Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

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.

 

  • Photo hashing & other news

    Apple photo hashing

    Report: Apple to announce client-side photo hashing system to detect child abuse images in user’s photos libraries – 9to5Mac – photo hashing its not foolproof. Once the proof of concept exists, Apple won’t be able to withstand the pressure authoritarian government could use it to track other materials. Tencent’s WeChat is already collecting memes that the Chinese government wouldn’t like from foreign WeChat accounts so that it can train its algorithms to locate similar content with domestic users. The risk for Apple’s customers in other markets like Russia, China and the middle east is real. Apple’s development of photo hashing has garnered a lot of coverage

    Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child abuse imagery | Financial Times 

    Apple led the market on encryption, but other players like WhatsApp have made it clear that they won’t follow Apple on photo hashing.

    Apple has been trying to ignore the voices complaining against its photo hashing initiative. The problem is that those voices are the early adopters and developers who have made Apple what it is today. I think that this could end very badly for Apple in the long term. Particularly when viewed in context of questionable ethical choices despite its progressive positioning on issues in western markets

    Apple Discusses “Screeching Voices of the Minority” in Internal Memos – It’s difficult to even write a piece like this, pointing out that a feature ostensibly created for good could have bad implications. Again: What happens when a country like China uses this feature to find people with images critical of the government? Why wouldn’t the industry want to start searching for pirated content on iPhones in a few years?

    Apple Privacy Letter: An Open Letter Against Apple’s Privacy-Invasive Content Scanning Technology – a legion of the great and the good of the technorati from around the world on the photo hashing

    One Bad Apple – The Hacker Factor Blog 

    Even the FT weighed in.

    Business

    The China risk factor continues to reverberate: China’s Corporate Crackdown Is Just Getting Started. Signs Point to More Tumult Ahead. – WSJ

    Chinese music group pulls $1bn Hong Kong IPO after tech crackdown | Financial Times – interesting move, especially given Netease’s exposure to the edutech sector

    ‘If Masa said yes, who am I to object?’: SoftBank deals unleash internal compliance tensions | Financial Times – sounds like desperate measures

    China

    Is Pax Sinica possible? – China will need to start upholding democratic values and norms, and cultivating peaceful relationships with other countries. Pax Americana has survived for so long, because many countries, including China’s neighbours, rely heavily on the US for trade, finance, technology, and security. They will be reluctant to accept Pax Sinica, unless China offers them something better. And that must begin with pax – I suspect that Premier Xi would be thinking more along the lines of mercantilistic trade relationships and vassal statehood, which would be more in keeping with pre-revolutionary China

    Consumer behaviour

    Everybody needs to get vaccinated, says Tilman Fertitta – Fertitta’s comments about employees admitting that they had fake vaccines cards is pretty disturbing. It isn’t like vaccines are in short supply in the markets that has restaurants in like New York. The counterfeit vaccine cards must be more about avoiding vaccines all together

    Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades | PNAS – Individuals with depression are prone to maladaptive patterns of thinking, known as cognitive distortions, whereby they think about themselves, the world, and the future in overly negative and inaccurate ways. These distortions are associated with marked changes in an individual’s mood, behavior, and language. We hypothesize that societies can undergo similar changes in their collective psychology that are reflected in historical records of language use. Here, we investigate the prevalence of textual markers of cognitive distortions in over 14 million books for the past 125 y and observe a surge of their prevalence since the 1980s, to levels exceeding those of the Great Depression and both World Wars. This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample. Our results suggest a recent societal shift toward language associated with cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders. – literally society is sick

    The xenophobic chicken and the propaganda egg: disentangling official and popular nationalism in China – by Kevin Carrico – NSL can’t cancel me – you could not make some of this up. But then, you also couldn’t make up the QAnon community if you tried either.

    ‘Sales funnels’ and high-value men: the rise of strategic dating | Dating | The Guardian – I suspect this is an edge case but its interesting

    Where have all the pre-teens gone? – The Face 

    Design

    ongoing by Tim Bray · Apps Getting Worse – Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted. – This also explains why Skype got designed into irrelevancy

    FMCG

    Unilever installs a detergent refill machine in Mumbai | Trendwatching – this all feels like things have gone full circle. My Mum and Dad growing up as children in rural Ireland talked about how many dry goods products were sold by weight in the village store. My Granny used to keep spices and flavourings for baking in a bucket sized tin that she’d been gifted decades before by the village store owner. Used packaging was a community asset rather than a liability. The biscuits were sold by the dozen in a paper bag by the shopkeeper. I can just about remember the village store and its long time owner Mrs Paddy Kelly, (Mr Kelly had died decades ago but I have no idea what Mrs Kelly’s name was). By the time I was born, it was more like a modern convenience store, with a farm supplies store attached. Electricity had come to the farm when I was three or four, so we had a fridge and an icebox – ideal for a block of HB vanilla ice cream that came back from the shop wrapped in newsprint to try and keep it cold.

    Secondly, by having a vending machine in store; Unilever are still managing to keep control of their brand.

