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.
I remember catching Thirtysomething in between working and DJing on a weekend and during my evenings. What caught my eye at the time is that the show felt ‘bigger’ than other shows on TV at the time. It was down to Thirtysomething having talented directors and really good script writers who managed to tease the drama and storytelling out of everyday life events. It was the first show where I watched and learned how it was being created rather than being merely entertained by it. I had already taken a similar attitude to film thanks to Alex Cox’s Moviedrome series.
Promotional artwork for the series
Thirtysomething dealt with issues like ‘selling out’, having career disappointment and becoming a ‘corporate being’. The storylines included episodes where cast members were killed off or had cancer. It was also unashamedly aspirational; they were all university educated. Two of the main characters ran an advertising agency together, that would be later bought out – which brought its own troubles. Others were a successful artist, a successful photographer and a college lecturer.
In many respects Thirtysomething was a forerunner for the BBC’s This Life, which was the younger, hipper British cousin. There is something very ‘HBO’ about the feel of Thirtysomething despite the fact that it was shot for the network ABC.
The people went on to work on big Hollywood projects:
Looking back at Thirtysomething you realise that the problems that middle class America worry about have grown. Thirtysomething came from a middle class that was still striving and unashamedly white as was the later Friends. This Life had it easier being set in multicultural London rather than Thirtysomething which was set in Philadelphia. Thirtysomething had a limited release as a box set in the US. It is unavailable for streaming in the US or UK and doesn’t have the kind of following it would likely deserve, given the quality of the storytelling and the script writing involved. Much of this seems to be down to issues with music rights, which makes sense when you see tracks by The Who being replaced on the DVD releases of the original TV series of CSI.
Tracker software
In the early 1990s, tracker software packages that ran on the Commodore Amiga inspired a number of music producers, mostly bedroom producers. Some prominent producers used this set-up, notably drum and bass pioneer Micky Finn.
Tracker software is the grandparent of modern DAW software like Cubase which has replaced most outboard studio equipment.
Making Leatherman multi-tools
This video looks at the Leatherman multi-tool factory and the legacy of engineer Tim Leatherman who founded the company in 1983. In a globalised world, Leatherman is unusual in continuing American manufacturing.
This post on AI and creativity was inspired by experiments being done at work by a member of our design department. They had been using Midjourney to create images within a minute of receiving an initial set of words as creative prompts.
For example we created this surreal image which fits somewhere between Christian kitsch familiar to catholic households around the world and a touch of Syd Mead‘s visual futurism. This comes from the prompt.
Jesus fighting alongside the US Air Force
https://flic.kr/p/2nSGwLB
Other efforts weren’t successful, we had faces featuring eyes with two pupils and when it tried to render round shapes, it didn’t know when to stop. The hands would go on and on as a twisted mass of flesh. This could be resolved by creating a human character in a service like MetaHuman and uploading that to Midjourney as a base model instead.
How neural networks drive AI and creativity?
Midjourney works using two neural networks. The first works to render an image. The second compares the processing image to exemplars from a data bank of images. There is a back and forth exchange between the two networks until a number of variants are rendered. At this point the human operator is given a choice, or they can choose to have other variations created if the originals don’t meet their requirements.
These images can be rendered in high resolution allowing for an amazing level of detail.
Dystopian vibes
The dystopian feel of the use of AI and creativity is down to a few different factors.
The first reason is that dystopia is at the centre of our cultural zeitgiest in the west. Documentary maker Adam Curtis covers it really well in this discussion with with the Joe Politics channel on YouTube. This zeitgeist affects the type of imagery that the AI has available to draw upon and the kind of prompts that people use to create AI images.
Secondly, the use of AI to ‘create’ something lacks the feeling and collective emotional experiences of a real person. Those elements can’t be captured in prompts which is why images land with the sensation of a dead fish.
What does AI and creativity mean for agencies?
