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.

  • KFC China virgin mojito + more

    KFC China virgin mojito

    KFC China launched a virgin mojito drink with a 1960s feel to the ad. Its a bit of an odd product for KFC, even in China particularly with its positioning against drinking. Quite how the product development process and consumer insight worked to produce it is beyond me. Beautifully produced advert

    Great documentary on Sterns Music (of Sterns Edits fame). The vastness of Sterns Music library is astounding. Sterns Edits did to African and Brazilian music what Razor N Tape have done to disco music more recently.

    High Snobriety have done their first documentary. It looks like the kind of thing I would expect from Vice. Given High Snobriety’s streetwear literate audience I was surprised at how ‘basic’ it approaches the topic.

    Korea’s historic fashion industry, its association with replicas since the days of Daper Dan and the retail infrastructure stifled by chaebols are issues. But streetwear couldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for the Korean textile industry – Daper Dan connection.

    The market in Korea reminded me very much of the ‘snide’ garments that were popular in the UK scene through the 1980s and 1990s.

    On a secondary note the size of the YouTube video embed was restricted to 560 pixels wide. Not sure why that was. I look forward to seeing more material by High Snobriety on Korea’s fashion industry moving forwards, particularly if local brands can get on the K-pop train.

    William Gibson: ‘I Never Expected to Be Living in an American Retro-Future’ – Motherboard – William Gibson critiquing Trump administration era America. This probably also explains why Gibson’s writing has become nearer term and has an apocalyptic focus in the Jackpot Trilogy

    Cities and Memory: global collaborative sound project – Cities & Memory | Field Recordings, Sound Map, Sound Art really nice project correlating field recordings by location. It would also be useful for open source intelligence outfits like Bellingcat.

  • Logic gates + more things

    Logic Gates Under (Air) Pressure | Hackaday – I remember seeing fluidic logic on a packaging production line for motor oil back when I was a teenager. By this time the line was reasonably old, micro-processor controls were becoming the norm, and it broke down on a regular basis. The Palmers who owned the factory knew my Dad, which is how I got to see it. They used to pack small volume SKUs for Shell at their own factory; when the oil company pulled the contract their business closed. Logic gates whether they are electronic or pneumatic are the basic aspects of computing. In this case the pneumatic logic gates would be used for automation. Though pneumatic logic gates have been increasingly replaced by simple embedded electronics to complex industrial computers

    Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) Firmware Decrypted | Hackaday – “Imagine the Secure Enclave as a vault. Apple hung a big, dark curtain over it to prevent anyone from even seeing the vault. Now, that curtain has been opened and people can see the vault. The vault, however, is still locked as securely as ever.” However we don’t know who else has got this far already, and we certainly don’t know if other actors have managed to find vulnerabilities in the code. More security related content here.

    China Tech Workers Wanted: Women Need Not Apply – WSJ – Parents often tell their daughters they won’t be good at math or physics or coding. And just like in the U.S., some Chinese companies are reluctant to hire or promote women because of concerns about pregnancy and child rearing, employee advocates say. About 20% of engineers in China’s internet and telecommunications industries are women, according to Boss Zhipin, a Beijing-based online recruiting company. And there’s a pay gap as well. Women were paid 30% less than men in China’s internet industry last year, ranking among the most discriminatory lines of work with medicine, media and entertainment, according to Boss Zhipin, which surveyed more than 365,000 pay samples nationwide – (paywall)

    Interim Report Q2 2017 (OMX:MAERSKA) – In the last week of the quarter we were hit by a cyber-attack, which mainly impacted Maersk Line, APM Terminals and Damco. Business volumes were negatively affected for a couple of weeks in July and as a consequence, our Q3 results will be impacted. We expect that the cyber-attack will impact results negatively by USD 200-300m.” – shipping titan Maersk talks about how malware has affected its business

    The First True Multi-User Holographic Table Has Been Built – ExtremeTech – cool as fuck

    Producers, Songwriters on How Pop Songs Got So Slow – Rolling Stone – Paul Oakenfold et al who tried unsuccessfully to slow acid house down to 98bpm was just 3 decades too early

  • Vaping

    What in the world has China ever done for us? Vaping – a China invention designed originally to help smokers reduce risks from tobacco. My exposure to electronic cigarettes (or vapes) was with seasoned smokers looking for a healthier opportunity, or a path to help wean themselves off nicotine all together. I had seen some research that suggested teen trial of vaping was growing – this was from E-Cigarettes: Youth and Trends in Vaping – Journal of Pediatric Health Care, volume 29, issue 6, pages 555 – 557 (November – December 2015)

    Among youth in the United States, e-cigarette use rose from 3.3% in 2011 to 6.8% in 2012 (Grana, Benowitz, & Glantz., 2014). This increase resulted in an estimated 1.78 million middle and high school students having used e-cigarettes (CDC, 2013). The trial and use of e-cigarettes have been higher among youth in Europe and Asia. A recent study on Korean youth found the trial use of e-cigarettes rose from 0.5% in 2008 to 9.4% in 2011 (Lee, Grana, & Glantz., 2014), and among youth 10 to 15 years of age in Poland the rate of those who had ever used e-cigarettes was 62% in 2014 (Hanewinkel & Isensee, 2015).