    Japan

    Japan’s fractured polity exposed by COVID-19 crisis – Nikkei Asia – Whatever the intention, the public sees hypocrisy, inconsistency and incompetence. The vaccination rollout has been a mess. The public was asked to practice “self-restraint” and stay at home for the fourth state of emergency as the country opened its doors to tens of thousands of athletes and officials for the 2020 Olympics. 

    This dismal state of affairs clashes with the image of competence and professionalism that Japan has enjoyed for decades, and for which it is admired around the world. 

    Japan looks good in international COVID comparisons, but by its own standards, the situation is perceived as chaotic and a failure of leadership. The public has lost faith. Cynicism has spread as people blame a sclerotic government that does not seem to understand the many recent transformations of Japanese society

    Legal

    South Africa grants patent to an AI system known as DABUS — Quartz Africa – The patent application listing DABUS as the inventor was filed in patent offices around the world, including the US, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. But only South Africa granted the patent (Australia followed suit a few days later after a court judgment gave the go-ahead). South Africa’s decision has received widespread backlash from intellectual property experts. Some have labelled it a mistake, or an oversight by the patent office. However, as a patent and AI scholar whose PhD aims to address the gaps in patent law created by AI inventorship, I suggest that the decision is supported by the government’s policy environment in recent years. This has aimed to increase innovation, and views technology as a way to achieve this – back when I worked for DSM before I went to college, a lot of of our patented products were developed using software that tested and then gave us optimal formulas – yet the patents went to the doctor who was the nominal head of the lab

    Luxury

    LVMH’s Deal With Google Is Groundbreaking. Here’s Why. – develop business solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI), it raised many questions about how brands are embracing the use of digital technologies to reshape the luxury experience. Google said they would join forces to empower LVMH’s individual luxury brands to create new, personalised customer experiences that fostered long-term growth, through functions like demand forecasting, inventory optimisation, as well as develop new business use cases at scale and explore co-innovation opportunities by launching a data and AI Academy in Paris

    Luxury Daily | Have China’s ‘trafific stars’ become toxic for beauty brands? – Chinese versions of K-pop stars are becoming embroiled in scandals that affect their brand partners

    Retailing

    Crocs, Ralph Lauren, LV All Get More Expensive As Apparel Prices Soar – Apparel prices across US retailers rose nearly 5% in June, the biggest leap in a decade.

    Software

    ongoing by Tim Bray · Apps Getting Worse – Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted. – this explains why Skype got designed into irrelevancy

    Sports

    Why Puma cancelled a $2.7 million deal with Nigeria — Quartz Africa – Nigeria’s current sports administrators are delighted. The athletics federation said Nigeria’s sports minister had successfully stopped athletes from receiving Puma bags containing about 40 items each in Tokyo through the Nigerian embassy. To this set of administrators, the 2019 deal was not properly agreed between Puma and previous leaders of Nigeria’s athletics body

    Wireless

    General Dynamics Mission Systems Introduces Badger Software-Defined Radio – Soldier Systems Daily – interesting decline in size, but much slower than would be likely to happen in the commercial space

    Samsung flagships can no longer compete with the Chinese smartphones – The current flagship Galaxy S21 series has never managed to win worldwide love. Judging by the information from South Korean publications, the flagships, which were supposed to destroy competitors, failed miserably in sales. Based on the report of Counterpoint analysts, it can be concluded that the Galaxy S21 series has not been able to repeat the success of any of its predecessors, starting with the Galaxy S5 – this looks like PC sales when ‘white box manufacturers’ disrupted Winter brands such as IBM and Compaq

    Research Alliances Grow to Learn How 6G Will Play Out – EE Times Europe

    Thailand

    Jack “dekfarang” Brown is having a tantrum – by Andrew MacGregor Marshall – Secret Siam – foreign influencers enjoyed by Thais were a thing I didn’t even know about

  • Kris Wu and other news

    Kris Wu

    Canadian Chinese performer Kris Wu was in a Korean group before going out on a solo career in China as a rap artist. He has become a TV star as a judge on Rap of China – a TV talent show. Kris Wu has also appeared in some Chinese films, mostly wushu films that look and feel more like a computer game. The scandal that Kris Wu finds himself would be a career finisher in the west, but it will be interesting to see what happens in China.

    Actor Kris Wu Accused of Predatory Behavior | HYPEBAE – Kris Wu has endorsement deals in place with Louis Vuitton, BVLGARI, Porsche, Lancôme, L’Oreal and Kans in China, along with other companies like Master Kong Ice Tea, Tuborg Brewery and more. Kans, a Shanghai-based beauty brand owned by C-beauty giant Chicmax, was the first to cut ties with Wu, announcing on July 18 that it has “terminated Wu’s endorsement contract. Meanwhile, Porsche, Master Kong Ice Tea, Vatti and King of Glory have deleted all their posts of Wu on Weibo. Louis Vuitton temporarily archived its Weibo posts of Wu but put them back on its feed not long after

    Kris Wu: Brands Drop Pop Star Amid China Misconduct Allegations – Variety – the interesting thing is that Chinese brands dropped Kris Wu first, before western brands. This is despite western brands being exposed to the #metoo movement. Note: the Chinese police have since found Wu did avail of the casting couch and the accuser went public to gain fame – make of it what you will

