Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • 2021 blogs that inspire me

    I wrote a blog post back in February 2014 that highlighted 40 blogs that inspired me, revisiting this post I decided to write about 2021 blogs that inspire me. But first how did the original list hold up in 2021?

    Original list in 2021

    Name / CategoryDescription
    Analysis 
    Wall Street Journal Corporate Intelligence blogNo longer exists, the link defaults to the Wall Street Journal front page.
    Edge Perspectives with John Hagel– No longer exists
    Monocle MonocolumnMonocle has kept the archive online, but the Monocolumn is no longer updated. It has been abandoned in favour of the Monocle Minute
    Organizations and MarketsOrganizations and Markets have their archive online but wrote their last post in 2016, ten years to the day when they first started writing posts
    Asia 
    AnalectsThe Analects last post was in November 2014
    Asia blogThe Asia Society have a blog which alternates between amazing photography from the region and analysis pieces with an academic / think tank type feel. It is still maintained
    Asian Security BlogStill sporadically posted to by Robert Kelly a Korean-based professor of international relations, it has some interesting posts analyzing the complex relationships across APAC. In 2017, became better known when his children gatecrashed a television interview he was doing via Skype with the BBC
    Bytes of ChinaNo longer available
    China Real TimeThe blog has disappeared and now diverts to the WSJ’s Asian news section.
    ChinaTechNewsChinaTechNews seems to have stopped at the end of 2020
    Hong Kong HustleStopped in 2017, but the archived posts are still available
    Jing DailyAll things luxury sector related in China.
    Jottings from the Granite StudioNow diverts to Jeremiah Jenne’s personal site
    May DailyMay Daily no longer exists
    Scene AsiaNo longer exists, instead it diverts to the WSJ home page
    Business 
    Andy KesslerBlog of the business author and former Wall Street analyst, mostly just posts the copy from his Wall Street Journal articles there now.
    Bronte CapitalAustralian authored blog with some interesting analysis on some of the business stories of the day with a very strong focus on US companies
    Strategyprofs.netThe archive is still available. The last post was written in 2016
    Union Square VenturesA mix of curated content and original analysis by staff from a New York-based venture capital firm
    Design 
    Cool ToolsKevin Kelly’s website which is a spiritual successor to the Whole Earth Catalog.
    designboomGreat new product site which cover product design to architecture products, handy to look through for inspiration
    DezeenSimilar to designboom but more focused on architecture
    IDSA Materials and Processes SectionNo longer active
    Thinking and SharingHasn’t been updated since November 2020
    Ideas 
    BBH LabsRandom assortment of posts from the innovation team at BBH, always something to think about
    ExcapiteIdeas of exploration in the network economy
    PARC blogBlog no longer active
    Insights 
    CEB Iconoculture Consumer Insights BlogMerged into GartnerGroup’s other blog posts
    Creative Culture InternationalNuggets of consumer behaviour insights from around the world
    GfK Insights BlogGlobal market research agency posts based on some of the research they carry out, has a mixed bag of content
    The comScore Data MineNo longer active
    WPP Reading RoomNo longer active
    Online 
    China Internet WatchThink Techcrunch for China
    China Social Media blogNo longer active
    Facebook Developer BlogLess of a pleasure, more of a professional necessity to try and keep with up with the latest developments on the Great Satan of social
    Technology 
    FluxxNo longer running a blog
    Infinite LoopArs Technica’s Apple-focused channel, quality analysis
    Michael GeistCanadian expert on intellectual property and online privacy. Blogs analysis with a North American focus
    Tech-On!Blog no longer published in English
    The WirecutterA ‘best of ‘ website that looks at different technology categories

    What surprised me about the 2012 list is how many blogs covering different aspects of China in terms of the technology scene, culture and online life have disappeared or stopped being updated. Despite the fact that now, more than ever, they are needed.

    Major media outlets have walked back from building blogs based on interest areas or personalities ( like a traditional newspaper columnist).

    By comparison, I have a compiled an exemplar list of inspirational 2021 blogs. I look at more but that would be ludicrously long to compile.

