Forthcoming article in Telecommunications Policy

My research paper co-authored with Professor Jaemin Park of Konkuk University will be published soon by Telecommunications Policy.  It is entitled "From developmental to network state:  Government restructuring and ICT-led innovation in Korea," and was based on a paper we delivered at the Pacific Telecommunications Council annual conference (PTC13) in January of this year.

Korea's youth the most "digitally native" in the world

The 2013 edition of Measuring the Information Society has been published by the ITU, and it contains an interesting new section on "digital natives."  The UN study uses the following definition.   "A digital native is defined as a youth, aged 15-24 inclusive, with five years or more experience using the internet."  Using this measure, 99.6 percent of South Korea's youth are digital natives, almost the same as Japan with 99.5 percent.  Several Scandinavian countries and Finland also ranked high and 95.6 percent of the youth in the United States are digital natives.
The accompanying graphic shows where digital natives are most concentrated in countries around the world (click to see a full size version).  The map is shaded according to a measure of digital natives as a percentage of the total population.  On this measure, South Korea ranked third in the world.

Flexible displays: Samsung announces Galaxy Round

Samsung has announced a new smartphone, the "Galaxy Round."  This will be one of the first smartphones to make use of flexible display technology, which is now being mass produced by LG.  The introduction of a curve into the design of the phone allows for several effects, one of which is demonstrated in the video below.

Is Samsung overly reliant on smartphones?

The headline in today's English Chosun Ilbo jumped out at me because I've posted on numerous occasions (for example, see my post on "Slim Smartphones, IT Exports and the Creative Economy") over the years about South Korea's heavy reliance on hardware manufacturing and exports, versus software and services.   As the Chosun Ilbo article points out, analysts believe that Samsung's mobile division, which includes smartphones, accounts for 65 percent of total quarterly operating profit. "In turn, Samsung Electronics accounts for 66 percent of the entire Samsung Group's revenues. That means that slow smartphone sales could rattle the entire group badly. Experts warn that Samsung must come up with new growth engines for a time when the global smartphone market is saturated. Otherwise it could go the way of former rivals Nokia and Blackberry."
In the larger scheme of things, it is well to remember that the rapid advances in digital networks these days are creating a global market in which content is king.  Those companies that manufacture the hardware and components for networks will have a role, but two thirds or more of the total market will be in content, software and information-based services.

Ben Huh seeks to reinvent global news

One of my alerts this morning brought news of Ben Huh, a Korean educated in journalism at Northwestern and an internet entrepreneur who seeks to reinvent the news for the age of mobile broadband networks.  The Ad Age Digital article led me to read more about his efforts.  I've been interested in how communication technology affects the news for a long time, at least since my doctoral dissertation and first book, Television's Window on the World, which examined how communication satellites and electronic newsgathering were shaping patterns of newsgathering and dissemination in the 1970s.  The advent of the internet and the spread of mobile digital networks have made the interaction between technology and the news even more interesting.
I'm going to look further into Ben Huh's efforts through his new company, Circa news and will be discussing this with students in my undergraduate class at KAIST on "Introduction to Mass Communication."  It is of interest to me that Korea was one of the first countries to experiment with citizen journalism, in the form of OhmyNews, in part because of its extensive and fast digital networks. The class I teach already includes a presentation by Andrew Gruen who worked with and studied OhmyNews as part of his doctoral dissertation research at Cambridge University.  Andrew is focusing, among other things, on the issue of accountability.   With the explosion of video and other information made possible by the new mobile broadband networks, there is certainly going to be demand for services like Circa that edit, select and format news in a mobile format.  Time will tell whether Circa is an important part of the solution or not, but the issue it addresses is important and should be of concern to citizens everywhere.