    China

    The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins | Vanity Fair – Wuhan is also home to China’s foremost coronavirus research laboratory, housing one of the world’s largest collections of bat samples and bat-virus strains. The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s lead coronavirus researcher, Shi Zhengli, was among the first to identify horseshoe bats as the natural reservoirs for SARS-CoV, the virus that sparked an outbreak in 2002, killing 774 people and sickening more than 8,000 globally. After SARS, bats became a major subject of study for virologists around the world, and Shi became known in China as “Bat Woman” for her fearless exploration of their caves to collect samples. More recently, Shi and her colleagues at the WIV have performed high-profile experiments that made pathogens more infectious. Such research, known as “gain-of-function,” has generated heated controversy among virologists. – this shows you how bolloxed China soft power is

    What if America Delists Chinese Firms? by Shang-Jin Wei – Project Syndicate – Chinese firms’ most egregious accounting frauds tend to be discovered by professional short-sellers using techniques – such as undercover company visits – that auditing firms do not employ.

    Consumer behaviour

    The New-Style Family Values Underpinning the ‘China Dream’ – the emergence of a new kind of “familism” — an ideology in which family interests take precedence over individual ones. Yan, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, sees this “neo-familism” as distinct from traditional Chinese familism, which revolved around ancestor worship and the perpetuation of one’s lineage. Success under neo-familism is defined in material terms such as wealth and consumption. 

    This year, Yan edited “Chinese Families Upside Down,” a collection of essays from academics that seeks to go beyond the conventional focus on filial piety to examine the new dynamics of intergenerational relations under neo-familism. Speaking with Sixth Tone over the phone, Yan talked about how and why family structures have received an unprecedented degree of high-level policy attention in recent years, the changes taking place in Chinese families, and the growing anxiety felt by parents and children in an increasingly risk-laden society

    We’re All Teenage Girls Now | EE Times – During the early days of mobile telephony, I was living in Tokyo, where I observed schoolgirls glued to their clunky DoCoMos, learning the obligations and pitfalls of 24-hour texting, taking proto-selfies with their primitive photo apps and flocking — like moths to a streetlight — to Harajuku and Akihabara to blow their allowance on the latest advanced purveyor of girl gab. 

    Fast forward to this month, in Paris. I was on the suburban train from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the heart of the city. I looked up from the book I was reading…  

    …and I looked around. There were perhaps forty people in the car, including a busker rendering “Au Ciel de Paris” on a battered accordion. My trainmates represented all shapes, sizes and colors of adulthood between the ages of 25 and 70-plus. Of this random cadre, not including the accordionist, three-quarters were clutching slim rectangles of metal and glass, gazing raptly downward into a tiny screen at words, photos, videos, news, games, mail, etc. One woman in her thirties, impeccable in hair, clothing and makeup, never once — as I observed — raised her eyes from her phone through the entire 45-minute haul from airport to place St. Michel. Her thumbs, when she set them to messaging, were a blur

    The first Olympic gold medal in skateboarding went to Japan — Quartz – big issue for skateboarding as a sport is how the Olympics might affect its culture and related categories. Despite its aspirations, the Olympics isn’t the X-Games.

    Design

    Humble Utility Poles Have a Long-Term Infrastructure Maintenance Plan | EE Times

    After 3D printing now comes 4D printing | Smart2Zero 

    Economics

    EDA, IC Manufacturing Gear Sales Hit Records | EE Times 

    Why Biden Seems Worse to China Than Trump – The New York Times

    In defense of sanctions – by Kevin Carrico – NSL can’t cancel me 

    China is keeping its borders closed, and turning inward | The Economist 

    Will China Retaliate Against U.S. Chip Sanctions? – Lawfare 

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam shrugs off scenes of residents leaving at airport, says city has ‘prosperous future’ ahead | South China Morning Post – Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam shrugs off scenes of residents leaving at airport, says city has best time and ‘prosperous future’ ahead. Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday brushed off recent scenes at the airport suggesting an exodus of residents, adding that she would tell anyone considering leaving that the city would continue to prosper with Beijing’s support and the help of the national security law – this is quite shocking. I don’t think that I have seen a country allow a wilful brain drain in this way. Medical staff, teachers and the middle classes are the the people slipping away to supermarket jobs in the UK

    Now News exec. resigns, cites ‘turbulent times’ for Hong Kong media – reports – Now News is a cable news channel

    ‘Hong Kong Tram Green’ now a recognised colour | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – great to see the ‘dingding’ having its iconic nature be recognised

    Over 90% of Hong Kong industrial estate tenants facing eviction oppose redevelopment plan | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP 

    Explainer: From ‘violent attack’ to ‘gang fight’ – How the official account of the Yuen Long mob attack changed | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – to be fair other governments spin as well. But this shattered the illusion of Hong Kong being a place where rule of law happened and the Hong Kong Police were no longer ‘Asia’s finest’ but instead seen as Hong Kong’s biggest gang who were tight with the triads like the bad old days of the 1960s and early 1970s and then you have the wolves and sheep book prosecution National security law: Hong Kong police arrest 5 for allegedly conspiring to distribute seditious children’s books | South China Morning Post 

