Ged Carroll

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  • The Writing On The Wall China And The West In The 21st Century by Will Hutton

    Before we get into The Writing On The Wall I thought it would be best to talk about how I got into reading books like this. I didn’t start reading economics for fun until I read Will Hutton’s The State We’re In when I was in college. I was interested to find out what Hutton thought about China and the west in his new book The Writing On The Wall. China has a history of technological and legal progression going back three millenia and made an unprecedented move back to the forefront of the global economy.

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    The Writing On The Wall China And The West In The 21st Century by Will Hutton writes in a narrative style that would be familar to readers of The State We’re In. Hutton covers how the teachings of Confucius led to a ‘modern society’ in China when my ancestors were building Brú na Bóinne.

    How the western colonial powers (notably the UK, France, Germany and the US) managed to embarrass and humble the celestial kingdom? The hard choices which the communist party had to make and the hard road that the country has walked to gain its present status and the challenges that the party faces in maintaining an even keel.

    Whilst Hutton is critical of some Chinese measures, he points out were the west has made similar mistakes and the lessons learned from them. Some readers may feel mis-sold as Hutton discusses the global politics of energy and protectionism by the US. However the world is connected and I feel his discussion of the intertwined fates of the US and China is a valid one. More on China here.

  • Cyprus notes

    I spoke earlier this week at an eTourism Forum in Cyprus. It was my first time on the island. It is an interesting mix of contrasts:

    • The main language is Greek, but everyone speaks English
    • Everyone drives on the leftside of the road and the even the road signs look British
    • The island has a series of micro-climates with snow on the mountains when I was there and a pleasant 20 celsius down nearer the sea

    I spoke and participated in panel discussions over two days. You can find my presentation on Online Reputation Management and the Personalised Web. It was good opportunity to catch up with some old friends and make some new ones including: John Horsley founder of the Marzar social network, Gerd Leonhard media futurist, Richard Sedley of cScape, Andrew Gordon,  Theodoris Koumelis of Travel Daily News and Dr. Natasa Christodoulidou of UNLV. The conference was enthusiastically hosted by Petros Mavros of Avantless on behalf of The Cyprus Tourism Organisation.

    The audience were enthusiastic and eager to learn about what online marketing techniques could do for their businesses. It struck me that there was more demand than there was the local web and design talent to address it, though some of the attendees seemed to already have a sophisticated understanding of search marketing techniques.

    What became apparent was the unequal nature of market power. The local businesses needed to reset the balance between themselves and the large tour groups that had traditionally brought travellers to the island.

    Large tour groups immense market power was used to screw these businesses into the ground on price. Cyprus even needs to import its own drinking water, so a downturn in the economy would be disastrous.

    Whilst I had been there on a professional basis, I wouldn’t mind going back during the winter or spring as a tourist to sample some of its more cultural aspects. More related content can be found here.

  • Spook Country by William Gibson

    I read Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk works a decade ago and felt it was time to visit Gibson’s more recent work. I am not reading them in order, just as they come off the shelf. Spook Country is set in a world similar to the one that we know, and closer in time to now, than his sprawl trilogy books.

    Blue Ant

    The story  revolves around branding and features a future-gazing advertising agency called Blue Ant seeking to grasp the future. In it are cutting-edge artists utilising augmented reality and where 2.0 technologies to make ‘locative art’.

    Whilst it is implied in his earlier works globalisation and container shipping also play a major role in this one.

    Web of no web

    Gibson uses the plot of Spook Country to recant the virtual reality dream of the ‘matrix’ that he painted in his earlier books. This vision feels out of place despite inspiring other cyberpunk and science fiction writers from Neal Stephenson to Earnest Cline. Instead Gibson sigues augmented and virtual reality into the more prosaic web that we have today. The augmented reality of the Wii, Sony PlayStation’s eyetoy,  geocaching, Google Maps, QRcodes and iPhone applications like Carling’s virtual pint. This is what I like to call the web of no web because in essence, the world becomes ‘the matrix’.

    Spook Country has the brand awareness that is a signature of Brett Easton Ellis’ work (particularly American Psycho) and the storytelling of John LeCarre. Gibson pulls multiple strands together weaving the story tighter and tighter together as the thriller gains momentum. You can find more book reviews here.

  • Pattern Recognition

    William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition moves his stories from a fantastical future to a world at the bleeding edge of today. A curious advertising company seeks to find out more about a series of video clips that have developed a cult following.

    The story evokes viral marketing similar to the complex story lines of games like Perplex City, The Majestic or online marketing done by industrial music band NIN and Trent Reznor. The resulting buzz in a passionate community is something that marketers aspire to create in product launches. The challenge that Gibson doesn’t fully articulate is identifying the target audience and watching it coalesce. It also reminds me of how conspiracy theories percolate online and seem to break out randomly. The Slender Man phenomenon and the obsession with number stations are classic examples of this process.

    Unlike Spook Country, Gibson only hints at a retreat from his vision of the web as an immersive experience inside virtual reality goggles. Most of the interesting locations and experiences happen in the real-world: central Tokyo, Moscow and London. Gibson’s literary obsession with Japanese culture and cities is part of the connective tissue that connects his early work to Pattern Recognition.

    These world’s are much more colourful than online. The web is now reduced to a silver screen on which the mysterious videos are projected.

    Marketing insight of the advertising agency and government intelligence operatives are seen by Gibson as two sides of the same coin. This makes sense when one thinks about the amount of data that web and mobile technology use now provides. In some respects big technology has gone beyond governments and moving towards the corporations envisaged in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

    All of this adds to the feeling that Pattern Recognition is a tale of now. More related posts here.

  • Jet lag alarm clock

    Great design comes from problems, the jet lag alarm clock solved a problem for me. One of the things I most dislike about staying in a new hotel room is confronting the alarm clock by the bed and trying to work out how to set it. I usually manage to do this, but not without an uncomfortable moment of doubt, put jet lag on top of this experience and it becomes a minor trauma. I must admit I have given up on a clock radio that was in a boutique hotel in San Francisco a few years ago.

    For most people the alternatives are:

    • Doing some fancy math to set their mobile phone or Blackberry alarm, they don’t want to change the time on their handset as that would put their calendar function out of whack
    • Getting a wake-up call from reception, which can be a bit of a chore in itself, particularly if you have to organise it via the interactive TV display in your hotel room
    • Bring your own alarm clock with you. Usually in these consumerist times you have an all-singing all dancing home alarm clock (mine is a Sony cube radio with dodgy reception for anything but my local pirate station and the long wave service of BBC radio 4) and a simplistic travel alarm clock (mine is a battered vintage Braun travel alarm clock)

    The last option is why travel alarm clocks have an enduring appeal. The challenge is that in order to design an alarm clock for a jetlagged mind you actually need great user interface and product design. Sam Hecht and the Industrial Facility design team have managed to do just that with the Jetlag alarm clock.

    Jetlag alarm clock at the design museum

    It has two displays, so you can instantly see what the alarm time is set to, as well as the current time. And a control panel at the top of the alarm clock that needs no explanation, just play and you will get the hang of it straight away.

    Jetlag alarm clock control panel

    Whilst I am still a fan of my Dieter Rams-designed battle scarred Braun alarm clock, if I was in the market for a new travel companion the Jet lag alarm clock would be on my shopping list. It can be purchased from Retail Facility and is cheaper than purchasing one of Braun’s discontinued range of alarm clocks from eBay. More design related content here.