Ged Carroll

Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン

The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.

Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.

Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.

Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.

Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.

  • Web response times & things this week

    Web response times

    I have been working with colleagues on a point of view that is impacted by web response times. During the research aspect of this work I came across this video by Jakob Nielsen which explained web response times really well.

    Web response time resources

    Ralph Bakshi

    I might have mentioned once or twice how I like Ralph Bakshi’s fantasy films: The Lord of The Rings, Wizards and Fire and Ice. Bakshi used rotoscoping in ways that other directors have never managed to provide a unique animation experience that modern technology can’t beat.

    Forging Through the Darkness talks about Bakshi’s career

    Bakshi was making his DIY career back before computers or social platforms. Watching this film and seeing Bakshi’s punk-like attitude makes your Tik-Tok efforts seem lame by comparison. Secondly, a lot of the early opportunities that Bakshi got in animation are no longer available as the work would have been outsourced to India, China, Taiwan or Vietnam.

    The second film places Bakshi’s role in the animation in terms of the parallel track it takes to the New Hollywood movement that came to the fore in the early 1970s and finished with Heaven’s Gate.

    I was watching Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind with a friend over the weekend and saw some visual similarities to Bakshi’s Wizards. According to IMDB Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind was produced in 1984, some seven years after Bakshi’s Wizards.

    Japan population decline and relationship with the city

    Open culture have an article on the ghost towns of Japan. While Tokyo feels as busy as ever. There are small towns and rural areas that have become depopulated.

    I love the video made of a man who has turned a school building that no longer has children into a hostel, café and jam space for bands.

    While we’re on Japan. The 2002 documentary Tokyo Noise looks at how different Japanese artists experience, understand, interact and are inspired by Tokyo. It also covers a diverse range of issues including robotics and Shintoism.

    More Japan related content here.

    Are you scared yet, human?

    Panorama ran a documentary that feels like Adam Curtis doing a programme for the BBC’s Horizon series that explores the area of machine learning. You can argue about the content of the film, but it has provided a base level of understanding on the area to the general public. Politicians watching this show will feel as if they are industry experts as the closing credits roll; instead of viewing it as a starting point for wider reading. I think that this might set the tone in terms of regulation for many years to come.

    It misses AI winters and the fact that the technology is only ‘smart’ in very narrow areas. For instance, understanding content and autonomous driving both have their stubborn problems. It misses the fact that what we see now is based on thinking coming out of Canadian academia in the 1980s, that hasn’t been moved on much further.

    https://youtu.be/P1VKB0u86Qs

    As cryptocurrency has shown there are physical limits to how much computing power that can be thrown at a machine learning problem.

    Technology is a threat in the hands of authoritarian regimes. A classic example of this is the relationship that the Nazis had with IBM.

    Finally, I will leave you with a nicely done public safety video coming out of Denmark about the need for wearing helmets when riding a vehicle (or a horse).

  • Eliot Higgins & things from last week

    Eliot Higgins

    Eliot Higgins talks about the origins of Bellingcat. The investigations that Bellingcat has done to date and some of the techniques that it uses in investigations. Higgins has written an account of Bellingcat which goes into open source intelligence and new investigative journalist techniques. Bellingcat are also famous for their courses, where they pass on their expertise in open source investigations.

    The Go! Team

    The Go! Team released a new video which makes good use of a photocopier effect to animate the band members. Pow is the usual mix of genre bending power pop that The Go! Team are known for.

    SK-II

    SK-II has commissioned some lovely films to support their ‘Change Destiny’ brand purpose. You have a mix of gaming, 3D animation and anime in these films. Working on Dove, there was the mantra real women; which went into the core of the brand’s creative. But that misses the online world which we now operate in and is often more keyed into our inner world than the real life around us. SK-II is owned by Procter & Gamble; who have been making leaps and bounds in terms of their approach to brand purpose. More related posts here.

    https://youtu.be/pguAbHCrxzA
    https://youtu.be/pmZr-AcYQs8

    This was something I hadn’t come across before, in 1974 a set of 4 LP records were released that had actor Nicol Williamson reading The Hobbit. Williamson is better known for his role of Merlin in Excalibur. One of his last film appearances of Williamson was the role of Cogliostro in the 1997 live action adaption of Spawn. This film is still vastly underrated. Williamson left us in 2011. This recording just hints at his acting skill. During the 1960s and 1970s he was considered one of the greatest actors of his generation alongside Albert Finney which is high praise.

  • The Exponential Era by Espindola & Wright

    The Exponential Era is a business strategy book published by the IEEE Press as part of its series on technology, innovation and leadership. David Espindola and Michael Wright work at Intercepting Horizons and advise at the University of Minnesota.

    The book is a concise 182 pages including its index. It has a satisfying hard cover about the height and width of a paperback book. The book proportions reminded of many of the books that we used to have my secondary school’s library. It felt right in my hand. Its a small thing, but it matters.

    The exponential era

    The secondary school analogy goes further; the book summarises knowledge and makes it relatively easily digestible.