    Interview: London Mayor Sadiq Khan rolls out welcome mat for Hongkongers, HK$9.6m fund to help visa holders settle

    Billionaires and a Hong Kong bank chief handed seats on powerful new election body | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP – the HSBC appointee is retiring from HSBC

    Ideas

    How cryptocurrency empowered the far-right – The Face 

    Outrage reaching boiling point as virus rages out of control – by Andrew MacGregor Marshall – Secret Siam – just wow, interesting article about COVID in Thailand. I imagine that this picture has played out to varying degrees around the world

    The Year Modern Sport Watches Were Born | Gear Patrol – its interesting that all these iconic watch designs appeared in one year 1953. Every idea has its time that builds on previous innovations – an empirical proof of Kevin Kelly’s idea of the ‘technium’

    The Work of Culture – Made in China Journal – the commercialisation and bureaucratisation of academia have led to a shift from ‘poetic technologies’ to ‘bureaucratic technologies’, which is one of the reasons why today we do not go around on those flying cars promised in the science fiction of the past century. As universities are bloated with ‘bullshit jobs’ and run by a managerial class that pits researchers against each other through countless rankings and evaluations, the very idea of academia as a place for pursuing groundbreaking ideas dies (Graeber 2015: 135; 2018). As conformity and predictability come to be extolled as cardinal virtues, the purpose of the university increasingly becomes simply to confirm the obvious, develop technologies and knowledge of immediate relevance for the market, and exact astronomically high fees from students under the pretence of providing them with vocational training

    Luxury

    Coach CEO talks China: From digital-first to staff as KOLs | Vogue Business – “About two years ago, even before the virus, we developed a very extensive programme to train each of our sales into KOLs so that we can leverage not only professional KOLs but also have hundreds of our own brand ambassadors,” explains Bozec.

    Jackson Wang and Palm Angels’s Ragazzi on their new collab, making celebrity lines work | Vogue Business 

    Marketing

    Subway Tuna Is 100% REAL Wild-Caught Tuna – Subway launches response site to debate on ‘is their tuna real tuna?’

    Marketing imperatives for a cookieless world | WARC – Sophisticated marketers will attempt a shift to contextual and moment-based communication – a bit of time travel by brand custodians to the pre-internet era, where passion group targeting and focus on context might resurrect. There will likely be a pivot from the “bottom of the funnel” performance optimization to “top of the funnel” preference strategies. As the levers at the lower funnel weaken, it will become imperative to move the needle to build brand salience and affinity. Bringing the right audience to their owned website, capturing first-party data, building a strong CRM capability, and recalibrating emphasis on performance media to performance creative. The emergence of a third-party cookieless world presents an opportunity for brand marketers to truly own the consumer journey via meaningful and relevant communication strategies.

    Long-Term Business Vitality Should Outweigh Short-Term Sales Gains – Nielsen – great essay and research on long termism versus short termism in marketing

    Ehrenberg-Bass: 95% of B2B buyers are not in the market for your products

    Male advertisers win sex discrimination case | Financial Times – unfortunate use of the world ‘obliterate’ in Jo Wallace’s presentation. WPP have got to hope to hell that Mark Read’s comments on older staff aren’t brought up

    Media

    Official Secrets Act reform could see journalists treated like spies | Press Gazette

    Online

    Why do people on Tinder list their Instagram? | British GQ – not terribly surprising when you think about the dynamics of Tinder. This has implications for Tinder’s business model of friends and dating based on buying premium services (visibility, bundles of super likes, ability to rewind and reexamine a profile)

    How to be an Instagram influencer | British GQ | British GQ 

    How Neopets Paved the Road to the Metaverse – by Rex Woodbury – Digital Native 

    Security

    US accuses China of masterminding cyber attacks worldwide | Financial Times 

    Who is Mr Gu? – Intrusion Truth – interesting investigation into Gu Jian a former PLA member who is an information security academic and associated with Hainan Xiandun which is one of a network of front companies for APT activity

    Operation Fox Hunt: How China Exports Repression Using a Network of Spies Hidden in Plain Sight — ProPublica 

    The Huawei Moment – Center for Security and Emerging Technology

    Technology

    AI tool cuts 3nm chip design times 

    ABB to buy Spanish autonomous robotics group | EENews Europe – I wouldn’t have set up the factory in China

    ARM shows first plastic M0+ microcontroller 

    Web of no web

    Robotaxis: have Google and Amazon backed the wrong technology? | Financial Times

    Wireless

    What the Orange Dot on Your iPhone Means | Gear Patrol 

  • Female voices impact + more news

    Pinay female voices power

    The Philippines’ secret weapon against Chinese incursions | The Economist – having women radio operators seem to be more successful and less likely to rise tensions, seems to be down to training and the nature of female voices. It reminded me of how early HCI experiments by DARPA found that jet fighter pilots responded best to ‘mature’ female voices on warning alerts. An interesting aside is that the radio altimeter on Airbus aircraft actually use an English mature male voice instead.

