Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.
I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.
Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.
I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.
I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.
Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.
I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.
I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.
Jim Collins, the author of Good To Great has been researching and writing about what makes companies successful since 1988, though there are points made about this and the similarity of the work done by Tom Peters at McKinsey. Peters eventually turned the outputs of that research into the book In Search of Excellence.
From this research Collins has written a series of books:
Good to Great was Collins’ sophomore book published in 2001. I was curious to see how it stands up in the 20 years since publication.
What’s the book like?
Collins has written a surprisingly accessible book that at the same time demonstrates an academic rigour to the underlying research. A good chunk of the book is an epilogue, frequently asked questions and referenceable materials at the back.
Each chapter is comes with a summary page and Collins makes good use of visuals to convey his ideas.
Synopsis
Collins bases Good to Great around seven ideas.
‘Level 5’ leadership. Collins had a management maturity capability model, the top level on ‘level 5’ was a leader who left their ego at the door with personal humility but professional will. They tend to be work horse rather than race horses. I found this particularly interesting as research that my first agency used to tout showed how a CEO’s visibility or fame had a positive correlation with rising share price, indicating that investors are probably buying on the wrong signals
Getting the right people on the bus. The right people comes before vision, strategy, tactics, structure. ‘Who’ before ‘what’. Rigor but not ruthlessness drives people decisions. All of this was based around three principles: 1/ If in doubt, don’t hire. Instead keep searching. 2/ Act when a people change is needed. 3/ Put the best people on the best opportunities. The right people thrive in a culture of vigorous debate in search of the best answers and then stand united behind the collective decisions, regardless of political or personal interests. The right people are your most important asset. You need self motivating people rather than having to work to motivate them
The Stockdale Paradox. Retain faith that you will succeed in the end. Regardless of the difficulties. And at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality. Whatever they might be. An honest determined effort is required to find the truth of a situation. 1/ Leading with questions, not answers. 2/ Engage in a dialogue and debate, not coercion. 3/ Conduct autopsies, not blame. 4/ Build ‘red flag’ mechanisms that turn information into something that cannot be ignored. Dealing with problems head on. Leadership doesn’t begin with vision, it starts with confronting facts head on and dealing with their implications
The ‘hedgehog concept’. Focus at the interception point between: 1/ What you are deeply passionate about. 2/ What you can be the best in the world at. 3/ What drives your economic engine. It is an iterative process. This becomes the one big thing that you focus on.
A culture of self-discipline. Great results over the long term depends on a disciplined culture. It requires people who adhere to a consistent system, but also gives freedom and responsibility within the framework of the system. Discipline means focus, ignoring once in a lifetime opportunities that dont fit within the business focus. Stop doing lists are as important than to do lists. This reminds me of why Apple never put an FM radio in an iPod or iPhone.
Technology as accelerator. Technology isn’t a fad that they follow, but apply carefully selected technologies that meat their focus. A classic example of getting this wrong is the way Micro Focus pivoted to cryptocurrency and ended up being bought by rival Open Text. Instead the attitude to technology is down to thoughtfulness and creativity. Contrary to every marketing campaign I did during my first decade in agency life, technology by itself is never a primary cause of greatness (or decline).
Good practices are cumulative and compounded in nature. Collins talks about the flywheel effect, the momentum energy required to get it moving requires consistent pressure, but once it gets moving subsequent pressure means that it moves the flywheel at a much faster rate
Where Good To Great didn’t age well
The example of Wells Fargo standing out as an exemplar jarred with me. Wells Fargo is cited as a prime example of a great company, but there are examples of a number of cracks in its culture over years
Allegations of higher costs charged to African-American and Hispanic borrowers on sub-prime loans which resulted in fines and damages paid totalling 175 million dollars
Good to Great focuses on American companies, there doesn’t seem to be a consideration of how national culture may have an impact on the firm. Where does China’s wolf culture or Samsung’s punishing culture fit in the kind of model that Collin’s proposes in his book? I don’t know the answer but its a topic worth exploring in a more global business environment. I think that its particularly interesting because Collins’ work has been widely read by Chinese business people, yet their ‘great companies’ look very different to the corporates that Collins cites as good to great in nature.