Concepting
The most immediate impact could be in rapid concepting, analogous to how rapid prototyping for manufacturing design. Creative teams would still need to conceive of ideas but concepts could then be brought to live in minutes.
It’s as far away from the black marker and pad that creative directors traditionally used; as paste up graphic design techniques from the use of desktop publishing software that started to impact the design world in the mid to late 1980s.
News illustrations and graphic novels show the way
One of the first areas that is really shaken up by AI and creativity has been the world of the political cartoonist and news illustrator. At the moment newspapers and news magazines pay skilled artists to develop and conceptual designs that convey a political concept.
A good example of this is the covers of The Economist magazine. However things are starting to change. US political publication The Bulwark has already started using AI generated illustrations processed by Midjourney. Midjourney has also been used to create graphic novels.
One could easily see how this might be extended into business-to-business marketing for intangible products like software and services.
Production
The hyper-realistic effects that AI can produce is likely to inspire a desire in clients to use them more often for cost effective production costs. At the moment however, the results can be very hit and miss. There is a problem with hands, faces, interlocking round shapes and a ‘dead’ look to the work.
Social implications
At first we had a discussion about what happens to designers? Were they doomed? Should there be a universal income for them or should they march in the streets to ? How could the technology be stopped?
I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine in this discussion. I pointed out that over the past few centuries, capital won out over labour every time. So people only kept their jobs if they cost less than the process to automate their tasks.
Globalisation versus automation
London like a few other cities have ad agency work done that is designed for global audiences. At the moment I work on campaigns designed for markets including: the UK and Ireland, Spain, Italy, the US, Vietnam and Japan. Globalisation seems to have benefited hub cities rather than moved the work to cheaper locales.
This in sharp contrast to what happened to British manufacturing. Whole sectors largely disappeared:
Steel making
Textile mills
Shipbuilding
Car manufacturing
Chemical industry
Pharmaceutical manufacturing
Engineering and fabrication
Where capacity was spared, it was largely down to the UK being a good point of entry into the European Union. As the number of countries expanded new manufacturing jobs moved east; and workers moved west to fill workforce needs in established UK factories depressing salaries.
Research shows that globalization only accounts for 13 percent of job loss in US manufacturing while 88 percent of losses were from automation including robotic manufacturing. In fact, availability of ever-cheaper automation options combined with uncertainty in the global supply chain has led to a resurgence in “onshoring” manufacturing.
Automation has been the quiet destructor of roles. During the 1960s businesses had typing pools and secretaries. Many of these roles disappeared due to desktop computers, office productivity software and the democratisation of touch typing as a skill.
The Technium
Even if labour won out over capital in the UK, there is no guarantee that they would be able to stop the march of technology. Kevin Kelly in his book What Technology Wants shares the idea of ‘The Technium’. The idea behind The Technium is that technology has a momentum of its own building on previous progress. Kelly goes as far to describe it as a super organism of technology. He believes that it exerts a force that is partly cultural with technology influencing and being in turn being influenced by technology. All of which means adaption and accommodation are likely to be the way forward for now.
Adaptation
While people don’t realise it, you’ve been using what could be termed AI for decades:
Autofocus on a camera
Losing ‘shake’ in camcorder and smartphone video
Programmes in a microwave the attempt to cook a casserole or baked potato
Predictive text (although it seems to have become more stupid over time)
Siri, Alexa and Google’s various search functions
In the case of a designer it would also include tools like the ‘lasso’ function in Photoshop that automatically cuts around objects including frizzy hair on a model. So it’s a bit late in the day for people to get squeamish about AI and creativity. Dominant creative software company Adobe sees the place of AI and creativity more as a technology to augment designers in their work rather than replace them. Much of the current Adobe focus seems to be on lowering the on-ramp for new users of their software packages.
There will be more of a challenge for supporting professions like photographers. Fashion brand Hugo Boss is looking to 3D AI powered design to aid in product design and 3D rendering threatening product photography for websites, look books and catalogues.