    Academic research gives us an idea of what kind of female voices are likely to be more effective. Maybe this authority is conveyed by the female radio operator training and the female voices selected by the Coastguard?

    Women with masculine voice are perceived to be more rational and persuasive than those with feminine voice. In addition, masculine voice is rated as more competent than feminine voice, regardless of the actual gender 

    It’s not What It Speaks, but It’s How It Speaks: A Study into Smartphone Voice-User Interfaces (VUI) by Jaeyeol Jeong & Dong-Hee Shin of Department of Interaction ScienceSungkyunkwan University, Seoul,Korea (2015)

    Other research suggested that a preference for female voices occurred over time, this might be due to technological change in voices. The heavily synthesised ‘Speak n Spell’ type voices were male, better technology allowed for great choices and detail in female voices to be conveyed.

    …the survey found that people preferred human-like, happy, empathetic voices with higher pitches. However, these preferences were not static; for instance, user preference for voice gender changed over time from masculine voices to more feminine ones. Based on these findings, the researchers were able to formulate a high-level framework to classify different types of interactions across various computer-based technologies

    The role of computer voice in the future of speech-based human-computer interaction – Tokyo Institute of Technology

    Other research that it is attitude rather than a female voice that matters. Which begs the question is it compliance to the radio operator training rather than a female voice that is more important in this context? Filipino culture has a certain amount of machismo and having female voices delivering the radio instructions might be a way around this dilemma.

    introvert participants rated the introvert computer voice as more attractive, credible, and informative, while the extrovert participants rated the extrovert voice more highly. Expanding on these findings, it was found that the personality conveyed by the voice was the dominant percept

    Voice as a design material : sociophonetic inspired design strategies in Human-Computer Interaction by Selina Sutton, Paul Foulkes and David Kirk of the University of York presented at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019). (PDF)

    The use of female voices in this way could be accused of playing to sexist tropes

    China

    Another day, another reminder of how Brand China has deteriorated – Fawning and complacent, the West has eased China’s path to power | The Sunday Times – while the statement is true, it also shows how much the tone has changed towards China amongst UK political elites

    China goes on the defensive as Covid vaccine diplomacy backfires | The Times – Beijing’s hopes of winning favour by helping the world’s poorer nations out of the pandemic have been hamstrung by questions over the efficacy of the jabs on offer

    Alleged assault on scientists overshadows China’s space race success | Financial Times – Police detained Zhang Tao, chair and party secretary at China Aerospace Investment Holdings, for his alleged attacks on Wu Meirong and Wang Jinnian last month, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. Wang and Wu had refused to recommend Zhang for membership of the International Academy of Astronautics, a Stockholm-based group that recognises distinguished scientists

    For China’s Business Elites, Staying Out of Politics Is No Longer an Option – The New York Times – The Chinese internet immediately savaged Didi and Ms. Liu — and then Mr. Liu. A hashtag, #Didiapppulledfromappstores, which was started by the official People’s Daily, was viewed more than one billion times over a 24-hour period on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Weibo users called Didi a “traitor” and a “walking dog of the United States.” They urged the government to also punish Mr. Liu for selling out national interests

    Underground front: the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong – Continuing to operate secretly in Hong Kong can only cause unnecessary discomfort. Hong Kong people already accept the CCP’s undoubted authority in leading the affairs of state. While the party appreciates that Hong Kong needs to function differently from the mainland, its basic instincts, which are Leninist in nature, make it difficult for the party apparatus not to over- extend its reach into the city’s public affairs. The sharpest point of departure between the party’s way and Hong Kong’s way arises from their different governing experience. (PDF)

    Consumer behaviour

    Japanese fax fans rally to defence of much-maligned machine | Japan | The Guardian – Members of the resistance said there were concerns over the security of sensitive information and “anxiety over the communication environment” if, as the government had requested, they switched exclusively to email. Japanese ministries and agencies use faxes when handling highly confidential information, including court procedures and police work, and the Hokkaido Shimbun said there were fears that exclusively online communication would result in security lapses

    Patriotism Abroad: Overseas Chinese Students’ Encounters With Criticisms of China – Henry Chiu Hail, 2015 – research on international education suggests that host country students’ lack of interest in talking to international students is a major cause of international student segregation. Some Chinese international students, however, complain that although host students want to talk with them about China, they often exhibit misinformed, prejudiced and offensive views of Chinese current events. This has occasionally led to tensions between Chinese international students and host communities. Drawing on interviews and open-ended surveys of Chinese students at an American university, this study shows a variety of positive and negative cross-national interactions and uses social identity theory to explain why tensions may arise. Negative reactions to hearing criticism of one’s home country are often motivated by concerns for status, loyalty, harmony, or utilitarian politics. However, fostering a common group identity and the perception of mutual benevolence among students from different countries can promote positive cross-national interaction. Furthermore, international students may learn more about democracy and human rights through observing the host society rather than directly discussing these topics with host country members – basically the delta between western perceptions of China, versus domestic Chinese propaganda is going to drive that wedge deeper. Universities have Chinese students purely for the money as there is minimal wider benefit to their domestic student body. Which begs wider questions about the purpose and morality of many western third level education institutions

