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.

  • 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

  • Woz + more things

    Woz

    Reddit have interviewed geek heroes. In each interview they discuss their formative moments for a series of videos on YouTube. The complete playlist is below. Steve Wozniak aka Woz is one of the geek heroes highlighted . It’s a a quality interview with the Woz on form on various topics. You can read more about Woz here.

  • Holly Herndon + more things

    Holly Herndon

    Holly Herndon and Jace Clayton in conversation. Holly and Jace are interesting characters. They are academics, at least one published book author and artists. They have explored areas such as sampling themselves and the use of machine learning in composition and sound creation.

    Holly Herndon on process is fascinating. I think this has wider implications for creative industries. It does raise question about the nature of creation itself in terms of intellectual property.

    James Lavelle

    James Lavelle on the history of Mo’Wax. These films by FACT magazine are nice. Although they miss a few things.

    Lavelle’s impact goes beyond music:

    • James Lavelle has been a taste maker, he helped popularise a lot of Japanese clothing including A Bathing Ape (BAPE) in the UK and Europe
    • Lavelle’s Unkle was more than a music brand. There was a strong focus on merchandise and clothing including the Surrender streetwear brand. The merchandise was a great product as you can see in Lavelle’s archive. You only see Surrender items come up on eBay every so often because they are so valued and highly prized by owners. The big issue seems to have been one of distribution and hype. There is no interest on the likes of StockX for these items despite the heat behind designers Futura and manufacturers Mediacom and BAPE – again distribution would have been so important for awareness

    Lavelle has managed to self destruct and reinvent himself, which is only obliquely touched upon in this footage.

    More on the history of Mo’Wax. There is more serendipity in this than this video lets on. Also Japan’s Major Force Records needs more kudos than seems to happen in this video. If you liked this it is well worthwhile checking out the

    Sleep app pivot

    How J&J Research Led From Bath-Time to a Mobile Sleep App | Digital – AdAge – fascinating story how consumer insights can dramatically shake up product development and or service design

  • 6 things learned in a corporate environment

    The idea for 6 things learned  in a corporate environment came from having spent four months working day-in, day-out onsite at a large corporate.

      • The working environment is very different to an agency. My desk had to become much more portable. Since the space was all hot-desking with only team PAs assigned permanent desks.  This meant no reference charts stuck up or post-its around the monitor. Instead I boiled my process down to the laptop, a notebook that acted as my organisation memory and a day book that focused on my tasks. That was it, no further paper work
      • Many of the traditional spaces for memos weren’t available. So the back of a toilet door with its regularly updated notices was a lifeline to what was happening where. The coffee machine, once a traditional networking point was less useful as hot desking meant that your serendipitous meetings are random in nature. They often lack the depth of what you have an agency environment. These aren’t shallow people, its a level of impermanence built into the working space
      • The importance of mobile was brought home to me. Each desk space had a phone. You keyed in your number and a PIN and your direct dial number moved with you. But 20 per cent of these phones were out of action at any given time. This wasn’t a problem as people tended to use their mobile phones a lot. We used to talk a lot, over bridged conference call numbers. You would see people on calls pacing the floor listening and talking on their calls via headsets plugged into their mobile handsets. For the first few minutes it feels slightly weird
      • Sustainability and being environmentally friendly were more than having a prominent recycling bin. There is an application that reminded me any time I printed something just how bad I was for the environment. Being green was thoughtfully built into processes rather than bolted on as an afterthought
      • Admittedly, my time at Yahoo! was in a very different company and culture, but being a client is very much a team sport. You only have a limited amount of control, a lot of work has to be done by consensus and through a process. You feel like a very small cog in that process and every small gain was an appreciable win. Making this happen takes up an inordinate amount of time
      • It seemed to be timely when writing this post that I read this article Silicon Valley Has Not Saved Us From a Productivity Slowdown – The New York Times – new enterprise software like Workday is still as reassuring clunky as their forebears. Many of the same problems of collaboration and information sharing are still being resolved

    What other things learned in a corporate environment have you come across?

  • Come to Singapore + more

    Come to Singapore

    Come to Singapore! The Sights (And Branding) Are Lovely | WIRED – it feels very Monocle-esque in terms of editorial style. Come to Singpore! is very different to the Conde Naste Traveller type editorial. Singapore is aiming at developing a start-up culture so targetingWired (US) readers make a good deal of sense. More Singapore related posts here.

    Decline of cyberspace

    William Gibson on the decline of cyberspace. It is fascinating in terms of how Gibson’s inspiration has evolved over time. He was reacting against genres that he didn’t want to write as much as ideas he wanted to convey. The ability to say no, is a very interesting creative process and it reminds me of an interview I saw with an Apple executive talking about why the iPod didn’t have an FM radio.

    Renault Alpine Vision

    Interesting to see Renault going back to Alpine’s sports roots with the Vision sports coupe. It is made to a similar formula to the original 1960s cars that made Alpine famous. A light, small car, a rear-mid engine placement with a highly tuned small capacity engine. Performance is viewed by the Alpine team in much more holistically with an equal focus on handling and breaking.

    Tesla Model X

    I am a sucker for well done manufacturing and process films. The first one up is from Tesla, highlighting robots working in a manufacturing cell on their X model vehicle. Tesla has had problems around areas like panel fit. I am not sure if they have resolved those quality issues, but robots should provide them with a very consistent process and higher throughput.