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.
Apple development changes was at the forefront of Apple’s WWDC keynote for 2025. I think that the focus on Apple development changes were happening for a few reasons:
Apple got burned announcing sub-standard AI offerings last year.
The new translucent interface is divisive.
The multi-tasking iPad was interesting for power users, but most usage is as a communal device to consume content.
Apple has a number of small on-device models that do particular things well. Which is why Apple needs to get developers on-board to come up with compelling uses.
The Mac still has great hardware, passionate developers and a community passionate about great life-changing software. Apple development focus was coming home.
Welcome to my June 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 23rd issue or as 23 would be called in bingo halls ‘thee and me’.
Basketball legend Michael Jordan wore the number 23 on his jersey when he played for the Chicago Bulls and when he returned to basketball to play for the Washington Wizards.
At the beginning of the 20th century, 23 and 23Skidoo appeared memetically as short hand for ‘to leave’ or to be asked to leave in American English. There are no satisfactory explanations about its origin.
It went on to be referenced in American plays, a Popeye cartoon, a William Burroughs story and inspire the name of a post-punk band founded by original international Stüssy Tribe member ‘Alex Baby‘.
Burroughs inspired the ’23 enigma’ which appeared in new age and alternative literature including The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
Walsh’s of Mullingar and more things dwelt on multi-generational businesses in Ireland, memetic ideas in architecture and the political act of hacking.
Augmented retailing – how machine learning is being used beyond efficiency to actually help customers in a customer-centric approach to customer experience.
I finished Rogue Agent by Andy McDermott. It’s an easy undemanding read, ideal for a holiday. It benefits from good pacing of the plot line and feels like it’s aimed at a British working-class male reader. It feels like it would be a good Amazon Prime or Netflix series if adapted from the novel.
Things I have been inspired by.
Walk the house
Walk the house is an exhibition at the Tate Modern by a Korean artist Do Ho Suh. The exhibition features a number of works that challenge what we think about living spaces and their sense of permanence. There is a traditional Korean house reproduced in charcoal rubbed fine paper, which captures every detail of the building’s exterior.
There is a tension between the scale and ephemeral nature of the work. The traditional Korean house also contrasted with modern apartment replicas in polyester mesh curtain material and wire supports.
The material and the extreme fidelity to detail that the artist brings gives them a dream-like quality like reliving a memory.
The exhibition is on at the Tate Modern until October and I can’t recommend it enough.
Time for some new ‘Age Thinking’
There was a moment in 2023 when the IPA Census of the UK advertising industry saw no one reach retirement age in any advertising agency. Anna Sampson was tasked with writing a report about age, systemic barriers and ageism with in the industry.
This directly impacts concerns around inclusivity, diversity and representation. It’s adversely affecting the work done for clients.
I remember listening to a creative director’s challenge in getting a production company to cast old people for a film. The production company was suggesting 40 year-olds, when what required was 70-plus.
I can also recommend Matthew Knight’s interview with Anna Sampson after the publication of the report.
What’s working in raising brand awareness?
WARC published their report What’s working in raising brand awareness, which is instant click bait to strategists. The findings in the report reinforce what we already knew from The Long and the Short of it and Ehrensberg-Bass’ How Brands Grow. It cites Research by Fospha found that brands who allocated at least 5% of their budgets to awareness and consideration saw a 22% higher return on advertising spend. When higher-awareness brands boosted their spend by 10%, they saw a 13% increase in sales.
AI’s dot com moment?
Given Mary Meeker‘s heritage in the late 1990s dot com bubble as evangelist rather than analyst – I was instinctively a bit leery of the hockey stick-shaped graphs in her new presentation on AI. The report gives good context to where many of the exponential claims. Like telecoms and the web before it, the presentation is an expression of confidence in progress, not a business model endorsement per se. Look instead at the financial results of major players in quarterly and annual filings.
Chart of the month.
Global podcast advertising growth seems to have matured based on data from WARC.
Things I have watched.
Bad Day At Blackrock – the film merges film noir with the western. It has a cast dominated by award-winning actors including Spencer Tracy as one-armed veteran with judo skills. Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin play local yahoos who try and needle a new arrival. The quality of the cast, the setting in the California high desert, a ramshackle western town and the Southern Pacific streamliner train – create an amazing film. Just ten years after the end of the second world war, Bad Day at Blackrock deals with racism against Asians. In my mind, it is John Sturges best film, but always overshadowed by his later works Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.
