President Jimmy Carter, the 444 day Iran Hostage Crisis and US Television News

 The news of former US president Jimmy Carter's death is what prompts me to write this post.  The Iran hostage crisis began in November of 1979 and stretched on for 444 days, ending only after Jimmy Carter had left the White House in January of 1981.  It was a major factor in his defeat in the 1980 presidential election against Ronald Reagan.

In 1986 my case study titled "Television and U.S. Foreign Policy:  The case of the Iran Hostage Crisis, " was published in the Journal of Communication. In recent years, that study has consistently been cited by some influential scholars of political communication and I've wondered exactly why, so I decided to look into it.   A PDF copy of the article can be found on Google Scholar, along with a bar chart showing annual citations by year and links to each of the citations.  One reason for the scholarly interest is that the article was included as a chapter in Doris Graber's book, Media Power in Politics, 1990.  Seven of the 98 citations were to the chapter in her book.  Other reasons for continued interest in the study are the highly visual character of television news and the nature of its relationship to the foreign policy process in the 1970s and early 1980s.  At that time Walter Cronkite was still anchoring the CBS Evening News and he was known to many as the most trusted man in America.  Instead of concluding his news telecast with "and that's the way it is on this ____st day of November" Cronkite adapted it to ".. and that's the way it is on this ____day of captivity for the American hostages in Tehran..." thus providing a nightly countdown reminding viewers of the duration of the hostage crisis.

The December 2024 martial law in Korea: more context

 The short lived declaration of martial law in Korea by President Yun earlier this month (December 2024) shocked everyone and resonated strongly with the nation's political history during the latter half of the 20th century.  My own shock was based partly on personal experience.  I taught English at Kangwon National University when Park Chung Hee, was president.   The Fall semester of 1972 was shortened and came to an abrupt end when President Park imposed his Yushin "revitalizing reforms" to strengthen the military control over government.  I still recall the day in October 1972 when I saw the military enter campuses, including a half tracked armored vehicle clanking up the road to enter the Songshim Women's University (now the campus of Hallym University in Chuncheon).

On my return to the U.S. following Peace Corps service, I completed the Ph.D. in communication at Stanford and began a teaching career at the U. of Texas in Austin.  That was where I was located in the Fall of 1979 when President Park Chung Hee was assassinated by the chief of his CIA.  After the assassination general Chun Doo Hwan took power in a staged military coup that culminated in the Kwangju pro-democracy uprising in the Spring of 1980.

During the 1980s, opposition to military government grew and demonstrations by students and activists steadily increased until there was a breakthrough in June of 1987. (the famous June 29 declaration televised address by Roh Tae Woo, who would later be elected President)  As it happened, I had been awarded a senior Fulbright grant to teach and conduct research at Yonsei University in the 1985-86 academic year.  The anti-military government demonstrations at Yonsei University were quite active in the Spring of 1986 and I personally witnessed quite a bit of the violence and smelled a lot of tear gas.

For more of the historical context of martial law in Korea during the latter half of the 20th century, see this Canadian Journal of Communication article that I wrote along with Sogang University Professor Kim Hak Soo.

The future of generative AI in Korea

 During the past several semesters, including Spring 2004, I've been teaching an undergraduate course entitled Modern Digital Technologies and Innovation (EST 204 at Stonybrook University).  Not surprisingly, the public introduction of generative AI with the release of chatGPT in the Fall of 2022 had a big impact on my approach to this class.  I've been encouraging students to explore the possibilities of generative AI for both good and bad.  The "emergent properties" sometimes generated by AI models may sometimes be good, but may also on occasion be hallucinations that may have various adverse impacts. 

The rapid spread of generative AI clearly suggests that there is an urgent need to train large numbers of students in what we may call generative AI literacy.  In my class, students work in small teams of 5-6 students each.  They are asked to select one of the sustainable development goals and to use generative AI and the design thinking process to develop solutions to help achieve the goal. 

The massive electric power requirements to implement generative AI on a large scale using silicon chip based computing and large data centers suggests that we are only at the beginning of a process that may eventually revolutionize the role of technology in sustainable development.  The human brain, although it runs on significantly less power, has far more capabilities than even the largest and latest AI models.

South Korea harnessed the digital network revolution for national development faster and more effectively than any other country in the world.  However, it did so with relatively more emphasis on hardware and exports than on software and services.  The arrival of the generative AI era suggests that future developments will depend largely on AI generated software and services across all sectors of society, industry and government.  In future posts I will try to break down some of the issues and possibilities. 

Korea's world lead in industrial robot density

 

As shown in this bar chart published by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) in its World Robotics  2022, South Korea continues to lead the world in industrial robot density (robots installed per 10,000 employees).  It leads by quite a large margin over Singapore, Japan, Germany and China, the next top ranking countries.  As explained by the IFR "The Republic of Korea hit an all-time high of 1,000 industrial robots per 10,000 employees in 2021. This is more than three times the number reached in China and makes the country number one worldwide. With its globally recognized electronics industry and a distinct automotive sector, the Korean economy profits from two large customer industries for industrial robots."

Another graphic provided by the IFR shows the overwhelming importance of the ICT and Automotive sectors in Korea's industrial robot installations.  For those interested, the full World Robotics 2022 report provides similar data for other countries, allowing comparative analysis.

Human writer or AI? A detection model being developed at Stanford

 

The Human Centered Artificial Intelligence program at Stanford University reports that scholars there have built a detection program that "...can determine with up to 95% accuracy whether a large language model wrote that essay or social media post."  For more information on their efforts, use this link to the news release.

After a somewhat long hiatus in posting to my blog, I'm planning to follow developments relating to the public release of chatGPT and competing programs soon to be released by Microsoft, Facebook (Meta) and others.  This Spring semester I'm teaching both an undergraduate course on digital networks and innovation and a graduate seminar on networked communication technologies, so the development and spread of generative natural language programs is highly relevant in both classes.