    Culture

    Trese: the true crime and folklore behind Netflix’s… – The Face – it reminded me of the animated Blade series and Ghost in The Shell. The Philippines could be an anime powerhouse

    Finance

    China’s Big Tech Crackdown Puts Dozens of U.S. IPOs at Risk – Bloomberg – “The Chinese government could have stopped the IPOs from happening, like how they did with Ant,” said Sharif Farha, a Dubai-based portfolio manager at Safehouse Global Consumer Fund. “Instead, they allowed global investors to take pain, and consequently have broken trust with a lot of foreign investors. While we did not participate in any of these listings, we would imagine that several funds would consider exiting.” – it makes the Goldman Sachs ICBC deal look even more sketchy

    China Mulls Closing Loophole Tech Giants Use for U.S. IPOs – Bloomberg – on one hand I get it. Mainland Chinese are creating bubbles in areas like property and have poor returns because they don’t have stocks or ETFs that they can invest in. On the other hand this burns early stage foreign investors to the ground as they can no longer exit their money from China.

    Tell me lies, tell me sweet little VIEs | Financial Times – not terribly surprising. VIEs are the vehicle that Chinese companies use to go public abroad

    Chinese companies listing in the U.S. like DiDi face audit concerns – Protocol – basically you don’t know what you’re buying

    UK advertising watchdog to crack down on misleading crypto marketing | Financial Times

    Hong Kong

    Vitasoy faces boycott in mainland China following stabbing in HK | PR | Campaign Asia – Following the incident, an undated internal memo was circulated among Vitasoy employees expressing condolences to Leung’s family. A translated version of the memo, which leaked onto Chinese social media, mentions that “human resources has contacted [Leung’s] family and will follow up and provide assistance when needed.” The internal memo proved controversial, as Chinese social media users accused the brand of condoning violence and defending anti-China sentiments. – the red guard are already here. This wasn’t an endorsement of his act, but sympathy with the loss and grief that his parents must be feeling as they try and make sense of his actions.

    Crypto Keepers’ NFT-Backed Drama Series Hatched by AMM Global – Variety – the production company spun out of Hong Kong’s Asia Television – a former free to air TV station. Meanwhile in the UK, I heard that a production company is looking for people how have lost the password to their cryptocurrency wallet.

    Ideas

    If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals – Kevin Drum ….Over the last four years, white liberals have become a larger and larger share of the Democratic Party….And since white voters are sorting on ideology more than nonwhite voters, we’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of “racial resentment.” So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us. 

    ….If Democrats elevate issues or theories that a large minority of nonwhite voters reject, it’s going to be hard to keep those margins….Black conservatives and Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do – well worth a more in-depth read

    Culture Wars are Long Wars – The Scholar’s Stage – Democrats under 40 take socialism very seriously. The Great Recession was their formative event; the old orthodoxy did not seem equal to the fear and heartache it caused. Thus, gradually, the younger cohorts have been won over to the socialist cause.5 All that keeps the socialists at bay is the power of their elders. That power cannot last. At some point in the next decade the transition point will arrive. Gradually will become suddenly, and America’s most popular party will be openly run by socialists – I don’t agree with a lot of the post, but it provides an interesting prespective

    Bristol Unpacked on whether white working class people are shut out of the equality debate, with Hartcliffe’s award winning filmmaker Paul Holbrook – The Bristol Cable – far too short a discussion session as podcast, it felt like they were just scratching the surface with this recording

    Erik Prince Had Pitched $10 Billion Private Army in Ukraine: Time – everything he does seems like it’s taken from the plot from William Gibson’s sprawl trilogy

    Innovation

    Institute for New Economic Thinking | How Intel finkncialised and lost its leadership in semiconductor technology – The root of Intel’s failure in organizational integration lies in the financialized character of a third social condition of innovative enterprise, strategic control. Accepting stock yield as the measure of enterprise performance, in recent years Intel’s senior executives who exercise strategic control have lacked both the incentive and, increasingly we would argue, the ability, to implement innovative investment strategies through organizational integration. 

    Executive stock-based pay, in the form of stock options and stock awards, has created incentives for Intel’s CEOs to do large-scale buybacks to give manipulative boosts to the company’s stock price. Table 3 documents the total compensation, including realized gains from stock options and stock awards, of Intel’s CEOs over the past three decades

    Ireland

    Irish Times under fire for page of China propaganda | Ireland | The Sunday Times – The newspaper, whose rate card sets a full-page colour ad at €34,000, ran the paid-for-content on page five of its news section under an “advertisement” heading last Thursday. The accompanying article by He Xiangdong, the Chinese ambassador, claimed the CCP enjoyed “solid” support from its people, and highlighted China’s vastly improved standards of living in recent decades – propaganda from draconian empires doesn’t go down that well in Ireland

    Luxury

    Supreme Italia Founders Sentences to Jail in Court | High Snobriety – this has been running for a long time. The key challenge was that they were headquartered in the UK. They could have got around this by being headquartered in a market that allows first registration as legitimacy for brands. More related content here.

