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.

  • WeChat payments + more things

    WeChat payments and wallet function brought to the international version of WeChat with its last version update, but I only noticed it this week. Does this mean that WeChat is now putting all the pieces in place before they get serious about an international market push? They are already trying to get foreign credit card merchants on board accepting WeChat payments to  provide extra convenience for Chinese consumers travelling abroad.
    WeChat wallet now for louwai
    TfL brought back its experiment for having people stand on both sides of the escalators. For those of us who live in London this is quite a change to our usual routine. We are used to standing on the right or moving along the escalator on the left. It caught me out the first time that I visited London.

    But TfL research found that you net out moving people more efficiently by encouraging everyone to stand. This allows a ‘denser’ escalator and better times clearing people off platforms.
    Stand on both sides - people living outside London won't realise what a paradigm shift this is
    A comparable shift would be say, New Yorkers suddenly becoming unfailingly polite and accommodating. I do quite like the ‘blue pill’ footprints that TfL use for signage on the escalators.

    Japanese producer TOYOMU reimagined Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo based on reviews and a list of the samples used. Japan hasn’t embraced streaming music unlike western lemmings music buyers. I think what he came up with is far better, see for yourself.

    Forthcoming Russian superhero film Guardians looks even more intense than the Night Watch and Day Watch films. Apparently the bear packs a chain cannon a la Jesse Venture in Predator.

    Luxxury releases Greg Wilson remixes of the their track on yellow vinyl, have a preview of it here. I am a huge fan of Luxxury and the lush nu-disco products that he manages to come up with.  More Luxxury sounds here.

  • renaissance chambara retrospective

    renaissance chambara retrospective – whilst looking at something else I decided to do an animated GIF showing what my blog had looked like in various incarnations over the years.

    I didn’t even remember a few of the designs in the finished GIF.

    Disappointingly flickr doesn’t host animated GIFs so had to use another service instead.
    renaissance chambara since 2004

    make animated gifs like this at MakeaGif

    Before there was the website this was a contributed strand to an online community founded by Tony Perkins who had previously founded Red Herring magazine. Red Herring was one of the go to media for the original dot.com boom and bust. The site ran on a CMS called Netmodular and provided a community experience somewhat like Facebook, but more specialised.

    The AlwaysOn Network went through a number of changes. So I decided to strike out on my own with my writing. This was partly precipitated by my playing with platforms to work out how they could be useful for clients.

    I eventually went with Blogspot because it was free and had a good community at the time. The platform was easy to use and customise (in a similar manner to the way MySpace or Bebo were later on). Eventually, I wanted something that felt a bit more professional and the website moved from Blogspot to WordPress on Yahoo! Small Business Hosting.

    I chose Yahoo! Small Business Hosting for my first WordPress blog because I got a staff discount.  This decision was disastrous. I lost a good deal of my content, which I tried to recover via the Google cache and was partially successful. I then moved on to Media Temple as my hosting provider.

    The design of the site changed a bit over time, partly because the themes that I used were no long being updated from a technology point of view. I was very influenced by Derek Powazek’s approach to blog design with a single column of content.

    It turns out that doesn’t completely break down when you go through the site using a mobile device. Anyway that’s the renaissance chambara retrospective. Let’s see what the next 13 years of blogging will bring…. More on the transitory nature of the web here.

  • Old mix I’d done

    Digging through my digital archive I came across an old mix CD I’d done.

    Two Technics SL-1200 decks, vinyl records, a no-brand mixer with bass and treble levels on each channel that I had picked up at Maplins (think Radio Shack in the US) and a HHB CD-R 800 recorder to take it down in one take.  (For hi-fi heads, the CD-R 800 was made for HHB by Pioneer based on the respected Pioneer PDR-99. The differences were in the rack mount capability on the HHB in place of the wooden side pieces, HHB branding and some additional balanced connections on the back for recording in a studio.)

    It was sent out and given to friends as a CD in an A3 sleeve that folded down to CD size designed by Stephen Holmes at bloodybigspider.

    Track listing (as best I can remember) – if you recognise any of the other tracks let me know so I can plug the gaps

    1. Unfinished Sympathy (Nellee Hooper club mix) – Massive Attack. I am a great believer in starting with something people know. I prefer the Nellee Hooper mix over the more famous Paul Oakenfold mix of Unfinished Sympathy
    2. Reality (main vocal version) – DJ Spinna featuring Rich Medina
    3. Marscarter (BLHIII original) – Bernard Leon Howard III. A really nice track on the Tweekin label which I really liked. BLH didn’t release anything after this 
    4. Inspirations From A Small Black Church On The Eastside Of Detroit – Moodymann. I loved this track but wasn’t sure how to use it. In the end I just threw it in
    5. Unlabelled white label
    6. City People (Migs Dubpusher Rub) – Miguel Migs
    7. Jazz 2 B U (Johnny Fiasco’s after midnight mix) – Chris Simmonds
    8. Saxomus Bill – Jay Tripwire (you can find this on Beatport as Saxamus Brown – presumably because the original namechecks Bill Clinton)
    9. Hypnose (Tony Hewitt remix) – Phil Weeks
    10. Unknown white label
    11. Unknown white label
    12. My Dusty 303 – Dano – it manages to do acid house in a way that allows room for all the instruments to ‘breath’
    13. I go back (main mix) – Harry Romero featuring Robert Owens. Both are great in their own right but together this becomes phenomenal
    14. The Love Scene (Henry Street remix) – Joe – this is a remix of an R&B track that I hadn’t heard of. I like the way its built into a dreamy track, ideal for finishing this mix on.