In conclusion
Collins has created useful management book for departments as well as large corporates, which explains why it has been published in so many languages including Spanish and Chinese. What is less apparent in Chinese corporate culture is how influential the book has really been.
You can find my updated list of professional reading materials here and further book reviews here. Lastly, more on Good to Greathere.
Riding The Wave Into China’s Latest Hype — Land Surfing | Jing Daily – land surfing is what a lot of people would know as a long board in skating. I first came across them 20 years ago, when I used to know a dreadlocked German photographer who got around London on one. South Korean app developer Ko Hyojoo, brought style and strong Instagram game to long boarding. From her style cutting and spinning on her board, I can see where land surfing came from. She has collaborated with a lot of fashion brands, getting an international profile with her land surfing.
Films like this one from Vogue in 2016 blew long boarding / land surfing up across Asia. I have former colleagues from Hong Kong who took up land surfing in the winter as they missed the feeling of water-skiing which they did some summer weekends.
It was only a matter of time before China’s Taobao culture picked up on the idea of land surfing.
The Professional Try-Hard Is Dead, But You Still Need to Return to the Office | Vanity Fair – It’s Malcolm Gladwell waxing emotional about how much he loves return-to-office and pleading, “Don’t you want to feel part of something?” as if the man has never heard of, like, recreational softball. It’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly getting mad about an employee asking if Meta Days (extra vacation days introduced during the pandemic) are still on this year because, shouldn’t the pleasure of working for Meta be enough? It’s any number of investor-type herbs who’ve been warning about how quiet quitting will cause you to lose out on x dollar amount of earnings later in life
Pro-China media slam ‘minority’ of Hong Kong mourners in wake of Queen’s death — Radio Free Asia – Hong Kong historian Hans Yeung, who now lives in the U.K., said Hong Kongers’ nostalgia for colonial times was a complex emotion. “The reason we are seeing these mourning activities is that the current way of governing is different from the way it was in Hong Kong more than 20 years ago, and the emotions that result from that difference between the old and the new,” Yeung told RFA. “It’s not necessarily the idea that we miss colonial times because things were so good back then, but because the current government is so poor,” he said. Yeung said some mourners were too young to remember an era in which the Queen’s portrait was in every classroom, and TV stations shut down every night with “God Save the Queen.” He said younger people likely have read about Hong Kong before the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, and drawn their own conclusions
Ideas
Simple models predict behavior at least as well as behavioral scientists – we analyzed data from five studies in which 640 professional behavioral scientists predicted the results of one or more behavioral science experiments. We compared the behavioral scientists’ predictions to random chance, linear models, and simple heuristics like “be- havioral interventions have no effect” and “all published psychology research is false.” We find that behavioral scientists are consistently no better than – and often worse than – these simple heuristics and models. Behavioral scientists’ predictions are not only noisy but also biased. They systematically overestimate how well behavioral sci- ence “works”: overestimating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions, the impact of psychological phenomena like time discounting
How China Has Added to Its Influence Over the iPhone – The New York Times – More than ever, Apple’s Chinese employees and suppliers contributed complex work and sophisticated components for the 15th year of its marquee device, including aspects of manufacturing design, speakers and batteries, according to four people familiar with the new operations and analysts. As a result, the iPhone has gone from being a product that is designed in California and made in China to one that is a creation of both countries. The critical work provided by China reflects the country’s advancements over the past decade and a new level of involvement for Chinese engineers in the development of iPhones. After the country lured companies to its factories with legions of low-priced workers and unrivaled production capacity, its engineers and suppliers have moved up the supply chain to claim a bigger slice of the money that U.S. companies spend to create high-tech gadgets. The increased responsibilities that China has assumed for the iPhone could challenge Apple’s efforts to decrease its dependency on the country, a goal that has taken on increased urgency amid rising geopolitical tensions over Taiwan and simmering concerns in Washington about China’s ascent as a technology competitor.
