'2007/07'에 해당되는 글 5건
- 2007/07/31 Are you excited about the 3.5G networks, too? (3)
- 2007/07/27 Why the name "TechnoKimchi"? (2)
- 2007/07/25 Digital generation around the world
- 2007/07/18 What the "digital generation" in Korea looks like (2)
- 2007/07/04 Things are crazy over here! (4)
There are currently three major 3.5G services offered in Korea. HSDPA by SK Telecom, iPlug by KTF, and Wibro by Korea Telecom. (KTF is a mobile carrier company of KT and stands for Korea Telecom Freetel). With 3.5G services, you can basically have broadband connections anywhere in Seoul and some other cities, whether you're out in the street, riding bus or subway, even playing out at a park. Are we talking "ubiquitous" here? I say "Heck, yeah!"
Today I just ordered a KT Wibro modem. I could've chosen other services, but for my personal use, the KT service seemed to be most fit. I'm jumping into a promotion package where I get to try out the service for free for 3 months and pay just $20 for unlimited traffic thereafter. The modem's getting delivered in about 2 days and I'll be on, baby.
I'm waiting with much anticipation and excitement. When I get it, I'll be able to blog on subway, chat in the Seoul City Hall Square, or even watch YouTube's most viewed video of the day while taking No.2 at a public restroom. Ok, that, I went too far ;) I've read some reviews on KT WiBro and it seems to be awesome.
For more information on KT Wibro in Seoul, check out this article.
Oh, I love living in Korea.
Today I just ordered a KT Wibro modem. I could've chosen other services, but for my personal use, the KT service seemed to be most fit. I'm jumping into a promotion package where I get to try out the service for free for 3 months and pay just $20 for unlimited traffic thereafter. The modem's getting delivered in about 2 days and I'll be on, baby.
I'm waiting with much anticipation and excitement. When I get it, I'll be able to blog on subway, chat in the Seoul City Hall Square, or even watch YouTube's most viewed video of the day while taking No.2 at a public restroom. Ok, that, I went too far ;) I've read some reviews on KT WiBro and it seems to be awesome.
For more information on KT Wibro in Seoul, check out this article.
In April, about the time Sydney newspapers were lambasting Australia's household broadband speeds, Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul, was sitting on a moving bus and using a laptop. Se-hoon could have been downloading TV shows, playing online games or chatting with friends, because he was enjoying speeds of three megabits a second using WiBro, a new wireless broadband service from South Korean telco Korea Telecom.So, wait for my own review of the service. It'll probably be EXCLUSIVE!! ;)
On the same day, KT announced that WiBro - which delivers high speeds even to those travelling at 120kmh - would be rolled out throughout Seoul.
The story illustrates Seoul's top spot among the world's digital cities. Stephen Quinn, associate professor in communication studies at Deakin University, visited Seoul in April. "You still see people walking about reading print newspapers, using origami to fold broadsheets to the size of a paperback novel. But you also see people surfing the internet on tiny laptops while on the subway, which travels about half a kilometre underground."
Oh, I love living in Korea.
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Kimchi is the best known Korean food, which Korean people are most proud of. We simply cannot live without kimchi. It tastes really good though it stinks really bad. It's really good for your body, too. For more information, obviously go check out the Wikipedia article on kimchi.
Now, why the name TechnoKimchi? Some people liked the name very much. Some thought it was purely stupid. Some even told me it sounds too much like TechCrunch. Fine, all points well taken.
To tell you the truth, it took me way over a year to come up with the name. I've had an idea about a blog like this for a long time. After all, my Korean blog is one of the most widely read IT/Web blogs in Korea. Just to flex my muscle, my Korean blog was started like a year before TechCrunch was born. Subscriber-wise? Probably 1/100 of TechCrunch :)
Anyhow, I really wanted a name that can well represent what I want to write about--the Digital Generation in Asia. Somehow it needed to have the word "Tech" combined with something very Asian. Even better if it can maximize people's prejudice about Asia or even the "oriental world".
Now, I'm Korean. Korea does not, by any means, represent Asia. China, Japan, India, even Vietnam are far more famous Asian countries to those over in the other half of the world than Korea is. From my personal experience, every time I told somebody in U.S. that I was from Korea (especially given I lived in South Carolina for so many years), the first question I would always get was "North or South?"
But I really love kimchi. I also thought TechnoKimchi was such a great brand name for a blog like this. In all truth, some other candidates were "TechKaraoke", "DimsumTech" or "Chopstech(s)". I liked them all, but had to shed tears choosing TechnoKimchi over them. I love Karaoke, dimsum and I use chopsticks every day. But I just love kimchi too much. And obviously, "TechnoKimchi" sounds far better than "TechKimchi"!