I first saw Le Doulos (aka The Fingerman) in an arthouse cinema in Liverpool with some art student friends. It was great to watch it again, this time in Blu-Ray. Jean-Pierre Melville directed a classic piece of French New Wave cinema noir. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Silien, a complicated character whose true place in the story isn’t revealed until the final third of the movie. Belmondo’s role lights up the screen displaying movie star looks and the hardness of a gangster. The plot is carefully doled out like a well-played poker hand with enough twists and turns that kept me on the end of my seat. It’s a masterclass in storytelling.
Useful tools.
Pocket is shutting down
Pocket was a service that was integrated into Firefox by the Mozilla Foundation that allowed the user to bookmark a web a page that was used to save articles and webpages for later. if you’re a Pocket user and looking for an alternative I can recommend Pinboard. I have been using Pinboard for the best part of 15 years, so can vouch for the service.
The sales pitch.
I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency.
I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements from the start of 2026 – keep me in mind; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
The Casio GW-9500 Mudman isn’t my first G-Shock by a long-shot. I thought it would make a bit of sense explaining what it’s like to live with and why I wear it at a time when the world is becoming more connected and documented.
My relationship with the Casio G-Shock started with my time scuba diving. At school my friend Neil had a Casio DW-100, which was a pre-G-Shock digital dive watch, only available in the Japan and the US at the time.
I was introduced to diving when working in my second job out of school by a colleague. I started using an old DW-5500 attached by an Animal velcro strap to my buoyancy compensator of my dive kit, that was gifted to me by a friend. It served as a back-up timer to my dive watch. I couldn’t afford a dive computer. At the time I had a friend who worked in a dive shop and my lessons were done by former military divers. I probably couldn’t afford similar equipment now if I decided to return to driving.
I also wouldn’t be doing the kind of dives we did back then thanks to the governing bodies de-risking the sport to the point of boredom, that’s a subject for another post.
Why do I wear a GW-9500 now?
It makes sense to tell a little bit around why I wear G-Shocks. I want an accurate watch (who doesn’t?). I want a dependable watch (again, probably a hygiene factor for most people). G-Shock offers robustness that 30 years ago would have come from fine Swiss or Japanese engineering – but at a much lower price point. Although the price point for G-Shocks has been steadily increasing.
The GW-9500, alongside other G-Shocks is what watch people would call a ‘beater’. It will take whatever life throws at it, from colliding into door handles, being dropped, to its water resistance – you don’t have to worry about it.
G-Shocks are the grey man of watches, despite some models being colourful – they are ubiquitous on any street from London to Manilla. They blend in with the crowd and are less likely to draw attention. This makes them the ideal ‘London watch‘.
The Apple Watch is closing in on this status in London now, but requires regular charging and is also more fragile than your average G-Shock.
I work in a creative role, my usual work outfit consists of:
T-shirts
Flannel shirts, sweatshirts or fleece quarter-zips
Jeans or climbing pants
Suede hiking boots or trainers
All of which make the G-Shock an ideal accessory for my form-follows-function wardrobe.
Industrial design of the GW-9500
The design of the GW-9500 is based on form following function. The buttons are designed so that they can be pushed with gloves, but still protected from accidental use. The ‘armouring’ helps protect the watch screen.
Casio worked out a lot of these lessons with the early Casio G-Shock Mudman and Rangeman watches. These models in turn borrowed the learnings of even earlier G-Shock models. G-Central did a good job at teasing out all the G-Shock family tree that led up to the GW-9500 – the link is at the bottom of the article.
The feel of the industrial design evokes the product design in Japanese anime like Ghost In The Shell or Evangelion – where things are over-designed. That has a certain appeal for me.
Materials
One of the biggest steps forward with the GW-9500 is the materials that the watch is made from. The movement and glass is held in a carbon fibre composite case. In my other G-Shock watches, this core case is made of plastic, stainless steel or titanium. This is one reason why the GW-9500 is very noticeably lighter than my other models. It’s also noticeably thinner, yet still offers the same protection.
Casio also has one eye on sustainability, with the watch strap being made of plastic material made from biomass rather than oil based plastic. The plastic is tough but not as supple as the polyurethane straps on cheaper G-Shocks. This bio-plastic strap isn’t as comfortable to wear and doesn’t break in over time. Ideally if I had the option, I would switch the strap out for adaptors and a NATO strap instead, even though it would ruin the aesthetic. After four decades, Casio could still learn a lot from Seiko’s polyurethane dive watch straps.
Connectivity
I have mechanical watches, an Apple Watch Ultra and my range of G-Shocks including the GW-9500 sit somewhere in between these two technological extremes.