Limitations of AI and Creativity
One of the things that my colleagues said which really struck with me was ‘if an AI told the world’s funniest joke’ would it know that it was funny? Software is being used to track emotional response, but it wouldn’t necessarily know why something was funny.
The AI can’t be coded with a summation of life experiences, it can analyse emotions, but as far as we know doesn’t experience them yet. This probably explains why Studio Ghibli and Disney animation feels like it has much more life in it than the best AI renders.
Is it art?
Auction houses have sold works generated using AI, but is the art in the creation of the work, or in the decision to use an AI to do the work and thinking of the artist behind that idea? AI can produce works as they have existed before and mash-up genres and ideas, but it wouldn’t be able (at the moment) to create something completely novel through a leap of abstraction, such as a concept like Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture ‘Fountain‘.
AI images can be nice, but do they involve an illusion of creativity? Everything that appears in an AI image is depended on the inputs that the AI receives and the content in image banks that it uses as a reference – which is the reason why AIs often sign works with an indecipherable script.
Do artist styles have to be better protected as part of their IP as well as their works?
IP issues goes beyond artists. We created an artistic rendering of Pokemon character ‘Pikachu’ on Midjourney using the prompt
Definitely not a pikachu
In conclusion
If you’re a creative we eventually managed to get to four thoughts from the discussion:
In the grand scheme of things, change is the only constant
AI has been changing things and will continue to do so
It is inevitable that there willl be some automation and augmentation happening in the creative professions such as design
In the words of Douglas Adams book Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy ‘Don’t Panic’ – but be prepared to adapt and learn new skills and develop new areas of expertise
Interesting trends interview that covers a lot of the issues influencing the interviewer calls the world of visuals. The world of visuals is considered to be influenced by everything from a desire for authenticity and video content to the metaverse. While the metaverse is immature (despite what you may here elsewhere), the effect on culture of the world of visuals will be more apparent.
I saw the impact of the web on graphic design way before I got to experience the web at college. The idea of the technology inspired (mostly wrong) cultural tropes. The move towards ‘b-roll’ video makes a lot of sense. The world of visual interview gives an insight to where Getty Images thinks that the world of visuals is going.
John Le Carré
I came across some amazing interviews with author John Le Carré. John is sadly no longer with us, but the video footage still feels very pertinent. Beyond the Karla Trilogy ofTinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, The Honourable School Boy and Smiley’s People – I would also recommend Agent Running In The Field – which shows how well Le Carré still kept his finger on the pulse and was written as a riposte to Brexit. Brexit also persuaded Le Carré to change his nationality to Irish in the end, he died an Irishman.
Gucci x Palace
Following on from their collaborations with The North Face, Gucci has now collaborated with UK skate and streetwear brand Palace. Like Kim Jones over at Christian Dior, Gucci seem to be really on the zeitgeist.
Soviet oil
Asianometry has put together another great documentary. This time he focuses on how the Russian empire became an oil power. If you like John’s introduction to the subject area, I can recommend Daniel Yergin’s The Prize, as a Christmas read. This was required reading back when I worked in the oil and gas industry at the start of my career. Yergin covered the oil industry globally from 1850 to 1990 in this book and complements this introductory video to the subject.
Mid afternoon Sunday saw an incident outside and inside the Manchester Chinese consulate. The Manchester Chinese consulate caters for the second largest Chinese community in the UK. Manchester airport before COVID had direct flights to China and Hong Kong. Given the large British Chinese population in the area, it also has a community of Hong Kongers who desire democracy.
My understanding of what happened:
Chinese diplomats didn’t want a protest right outside the Manchester Chinese consulate
On the first day of the party congress at home in Beijing, some staff emerged from the consulate wearing anti-stab vests and riot police helmets to smash protestor banners and drive them away. Police were slow to intervene
Protesters defended themselves
The Manchester Chinese consulate staff retreated to their grounds including the Consul General who has been out walking.