    2021 blogs that inspire me

    Name / CategoryDescription
    Analysis 
    Marginal RevolutionEconomics blog of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both of whom teach at George Mason University
    Naked CapitalismNaked Capitalism is an educated critique of post Reagan / Thatcher Chicago School of economics
    Global Risk InsightsA mix of current affairs and economics from an international team of policy wonks and economists
    LawfareCurrent affairs analysis in association with the Brookings Institute
    ProMarket A curated newsfeed of articles on the intersection of technology, policy and economics
    VoxEUEU focused policy blog under the auspices of the Centre for Economic Policy Research
    Asia
    Asian SentinelAsian Sentinel is edited by a couple of veteran Asia based journalists. The content comes from a number of experts in the region in specialisms such as finance, economics and policy.
    Chosun IlboEnglish language Korean newspaper
    Hong Kong Free PressThe Hong Kong Free Press is an English language online-only new site focusing on Hong Kong
    MetropolisEnglish language online magazine focused on life in Japan – culture rather than policy and news
    Jayne StarsEnglish language blog that collates Hong Kong celebrity news from Cantonese language media. It is was important for me to keep an eye on this when working in Hong Kong. It is also a good way to track the slow death of the Hong Kong domestic media industry.
    Nippon.comOnline magazine ran by the Nippon Communications Foundation
    PingWestChina-based English language site that specialises local technology sector news
    SoraNews24English language version of a Japanese news site that focuses on ‘fun, weird, and intriguing news from Asia, particularly Japan’. It has some great Japanese consumer insight content including retail experiences
    South China Morning PostThe South China Morning Post historically was the paper of record for Hong Kong. It’s medium-to-long term usefulness looks in question with the National Security Act and the Chinese government pressure for Jack Ma to divest media ownership
    Tech in AsiaEnglish language site that is focused on the South East Asian and East Asian technology sector 
    What’s On WeiboEnglish language site that provides insight into the top stories and memes trending on Chinese social media
    The Wire ChinaSubscription-based online Chinese news magazine covering business, policy and economic issues
    HKU Legal Scholarship BlogHong Kong University faculty of law blog on local developments
    Design
    Cool Hunting A mix of the unusual and cool from around the web
    Cool ToolsKevin Kelly’s website which is a spiritual successor to the Whole Earth Catalog.
    designboomGreat new product site which cover product design to architecture products, handy to look through for inspiration
    DezeenSimilar to designboom but more focused on architecture
    Core77Curated design and architecture
    Retro To GoProducts with a retro design and sensibility
    1Granary A magazine focused on profiling designers and artists
    ColossalColossal in their own words – “an international platform for contemporary art and visual expression that explores a vast range of creative disciplines.” 
    Design milkAn online magazine and e-commerce site focused on modern design
    DexignerOne of the OG design blogs started back in 2001
    Retro To Go Retro To Go curates vintage and new products that are retro influenced product designs
    Ideas
    Ad AgedGeorge Tannenbaum is a 40 year creative veteran in the advertising industry. His blog is a mix of smart thinking and ranting about ageism and other isms in the ad industry (there’s a lot of them to rant about)
    AeonAeon is a smart digital magazine run along the same principles as PBS or NPR in the US
    BaekdalManagement consultancy type content on the media industry, primarily aimed at publishers, but useful for ad people like yours truly
    Clot MagazineAn online magazine about art that uses ‘science’ as its media – full of interesting curios
    Creative Culture A mix of academics and consultants covering a wide range of cultural issues. I am never sure what I’ll find here, but it’s seldom dull.
    FuturismCuration of interesting stuff
    Hello FutureFrance Telecom has a blog about the bleeding edge of technology. Alongside the usual 5G flag waving you’d expect from a major mobile network operator there’s some thoughtful content
    Kellogg InsightArticles from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Many of which are well written
    KnowledgeArticles written by INSEAD teaching staff and alumni 
    Union Square VenturesVenture capital fund who write about some of the thinking that underpins their investment themes
    Yale University Press BlogA blog that covers the central ideas in the books that they publish. The articles go from current affairs to art, history and science.
    Technology
    Radio Free MobileDespite the name, covers technology and does some interesting business analysis. I really like the way everything is delivered in succinct bullet points
    Semiconductor DigestSemiconductors are the most overlooked, yet important part of technology today. Well worth keeping up with the latest developments here
    Chilling CompetitionAnalysis of the intersection between legal and technology, with a particular focus on anti-trust and competition law
    Tech.euEurope based technology and innovation news