Chinese mercenaries have been around longer than the belt and road. You can come across Chinese mercenaries protecting in the border areas of China such as the warlord regions of Myanmar. But now Chinese mercenaries are increasingly linked with the Belt and Road Initiative. China claims that it isn’t building an empire in Africa, across the former Soviet Union and Sri Lanka. Yet all of the private security companies that Chinese mercenaries work for are state owned. The Chinese mercenaries come out of the PLA, the PLAN marines and the PAP. That doesn’t mean that they are well trained or even well disciplined and they exist in a Chinese legal vacuum.
There is more connecting China to its empire with these Chinese mercenaries than there was for the army fighting under Clive of India for the East India Company a few centuries before. Task and Purpose goes into the subject of Chinese mercenaries in more depth.
Inside Missfresh’s hunt for investor cash ahead of collapse | Financial Times – probably one of the best comments on this article – Missfresh is only one of a number of Chinese domestic startups that sought US investors, as their own domestic private investors were unwilling to invest. For a Chinese investor, they always consider when and if the CCP may want a piece of the business, or worse take action against the promoters and management. for non performance. The lighter loss being financial and. the greater loss, life.
China’s Growth Sacrifice by Stephen S. Roach – Project Syndicate – Japanization of an increasingly debt-intensive, bubble-supported Chinese economy. An overly leveraged Chinese property sector fits this script, as does the debt-fueled expansion of state-owned enterprises since the 2008-09 global financial crisis. For China, this became the case for deleveraging, well worth the short-term price to avoid the longer-term stagnation of Japan-like lost decades. Finally, a major reversal in the ideological underpinnings of governance is also at play. As the revolutionary founder of a new Chinese state, Mao emphasized ideology over development. For Deng and his successors, it was the opposite: De-emphasis of ideology was viewed as necessary to boost economic growth through market-based “reform and opening up.” Then came Xi. Initially, there was hope that his so-called “Third Plenum Reforms” of 2013 would usher in a new era of strong economic performance. But the new ideological campaigns carried out under the general rubric of Xi Jinping Thought, including a regulatory clampdown on once-dynamic Internet platform companies and associated restrictions on online gaming, music, and private tutoring, as well as a zero-COVID policy that has led to never-ending lockdowns, have all but dashed those hopes – China was on a rocket ship that it couldn’t control, it is now trying wrestle back control at the expense of growth
Eurostar to axe direct trains from London to Disneyland Paris over Brexit | Eurostar | The Guardian – “We have taken the decision not to run the direct Disney service … in summer 2023,” it said. “While we continue to recover financially from the pandemic and monitor developments in the proposed EU entry-exit system, we need to focus on our core routes to ensure we can continue to provide the high level of service and experience that our customers rightly expect.” – not enough demand from the UK and too much hassle to run
In Myanmar, Vietnamese firms learn the political risks of backing the junta — Radio Free Asia – interesting that Burmese consumers are boycotting military-owned businesses including MyTel – a mobile carrier that VietTel has a major stake in. Also: Vietnamese firms have begun investing abroad, and, in particular, have sought a place in the 5G marketplace, especially in markets where there is residual fear of China’s communications giant Huawei. – Also: Vietnamese conglomerate THADICO, which has invested in Myanmar Plaza, the largest modern mall and office space in Yangon, ran afoul of the local population when the plaza’s security attacked civil disobedience protesters in November 2021. This led to a sustained boycott that hit the plaza’s 200 retail units hard, compelling the firm to publicly apologize
Over the weekend, Darya Dugina was blown up in a car bomb under the Toyota Landcruiser, her newsworthiness was down to her being the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin. News stories covering the bomb blast described Aleksandr Dugin as a political commentator close to the Putin regime. But that descriptor doesn’t really tell you that much.
Aleksandr Dugin is a political philosopher, published author and commentator. But most importantly he is the founder of the Eurasian Movement. This movement supports neo-Eurasianism. This means opposing and rolling back the Atlanticism of western nations and having Russia to rebuild its influence through annexations and alliances, underpinned by an ultranationalist and neo-fascist ideological logical world view that considers America and liberal values the scapegoat for every ill.
https://flic.kr/p/2nFvPwm
Dugin’s written work
Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russiapublished in 1997, outlined in how Aleksandr Dugin saw the future of Russia. it would form an alliance with Iran in the middle east. Reassert control over former Soviet republics, dismantling some completely like Ukraine and Georgia.
