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.

  • The merge

    I first heard of the merge from Sam Altman’s blog. He said that it was a popular topic of conversation in Silicon Valley to guess when (not if) humans and machines will merge. In a meaningful way rather than just a Johnny Mnemonic-style walking data storage unit.

    When I heard of this definition of the merge, I immediately thought of the digital series H+.

    https://youtu.be/ZedLgAF9aEg
    H+ The Digital Series

    H+ told the tale of a technological hack that killed people by disrupting the implants in their heads. Some of the few survivors were out of cellular network reach in the basement of multi-story car park.

    He went on to explain that it may not be a hybridisation of humans literally with technology but when humans are surpassed by a rapidly improving (general purpose) AI. The third possibility was a genetically enhanced species surpassing humans in the same way that homo sapiens surpassed the neanderthal.

    What’s interesting is that some of the people don’t give ‘the merge’ a name at all. Back during the dot com boom, when Ray Kurzweil published his book Age of Spiritual Machines it was given the name The Singularity.

    Part of the resistance to this established term was that The Singularity implies a single point in time. I don’t think Kurzweil meant it in that way. But its been almost 20 years since I read Age of Spiritual Machines, and I suspect most of the debaters have only read about it from a Wikipedia article.

    Alton points out that in some ways the merge has been with us for a good while.

    The contacts app on our devices and social networks take the place of us remembering telephone numbers. I can remember my parents landline number and the number of the first family doctor that we had. But I wouldn’t be able to tell you my parents current cell phone number; or the number of my current doctor.

    On a grander scale; general knowledge and desire to read around has been depreciated by Google and Wikipedia. Our phones, tablets and laptops are not implanted in us, but at least one of them will be seldom out of reach. I learned to touch type and I am now not conscious of how I input the text into this post. It goes from my thought to the screen. Only the noise of the keys gives away illusion of mind control as I stare at the screen. Ironically voice assistance makes me more conscious of ‘the other’ nature of the device.

    But it no longer just about memory and our personal connectedness of the devices. Our device control us and suggest what to do and when. Social media platform curation affects how we feel.

    As Altman puts it:

    We are already in the phase of co-evolution — the AIs affect, effect, and infect us, and then we improve the AI. We build more computing power and run the AI on it, and it figures out how to build even better chips.

    This probably cannot be stopped. As we have learned, scientific advancement eventually happens if the laws of physics do not prevent it.

    Sam Altman – The Merge

    Innovation often spits out the same process in several waves before it works. Before Siri, Alexa and Google home there was Wildfire. Before Wildfire there were various speech recognition technologies including Nuance for call centres, Lernout & Hauspie, Dragon Systems and Kurzweil Computer Systems. The last two were founded in the mid-1970s. SRI International’s AI research started delivering results in the mid 1960s.

    AI in its broadest terms has gone through several research booms and busts. The busts have their own name ‘AI winters’. The cadence of progress could easily be far slower than Altman imagines.

    One could easily argue that machine learning might run its natural course to technical maturity without much more improvement. Google and other technology companies are basing their work on research done at Canadian universities in the 1980s during an ‘AI winter’ characterised by a lack of basic research funding. Canada continued to support the research when others didn’t.

    Silicon Valley companies not engaging in basic research themselves. As Judy Estrin observed in her book Closing The Innovation Gap back in 2008, Silicon Valley no longer engages in ‘hard innovation’. Without that basic research; a general purpose AI envisioned by Kurzweil and Altman maybe out of reach. Which is why Silicon Valley pundits put the merge as somewhere in a 50-year window.

    Altman also caveats his prediction based on the laws of physics. Aaron Toponce : The Physics of Brute Force provides an idea of the physical limits imposed by cracking cryptography. It would not be inconceivable that a general purpose AI may hit similar challenges. More on machine learning and innovation here.

  • Hair Growth Helmet + more things

    LG Launches Hair Growth Helmet to Combat Hair Loss | HYPEBAE – this looks totally legit. NOT. Yes, the FDA has certified other hair growth helmet treatments, but that was to indicate that they wouldn’t harm you or interfere with medications. It doesn’t validate the hair growth helmet actually working. But on the other hand lasers in the helmet….. More beauty category related content here.

    Why loneliness fuels populism | Financial Times – depicting loneliness solely in terms of how connected we feel to our friends, neighbours and colleagues risks occluding its other potent forms. Loneliness is political as well as personal, economic as well as social. It is also about feeling disconnected from our fellow citizens and political leaders, and detached from our work and our employer.