  • Porsche & things that caught my eye this week

    Porsche enlists Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter

    Porsche enlisted Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter (aka Bill & Ted) to promote their new electric powered sports cars. There is so much to unpack here.

    I suspect Porsche wanted to target gen-xers (and more likely early millennials) with a mid-life crisis. They probably wanted something that was memetastic.

    While I am in the right age group, I am not necessarily in the right income bracket, so I am not their target market. From my perspective, there was some interesting choices.

    Bringing in Alex Winter alongside Keanu Reeves was to signal that this isn’t about the ‘cool’ Keanu of Point Break, The Matrix, Cyberpunk 2077 or John Wick. Instead its closer to the ‘Dad cool’ of Apple executives – not really cool at all, but it might be fun.

    The film itself is shot in a style reminiscent of Top Gear, even going as far to feature former Top Gear US presenter Tanner Foust.

    This didn’t make Porsche feel like the luxury good that it is. It didn’t make it aspirational to own a Porsche. And I think that’s a problem.

    Netscape

    Netscape Navigator was the first internet browser that I used on a regular basis. This happened whilst I was at college. There were a few other browsers SpyGlass which was bundled with some internet services (and eventually Microsoft Internet Explorer) and NCSA Mosaic. The word in the college computer lab was that Netscape Navigator was the one you wanted. My first copy was bundled on a floppy disk sellotaped to the front cover of MacFormat magazine.

    This video goes into the rise and fall of Netscape.

    TeamLab

    Experiential agency TeamLab have come up with an amazing experience in central Tokyo sponsored by TikTok. It is held at the Rinkan Sauni in the Roppongi district of Tokyo.

    Goddess of Spring

    Disney’s Goddess of Spring is set to classical music like Fantasia. It was designed as a short and the study used these series of short films to experiment with animation techniques. This episode of ‘Silly Symphonies’ was the first time they had experimented with human animation. The techniques are gone into more depth here.

    MacOS X

    The modern Mac operating system is 20 years old this year. I remember getting it to run on the iBook laptop that I owned back then. MacWorld have put a potted history together on how the modern Mac operating system came into being here.

  • UK China relations + more things

    UK China relations

    What to know about UK China relations in 2021 — Quartz – interesting that the author frames UK China relations in terms of Brexification. The reality is much more nuanced

    Culture

    The Gen X Culture Warriors Who Never Grew Up | The New Republic – interesting take on things, though I disagree with a good deal of it

    Design

    Jeff Bezos and Amazon: A complicated design legacy – A major part of design’s value proposition is the process. Designers identify problems to create solutions. Amazon, on the other hand, has often identified solutions before naming the problem. Sometimes that approach worked. But often, it didn’t. And it created an ecosystem with a surprising number of hidden costs. “Amazon will never be a design-led company. It’s evident in the quality of the products they ship. And although the design is still thriving there, I don’t believe it’s fundamental to the core DNA of the company,” says a former Amazon designer who worked closely with Bezos on several products. “Just because there’s ‘customer obsession’ doesn’t mean there’s an investment in quality and design rigor.”

