal paper and Flickr’s business model are both tough things to fathom how robust they will be.

    The problem with this is often the data we don’t want to keep stays like embarrassing pictures on Facebook or a drunken rant on a Usenet forum, whereas the stuff we want to keep too often fades away. So how do we get better at looking after electronic data that matters? More online and internet related posts here.

  • Nozoe Kuniaki & more news

    Nozoe Kuniaki

    Former CEO of Fujitsu Nozoe Kuniaki (野副州旦) – blackmail forced his resignation | Japan: Stippy – interesting story of boardroom intrigue. Nozoe Kuniaki was originally said to have resigned due to ill health. The FT reported that Nozoe Kuniaki was really forced to resign by Fujitsu. Apparently Nozoe Kuniaki was forced to resign over links to a company of “unfavourable reputation”. The FT hints the roots of this palace putsch: apparently Nozoe Kuniaki was opposed by colleagues due to his drive to refocus the group on IT services at the expense of unprofitable electronics divisions, including its hard disk drive business.

    China

    FT.com / China – China faces shortages of migrant workers – this is more about structural change than an economic problem, the demographic bomb hasn’t kicked in yet. Shenzhen and similar areas will go to higher value products and industry permeate deeper into the country FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Labour shortage hits China export recovery

    Consumer behaviour

    When Trying to Preserve the Planet Strains the Relationship – NYTimes.com – environmentalism causing maritial strife

    Culture

    Axe Cop – genius: a 5 year-old script writer and a 29 year-old illustrator create an awesome comic

    From Quantic Dream, a Child Killer and a Tormented Dad – NYTimes.com – interesting new direction in gaming. In some ways it reminds me of Myst and the vision that Philips had for the CD-i platform

    Economics

    Economists Urge Government to Stop War on Piracy | TorrentFreak – Digital Economy Bill-type measures don’t make economic sense according to Spanish economists

    Innovation

    Op-Ed Contributor – Microsoft’s Creative Destruction – NYTimes.com – “Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?” and “Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever.”

    Chinese Premier Talks Up Internet of Things – NYTimes.com – interesting stuff here, however we need to move to IPv6 addresses fast in order to take advantage of it

    Ireland

    RTÉ News: ‘Guerrilla street’ hurling in US capital

    Japan

    Grads return to watches as job-hunter prop | The Japan Times Online – watches used to give the impression of being well-organised

    Tech Lawyers Say ‘Uh Oh’ as Microsoft Outsources Legal Work to India

    Google and antitrust: Searching questions | The Economist

    Slapdash Bill will damage Britain’s digital economy – The Irish Times – Fri, Nov 27, 2009 – external perspective on the forthcoming Digital Economy Bill

    Media

    Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking UK copyright – Boing Boing – WTF. The BPI-authored changes the effect of which was that “the security services concerns were not being met” and then goes on to talk about the irony that the Open Rights Group and the Security Services being on the same side as if it validates his standpoint

    ivi.ru — смотрите фильмы и сериалы с комфортом! – Russian answer to Hulu and iPlayer. Really nicely designed.

    When using open source makes you an enemy of the state | Technology | guardian.co.uk – interesting evidence against MPAA and RIAA of trying to incite unilateral US government actions against Indonesia because it uses open source software

    Online

    U.K. Kids Start Social Networking Way Under the Age Limit | Fast Company

    Philippines

    Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord – NYTimes.com – My Way correlates with karaoke-related killings in the Philippines. Fascinating bit of newspaper anthropology

    Retailing

    FT.com / Comment / Analysis – China: The jailed salesman – background on the Gome business

    Security

    China PLA officer urges new Internet control agency | Reuters – People’s Liberation Army Major General Huang Yongyin ‘For national security, the Internet has already become a new battlefield without gunpowder’

    Google Case Highlights Gaps in Computer Security – NYTimes.com – interesting take on security

    Software

    The best health apps for your iPhone | The Guardian

    Wireless

    FT.com / Telecoms – Students power BlackBerry growth – I can completely understand this, I miss a proper keyboard a la the Nokia Communicator

    Motorola’s First-Quarter Forecast Hurts Shares – NYTimes.com – Android failing to save Motorola’s bacon

  • Google Music China

    I spent some time in Shenzhen and tried the Google Music China service. It was unlike anything else I have seen and was designed especially for consumers in mainland China.

    Google Music China

    Google Music China is impressive in terms of the size of its catalogue and ease-of-use. You have a mix of western artists and Chinese artists on the service. There didn’t seem to be a lot of censorship going on. You could download the full expletive riven Eminem experience. The music is downloaded into your computer as MP3 files and doesn’t have any DRM on it. I put it into my iTunes library. The service is powered by a Chinese partner for Google, which becomes apparent when you look at the URL on the page for an individual track.

    There didn’t seem to be a restriction on the amount of music that you could download. I got a mix of material from jazz to techno including a number of albums by The Jazz Messengers.

    Much of the music seems to have been licensed through the US right holders of the music; such as this Astralwerks license for a Fat Boy Slim track below.

    The service is free, in that I didn’t have to pay per track, or pay a subscription. Instead the music is ad funded with display ads as shown below.

    Google Music banner ad

    I do wonder what the click through rates are on the adverts that periodically get vended on the service?  More China-related content here.

  • Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and The Great Secret of China by Simon Winchester

    Bomb, Book and Compass

    Simon Winchester’s Bomb, Book and Compass delves into the history of science and innovation. The old adage of the victor writing history applies not only to wars but also the history of innovation and science. Everything you were taught in school about the history of science is likely to be wrong. It usually having a European focus; from the Greeks and Romans to the Italian-based renaissance via the wisdom preserved within the monasteries of Europe during the dark and early medieval ages.

    Book, the book and the compass

    The Chinese, in comparison, were seen as inscrutable and cunning rather like the Fu Manchu character of Sax Rohmer’s novels but less sophisticated than their European counterparts. This diacotomy helped assuage the consciences of empire-builders who had designs on the riches of the Chinese market, from bringing away silk and porcelain to finding a ready market for Indian-grown opium and laying the foundations for the modern-day heroin trade.

    Up until the European’s arrived China was the world’s largest manufacturer, counting for about 30 per cent of the economic activity by value in the world. This time of weakness is what the Chinese refer to as the century of shame, which was finally laid to rest when they claimed back Macau in 1999.

    Joseph Needham

    Bomb, Book & Compass is the story of Cambridge biochemistry professor Joseph Needham and his quest to find the real truth behind the history of science and China’s role within it, he did this during the chaos of the second world war, when he had the chance to get at the documentary evidence.

    He then spent the rest of his life curating and writing material for a vast series of books Science and Civilisation in China. These books were not only a historical record that put China closer to the centre stage position that they deserved in science, but also put the country on a more even standing with the ‘civilised world’ restoring or enhancing its reputation. In some respects Needham’s work could be considered to be the largest unpaid (in that China didn’t pay for it) corporate reputation campaign in the annals of public relations.

    Bomb, Book & Compass is a compelling read, by turns adventure, travelogue and political intrigue. I would recommend it, if nothing else for the very human portrait it paints of Joseph Needham as a man of great intellect and passion, but also a man with some very human failings. More book reviews here.