Dugin on re-engineering the world’s borders
It would look to address what it perceived as a threat from China, encouraging China to look south to its neighbours on the South China Sea rather than north to the former Qing empire lands now full of natural resources. This would allow China to solve the Straits of Malacca problem in its favour. The constraint to its move west would be India inside the Eurasian empire.
Aleksandr Dugin wanted the UK was to be isolated, as he viewed it as an aircraft carrier of the US, (echoes of Orwell’s 1984 in that viewpoint). Europe is to remade an anti-Atlanticist Franco-German bloc, that would affect a ‘Finlandisation of Europe’. Countries like Poland, would become a vassal like state of Russia. Orthodox countries would look towards Russia as the home of their mother church and cultural lodestone. Finland would be absorbed into Russia. Eventually, due to an over-reliance on Russian commodities, Aleksandr Dugin hoped to engineer an economic shock. Germany’s dependancy on Russian gas and oil would ultimately allow Russia to pick up the pieces in Europe and create an empire stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok
Aleksandr Dugin maybe at a distance from the Putin administration, but his political ideas have influenced Vladimir Putin, Russian foreign policy and military thinking.
Uneasy Euroasian detente
One can only see Russia’s relationship with China as reminiscent of the von Ribbentrop – Stalin detente of the interwar years, based purely on timing and mutual convenience.
Demographics
Aleksandr Dugin’s ideas are challenged by demographics. In the Middle East, Iran and Shai Muslim community are outnumbered by their Sunni counterparts. Russia’s own population growth is in terminal decline and not a match for China should it decide to go north. Which probably explains why Dugin tries to shoehorn India into part of the Eurasian empire.
The current war in Ukraine is as much a product of Aleksandr Dugin as it is of Vladimir Putin. President Putin is merely implementing Dugin’s vision slavishly. It is also interesting that the attempt on the life of Aleksandr Dugin seems to have given new ideological impetus to the invasion of Ukraine in Russia.
Is Dugin’s Eurasian ideological purity a threat to the Putin administration?
Marx and Lenin were dead by the time that Mao came along, so the Chinese communist party was never threatened by the legitimacy of their thought leaders with a higher authority ideologically pure voice. If they were alive today, it would be impossible for Xi Jingping to accuse Marx or Lenin of being guilty of hstorical nihilism. But Aleksandr Dugin exists outside of the Putin administration, he could be a natural rallying point of Putin’s support basis as the philosophical centre. He could be even considered a rival leader to Putin, drawing support from believers across the military intelligence and political classes. Making Aleksandr Dugin into a martyr just at the point when Russia has been suffering setbacks has some obvious benefits for the Putin administration and arguably less benefits for the Ukrainian government.
From Drugs to Corruption: The Growing Presence of Chinese Organized Crime in Latin America – In 2021, China’s policy banks — the China Development Bank (CDB) and Export-Import Bank (Exim) — made no loans to Latin America for the second consecutive year. Beijing is now essentially focused on financing Chinese companies to operate in the region. This shift in strategy and the resulting proliferation of Chinese companies in Latin America will increase the circulation of people and money that are no longer under the direct control of local governments. Based on current trends, Chinese criminal organizations will likely thrive in this new economic environment. Extortion, money laundering through front firms, and smuggling are already increasing, posing a severe threat to the population’s safety in the region. Worthwhile reading in conjunction with: Will Kenya’s next president follow through on China contract promises? | South China Morning Post – William Ruto campaigned on threats to deport illegal workers and make big contracts with Chinese companies public. But politics and the reality of government are two different things, observers say
Interesting dive into what’s causing the ‘great resignation’ and what it will mean for productivity
Culture
Guy Ritchie talks about Snatch – as a film, its interesting, but I won’t bother buying my own copy of Blu-Ray. A few things of note:
The direct influence of Sam Peckinpah’s western films on Snatch was not a connection that I saw coming at all
Ritchie talks about directing a Jason Statham film remotely via iPad, rather than being on set. I presume that this was done during COVID but still very interesting
His use of amateurs as actors because they were the right kind of characters
The folkloric nature of pub stories. The bit that chimed with me is how I knew of similar characters growing up at a similar time to Ritchie and some of them I knew personally. As I moved in more middle class circles my exposure to that world declined
Design
Big Car have a great documentary on the development of the Renault Scénic including an interview with Renault’s head of design at the time Patrick le Quément.
