Blog: Ged Carroll | renaissance chambara

  • July 2024 newsletter

    July 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my July 2024 newsletter, this newsletter which marks my 12th issue. I hope the wettest part of the summer is behind me. This time last year, I didn’t set out to get to 12 issues. I thought I would try three and see where I got to. You’d think…

  • The ultimate driving machine + more things

    The ultimate driving machine Interesting interview with author Steve Saxty on how BMW as a modern car brand came into being as the ultimate driving machine and a discussion on what eventually became the 1-series. The brand value of it being the ultimate driving machine actually came from a review by US magazine Road &…

  • Zynternet + more things

    Zynternet is a portmanteau made up of Zyn and internet. If you’re reading this internet is self-explanatory, the Zyn in question is tabacco-free Skoal bandit type nicotine pouches. Zyn comes in a tin and has various flavours. According to journalist Max Read, the Zynternet is a kind of 90s to early 2000s sports obsessed ‘lad’…

  • Media virus by Douglas Rushkoff

    By the time Media Virus came out, Douglas Rushkoff was a public intellectual with the same kind of cultural impact of Simon Sinek back in the 1990s and early 2000s. I went back to read Media Virus for the first time in decades. The book design feels very dot com, with neon colour details a…

  • End of culture

    This post on the end of culture as inspired by a presentation. Pip Bingemann of Springboards.ai presented at Cannes in Cairns – a marketing festival for Australians who wouldn’t be able to go to the Cannes Festival of Advertising. Pip’s presentation touched with things I had seen about the end of culture and had some interesting…

  • Warped media constructs

    Where did warped media constructs come from? Warped media constructs as an idea originated from a few observations I made. The first was an article by Magic Numbers that examined the distribution of marketing spend across various media channels compared to the percentage of profit they generate. It was based on a piece of research…

  • Dogfight by Fred Vogelstein

    The story Dogfight tells feels much more recent than it now is almost two decades on, and yet so far away as smartphones are central to our lives. Back in the mid and late 2000s Silicon Valley based journalist Fred Vogelstein was writing for publications like Wired and Fortune at the time Apple launched the…

  • June 2024 newsletter – legs 11

    June 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my June 2024 newsletter, it’s been a bit of a mad month with the European Union elections foreshadowing a rightward lurch in policy direction. The snap call for a French general assembly election and the bizarre spectacles happening in the campaign efforts of the UK general election. And before…

  • IT director powers up + more stuff

    The IT director is seeing a return to power and its thanks to the power of hackers and AI. The smartphone, the resurgence of Apple and SaaS saw IT decisions become more organic thanks to increased access to online services that provided better features than traditional enterprise software companies and the rise of knowledge working.…