    Now what I don’t know is how good the research quoted actually was, or the factors in ‘trialling’.

    You also have to remember that there is a big health research grant eco-system that depends on tobacco control which has sprung up over the past 40 years which will affect the framing of the data.

    I am not saying tobacco isn’t harmful, but it is useful to understand the likely factors framing the presentation of information.

    I was surprised by this video from the Shanghai Vap Expo in China. It was more like going to a skateboarding convention back in the day:

    • Lots of independent resellers from around the world for vaping liquid – mirroring the variety of skateboard parts makers. Many of the formulations on sale had no tobacco
    • Vaping tricks and demonstrations
    • Clear tying of vaping to sub-cultures: hip-hop, race-girl type outfits. Pretty much any ancillary activity would expect around a Red Bull event or the X-Games

    Vaping is clearly being positioned as a central part of a youth sub-culture in China. But it hasn’t stopped Chinese courts shutting US provider Jul out of the Chinese market. This is stark contrast to the US where the government views vapes as an ascendant health threat. And in the videos vaping didn’t involve nicotine, again an interesting development. More related posts here.

  • Christina Xu on Chinese UX

    About Christina Xu

    I’ve been a big fan of work by Christina Xu for a while now and this presentation is a great example of her research. She has worked as an ethnographer for a range of clients including Daimler Benz, VF Corporation (the people who who own Timberland, North Face and Supreme) and Spotify. This presentation on Chinese UX in action is well worth bookmarking to watch it if you don’t have time now. Save it and watch it during your lunch break.

    Key takeouts

    • Etiquette about the order of proffering versus scanning a QRcode to exchange (WeChat) contact information
    • Digitisation of red envelopes drove take up in mobile payments
    • Great examples of online to offline (O2O) interaction in processes and services that are continually expanding.  
    • Driven by ubiquity of mobile phones 95.5 phones per 100 people with a number of people using two phones
    • Users across ages and demographics
    • Mobile adoption is coming on top of a rapid industrialisation. People are getting used to a whole much of stuff at once. Interesting points about the lack of social norms or boundaries on the usage of online / mobile service in the real world. I’ve seen people live their online life in the cinema there are NO boundaries as Christina says.
    • Mobile payments came up the same time as credit card payments
    • Population density on the eastern seaboard of China. Density has helped delivery services and high speed public transport
    • DidiChuxing allows for tailored surge benefits for drivers rather than search-and-forget version on Uber
    • WeChat commerce doesn’t facilitate international shipping
    • Westerners build messenger experiences for scale with automation, Chinese look for bespoke customisable ‘squishy’ experiences down to western interpretation of convenience. Chinese convenience is an absence of ‘nuisance experiences’ – real world interactions help prevent friction. Or is it culturally sanctioned ‘nuisance experiences’ that deals with differing experiences

    More related content here.

  • Mick Jagger + more things

    It’s quite rare for someone who has had as as long a career as Mick Jagger to still do relevant material. His double A side single featuring England’s Lost is an exceptionally political track featuring Skepta. The last track from similar artist would likely be Pink Floyd’s The Wall. This Mick Jagger song wouldn’t sound out of step with The Stone Roses or The Charlatans and the video with Luke Evans performance is amazing.

    Omega seem to have spent most of the summer dwelling on the NASA Apollo programme heritage of the Omega Speedmaster with launches happening around the world including PR people in faux spacesuits for photo shoots and socialite cocktail parties.  The excuse is the 60th anniversary of the Omega Speedmaster’s launch in 1957. They’ve supported it with a scripted film using brand spokesperson George Clooney talking with Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin as ever is awesome.

    60 years of production makes the Speedmaster a design classic. At the time of the Speedmaster’s launch Omega would have been a more bankable name than Rolex. That seems surprising now given Omega’s move more towards the fashion end of the market. There is a great interview at The Peak Magazine; with Peter Chow the recently retired veteran salesman at The Hour Glass in Singapore. The Hour Glass is a famous watch retailer that has attracted the world’s richest customers.

    “You could buy a manual mechanical watch with a fine Swiss movement for S$20 plus,” Mr Chong says. The well-known brands then were Titoni, Titus, Movado and Cyma. “Omega was the best, not Rolex.” Mr Chong quit his job in 1959 and with S$6000 from savings and loans, opened a shop in Bukit Panjang. But within three years, poor sales drove him out of business.

    Omega was the best was something I heard from my parents, though I had partly put this down to both of them having had Omegas – which they bought for each other when they got married. This piece of wisdom had been passed down to my Mum from my Grandad who owned neither brand. In fact I don’t think he owned any kind of watch at all.

    Northampton’s most famous son, author Alan Moore Interviewed by Greg Wilson and Kermit – real name Paul Leveridge from the Ruthless Rap Assassins and Black Grape. Interesting dissection of modern counterculture and the general sense of ennui.

    I am addicted to videos about mesmerising manufacturing processes and vinyl records. This video combines both of them. The hipster movement has done more than drive up the cost of avocados and gentrification. We’ve seen vinyl manufacturing plants revived and thrive. Over time the machinery has needed to be modernised, this has meant modern manufacturing techniques (like SCADA controllers) have been melted to post-war industrial technology. Anyway enough of my blathering check it out.

    My week was soundtracked by this epic mix of Herbie Hancock tracks.