The GW-9500 syncs its time via a series of atomic clocks that broadcast around the world. It is aware of its surroundings thanks to its digital compass, altimeter, barometer and temperature. All of this isn’t new technology,
A compass is surprisingly handy even in today’s age. The enemy of satellite navigation is tall buildings. They increase the amount of time that GPS takes to lock on and you end up with less precise positioning. A compass doesn’t have that problem allowing you to orient yourself.
Casio seems to have raided the parts bin of its ProTek series of watches. It doesn’t have Bluetooth, wi-fi or connect to a phone app – which means that obsolescence is less of a concern.
Power comes from on face solar panels that keep the watch battery topped up, rather than relying on a cradle like smartwatches.
Having a watch that just tells the time and has a timer or two for cooking allows me to disconnect from the always-on connected world of the smartwatch and smartphone.
Display
The display on the GW-9500 had a large screen that unlike its G-Shock peers doesn’t make an efficient use of the real estate. That approach has benefits, the sparce screen design and large numerals provide a very glanceable display.
It is well illuminated by a while LED that covers the whole of the display. The light is carefully balanced between bright enough to be clearly legible, and dull enough to not ruin your night vision.
Software
One of the benefits of getting a G-Shock over the years is that you feel right at home, for the most part, new G-Shock watches like the GW-9500 operated like older G-Shock models. The exception to this is when Casio tries to become a connected smartwatch as that part of the market is still in flux.
However the legacy software model requires a degree of patience in comparison to modern phone apps. The GW-9500 like all legacy G-Shocks uses what’s known as a modal approach. You want to set something you go into the set mode and then cycle through to the feature that you want to change. If you don’t get it write, then you have to cycle through the different functions and start again.
I grew up setting my parents video cassette recorder and answering machine so the experience isn’t that alien to me. The Hemingway Editor app also takes this approach with two modes: ‘write’ and ‘edit’ which works well with my text creation process.
As a watch experience, it works perfectly well, and once you have done it a few times you can use 80 percent of any legacy G-Shock watch without consulting the instructions – which still come in a satisfyingly thick paper book about the size of a box of matches.
Are there things that I would like improved? Yes, absolutely. A bugbear of mine, working with other people around the world is the different time zone function. A feature it shares with ChatGPT at the time of writing is that the GW-9500 doesn’t allow for countries which have daylight savings times changing in time difference during spring and summer. So I have ended up calling Asian colleagues an hour early by accident.
Is the GW-9500 a keeper?
The Casio Mudman GW-9500 has its faults, such as comfort, when worn for a prolonged time and the time-zone issue. But those are minor compared to its benefits.
May 2025 introduction – two little ducks (22) edition
Welcome to my May 2025 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 22nd issue. 22 is known in bingo halls and the Spanish national lottery as two little ducks.
In France, 22 is the equivalent of 5-0 in the English speaking world as slang for the police. 22 is an important number for people who believe in numerology. In Hong Kong, 22 is associated with good fortune. This is down to the number sounding similar to ‘easy’ or ‘bright’ in Cantonese.
I hope that you are tricked into thinking I am bright based this newsletter, so let’s jump in. Inspired by catching up with my old DJing partner Griff, this month I enjoyed the unashamedly joyous pumped-up sounds of Blackpool’s AZYR at the Boiler Room x TeleTech Festival in 2023. In particular the transition at the end of the set between Frankyeffe – Save me and Infectious! – I need your lovin’. (Extra trainspotter points if you knew that Infectious! is a homage / remake of N.R.G’s The Real Hardcore from a year earlier). Wear your headphones, it might be divisive playing the set out loud in the office. More bangers from AZYR here.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
Things I’ve written.
Predicting market share through share of search volume and what the rise of AI likely means.
Reaching a precipice in hydrogen power and trends in Chinese skincare amongst other things.
Books that I have read.
Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. Williams account of her time in Facebook had become the most discussed book of the spring in my social circle. I wrote a long review of it here.
The Road to Conscious Machines by Michael Wooldridge examines the profound cultural impact of generative AI, which is currently experiencing a surge in both its cultural influence and practical applications. Drawing parallels to the internet’s transformative impact in the mid-to-late 1990s, where it permeated various aspects of society and fostered rapid adoption, Wooldridge traces the evolution of generative AI as a phenomenon that emerged gradually over the past half-century. Throughout the book, Wooldridge provides a comprehensive historical overview of AI, including the periods of research stagnation known as AI winters. This historical perspective equips readers with a nuanced understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of AI, enabling them to approach AI adoption with a well-informed perspective.