    Right to repair’ law to come in this summer – BBC News 

    Hong Kong

    Hong Kong’s UA Cinemas lowers curtain for final time amid ‘devastating pressure’ of coronavirus pandemic; theatre chain had operated in city since 1985 | South China Morning Post – this felt big to me. Hong Kong has cinema attendance per head of population far over what you’d get in Europe which makes a city with the population of Denmark being historically the fourth largest cinema market. Some of the best times I had in Hong Kong revolved around trips to the cinema

    Japan’s SBI plans Hong Kong pullout on concerns over security law | Financial Times – I was surprised Yoshitaka Kitao came out so unequivocally against the national security law with the statement that ‘without freedom, there is no financial business’ – most companies have pussyfooted around the issue, like they have done around Brexit. SBI are also reviewing their presence in London

    StanChart tries to navigate moral minefield | Financial Times – really interesting read about he challenges that Standard Chartered is facing and how they are trying to manage them. It provides an unfavourable contrast for HSBC though both are a right mess

    Luxury

    Are Supercars a Good Investment? Experts Say Vintage Cars Are Risky – Bloomberg – interesting article

    Why No Other Luxury Company Compares To LVMH | Jing Daily 

    Dior Names Blackpink’s Jisoo New Global Fashion and Beauty Ambassador | Business of Fashion 

    Marketing

    Tymbals : The Agency of the Future – new agency conglomerate is financially engineered

    Media

    Netflix Begins Test to Crack Down on Password Sharing Outside Your Household – The Streamable – Netflix‘s next stage of growth

    Security

    The UK is secretly testing a controversial web snooping tool | WIRED UK – police and internet companies across the UK have been quietly building and testing surveillance technology that could log and store the web browsing of every single person in the country. The tests, which are being run by two unnamed internet service providers, the Home Office and the National Crime Agency, are being conducted under controversial surveillance laws introduced at the end of 2016. If successful, data collection systems could be rolled out nationally, creating one of the most powerful and controversial surveillance tools used by any democratic nation

    Technology

    Why I was wrong to be optimistic about robots | Financial Times – really interesting piece on the state of robotics in warehouse environments

    How Line built fact-checking into its encrypted messaging app – Rest of World 

    iCloud allegedly locked out a user over her last name | Engadget – I wonder if this affects other Oracle mail server instances

  • Ben Liebrand & things that caught my eye this week

    Ben Liebrand

    Ben Liebrand has been a name for as long as I have been buying records. According to Discogs; he has remixes that have appeared on over 800 albums, compilations and singles. This tells you a lot about the quality and longevity of his remixes. Dutch YouTuber Twan scored an interview with Ben Liebrand where he talks about his career.

    Lunar new year adverts

    WPP showcased work that had been done across their network for Chinese new year 2021. There was a mix of work there, some of it felt like WPP was having to do the creative equivalent of looking under the sofa cushions for change. For instance, Superunion showcased a browser game that they had built as a corporate greetings card for lunar new year. WaveMaker did a transport media buy branding a train interior for a hard candy brand. This could have been executed better. Yes it makes sense to drive awareness in high footfall areas, but shopping for lunar new year presents is usually done before travelling. Secondly, COVID meant that travelling home was discouraged; what was WaveMaker’s plan B for this scenario. Finally, the dressing of the train could have been done more creatively and involved more of a festive feeling.

    The highlight was a Mercedes Benz advert by Ogilvy shot by Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar wai – the film taps into the emotion that surrounds Chinese New Year. This mirrors the emotive brief that Mercedes Benz pursued in their US Christmas ad campaigns over the past few years.

    Ogilvy’s work for KFC China taps into the increasing interest in winter sports that is driven by the forthcoming winter olympics in Beijing.

    I was surprised that there was no Ogilvy work showcased from outside China, for instance Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan or Hong Kong.

    Machine learning stagnation

    Despite all the technology hype around deep learning, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors that conceals what innovation is happening in the field. The essay shows current machine learning development culture. The original essay is here and a video review of the Machine Learning Stagnation essay. Despite the title its a bit more uplifting than it implies.

    Retro Japan footage

    Yet more great stock footage from Japan in the 1980s. The first one is set to ambient music and shows everyday live in the town and country, alongside TV and film footage. Some of the footage seems to be near a US base. The significance of US cars in the footage is that they used to be popular with the yakuza – Japan’s native organised crime families.