    Philippines

    Duterte’s Pivot to China Yet to Deliver Promised Billions in Infrastructure – Bloomberg – from a Chinese communist perspective, why should they? They aren’t that good at being good to their word. Secondly, they are likely to view the Duterte regime as a vassal state and are getting everything they want out of the Philippines anyway

    Security

    Update Regarding VSA Security Incident | Kaseya – over 1,500 companies affected

    Code in huge ransomware attack written to avoid computers that use Russian, says new report – which begs the following questions / hypotheses? Are they in cahoots with Russian government? Was it that they didn’t want their own lives disrupted? Or are they petrified of the Russian security services coming after them, but relatively sanguine about foreign security services and law enforcement

    Technology

    The AI Wolf that Refuses to Play the Game Goes Viral – Google Docs – surely an issue of game design in terms of the way behaviours were rewarded and penalised rather than machine learning?

    The Tech Cold War’s ‘Most Complicated Machine’ That’s Out of China’s Reach – The New York Times – a great profile of ASML

    Musk has ‘mesmerised’ UK over electric power, says JCB chair | Financial Times – there’s a lot not to like about Lord Anthony Bamford, but I agree with him on this. Companies like BMW managed to extend this to cars. Bamford should be pitching this where there are hydrogen power plans like ireland

  • The rise & fall of American growth

    The rise and fall of American growth

    It has been five years since The rise and fall of American growth was written by Robert J Gordon. When it was first published it was a New York Times bestseller and won awards from the FT and McKinsey. I felt that it was particularly interesting to go back and visit now, given current economic circumstances and the view that its data provides on the techno-optimism versus techno-pessimism that is currently raging on.

    The Rise and Fall of American Growth

    Understanding the author’s perspective

    Robert J Gordon developed his career as an economist in a crucible. He started his career during a time of battle between Keynesian and the monetarist supporting economists. Keynesian ideas had reached their peak in the 1950s. It was challenged by economists such as Milton Friedman and George Stigler. Both of whom were from the Chicago School. The Chicago School was the University of Chicago. It became a centre for economic conservativism. The Chicago School At his time, drew on the likes of Hayek for its ideas.

    Gordon became a ‘New Keynesian’. They assume that there is imperfect competition in price and wage setting to help explain why prices and wages can become “sticky”. They do not adjust instantaneously to changes in economic conditions. Wage and price stickiness, and the other market failures present in their models, imply that the economy may fail to achieve full employment. They argue that macroeconomic stabilisation by the government and the central bank leads to a more efficient macroeconomic outcome than a laissez faire policy would.

    American growth and techno-optimism

    The techno-optimism viewpoint is that continuing technology innovation is going to bring about a new golden age. There are essays trading perspectives on this back-and-forth.

    Gordon’s research suggests that the kind of growth suggested by techno-optimists as an outcome is usually because of very special circumstances.

    When he looked at American growth through the 19th century; growth had occurred in short spurts and much of it wasn’t driven by technology, but was multiple factors coming together. He further posits that those factors that drove American growth are unlikely to be repeated in the future.

    The last spurt of this growth was during the irrational exuberance of the dot com era.

    As you’d expect from an economist, Gordon pulls together to support his ideas very carefully and it is based on empirical analysis. IT has driven little economic growth, which makes one wonder about the benefits of digital transformation as touted by management consultancies.

    Gordon’s work is also an argument against globalisation, at least for the American economy. It brings into question the American dream.

    Finally, with technology unlikely to drive the kind of stellar growth promised, it brings into question the massive premium set on growth stocks over the long term and venture capital investments in the technology sector and the current Silicon Valley model.

    Gordon’s current research is focused on looking at European and American growth so it will be interesting to see commonalities and differences. I expect to see a spurt of growth from second generation mobile devices that freed up small businesses by providing an instantaneous connection with the customer. Rather than relying on an answer machines or a member of their family as receptionist.

    The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War: 70 (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World, 70)

    More book reviews can be found here.

    More information

    Robert Gordon’s academic papers here.

    Answering the Techno-Pessimists (complete) – Noahpinion 

    Interview: Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe – Noahpinion

  • Handset industry of South Korea + more

    South Korea’s handset industry

    South Korea’s handset industry is leading indicator of supply chain shift – Samsung has chosen to place two thirds of its global production capacity at 360 million phones near Hanoi, Vietnam and one third in Noida, India. At the same time, a group of American brands led by Apple have asked their Taiwan-based OEMs to set up production facilities in India. Taiwan’s three largest manufacturers Wistron, Pegatron and Foxconn all have production lines up and running in India. Before this, Taiwan-based notebook computer manufacturers had already moved their production to major ASEAN countries. It is a definite trend that manufacturers are relocating part of their production out of China into ASEAN countries and South Asia – Apple can learn a lot from South Korea’s handset industry. Apple’s approach to its supply chain compared to the handset industry looks risky. It is betting on Chinese behaviour that seems to run counter to Xi Jingping-era China. More on handset industry related content here.