As I finish this newsletter during the bank holiday weekend, my light reading is Rogue Asset by Andy McDermott. McDermott comes from a long line of British authors like Jack Higgins, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth and Mick Herron who provide novels aimed at a shrinking pool of readers – men. At least, if oneis tobelieve what’s said in the media. Rogue Asset hinges on the premise that the UK has a unit which assassinates the countries enemies on a regular basis. Think somewhere between The Troubles era Det and the modern deep state trope. Our hero is snared into the plot by being discovered on the run thanks to his online behaviour – which is attributed to GCHQ; (but isn’t as mysterious as it sounds because of the programmatic advertising technology stack). So far so good for what it is. I will let know if it goes downhill as a read next month.
Things I have been inspired by.
Mmrytok
Limitations are often the mother of invention. That seems to be the theory behind mmrytok. Mmrytok allows you to do one post a day. It doesn’t support HTML formatting, it doesn’t allow you to link out and doesn’t have a newsfeed. So it’s easy-to-use because it’s less sophisticated than Geocities was. In this respect it is to social media and blogs what Punkt is to smartphones. In an always-on social time, I have found it liberating to use. You can see my page here. I heard of Mmrytok thanks to Matt Muir’s great newsletter Web Curios.
No, AI isn’t making you dumber
Australian documentary maker ColdFusion put together an interesting video essay on How AI is making you dumber.
Yes, you could argue that under certain attributes the population isn’t as smart as they have been in the past. Just last month I shared an article by John Burn-Murdoch. In the article he shared data of a longitudinal trend across countries and age-groups struggling with concentration, declining verbal and numerical reasoning. The problem with Burn-Murdoch’s article vis-a-vis the ColdFusion video is the timeline.
His article charts a decline further back than the rise of generative AI services. Mia Levitin in an essay for the FT attributed the decline in reading to the quick dopamine hits of social media content.
A college professor interviewed by The Atlantic put the decline in reading amongst his undergraduate students put it down to a practice in secondary education of atomising content. Pupils in high schools were assigned excerpts, poetry and news articles to read, but not complete books. This has impacted the size of vocabulary and grasp of language that students starting university now have.
This isn’t new territory, James Gleick in his book Fasterdocumented the massive acceleration of information through the late 20th century and its effects on the general public. The underlying accelerant was described by Kevin Kelly in What Technology Wants as the technium – a continuous forward progress due to a massively interconnected system of technology.
There were concerns in research as far back as the late 1980s that television could be adversely affecting children’s reading comprehension and attention spans.
TL;DR – with generative AI you could become dumber, if you use it unwisely – but the problem lies with all of us and what we chose to do with our personal agency.
CIA advertise for Chinese spies
The CIA commissioned a couple of high production value adverts that they’ve been running on social media channels. The adverts are designed to encourage Chinese government employees to come forward as an agent. The sales pitch is about taking control.
A translation of the Chinese tagline: ‘The reason for choosing cooperation: to become the master of (one’s own) destiny‘. More details from the FT about the campaign here, and here’s the twoexecutions currently running on YouTube.
It remains to be seen if the campaign will be effective. The Chinese Ministry of State Security managed to roll-up the CIA’s spy network back in 2010-2012. Up to 30 informants in China were executed.
Montirex
Merseyside sports-inspired lifestyle brand Montirex have published a film telling the brand story from its origins to the present day. The brand is expanding beyond its Merseyside roots to get national and international sales.
Trust, attitudes and use of artificial intelligence
A 2025 global study covering some 48 countries was conducted by KPMG in association with the University of Melbourne. Some key insights from the report. Consumer generative AI is being used instead of enterprise options by workers. Generative AI adopters still have self-perceived low AI skills but that doesn’t slow their adoption. There is higher adoption and trust rates in emerging markets than in developed markets.
Year-on-year we are seeing an increase in both distrust and trust for specific AI use cases, indicating that it is becoming a polarising subject. The lowest trust levels is in tech-savvy Finland. More here.
Chart of the month.
McDonald’s Restaurants saw a decline in sales. This was down to low income consumers spending less, while middle class earners still weren’t going into McDonalds. Normally when there is a recession, McDonalds should benefit from the more well-off trading down to McDonalds. Instead, fortunes have diverged into a ‘k-shaped’ recession. Lower income earners are hit, while middle classes aren’t. What Axios called the ‘McRecession‘.
Things I have watched.
Tony Arzenta (also known as Big Guns). The film is an early 1970s gallo film. French star Alain Delon appears in this classic retribution story based in Milan. As Tony Arzenta, Delon exacts revenge on the former bosses who killed his family by accident in a botched assassination attempt to prevent him from retiring.The film uses a wintry Milan as a good atmospheric backdrop for the action that plays out in a series of shoot-outs and car chases. It’s John Wick before it was even conceived. Delon brings a tension that other stars of the era like Charles Bronson failed to do in similar roles. As Arzenta’s targets flee across Europe, he goes through Germany and Denmark to catch up with them.