    The Exponential Era includes:

    • The threat of platforms and their ability to disrupt market sectors
    • Why people find it hard to grasp the change brought about by the future
    • Megatrends with the kind of utopian tone that reminded me of Alvin Toffler, George Gilder and John Naisbitt
    • Horizon monitoring
    • Agile approach to development
    • Test and learn
    • Feedback based strategic decisions which relies extensively on the technology sector’s fetishisation of John Boyd’s OODA model
    • The Innovator’s Dilemma
    • Future business ethics

    The book consolidates the kind of reading that people in technology and marketing would likely have read anyway. Chances are if you’ve already read books like Saving Big Blue, Measure What Matters, The Lean Startup and Zero to One, then The Exponential Era isn’t written for you.

    Who should read this book?

    Instead this book seems to be an increasingly diminished audience. A company too small for it’s management to have been lectured on disruption by McKinsey, Bain, BCG or Accenture. But still large enough to be concerned. Like McKinsey et al Espindola and Wright are looking to create disruption fear and sell their SPX methodology to re-engineer their business. I would have thought the c suite in most businesses would have at least done enough reading to have a high level understanding of the content in the book.

    The book’s relentless utopian optimism reminded me a lot of business works from the 1970s to the dot com era. I think that The Exponential Era will be of most use to junior people at the start of their career looking for a primer rather than its intended audience.

  • Harmony Korine & things that made last week

    Film director Harmony Korine has shot a number of spots for convenience store 7-Eleven. If Korine’s name sounds familiar he is most famous for writing Kids and directing the dystopian 1997 movie Gummo – that paints an unflattering picture of midwest America. Much of the rest of his work has been making music videos and brand movies for luxury fashion houses Gucci & Dior.

    In his posts for 7-Eleven Harmony Korine riffs off the American Graffiti vibes of the convenience stores with parking around them and combined that with sub cultures on YouTube. Most notably the Japanese dancing rockabilly gangs of Yoyogi Park, Tokyo. (More Japan related content here.)

    https://youtu.be/hBCf83SA9j4

    Another video riffs on the recently raised profile of African American culture in skating rinks following the documentary United Skates.

    https://youtu.be/kEOzBqOjWGU

    If you had caught the The Lord of The Rings bug before the Peter Jackson movie adaption, you would be familiar to with two things. The first was the Ralph Bakshi animated adaptation, which unfortunately didn’t see its second part made due to faults mostly on the side of United Artists. The second would be Brian Sibley’s radio adaptation for the BBC, that still remains in publication as a CD audio book. Sibley did this fantastic interview on the the making of the radio drama and the reaction to it. Back in 1981, The Lord of The Rings adaptation had been destination radio, with listeners being sure to tune in to each episode.

    Really interesting interview with plus size influencer Saucye West. It highlights a new economy in plain sight. It is also interesting how the the body positive movement has bifurcated along racial lines, partly due to body shape. The business aspect of it is really interesting. She is an influencer and also advises brands on size 26+ products. There is the discussion about the lack of brand purpose in plus size clothings.

  • PostScript + more things

    PostScript

    Adobe is dropping PostScript Type 1 font support. Be prepared for the change – huge move, given the amount of time that PostScript had been at the centre of design and print. There must be brands out there still using Type 1 fonts for standard print design work that haven’t changed style in 30 years beyond a logo tweak. Without PostScript fonts you couldn’t have had the laser printer or modern design software tools

    Business

    Amazon Exploding Hoverboard Case Could Forever Change Company – Bloomberg – Last month, a California appeals court ruled that Amazon can be held liable, even though the seller stored and shipped the device itself. The decision sent shockwaves through the e-commerce world. Though it will probably be appealed again, the ruling raises the possibility that Amazon might have to exert more control over the activity on its own website. “Courts are rejecting the internet exceptionalism idea when it comes to a company like Amazon,” Agnieszka McPeak, a Gonzaga University professor, told Bloomberg Law. – It could also have implications for companies like Shopify

    Sennheiser to spin out its consumer audio business | EE News Europe – AKG got sold off by the family, Sennheiser is selling off its iconic headphone business. This leaves only Beyerdynamic – Sennheiser sells auido business to hearing aid maker | EE Times Europe 

    South Korea’s Kakao to buy two U.S. storytelling apps for $950 million | Reuters

    Why SoftBank’s THG deal has more questions than answers | Financial Times – What exactly the Ingenuity business does is something of a riddle: chief executive Matthew Moulding described it as a “social media influencer platform” but it also handles the prosaic business of logistics and translations for third parties launching in new markets – I don’t get The Hut Group (THG), maybe they’re bad about telling their story?

    Luxury

    Why Victoria’s Secret Body Positivity Spin Won’t Work in China | Jing Daily – Victoria’s Secret’s has a long history of glamorous supermodel perfection, therefore this choice is seen as inauthentic for the Chinese consumer and has left many citizens bewildered. Global brands need a localized approach in China, but one that resonates convincingly with the company – on Victoria’s Secret trying be more inclusive and body positive

    Technology

    EVs Will Drive A Lithium Supply Crunch – IEEE Spectrum – not new news, but interesting that it is being highlighted by electrical engineers now just as many electric cars are coming to market. More lithium related content here

    Web of no web

    Northrop Breaks Into DARPA’s Blackjack « Breaking Defense – Defense industry news, analysis and commentary – software-defined Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) technology will offer military users an agile new signal from low Earth orbit (LEO) that is not dependent on existing satellite navigation systems – it could be interesting to see what new services can be built on this eventually