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.

  • Fieldnotes & other things

    Fieldnotes

    Chad Dickerson’s Fieldnotes – Fieldnotes is an email newsletter from one of the key people during Yahoo!’s web 2.0 geek golden age and former CEO of Etsy. Chad Dickerson was in charge of Yahoo!’s Brickhouse incubator and the Yahoo! Developer Network. He then went to be the CTO of Etsy and was then promoted to CEO. Dickerson came from a background in technology for online media, having worked at CNN, Salon.com and InfoWorld before Yahoo!

    Shipping time lapse

    This is the second time lapse film I’ve seen done by an officer on a ship. I get it. No internet would give you a lot of time to put the film together. It opens up a world that I had only heard of from people older than me who had served on ships when westerners were sailors. I love the way clouds boil away, time lapse allow you to better see the liquid nature of clouds.

    20 choice edits and reworks

    Greg Wilson put together this mix of his favourite edits that had been done in 2017. Everyone of them are are an amazing track. Wilson was one of the original resident DJs at the Hacienda. He was the first UK DJ to be seen scratching on TV. He took a break from DJing and returned later to both DJing and production. Wilson is one of the pioneers in the nu disco movement.

    LV Pass Apple Messenger icons

    Louis Vuitton’s LV Pass app did some really nice integration with Apple’s Messenger stickers. It is based on Jeff Koons artworks and the iconic Louis Vuitton brand. More related content here.

    Untitled

    Switch off for the holidays

    Fair play to Nokia for running this campaign on their website over Christmas. They realise that consumers are over connected and need a screen break, so they have been encouraging consumers to switch off and connect in real life for the holidays.

    nokia

  • Darude & other things

    Darude  – Sandstorm

    Vice are running a series on classic EDM (heart sinks) but the first is Darude – Sandstorm. Lets not even get into the music taxonomy Vice are using…

    Darude – Sandstorm is interesting because the catchy hook is straight out of the Stock Aitken and Waterman playbook, complete with a key change. It sounds timeless, it could have been from any time from the early 1980s onwards – since it fits in with records like Rofo’s Theme. It is also surprisingly simple which is why it became endlessly memeable.

    The back story of how Darude – Sandstorm took off is fascinating.

    VR in jail

    Re-entry into society is astonishingly difficult for criminals that have completed their prison sentence. Its not only that businesses are reluctant to employ convicted criminals, but that life has changed. Imagine going into jail before the internet and coming out today. You might know about the changes, but knowing isn’t the same as experiencing them.

    Secondly, interacting outside is different to jail. You don’t have opportunities to prepare for the transition. And that’s where the Colorado correctional facilities use of VR comes in. Convicts can experience scenarios and learn from the experience.

    Scott Galloway on 2017

    Scott Galloway summing up 2017 at hyper speed.

    [Bonus posting] Predictions for 2018 | The Daily | L2 – Scott Galloway and the team have some ballsy predictions

    How Rega makes turntables

    The team at The Vinyl Factory put together videos on how Rega make turntables…

    How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers

    How McIntosh Labs make amplifiers. McIntosh Labs have been producing amazing hi-fi for over seven decades, with a design language that hasn’t changed that much over the years. It is really impressive that McIntosh Labs have been competitors like Bob Carver come and go. It’s also impressive that McIntosh Labs still make their products in the US.

    Have a great start to 2018.

  • HBN & other things from last week

    Human by Nature or HBN are a relatively new streetwear brand. This HBN football shirt caught my eye; a logo that skirts perilously close to the wrath of New Balance. And the HBN geometric pattern looks like a blown up version of the adidas ‘leaf design’ 1990-92 Manchester United away shirt, but at the same scale as the ‘vee’ motif on the 1991-1993 Arsenal away shirt.

    human by nature

    In order to get into the Christmas season I have been listening to this Amerigo Gazaway seasonal mixtape

    I also love listening to this seasonal mix that used to be played in the much missed Hideout boutique throughout the holiday season

    I can recommend Lo and Behold: Reveries Of A Connected World by Werner Herzog who gives an iconoclastic history of the internet and where it is taking us. It is currently available on Netflix.

    SaveSave

    I am currently working my way through a few different books, including Steve Coll’s forthcoming book Directorate S. Coll is a former journalist and academic. He is has written a number of non-fiction books on central Asia and companies such as Exxon. His research is exhaustive which is why my galley copy is a bit of a door stop. More later on my thoughts.

    Directorate S

  • 200 billion dollars & other news

    200 billion dollar markets

    Upgrade to 5G Costs 200 Billion Dollars a Year, May Not Be Worth It | Advertising Age – this will be interesting. 3G mobile networks were in a similar position at launch. I remember going to a Cap Gemini conference at the time, where research from European mobile operator c-suite opinions was presented. TL;DR no one knew how it was going to make money. Some like Three had ideas of making money on short form media like sports highlights.  Three didn’t manage to build a business selling football clips. None of the current ideas look worth $200 billion a year. Not even at the inflated values that we currently have, nothing close to 200 billion dollar markets. More related content here.

    Culture

    Outlaw Appeal: The Yakuza in Film and Print | Nippon – nice analysis of the Yakuza in popular culture

    Design

    Why Is There No Freighter Equivalent of the Airbus A380? – this is explains why Airbus made non-cargo optimised design decisions (like a cockpit on the lower flight deck so you can’t fit a cargo door in the nose). I would be very surprised if Airbus doesn’t make the same mistakes in the future. 