    “Buy British”: The viability of a nationalist commercial policy | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal – attempts by successive UK governments in the 1970s and early 1980s to initiate such import substitution policies were fraught with economic and legal difficulties. Indeed, accelerating globalisation and the rapid growth of imports in intermediate products for assembly into ‘British’ goods raise significant problems in defining a ‘national’ product – and the growth of tradable services (such as insurance, education and healthcare) presents an even more intractable problem

    Arkady Bukh: Man in the Middle | CyberScoop – go-to lawyer for hackers

    China bans Australian academics in apparent tit-for-tat retaliation | South China Morning Post – this has followed soon after a good report by Alex Joske and book by Clive Hamilton on China’s influence activities abroad

    Facebook removes fake accounts with links to China and Philippines | The Guardian – Facebook says it has removed hundreds of coordinated fake accounts with links to individuals in China and in the Filipino military that were interfering in the politics of the Philippines and the US – not very surprising. More details in the South China Morning Post – How a Chinese network of fake Facebook accounts influenced online debate on South China Sea, US politics | South China Morning Post 

    Ebay ex-CEO, PR head shared texts about taking down critics: DOJ – Business Insider – probably one of the most disturbing and bizarre things that I’ve read in a while

    China has the upper hand in corporate proxy wars with US | Financial Times – Mr Trump gave Mr Xi what he wanted on ZTE — a reprieve in the form of a new US commerce department settlement that allowed it to stay in business — and mistakenly assumed that this concession would smooth over the other matters. China quickly pocketed the ZTE present but continued to withhold approval of the Qualcomm-NXP deal. When the trade talks later started to unravel, Mr Xi let Qualcomm-NXP languish in regulatory limbo, where it eventually died. – Trump gave a concession too early

    How a local messaging app defeated WhatsApp in Vietnam – messaging app Zalo has been taking the country by storm for nearly a decade now. Zalo’s got a pretty firm grip on Vietnamese consumers. And now that it’s integrated mobile payment service ZaloPay into its messaging app, there’s plenty of potential for it to expand beyond being just a means of communication.

    The landlords are back – The families of China’s pre-Communist elite remain privileged | China | The Economist – The old elite began to suffer almost as soon as the Communist Party won the Chinese civil war in 1949. China’s new rulers quickly set about seizing land from people in the countryside, redistributing it among the landless, confiscating private businesses and executing many rural landlords and people who had worked for the overthrown Nationalist regime

    Listen to an unheard Steve Jobs NeXT keynote from 1988 – “But why it matters is that those explorations and that fun were in the end quite significant. It’s always useful to look back and to realize that even though the tech itself might seem quite primitive today, the people were already sophisticated. We know a lot more facts, and we can do more things, but I’m not sure we have gotten that much wiser.”

  • Easy growth trap + more things

    Luxury Brands Must Avoid This Easy Growth Trap | Jing Daily – China has been reporting significant growth rates in the luxury sector recently, and many global luxury brands have been counting on China to be their silver lining. However, this recent growth has, to a large extent, been driven by repatriation (meaning sales that customers would otherwise have made during overseas travels). With travel routes to Europe and the US closed, Chinese luxury customers have been shopping domestically, which has driven the luxury demand inside Mainland China. Yet, this strong increase in demand in China could not offset the drastic decline in demand in both Europe and the US, at least during the second quarter of 2020. As such, many brands across categories like luxury cars, high-end jewelry, watches, and luxury fashion are sitting on enormous inventories and are looking at empty stores – Jing Daily were warning of the easy growth trap in discounting but their description of the market at the moment is very interesting. I suspect that the luxury sector is already well aware of this. The have seen department stores fall into the easy growth trap. Luxury brands have historically gone to extreme lengths to avoid the easy growth trap. Reputedly, during the last recession Rolex is alleged to have bought excess products from its dealers and the grey market to recycle, rather than discount. More on luxury and retailing.

    AI in Marketing: Myths vs. Reality – Techerati – Johnny Bentwood articulates a more reasonable assessment of AI. Badging everything ‘AI’ wonder technology is the easy growth trap of the tech sector. We’ve been here before

    Teens are turning themselves into Gucci models on TikTok | Dazed – Luxury is interesting because here brands really have meaning. The Gucci brand has history and meaning that comes from their behaviours and their products – rather than merely from how they have spent their ad budget in the past. Their Northern Soul homage in 2017 is just one example of the brand’s authenticity, energy and creative eye. For Gucci, it’s vital their brand continues to be culturally relevant, so they need to participate in TikTok. First, their #AccidentalInfluencer Grans in fur coats (with 8m views) showed they understood the grammar of TikTok and then the #GucciModel Challenge invites – no, demands – people play along. As Gucci makes fun of themselves they convey strong messages and have 26m views already. One thing I particularly like is how they use the audio by Lachlan Watson, star of the Netflix hit ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’. This is the antithesis of the glossy spreads Gucci and others place in the top magazines and balances their marketing with authenticity which suits TikTok so well – Simon over at Great TikTok creative