And it turns out that kimchi is extremely spicy and hot. So I added the "spicy thoughts" part to the subtitle. Personally, I love both the title and the subtitle.
So that's how "TechnoKimchi: Spicy Thoughts on Digital Generaton in Asia" came around. Unfortunately, kimchi is only vegetable stuff. I guess it's now time to add some meat to it. :)
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I came across a ZDNet article on the young generation's adoption of new technology, esp. the Web technology. None of the facts were too shocking to me, but I thought they gave me a good grip of where the world is at right now. Now, the "old" ones, can you feel all this happening?
"Young people don't see tech as a separate entity--it's an organic part of their lives," said Andrew Davidson, vice president at MTV Networks International.
The surveyors found that the average Chinese computer user has 37 online friends they have never met. Indian youth are most likely to see mobile phones as a status symbol, while a third of U.K. and U.S. teenagers say they cannot live without game consoles.
"The way each technology is adopted and adapted throughout the world depends as much on local cultural and social factors as on the technology itself," Davidson said.
The changes in how the youth market engages with technology is keenly followed by advertisers and content providers. For parents worried about what their children are getting up to amid the wave of gadgets, little has changed in a generation.
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Park Ji-Sung, a 27-year-old Korean soccer star, is one of the biggest celebrities in Korea. He's currently playing for Manchester United in the Premiere League in England. (For those who aren't particularly famililar with the soccer leagues, it's basically like the NY Yankees in baseball and the LA Lakers in basketball). Being the first one from Korea to play in the Premiere League, he's the Beckham, Zidane, and Figo of Korea.
Anyhow, he had this huge outing in Korea. Lots of fans, along with reporters, came to see him, waiting in line for hours and hours before he showed up. How many? A lot more than this.
What caught my attention was the number of digital cameras that were around today. This is pretty crazy even for someone living in Korea like me. Look not only at the number of cameras but also at the variety of the devices. While many are cell phones, others are regular digital cameras, some hybrid devices (like GPS and PMPs combined), and even lots of DSLRs.
Now, let's talk about citizen journalism. In the picture above, can you tell who are the "professional" reporters and who are the citizen journalists? What if these thousands of people go home tonight and upload the pictures and tag them under "Ji-Sung Park"? What if they all start writing stuff under the picture, ranging from a teenage girl writing "I finally saw Park and that makes me wanna cry because I'm so happy", to a little boy writing "someday I'll be a great soccer player like him", to a daddy going "I'm gonna buy my kids the Park jersey today to show them how much I love them", to a marketer contemplating "what kind of media coaching could I perform for my clients to create a brand like his?"
I had a chance to talk to Jay Rosen back in April about the online journalism. I just had set my direction as the first "full-time" blogger in Korea and was wondering if I could live up to people's expectations of being a competent journalist. After all, I was a computer science major and had just begun to study how the "new media" might impact the society. I had never taken a single journalism course, didn't know much about the what-when-who's of storytelling, or couldn't really come up with great attention-drawing headlines. I could never write like professional journalists. Of course, being a blogger, I knew you really never have to be 100% like that, but I always thought I would need some skills well-possessed by many professional journalists.
And this is what Jay said:
"There are two kinds of journalism out there. One's the 'refined' journalism you're talking about. This form of journalism has dominated our media industry for decades now. There's also another kind that is more like 'everyday' journalism, where regular people come together to tell one another stories, transmit information, and add comments. The latter has been amplified by the development of the so-called new media."
So, according to Jay, what these people are doing is the second form of journalism. No wonder, the majority of those pictures aren't gonna be uploaded to newspaper sites or blogs with independent domain names, but to their Cyworld mini-hompies or Naver blogs. We're talking "everyday" here.
You can get a really nice DSLR for about $1,000 now. A decent camcorder for far less than that. These things are being uploaded to the universal brain with a scale of millions everyday.
So who are the journalists? Until every digital generation person gets tired of holding up cameras for minutes with one hand, I would say all of them could be one. Even great ones. Wherever they are.
Anyhow, he had this huge outing in Korea. Lots of fans, along with reporters, came to see him, waiting in line for hours and hours before he showed up. How many? A lot more than this.
What caught my attention was the number of digital cameras that were around today. This is pretty crazy even for someone living in Korea like me. Look not only at the number of cameras but also at the variety of the devices. While many are cell phones, others are regular digital cameras, some hybrid devices (like GPS and PMPs combined), and even lots of DSLRs.
Now, let's talk about citizen journalism. In the picture above, can you tell who are the "professional" reporters and who are the citizen journalists? What if these thousands of people go home tonight and upload the pictures and tag them under "Ji-Sung Park"? What if they all start writing stuff under the picture, ranging from a teenage girl writing "I finally saw Park and that makes me wanna cry because I'm so happy", to a little boy writing "someday I'll be a great soccer player like him", to a daddy going "I'm gonna buy my kids the Park jersey today to show them how much I love them", to a marketer contemplating "what kind of media coaching could I perform for my clients to create a brand like his?"