    Ethics

    Jaron Lanier interview on Silicon Valley culture, #MeToo backlash, AI, and the future – Business Insider

    FMCG

    Family Greatly | Kraft Brand – YouTube – classic planner driven creative targeting important family moments. Textbook FMCG advertising

    Japan

    No news, just snooze: Japan’s paper deliverers enjoy press holiday | World news | The Guardian – I love that Japan still values print

    Luxury

    Hiroshi Fujiwara Explains Why Fragment Sneakers Are So Hard to Get | GQ  – There’s many shoes out there. I want everyone to have it who wants to have it. But it’s hard because so many people buy them just to make money. And I don’t like that. And sometimes it’s good to work hard to get a sneaker, because otherwise you won’t buy it – Fujiwara-san on point as ever

    Security

    China unveils satellite network plan for round-the-clock lock on South China Sea | South China Morning Post

    Chinese woman offered refund after facial recognition allows colleague to unlock iPhone X | South China Morning Post – when you have a huge population like China even small odds become significant – I do have a nagging doubt about if the story is true though

    Technology

    Telling AI to not replicate itself is like telling teenagers to just not have sex | Quartz – runaway singularity?

    Wireless

    FT Opening Quote – Dixons Carphone profits fall 60% – UK consumer upgrade cycle stretched. More people going for SIM only deals and upgrades are pretty meh (paywall)

  • Most popular blog posts of 2017

    How did I go to define the most popular blog posts of 2017. I looked at my most trafficked articles from January to June 2017 here.

    What did June to December look like?

    # Title Notes
    1 Is your PR plan good enough? A series of six posts and a work book on developing and assessing how thorough a communications plan is
    2 Thinking about Marcel Reflections on the challenges and opportunities posed by Publicis Groupe’s bid to build machine learning into the core of the business
    3 My decade of the iPhone Reflecting on the impact that the iPhone had on my smartphone usage. Probably not as much as you would have thought
    4 Out and about: Blade Runner 20149 Review of Gosling and Ford’s reboot of the Blade Runner story 30 years after the original
    5 That Trivago poster The meme created by blanket out of home advertising throughout London in September
    6 The Bell Pottinger Post I was a bit surprised to see Bell Pottinger go into administration after I wrote this post. Even the London finances were bearing up, the key challenge seems to have been NO interested from any agency approached in acquiring the London office.
    7 Living with the Apple Watch A reflection live with the Apple Watch 2. My first Apple Watch went on eBay within 48 hours of its arrival and my initial trials with it. How will the Mk II version cope?
    8 Can too much design thinking be a bad thing? There is a lot of mediocre thinking shrouded in design methodologies out there. But this post wasn’t about that. Instead I wanted to consider the process itself. Was there be constraints on the process itself?
    9 Technology is way ahead of interface designs Good user experience, ergonomics and the latest technology don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand
    10 Three takeaways from Cannes and Vidcon Blind trust in influencers as a marketing tool. The unhealthy state of the online advertising eco-system and transfer of value from agencies and media to two platforms

    What did the most popular blog posts  of 2017 look like overall?

    # Title Notes
    1 Living with the Casio GWF -D1000 Frogman watch Casio took their Frogman watch and improved it even further. Some of the technology is interesting mainly because they’ve managed to run it all off a diminutive solar panel. The bigger changes for me was moving world time from the ‘home screen’ and reengineering how the strap is fastened to the case in a much more robust manner
    2 Louis Vuitton, Supreme and the tangled relationship between streetwear and luxury brands Louis Vuitton has been dragged into the 21st century by its creative director. A collaboration with Supreme seems logical in retrospect for so many reasons
    3 Is your PR plan good enough? A series of six posts and a work book on developing and assessing how thorough a communications plan is
    4 Thinking about Marcel Reflections on the challenges and opportunities posed by Publicis Groupe’s bid to build machine learning into the core of the business
    5 Richard Edelman is wrong, PR isn’t at a crossroads… Richard Edelman commented on the trend for large marketing groups to consolidate PR agencies and integrate PR offerings into a larger marketing services stack. This mirrors changes that Edelman’s own company has gone through as multiple disciplines close in on a marketing singularity
    6 It’s time that we talk about micro-influencers Looking past the hype of micro-influencers to work out how it fits with brand planning scenarios
    7 Oprah Time: Blood and Faith – the purging of muslim Spain (1492 – 1614) by Matthew Carr I picked this book up on a trip to Madrid. Carr’s books looked at Spain’s history with the muslim world in an unsympathetic light. The issues of conservative populism and racism also feel very contemporary given political sentiment across Europe
    8 Magic Lantern Festival, Chiswick House Gardens Chiswick hosted a lunar new year oriented lantern festival similar to what you’d seen in Hong Kong and across China
    9 Have we reached peak streetwear? A follow-on post from my jog down memory lane about luxury and streetwear. I started thinking about it in terms of a market in its own right
    10 My decade of the iPhone Reflecting on the impact that the iPhone had on my smartphone usage. Probably not as much as you would have thought

    There is it is; the most popular blog posts of 2017.