Economics
Why Mexico is missing its chance to profit from US-China decoupling | Financial Times – While foreign companies have borne the brunt of López Obrador’s attacks, the handful of big Mexican businesses that control large parts of the economy have been less affected. When the president wanted to tackle inflation, his government invited Mexican business leaders for private conversations to agree an informal pact limiting price rises on basic groceries. “It wasn’t a big sacrifice,” noted the owner of one large Mexican group. Mexico’s oligarchs have reinforced the impression of a cosy relationship with the president by making supportive statements in public and confining any criticism to conversations behind closed doors. “All the Mexican business leaders complain about Amlo,” says the chief executive of one big foreign company. “But when they meet him, they all appear afterwards in public saying how wonderful he is . . It’s a circle of collusion.”
I hadn’t realised that 8-track cartridges were used as a karaoke medium in Japan. I thought that they had gone from vinyl to cassette and then on to laser disc. Vinyl based karaoke is what gave use the Technics SL-1200 series of turntables, which is why the speed control on the right hand side of the deck was called a ‘pitch fader’.
The reason why these karaoke featured have a common design with the US 8-track cartridge players is likely down to the relatively high tooling costs to create the plastic mouldings. You can see the ’round polished marks in the recessed section where the inputs and outputs are that show a tools has been amended and quickly cleaned up.
Samuel Bickett had some really good insight into why Joshua Wong and several other people pled guilty to charges under the national security law : The Hong Kong 47 Committed No Crime…So Why Are So Many of Them Pleading Guilty? – Bickett points out that their actions were legal under the Basic Law article 52, but the National Security Law seems to supersede and reinterpret the basic law to anything the authorities want it to be.
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must resign under any of the following circumstances: When he or she loses the ability to discharge his or her duties as a result of serious illness or other reasons; When, after the Legislative Council is dissolved because he or she twice refuses to sign a bill passed by it, the new Legislative Council again passes by a two-thirds majority of all the members the original bill in dispute, but he or she still refuses to sign it; and When, after the Legislative Council is dissolved because it refuses to pass a budget or any other important bill, the new Legislative Council still refuses to pass the original bill in dispute.
At the moment, this will be of most interest to more political types. Now if you apply that interpretation to short sellers like Muddy Waters Research, punchy buy-side equity analysts or a brief that an advertising planner like me might write where a client is competing against a connected Hong Kong or Chinese company – then legal, reputable and ethical commercial activities can result in national security charges at the whim of the Hong Kong government. This is something that many multinational companies seem to be sleep walking into. Work for a multinational like a VPN provider? That looks like colluding with a foreign power, subversion or even terrorism under the National Security Law.
The use of the term “national security” is particularly objectionable because the concept has frequently been used in China to criminalise the peaceful exercise of the rights of expression and to persecute those with legitimate demands like democracy and human rights. Its inclusion raises fears of extension of such Mainland Chinese practices to Hong Kong especially in the light of Article 23 of the Basic Law.
Hong Kong already had substantive security laws in place since British rule. Notably the 1971 Criminal Ordinance which remains on the books.
Then there is the way that the judiciary in Hong Kong has been shaped by the National Security Law. No defendant has won any points with regards the law and judicial decisions have allowed the law to be used in a retrospective manner in concert with older colonial era laws.
A film produced by a German film crew in 1966 to try and bring to life Japanese life for a European audience. I am sure that some of the manufacturing scenes are b-roll footage, but it is fascinating nonetheless. There is a style to the car and light truck designs which is a lovely aesthetic.