I had a chance to talk to Jay Rosen back in April about the online journalism. I just had set my direction as the first "full-time" blogger in Korea and was wondering if I could live up to people's expectations of being a competent journalist. After all, I was a computer science major and had just begun to study how the "new media" might impact the society. I had never taken a single journalism course, didn't know much about the what-when-who's of storytelling, or couldn't really come up with great attention-drawing headlines. I could never write like professional journalists. Of course, being a blogger, I knew you really never have to be 100% like that, but I always thought I would need some skills well-possessed by many professional journalists.
And this is what Jay said:
"There are two kinds of journalism out there. One's the 'refined' journalism you're talking about. This form of journalism has dominated our media industry for decades now. There's also another kind that is more like 'everyday' journalism, where regular people come together to tell one another stories, transmit information, and add comments. The latter has been amplified by the development of the so-called new media."
So, according to Jay, what these people are doing is the second form of journalism. No wonder, the majority of those pictures aren't gonna be uploaded to newspaper sites or blogs with independent domain names, but to their Cyworld mini-hompies or Naver blogs. We're talking "everyday" here.
You can get a really nice DSLR for about $1,000 now. A decent camcorder for far less than that. These things are being uploaded to the universal brain with a scale of millions everyday.
So who are the journalists? Until every digital generation person gets tired of holding up cameras for minutes with one hand, I would say all of them could be one. Even great ones. Wherever they are.
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People cheering during World Cup 2006 around the Seoul City Hall Square
"Pali Pali (빨리빨리)" is known to be the first phrase which those start working in Korea are required to learn. What does "Pali Pali" mean? It means, "Hurry Hurry" or "Faster Faster". People in Korea are hardcore like that.
While the title of this post "Things are crazy over here" is obviously meant to catch your attention a bit, I really do mean that things could get quite crazy over here in terms of the pace of things changing.
I'm a huge NBA fan, especially of the Miami Heat. I went back to U.S. for a business trip about a year ago, first time in 3 years. I was watching the NBA playoffs on TNT and ESPN, the first impression I got was "nothing's changed in 3 years!" Ads looked the same. TV presentations looked the same. Even the guys on the show, including dear Kenny and Charles, were the same! Not bad after all, right?
NBA was only one of many things that didn't seem to have changed. The language, people, food, atmosphere, etc. You might ask "Well, how much change do you really expect just in 3 years??"
Things are quite different in Korea, though. Language changes a great deal in 3 years. So does what we eat. So does what we wear. Even what we watch. 5 years ago we were only watching Korean soap operas. Now everyone's watching Heroes or Prison Break over here, thanks to various P2P applications.
We work a lot, too. According to a Wikipedia article, Korea recorded the most working hours out of all the OECD countries.
Why do things change and go around so fast and we still work so many hours? I don't know. Maybe we are all unproductive workers. Maybe we don't have firm principles or philosophies that govern and tie together the society in general, which keep weird changes from happening. Maybe people are just having fun running out of breath every time there's another change to adapt themselves to.
But more than anything, it's all cultural again. In Asia, things are often about people only. This often means when a small group of people start changing and making a noise, it can spread through the rest of the world at lightning speed without people considering the bigger pictures behind it. You see butterfly effects happening everywhere all the time. May I remind you of the word "emergence"? I'm not sure if you can apply of any of those complex network theories to the way we interact with each other over here, but it surely feels like it.
Well, then. What about the Web? It changes so fast that it's lierally crazy. I mentioned above our language changing so fast. It's actually because there are so many jargons being born on the Web that it directly influences how we express ourselves. If you say a phrase that was popular on the Web even a year ago, you're already not cool any more. News that comes up on portal news sites, the most powerful journalistic institutions in Korea now, which I'll cover later, can affect so many people that one picture taken with a cellphone and uploaded by a high school student in subway gets viewed by half of the entire Korean population the next day, stirs up the whole nation, and forces politicians to change the law within a week.
If you really think about it, this "craziness" or "intractability" is what represents the new Web. Things are crazy and cannot be controlled. Korean people are so used to that. We've been living like that for decades even before the Web was born.
So what's the conclusion of this post? I miss the laid-back culture in California. I miss the diversity in New York. But I'm here now and things are running only faster because of the Web. Sometimes because of the insanity I'm used to here, many things found in Techmeme seem to be a warmup session to me.
Like I said, the gap is closing. Trust me. Things are only getting crazier for everybody. Maybe we're all just doomed like this dude. Ask any dedicated blogger.
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