Invitation to a World Technopolis Association international conference in September

A few weeks ago I received an invitation to give a panel speech at the forthcoming Preparatory Conference for the Daejeon Global Innovation Forum, a meeting to be held on September 25 and 26 in Daejon.  It is being organized by Daejeon Metropolitan City, the World Technopolis Association and UNESCO.  My panel session is on the topic of "innovation clusters in the creative economy."   The invitation is most interesting to me for several reasons.  One is that I did my graduate work at Stanford where Silicon Valley grew up alongside and in interaction with the university.  Another, of course, is that the Daedok Innopolis is far and away South Korea's largest and leading technopolis, and is about to become even as it forms the center of a much larger "global science belt."  I was fortunate to visit the Daejon Expo twice back in 1993, and that event gave a measurable impetus to the development of Daejon and the Daedok Innopolis as Korea's premier science city.   It is a welcome opportunity to do some reading and reflection on the role of urban technology clusters in fostering the "creative economy" that is a central goal of the Park Geun-hye administration.

Cloud-based "webhard" services show increased copyright violations

As reported in The Joongang Daily today, cloud-based file sharing services referred to in Korea as "webhards" (for web hard drives) have increased in popularity in recent years.   Consequently, as shown in the accompanying graphic, (click to see a full-sized version) there was a significant increase in copyright violations.  As reported in the article,"Webhards are fast becoming a breeding ground for transfers of illegal stuff like porn and copyright-protected files. In Korea, 1.8 billion illegal files were circulated last year, according to the Copyright Protection Center. Of those, 664 million were found to have been uploaded through webhards, or 36.1 percent. Between April and May, the Cyber Terror Response center at the National Police Agency found that 75 percent of pornographic materials accessed online had been uploaded through webhards."

Microsoft's Active-X is a black hole in South Korea's cyber security

For quite a few years now, I've been happily using Skype, including the paid Skype-out service which allows low cost calling directly to telephones anywhere in the world using the service.  A few weeks ago I logged on to add another $25 to my Skype-out account, only to find to my astonishment that the service had disappeared!   Instead I was directed to a new web page hosted by the Daesung Group that described a new set of services and calling rates and instructed me to download an ActiveX control in order to purchase Skype credits!   Of course, that would have meant installing Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which I abandoned years ago in favor of the faster, safer and more efficient Chrome browser.

I tell this story only to illustrate a much larger problem, as reported today in The Korea Herald.  Continued widespread use of Microsoft's ActiveX control in Korea creates a massive security problem.  As the accompanying graphic shows, (click to see a full sized version) there have been a series of massive leaks of personal information over the past five years.  This issue is so important that I'm going to include a lengthy quote from the newspaper article below.   

"Many Korean websites depend on Internet Explorer’s cumbersome “ActiveX” platform, posing another risk factor. KAIST professor Lee Min-hwa said, “ActiveX is a program that momentarily disarms the computer to download codes from an outside source, which can be abused by hackers seeking to plant malicious codes.” Lee, one of the key patrons of President Park Geun-hye’s signature science and technology-based “creative economy,” said that Korea’s dependence on the ActiveX-based public key certificate system created a “black hole” in cyber security. The public key certificate is a type of digital document that enables online transactions. Korea’s online regulations require that certificates should be issued for any transaction worth more than 300,000 won ($268), and the issuance also requires a download of proprietary software on Internet Explorer via ActiveX. The mechanism, introduced in the late 1990s, is intended chiefly for South Korean citizens who use Microsoft Internet Explorer. Other Web browsers, such as Google’s Chrome, do not support ActiveX, and the whole system means foreigners often find it virtually impossible to purchase items on Korean websites. The mix of ActiveX and the key certificate system was originally designed to protect personal data, but experts say it is now making computers in Korea more susceptible to cyber attacks and identity theft."

Review of Digital Development in Korea published by USC-based online journal

The International Journal of Communication, an online journal based in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (USC)  has just published a review of my 2011 book with Myung Oh, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society (London:  Routledge).
The review can be found at this hyperlink in PDF format.

Forthcoming ICISTS KAIST 2013 Conference

I was pleasantly surprised recently to receive an invitation to speak at the annual International Conference for the Integration of Science, Technology and Society (ICISTS), hosted by KAIST here on campus and at the nearby Daejeon Convention Center August 5-9.   It is the largest student-organized interdisciplinary conference on this topic in Asia and appears to have been attracting growing interest in recent years.  You can learn more about the conference here, at its web site.
I've been invited to speak on the Sub-topic of "New Values," and to discuss the changes occurring in political society in the internet age.  The conference looks most interesting and I'm looking forward to exchanging views with students, faculty and other participants from Korea and 20 or more other countries!
The graphic at left is from the cover of the conference leaflet. (click to see a larger version)