Vintage Studio 1 tracks mixed by Japanese sound system veterans Mighty Crown
1/ Chinese consumers overstretched themselves on luxury goods
2/ China is going through straitened financial times, 6 percent GDP growth feels like zero growth in developed markets. I have heard growth being described as being closer to 3 percent. Government control and intervention means that you won’t see the kind of collapse you saw in the west during 2008 and 2009 and internal security would stomp all over any ‘Occupy Wall Street’ analogue. Security forces are already suppressing depositors who have lost their savings in regional banks. There are also a lot of investors in property businesses: China Evergrande Shares Are Worthless, Top Fund Manager Says
Russia Holding Its Arms Expo With Weapons That May Be A ‘Hard Sell’ Now. | SOFREP – it is interesting that the Russians took steps to make sure the captured American gear on display was spotlessly clean, right down to the tyre paint. Who is to say that some of the gear came in by being bought or traded with the Taliban rather than from the Ukraine battlefield? I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia did a ‘homage’ to the M777. Russia has a wealth of experience in titanium fabrication from submarine hulls to aircraft, so the M777 carriage shouldn’t be that hard. The challenge would be the digital tools used to facilitate a higher degree of accuracy.
ViewSonic lays out plans for education metaverse – ViewSonic, which marks its 35th year of establishment in 2022, has been actively promoting digital transformation in recent years, shifting from a hardware company to a solutions company. Looking towards the future, company chairman James Chu has laid out the key development strategy of “ecosystem as a service,” announcing the Universe education metaverse software. Chu pointed out that ViewSonic has transformed in response to the rapidly changing environment. The company will focus on assisting the digital transformation of the education market. In the third quarter of 2021, ViewSonic’s electronic whiteboard was already no.1 in global market share, Chu said. Its Universe education metaverse software aims to level up the traditional 2D digital education into a 3D interactive virtual education platform. The goal is to solve the lack of interactivity and participation and make online education feel as if it is in-person. The proposed “ecosystem as a service” is about the integration of hardware, software and service, it said. Regarding software and hardware, ViewSonic will integrate its ViewBoard, a smart interactive electronic whiteboard, with myViewBoard, a digital teaching platform, to provide a complete education technology solution.
The Line or Neom is a building project in Saudi Arabia. It is a 110 mile or 170 kilometre long building. It will be 200 metres wide and 500 metres or 1,600 feet tall. Inside the structure will be a city to house 9 million people, amenities like school and leisure, their work and public transportation.
NEOM advert in the FT
The Line will be run on renewable energy and involve some sort of smart grid to optimise the living experience. They’ve apparently already started the earth works on construction and expect to have it completed by 2030.
Dystopian
The Line has been criticised in western media as dystopian. The mind immediately turns to science fiction visions like Judge Dredd’s Mega City One or William Gibson‘s cityscapes in his sprawl trilogy books: Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. They would likely consider ‘ideal’ to look more like the Bosco Verticale in Milan, or the STH BNK in Melbourne, Australia, both of which look very nice. However, isn’t necessarily a panacea as one forestry expert noted.
″I think it’s very important that trees are given space,” Cecil Konijnendijk, from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, told CNBC.
“We know that soil — what we call soil volume — is really important, so the trees have to have space underground, maybe even more so than over ground,” he added.
“And then of course trees will have to have time to develop, so you won’t have instant trees. You’ll have to take the time to make sure they grow up and then they provide the benefits that we want to get from them.”
And it wasn’t just the media who were critical, there were people who spoke out on social media or wrote to the FT like Mark Hudson of Blandford Forum, Dorset.
While the developers claim that it has green credentials and is a harbinger of a low carbon future, there are concerns about its effect on local fauna, flora and migrating birds.
Retrofuturism
Moonwalk 1 Artist: Andy Warhol, 1987 Media: Silkscreen on paper Description: The famous image of astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon has become an icon of popular culture. It became material for Warhol’s silkscreen series of nationally known images printed on vibrant, retro, poster colors. Image Credit: Andy Warhol for the NASA Art Program
When I saw the adverts for The Line, I was reminded of two things. NASA’s Art Program and the visual futurism of Syd Mead.