    China

    Ketamine and the Return of the Party-State | Palladium Magazine – as China gets richer and its factional lines get drawn across social battles instead of economic ones, we can expect rhetoric about moral regeneration to become more potent. The party’s turn towards encouraging family and child-rearing might well be the first sign of things to come. When all your political capital has been invested in the narrative of national rejuvenation, there’s no easy way out when the low-hanging fruits of the market start to run low

    Former Chinese Party Insider Calls U.S. Hopes of Engagement ‘Naive’ – WSJ – “Wishful thinking about ‘engagement’ must be replaced by hardheaded defensive measures to protect the United States from the CCP’s aggression—while bringing offensive pressures to bear on it, as the Chinese Communist Party is much more fragile than Americans assume,” Ms. Cai wrote. Her 28-page paper is slated for publication this week by the Hoover Institution, a conservative-leaning think tank at Stanford University. A growing roster of Western politicians and analysts has concluded that U.S. diplomacy with China hasn’t paid dividends. But such views are rarely expressed publicly by sources as highly placed as Ms. Cai was just a short time ago. – Pretty reasonable assessment with plenty of empirical evidence to support it

    Fawning and complacent, the West has eased China’s path to power | The Sunday Times – while the statement is true, it also shows how much the tone has changed towards China

    Finance

    Brazil and China in talks to strengthen science and technology ties | ZDNet – China calls for financing to bring plans to reality…..

    France

    France probes fashion retailers for concealing ‘crimes against humanity’ in Xinjiang | Reuters – source told Reuters Uniqlo France, a unit of Japan’s Fast Retailing, Zara owner Inditex, France’s SMCP and Skechers were the subject of the investigation

    Hong Kong

    How Beijing humbled Britain’s mighty HSBC | Reuters – The decision by Baowu to blackball HSBC is part of a clampdown on the global London-based bank by many of China’s gargantuan state-owned enterprises – a campaign described to Reuters in interviews with HSBC bankers, and employees at state companies who have first-hand knowledge of their operations. Controlled by China’s ruling Communist Party, these companies manage the nation’s largest industrial projects and are responsible for $9.8 trillion of revenue annually. The reason for the pullback by state firms isn’t HSBC’s financial soundness, which isn’t in question, but rather Chinese politics. People inside the state enterprises and HSBC say Beijing has grown disenchanted with the bank over sensitive domestic and international legal and political issues, from China’s crackdown in Hong Kong to the U.S. indictment of an executive at Chinese national tech champion Huawei Technologies – this makes HSBC’s pivot to China look foolish

    ‘Unstoppable storm’: rights take back seat under Hong Kong security law | Yahoo! News – from the journalist’s Twitter thread when she shared the article and additional material that didn’t make the cut: “Judges hope to be given more trust and discretion. Prosecution wants more power. What can defense do? …I’m not as naive to believe they won’t come after lawyers. Losing license is the minimum charge.”

    Luxury

    Streetwear Has a Homophobia Problem | Highsnobiety – where to start with this? I think that some of the homophobia is down to in-out group dynamics. Gays have been in the streetwear industry for a long time. Bomber jackets as a streetwear item came from creatives like Judy Blame and the Buffalo Collective

    Media

    America’s New Post-Literate Epistemology | Palladium Magazine – McLuhan believed that the West was due for a period of “re-tribalization,” but by “tribal” he meant much more than the commonly understood definition. Yes, there would be polarization: people would by and large become less civil, less rational, touchier, and more defensive about the smallest things. This much, we already know and see every day. But McLuhan went even further in his use of the term, arguing that electronic media—more so than any political ideology—shifts the sensorial basis of Western society away from the visual, the literate, and the abstract and toward the oral, the tactile, and the tribal. In other words, he saw re-tribalization as a process that will eventually return modern man to the mental and epistemic world of his pre-literate tribal ancestors: the “global village.” Over the long run, this can be quite benign, even sublime: in 1969, McLuhan imagined its endpoint as a society of “mythic integration” where “magic will live again.” Speaking in lofty millenarian terms, he predicted technology would merge humanity “into an inclusive consciousness…a new interpretation of the mystical body of Christ…the ultimate extension of man.”

    ‘Crypto Keepers’ NFT-Backed Drama Series Hatched by AMM Global – Variety – the production company spun out of Hong Kong’s Asia Television – a former free to air TV station

    Facebook, Twitter, Google Threaten to Quit Hong Kong Over Proposed Data Laws – WSJ – the problem is that the online platforms don’t put teeth behind it. Like taking unilateral action against Chinese advertisers and Chinese media. Lets assume that Facebook, Twitter and Google would have to leave Chinese territories. They can then squeeze China two ways:

    1. China’s small factories rely increasingly on direct to consumer sales through Facebook and Instagram advertising. As does product aggregators like Wish.com and Shein. Squeezing them out of advertising would send 10,000s of Chinese employees out of work
    2. Shutting out China’s SOEs (Air China etc) and Chinese media accounts would severely cripple China’s external united work front efforts to influence the global market

    Vietnam

    Vietnam to phase out 2G, 3G serivces starting 2022 – Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) has decided to start phasing out 2G and 3G technologies within the country in 2022 in a bid to encourage people to use smartphones and promote digital society.