A protestor was dragged through their gates and given a beating, he was eventually extracted by police belatedly reacting to the fight
The Consul General was seen pulling the hair of the protestor as well and later admitted it
johnlsl Extradition law Protest at Admiralty, Hong Kong 反送中大遊行(金鐘段)
Business
Pfizer Executive: in-Person Work Is ‘Critical’ to Workplace Culture – Nearly 2 years after the company helped to develop the Covid vaccine, Pfizer’s Angela Hwang said it’s time to get back to the office. Though many worked from home during the vaccine’s development, Pfizer’s culture was “banked” from years of in-person work, she said. Some companies have recently faced backlash for requiring in-person work. – Not so sure how well this will go for them.
We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves
I know that the Elvis memorabilia dropped massively in price as his fans went into care homes or died off. Antiques and art go through cycles of ‘what’s in’ and out for that matter. Doug DeMuro asks a similar question about car collecting baby boomers. A lot of this is down to cultural relevance for collectors. DeMuro notes that ‘brass era’ cars from the 1910s onwards have already seen declines in price and demands.
The Covid-19 Baby Bump: The Unexpected Increase in U.S. Fertility Rates in Response to the Pandemic | NBER – Childbearing in the U.S. among foreign-born mothers declined immediately after lockdowns began—nine months too soon to reflect the pandemic’s effects on conceptions. We also find that the COVID pandemic resulted in a small “baby bump” among U.S.-born mothers. The 2021 baby bump is the first major reversal in declining U.S. fertility rates since 2007 and was most pronounced for first births and women under age 25, which suggests the pandemic led some women to start their families earlier. Above age 25, the baby bump was also pronounced for women ages 30-34 and women with a college education, who were more likely to benefit from working from home. The data for California track the U.S. data closely and suggest that U.S. births remained elevated through the third quarter of 2022
Letter from Hong Kong Advocacy Groups: U.S. Financial Institutions’ Planned Hong Kong Summit Will Undermine U.S. Foreign Policy – executives will meet with sanctioned government officials including Chief Executive John Lee as they help Hong Kong convince the world that it’s business as usual in the city—that despite the authoritarian crackdown of the past three years, investors should return. This financial summit is more than just a conference: it represents a watershed moment in our fight to hold Hong Kong officials accountable and deter others across the world who might seek to snuff out democratic rights and commit human rights abuses. If the U.S. Government takes no action to prevent even its own banks from undermining U.S. policy with respect to Hong Kong, then it will send a message to the world that the U.S. does not intend to defend the principles it espouses. Investment will return to the city, and the Hong Kong government, the CCP, and other authoritarian regimes will learn that human rights abuses are easily forgotten by the West—especially when lots of money is involved
Global cities are fragile by nature. Here are some on their way down | Financial Times – China’s Communist party distrusts global cities. It’s crushing Hong Kong, and people are fleeing. When a marquee 800-flat project opened last month, zero apartments sold. Hong Kong, fifth on Kearney’s global-city ranking in 2019, is regressing into what some call “just another Chinese city”. Beijing and Shanghai, among Kearney’s top 10 last year, have also lost access to the world, supposedly because of quarantine restrictions. Last month, China averaged about 100 international flights a day, down 96 per cent since 2020, says Variflight. After this week’s party congress, these cities may become global again, or perhaps those days are over
Clarifying Responsible Cyber Power: Developing Views in the U.K. Regarding Non-intervention and Peacetime Cyber Operations – Lawfare – the U.K. government’s strategic communication about cyber has included prominent speeches by successive foreign secretaries and attorneys general, as well as by senior securocrats such as the GCHQ director. This division of effort in the public communication about U.K. strategy makes sense, incorporating senior political leaders with responsibility for foreign policy and the law as well as leading securocrats who, as career officials rather than politicians, speak with a different kind of authority and independence from partisan politics. Cumulatively, this helps to advance the U.K.’s emerging narrative about the responsible, democratic use of cyber power by nation-states. Fleming’s remarks also emphasized that the U.K.’s cyber operations were “ethical, proportionate and legal.” As a proponent of responsible state behavior in cyberspace, it is not surprising that the U.K. twice (in 2018 and 2022) has used a major speech by its attorney general to develop the legal aspects of the case for responsible cyber power
Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career – Solomon’s suit is the latest in a series of legal actions that follows Reuters’ reporting about hired hackers operating out of India. In June, Reuters reported on the activities of several hack-for-hire shops, including Delhi area-companies BellTroX and CyberRoot, that were involved in a decade-long series of espionage campaigns targeting thousands of people, including more than 1,000 lawyers at 108 different law firms. At the time, Reuters reported that people who had become hacking targets while involved in at least seven different lawsuits had each launched their own inquiries into the cyberespionage campaign. That number has since grown. Azima, Solomon’s former source, is among those who have gone to court over the alleged hacking. His lawyers, like Solomon’s, allege that Dechert worked with BellTroX, CyberRoot and a slew of private investigators to steal his emails and publish them to the web. BellTroX and CyberRoot are not parties to the suit and could not immediately be reached. Executives at both firms have previously denied wrongdoing. Solomon and Azima allege that Dechert undertook the hack-and-leak operation in the interest of its client, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qasimi, ruler of the Middle Eastern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. Reuters has reported that lawyers for Ras Al Khaimah’s investment agency – RAKIA – used the emails to help win a fraud lawsuit filed against Azima in London in 2016
American technology boosts China’s hypersonic missile program – The Washington Post – “In this case the American technology is superior — we can’t do certain things without foreign technology,” said one Chinese scientist who works in a university lab that conducts testing for hypersonic vehicles. “There isn’t the same technical foundation.” Some of the U.S. firms whose products are reaching Chinese military research groups have been the beneficiaries of Defense Department grants to spur cutting-edge innovation, according to a federal program database, creating the specter of the Pentagon subsidizing Chinese military advances. “It’s very disturbing, because the bottom line is that technology that can be used for military hypersonics was funded by U.S. taxpayers, through the U.S. government, and ended up in China,” – war by other means….
Interesting take on how Singapore will evolve with a transition of power happening in Singapore away from the Lee family who have dominated the city state since independence.
Taiwan
Really good presentation on the international importance of Taiwan. Its not just about TSMC but also about the global supply lines that run through Taiwanese waters
I miss Tomorrows World as a show. It came from a few points that seem to have changed in UK society
Lord Reith’s original agenda for the BBC to entertain and educate. It made cutting edge research simple and highlighted its potential benefits
A futurism vision in the great and good of society at least, rather than the current viewpoint that we’re all doomed
Now as a society, we no longer know what innovation is. There is no ‘true north’.
Predicting the smart home of 2020
This Tomorrows World programme from 1989 predicts smart home type controls such as Philips Hue bulbs, wireless charging with ‘plug-in pads’, reducing energy consumption and big screen TVs. But there is as much as it gets wrong as well, LCD windows tend to be only use in the swankest offices or high security areas. Our home windows aren’t display screens. Unfortunately we don’t have aerogel as loft insulation due to the inability to make it cheaply via mass production.
One final point that was important was how they talked about consumers having a choice of how smart their home could be. Which showed a real consideration about technological impact that is at odds with smartphones vs. feature phones; or smart TVs vs. ‘dumb’ TVs.
Business
Why Facebook’s Metaverse Is Dead on Arrival | New York magazine – In actuality, Facebook is basically spending $10 billion on a prayer that, in the short run, it might change the conversation. It gives them an opportunity to talk about the meta verse instead of insurrection and teen depression – or that Meta has moved from being a growth company to a value company…