A poster apparently designed by Syd Mead for the 1983 World Sports Fair in Japan
Syd Mead created designs and conceptual art for clients including Ford Motor Company and Philips Electronics.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Mead and his company provided architectural renderings, both interior and exterior, for clients including Intercontinental Hotels, 3D International, Harwood Taylor & Associates, Don Ghia, Gresham & Smith and Philip Koether Architects.
As the 1980s came around Mead developed working relationships a number of Japanese corporations including Sony, Minolta, Dentsu, Dyflex, Tiger Corporation, Seibu, Mitsukoshi, Bandai, NHK and Honda.
Mead cemented his place on popular culture with his work on
Mead’s world, was the world that my generation were promised but was never delivered. Instead we got social media. (If you want to see more of Mead’s work I suggest Sentury and Sentury II.)
NEOM advert in the FT
NASA has an art program that is still running, all be it in a diminished form today. During the 1970s NASA Art Program artists and researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center explored what a future space colony might look like.
Toroidal Colony – Cutaway view, exposing the interior. Art work: Rick Guidice. NASA Ames Research Center
Torus Interior. Interior view. Art work: Don Davis. NASA Ames Research Center
That feeling of retrofuturism might not be accidental. An architect writing in the FT commented on the similarity between The Line and a concept proposed (as more a provocation or thought experiment) by a group of Italian artists called Superstudio who proposed a white gridded wall across the Arizona desert in the late 1960s called Il MonumentoContinuo or Continuous Monument in English.
The case for a city like The Line
Firstly, Saudi Arabia has to do something, doing nothing isn’t an option.
At the moment, the population is growing at about 1.65% a year and the average age of the population is just below 30 years old. By comparison the population in the UK is 43. Energy consumption tripled from 1981 to 2010 and if things carry on like this the country will soon move from being the worlds largest energy exporter, to a net importer.
The Saudis only have so much time to do something before the favourable petro-economy conditions turn against them.
The demand for oil won’t dry up completely, but the economics change when oil becomes about supplying legacy transport in the developing world, which will likely go on for a long while, together with a small amount of vintage vehicles run by enthusiasts.
To give you an idea of how long this can be. Leaded petrol started its phase out in cars back in 1975, in the US, and only stopped being sold in 2021. Leaded fuel is still used for some aviation power plants.
Then there will also be a continued need for chemical feedstocks for the likes of the pharmaceuticals sector and manufacturing. At the moment Saudi Arabia’s GDP is just under 600 billion pounds a year, but that doesn’t mean that it will stay at this level for long, or by how much it will decline.
Then there is the challenge of making Arabian peninsula liveable during climate change. They’ve seen the Arab spring in Egypt and Tunisia, or the Syrian civil war and they don’t want it to happen in Saudi Arabia.
Concentrated populations in cities are better for the environment than having them spread out homesteading or living in suburbia. Less environmental impact delivering services. All of which Stewart Brand puts the case for; far more elegantly than I could in his Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.
Where does my own opinion lie on The Line?
I can understand why the Saudis have gone there. They have sound pragmatic reasons for doing something.
I also feel nostalgic about the childhood future I dreamed of seeing when I looked at Syd Mead and the NASA space colony art work in children’s science books and a sense of a bright future lost.
But I don’t know how much of it will actually work.
Will the Saudis be able to find design fixes for migrating birds or animals in the same way that roads have developed overpasses or underpasses in the west?
Will the smart city systems work?
What about the renewable energy capacity?
Will there be an economy inside The Line? What will it look like?
What kind of society will be constructed inside The Line?
Will The Line be able to cope with an extreme weather event like a sandstorm, or the flash floods from rare rainstorms that occasionally happen even in the desert?
How will the infrastructure be repaired or upgraded once its all built?
Will the Saudis be able to afford completing The Line, or will they run out of money? The 2008 financial crisis crushed development in Dubai the following year and the aftershocks are still being felt through stretching out debt deadlines. Dubai property developers like Limitless went through successive rounds of financial restructuring. The Line is a project on a far grander scale.