    More culture related topics here.

  • IBM guilty + more news

    IBM guilty of age discrimination

    I, Cringely Is IBM guilty of age discrimination? – Part two – I, Cringely – this could get very interesting, IBM guilty in a court of law would pose a wide range of problems from a political and regulatory point-of-view. There will also be issues in terms of skillsets for looking after large legacy systems. More on IBM here.

    Consumer behaviour

    Has Desktop Internet Use Peaked? – WSJ – Data from the research company indicate overall time spent online in the U.S. from desktop devices—which include laptop computers—has fallen for the past four months, on a year-over-year basis. It dipped 9.3% in December 2015, 7.6% in January, 2% in February and 6% in March (paywall)

    Culture

    A Japanese guy remade The Life of Pablo without hearing it | Dazed – I think its better than the real thing

    Media

    Copyright fight club – POLITICO – Hollywood in one corner, internet companies in the other

    6 Reasons BuzzFeed’s Revenue Miss Is OMG! – BuzzFeed’s supposed to be the media company that holds the answer to the media business’s future in a post-banner world

    Online

    UC Davis pepper spray: PHOTOS – Business Insider – interesting case study of online PR clean-up that didn’t quite work out

    Rocket Internet Vows to Limit Losses After 2015 Cash Burn | BoF – just wow

    企鹅智酷 | Tencent Penguin Intelligence – great online research resource in Chinese

    The CIA Is Investing in Firms That Mine Your Tweets and Instagram Photos – (paywall)

    Security

    FBI hasn’t learned anything from unlocked San Bernardino iPhone, says report – CNET – quelle surprise, I can’t even believe that this is news

    Daring Fireball: Motherboard: How Canadian Police Intercept and Read Encrypted BlackBerry Messages – basically if you aren’t running your own Business Enterprise Server, your BlackBerry messages and email are up for grabs. If the police have the key you can bet other people can get their hands on it as well – a la the criminal record database access that is acquired by private investigators through nefarious means

    Web of no web

    Why New York Subway Lines Are Missing Countdown Clocks – The Atlantic – if you look at the lifespan of the equipment deployed, how would Intenet of Heavier Things last as long?

    The return of the QR code? | The Digerati – the QRcode never really went away, what is interesting is how Facebook has gone for something proprietary in its code design for Messenger

  • Context collapse

    Disclaimer on context collapse

    Years ago I wrote a series of posts with the link-baiting titles of ‘Facebook is a dead man walking’; the first post written in 2008. I say this so you can form an opinion up  front about my interpretation  around the idea of context collapse.

    Facebook page

    According to The Information, Facebook is worried about a drop in users sharing their own content.

    As of mid-2015, total sharing had declined by about 5.5% year over year while “original broadcast sharing” was down 21% year over year, the confidential data show.

    This loss is especially acute with under 30 year old users. This loss in sharing according to Bloomberg company staff have branded context collapse.

    Context collapse

    What are the likely causes of context collapse? Here my are my hypotheses.

    Negative network effects. Just five years ago ZDNet published research were respondents admitted that they were drunk in 75 per cent of their photos on Facebook. In 2016, when ‘friends’ means colleagues, superiors, clients, teachers or parents there will be a lot more self-censorship going on.  A more subtle form of self censorship will be also brought about in terms of societal norming.

    When Facebook initially arrived the volume of content that people shared was larger, now it isn’t only the nature of the content that people will consider but the volume of the content. Are they too noisy, do they overshare?

    Facebook lost a lot of trust with consumers with things likes Beacon. Consumers didn’t necessarily understand the nuances, they were told that it wasn’t good and their privacy settings are a major hassle to tweak – when you’re on edge about privacy, you are more likely to put a filter on your content.

    Just over five years ago, Netbase had released brand research that showed consumers had a stronger, negative feeling towards Facebook than brands like Microsoft, Google or Twitter. That left room for other services to creep in for self-expression, messaging and sharing to small groups. Facebook bought some of the major players Instagram and WhatsApp, but doesn’t own all the pieces.

    More information
    Facebook Struggles to Stop Decline in ‘Original’ Sharing | The Information (paywall)
    British Facebook users are drunk in 76% of their photos | ZDNet
    Facebook Wants You to Post More About Yourself – Bloomberg
    Why Facebook is a dead man walking | renaissance chambara
    Why Facebook is a dead man walking part II? | renaissance chambara
    Why Facebook is a dead man walking part 2.5? | 技术品牌的情绪 | renaissance chambara
    Facebook and advertising or why Facebook is a dead man walking part III? | renaissance chambara