    ‘It’s Ridiculous.’ Underfunded FTC and DOJ Can’t Keep Fighting the Tech Giants Like This – Big Technology 

    China’s middle-class dream of a second home in Malaysia dashed by coronavirus and geopolitical tensions | South China Morning Post – “Most of these Chinese individual investors are not prepared – financially or psychologically – for the risks of overseas investment,” Zhao said. “They have experienced only economic growth and a booming property market on the mainland for decades, and they lack the funds and risk awareness to deal with the downside [of the economic cycle].” – the belt and road initiative isn’t all plain sailing

    ‘Funnel juggling’ is the answer to marketing effectiveness – Marketing Week – For the long work, in most Uber countries there are a series of brand campaigns that push the emotional benefits of travel. Inevitably and rather cleverly the focus is on the top of the benefit ladder; or, in Uber’s case, the end of the journey, when it delivers you to your destination and the emotional benefit that awaits. In the US, for example, the brand uses TV, outdoor and digital media to associate Uber with these moments. It’s mass-market, it’s emotional, it’s brand-focused and it asks nothing of the consumer other than to see Uber as more than a ride-sharing service. 

    I have no idea what the split in Uber’s marketing spend actually is but I will bet about half of the money in any country also goes on the short of it.

    Gucci’s Gaming Garments | Gartner for Marketing – Chinese princelings….

    Cinnabon in the Oven | Gartner for Marketers – processed foods are the new eating out

    Public Image Decline of South Korean Churches – The PeninsulaThe Peninsula – Pastors in South Korea claim that church-linked COVID-19 outbreaks have tainted the public image of churches in the country. Most recently, a church in Seoul emerged as the source of the country’s second largest infection cluster following a spike in cases associated with a religious sect in Daegu earlier this year. A 2015 Gallup Korea poll finds that more South Koreans, particularly those in their twenties and thirties, are moving away from religion.

    Hallyu Con 2020 | KCCUK – virtual festival on October 4th

    Ageism Is Not Just A Disease—It Is The New Business Model For Top Ad Agencies – the original statement inadvertently let the cat out of the bag about agencies’ cost cutting at the expense of clients: they are now inhabited by junior talent, inexpensive and inexperienced. And this is the main reasons for the decline of the advertising industry. The holding companies like WPP were formed in the eighties, and they started consolidating the industry by gobbling up independent agencies. To do so, they needed to issue debt and the industry mortgaged itself to bankers. Madison Avenue went from focusing on the clients’ business to focusing on their balance sheet. And that meant getting rid of “cost”: talented experienced people in their forties and fifties and replacing them with cheaper labor.

    GBA hurt by Cold War, pandemic and protests EJINSIGHT – ejinsight.com – Greater Bay Area (cities and Hong Kong around the Pearl River delta) that China envisages as kind of like Judge Dredd’s Mega City One

    Video encoders using Huawei chips have backdoors and bad bugs – and Chinese giant says it’s not to blame • The Register 

    Hard to pardon: why Tenet’s muffled dialogue is a very modern problem | Tenet | The Guardian – “Think about it: the first few Star Wars [films], we heard them all. We heard all the lines. Listen to Apocalypse Now – you hear everything.” Price agrees: “If you watch old movies, you might hear some sound effects here and there but now they go nuts: somebody’s walking across the room in a leather jacket, you hear the zippers clink and the creak of the leather and every footstep is right in your face.” When television became commonplace in the mid-20th century and challenged cinema’s dominion, cinema needed to distinguish itself; it needed to prove that it could justify people leaving the comfort of their homes. It did so partly by becoming bigger and louder. In an era – and a pandemic – in which home streaming dominates, cinema may be forced to pull out the stops once more. “I think we’re bombarded,” Paul Markey, a projectionist at the Irish Film Institute, says of modern films. “The more expensive movies have got, the more of a bombardment they become on your senses.”