Sansho the Bailiff– as a film Sansho the Bailiff comes encumbered with a weight of praise. It is highly rated by film critics and Martin Scorsese had it as one of his must-watch films for young film makers. Director Kenji Mizoguchi assembled an ensemble cast of Japanese actors to tell a story of family hardship and poverty. Kazuo Miyagawa is key to the the production, providing a signature look to the cinematography. There is a tension between the emotional rollercoaster of the story and the reflective nature of the scenes portrayed – I don’t want to say too more, except that even the character actors like Kikue Môri (who plays a pivotal role in the plot as a priestess) are amazing in the film.
Warfare – I was a bit leery of watching Alex Garland’s Warfare after watching Civil War which was strong on aesthetics and emotion, but weak in terms of the creative conceits involved in making the story work. Warfare is the collective accounts of a US military unit during a two-hour fire fight. The story is told from multiple perspectives in real-time. The film captures the stress and boredom of inaction as well as what you would normally expect from this kind of film.
Useful tools.
Reddit Answers
Reddit Answers – alternative to Gigabrain that I recommended back in March. Like Gigabrain, Reddit Answers looks like the kind of knowledge search product that we failed to build at Yahoo! twenty years ago (or NORA as Microsoft has been calling the concept for the past few years). Reddit Answers is powered by Google Vertex AI.
Process online data like its peak web 2.0 all over again
While WordPress installations come with RSS enabled as standard and is something that can then be disabled, many types of sites aren’t RSS enabled. And where they are the web devs will often disable it just because. RSS app will create an RSS feed for websites that don’t have it. This allows you to pull it into data processing using something like Pipes. RSS app starts at $9.99 per month and goes up to $99.99 a month. Pipes starts at free and goes up to $79 per month.
The sales pitch.
I am currently working on a brand and creative strategy engagement at Google’s internal creative agency.
I am now taking bookings for strategic engagements in Q4 (October) – keep me in mind; or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
Ok this is the end of my May 2025 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and onward into spring, and I hope you enjoyed the last bank holiday until August.
Don’t forget to share if you found it useful, interesting or insightful.
Get in touch if there is anything that you’d like to recommend for the newsletter.
Walsh’s is the kind of business I grew up with in Ireland. In my part of the world it wasn’t the Walsh’s it was Kelly’s and Salmon’s who both ran general stores on the edge of my parish. It was a mix of groceries, cigarettes, a top-loading cabinet of ice creams. In the local market town there was O’Meara’s who still run a supermarket, Lynch’s who run a hardware store, builders yard and farm supplies and Hayes – a chemist and veterinary pharmacy. Like Walsh’s they are all multi-generational businesses with customers from the same families over successive generations.
Maintaining a multi-generational business was (and still is for many) a matter of pride. It can be a great business, you know your customers needs and personalities far better than I ever did working for the likes of Unilever. The Walsh’s will have been with their generations of customers at key times in their lives: engagements, marriage, anniversaries and retirements.
When my Uncle died and we had a wake for him, I met the the pharmacist who looked after his personal and farm needs and her Dad who had filled my prescription for cough medicine as a child. There were people from the hardware store, farm supplies, the newsagent who my family always got their copies of the Irish Farmer’s Journal and the Connacht Tribune.
The Walsh’s are wrapping up because their business can no longer compete with the scale of online jewellers.
It’s interesting that COVID was the inciting incident that broke the generations of consumer behaviour, brand loyalty and relationships. The second factor that the Walsh’s named was the hollowing out of people living within the market town of Mullingar. That’s especially interesting given that Ireland currently has a chronic housing shortage makes me wonder what is going on.
Chris Spargo runs one of the most interesting British YouTube channels looking at the minutae of the UK from supermarket clock towers to book barcodes and milk packaging. This film looks at how The Glass Committee funded by Pilkington Glass created outlandish concepts that promoted discussion. Weirdly enough some of the ideas found themselves from the most outrageous concepts into Britain’s new towns developments.
A history of hacking
Frederico Mazzini goes through a history of hacking with a focus on culture. Even though it was presented for Tokyo College, it had a very western centric slant to it. Interesting points about hacking is an explicit political activity in some non-US cultures – notably France, Italy and Germany.
What became apparent was that Mazzini lacked was any kind of understanding of hacking in Japan, which runs with a much lower profile than their counterpart western communities according to Trend Micro.