    Fremantle Media have Thames TV’s complete archives including this b-roll of Japanese signage. They claim its Tokyo but some of it looks more like Osaka. It is a symphony of neon that Japan still does the best. It is worthwhile going through Fremantle’s b-roll archive if you’re an art director because of the variety of material that they have.

  • SITA + more things

    SITA

    SITA | SITA statement about security incident – this gave limited and basic information – specifically your name, membership number and tier, seating preferences and a code corresponding to your meal preferences. – according to Cathay Pacific. It looks like this attack on SITA was more about tracking the travel of persons of interest around the world; so more likely to be a state actor rather than commercial motives. China is known to use this kind of data to track and harass its enemies

    Business

    If you read nothing else here, read this piece of investigative journalism. It reads like something out of a post-Smiley John LeCarre novel – British American Tobacco Fights Dirty In West Africa – OCCRP

    Like China, The West Needs National Champions  

    China

    Jack Ma personifies the contradiction of China’s ideology | Financial Times – interesting end to the article, with a question about whether Goldman Sachs, BlackRock et al will be able to convincingly align themselves “politically, intellectually and emotionally” with Xi Jingping? How will the west regard Communist party cells in their management decision structures?

    China, Russia Images in U.S. Hit Historic Lows – I would imagine that this is a bigger problem for China than Russia. I think will continue to be a big issue for China and would be mirrored across other western countries across Europe. Worth reading alongside Xi Jinping turned me into a China hawk – POLITICO 

    The Fall of China’s Working-Class ‘Palaces’ – Sixth Tone – interesting read on ‘peoples palace’ public spaces

    Luxury

    Kering bets on first-mover advantage with resale | Vogue Business – pretty much all the major houses now have a resale brand of sorts

    H. MOSER & CIE SWISS ALP WATCH FINAL UPGRADE | Watches News – I do like the sense of humour in the design

    LOEWE | The Loewe Show Has Been Cancelled – Loewe’s approach to marketing its spring and summer collection aped a newspaper to create a cookbook.

    Loewe virtual collection newspaper themed look book
    Website screenshot

    Marketing

    An Oral History of Mountain Dew’s Puppy Monkey Baby Super Bowl Ad – this feels like the creative was done before the strategy which sounds completely out of whack

    Airbnb slashes spend in permanent shift from performance marketing to brand | Campaign – makes sense since AirBnB is ‘verging’ as Faris Yakob would say. And here comes the why: Why you need a strong brand to win in e-commerce: Adidas’ Simon Peel | WARC. More from Simon Peel here.

    Tymbals : The Agency of the Future – I was reading this by Nigel Scott. I suspect that he’ll be right. My main concern as a marketer is the piss-poor job that the martech stack players do, supporting brand building. The fundamental problem is they only view things from a performance marketing perspective because engineers, programme managers and even the company CMOs don’t get brand. These are the people that brought us growth hacking. Their model is a secondhand car lot salesman.

    Shoppertainment & Livestreaming Gain Steam in Europe’s E-Commerce | Alizila – QVC on your mobile…..

    Russia

    Why the Europeans Don’t Have a Russia Policy – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – the belief held by the older generation of German Social Democrats—and Christian Democrats—that Russia should not be isolated. This was the thinking behind Germany’s Ostpolitik, or Eastern policy, which was begun by the Social Democrats in the late 1960s. That policy was based not only on the idea of dialogue with Russia but also on the notion of Wandel durch Annäherung, or change through 

    Technology

    Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound Countdown | The Science Behind the Sound | Qualcomm – I think that this sits between two stools. It isn’t hi-fi and it won’t be cheap.

    Wave Goodbye, Hello MIPS as Chapter 11 Resolved | EE Times – still has a strategic focus on the RISC-based processor architectures. They are looking to support a mix of legacy MIPS technology and a new “standards-based 8th generation architecture,” based on the open source RISC-V processor standard

    Can WhatsApp stop misinformation without compromising encryption? — Quartz 

    Don’t know how to train your dog? This device will do it for you – CNET 

    Tools

    I have been playing with this for a few days now and could definitely see a use for it – flowchart.fun