    ‘The Devil All The Time’ Costume Designer On Its Style | Esquire – the world has never fallen out of love with American workwear; no split, no wandering eye. The only thing that has changed is who wears it. The plaid-clad men of The Devil All The Time wear clothes that are as tough and hardscrabble as their lives. Their ancestors still flock to the same brands – think Dickies, Levi’s and Carhartt – only now it’s because they’ve collaborated with Off-White. Still, context is context, but the fact that these classics still work is testament to their longevity, both in design and build – the timelessness of American workwear

  • Tech cold war + more things

    The US-China tech cold war has turned hot – but would a Biden presidency change things for Huawei and others? | South China Morning Post – “No president will want to be accused of being soft on China,” said James Andrew Lewis, senior vice-president and director of the technology policy programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “Trump’s policies are disorganised, but consistently move to cut economic ties with China. Biden’s policies will be better coordinated, less abrupt, but move in the same direction.” – the tech cold war isn’t new. You could trace it back to the beginning with coercive IP transfer and massive industrial espionage. It kicked off in earnest with the Golden Shield Project 金盾 工程 censorship system. Where we are now was not a case of if, but when

    TikTok becomes a case study for Chinese companies planning global expansion | South China Morning Post – Zhang’s relationship with the ruling Communist Party is complicated. He must walk a fine line between keeping Beijing happy but not be seen as too close to raise concerns outside China. Zhang, who told Atlantic magazine in July that he was not a party member, was approached by Beijing a year ago with an offer to help when TikTok faced political troubles in India. However, Zhang sent mid-level staff to meet government officials, signalling he did not want Beijing to get involved – whether entrepreneurs like it or not, they’re likely to find the government inserted into the business like a helicopter parent. You’re likely to see coercive business development as part of Chinese diplomats wolf warrior patter; a la Huawei 5G network equipment and the Faroe Islands

    Allegations of deception dog Nikola’s lofty aims | Financial Times – my worst fear is that this will tarnish hydrogen fuel cells in the market. Hyundai are already doing interesting things with hydrogen fuel cell wagons

    Interesting report from Watches & Wonders (aka SIHH), Shanghai – Watches & Wonders Shanghai: The Future of Fine Watchmaking? | Luxury Society – more luxury related posts here.

    BJ Fogg on this old but good video explaining persuasion through technology in very simple terms

    FAA, Boeing Blasted Over 737 MAX Failures in Democratic Report – WSJ – really nice oral history of the Boeing 737 Max scandal

    Money-launderers use Chinese online shopping sites to funnel cash offshore | Financial Times – Money launderers have used some of China’s leading online shopping sites to transfer billions of dollars to offshore gambling sites, police raids have revealed. People wishing to evade China’s strict capital controls, for example to gamble on offshore websites, have been placing fake orders on the shopping sites, including on Pinduoduo, China’s second-largest platform by users. A corresponding sum is then credited to their gaming account.

    Kraft Heinz sells parts of cheese business for $3.2bn | Financial Times – surprised if more assets aren’t sold as the 3G Capital model isn’t working

    EU tests platform to link up coronavirus tracing apps | Reuters – really interesting development in interoperability

  • Carhartt Labor Day + more things

    Carhartt Labor Day colouring book – the American workwear brand put together a great children’s colouring book for labor day weekend. It allows parents to explain what they do for their kids and provides an activity for a socially isolated public holiday. You can download your Carhartt Labor Day colouring book here.

    Carhartt Labor Day colouring book

    Vox Media have done a great video on rotoscoping and animation. Rotoscoping as a technique allowed animation to have life-like motion, but the creativity of animation.

    I was introduced to rotoscoping with the Ralph Bakshi Lord of The Rings animated movie. Peter Jackson’s live action version borrowed from this version shot for shot, but I find the animated version more enthralling because of Bakshi’s use of rotoscoping.

    Video shot from an original 35mm trailer print

    Simon Peel of Adidas’ now famous speech that recommended a healthy skepticism on short term performance marketing and the impact of longer term brand marketing. He realises digital is important, but lays out why marketers should ask why? Peel talked honestly about marketing effectiveness, marketing efficiency and misleading metrics. I had read the articles, but this is the first time that I’d seen his talk. More on marketing effectiveness here.

    IPA Eff Week talk 2019 by Simon Peel of Adidas

    Microsoft had been experimenting with sealed underwater data centres to see if they were possible and what the benefits were. Prior to the project starting there would be some predetermined benefits:

    • Reduced energy costs as refrigeration wouldn’t be needed. (You could achieve a similar effect, if you buried the data centre deep enough)
    • Reduced data centre costs. Internet hotels and server farms can cost a lot if built in cities with expensive real estate

    But there were questions over corrosion, damage and reliability. Microsoft got around corrosion by filling a submerged data centre with a nitrogen atmosphere. They found that a data centre without human intervention had much less faults than a matching data centre on-shore.

    Microsoft are now working on how the end of life process would work for an underwater data centre.

    Microsoft’s Natick project on underwater data centres