Digital Korea

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Tim Ahonen and Jim O'Reilly. Digital Korea. Future Text, 2007


URL = http://www.digitalkorea.info

book about the most advanced information society to date


Description

"We go deep into the digital miracle of South Korea - the first country where all internet connections were upgraded to broadband, where all phones are cameraphones and three out of four mobile phones are high speed 3G phones. Where digital TV tuners are now being built into cars, laptop PCs and mobile phones.

You'll find all of our favourite Korea stories in the book. We have case studies of Cyworld (like MySpace but two years into the future say users familiar with both), Ohmy News (the world's first citizen newspaper), Lineage 2 (twice the size of World of Warcraft), Cart Rider (a multiplayer game that has been played by 25% of the total South Korean population ! Imagine that !) as well as Tu Media, Melon Music etc. We have chapters on automobile telematics, home robotics, digital money, electronic government and the intelligent home. And the book discusses digital youth - Generation C as well in its own chapter. Don't forget digital music - where 10% of American music is now digital, in South Korea it is already 57%.

South Korea is the one country where the future exists already today. What happens when hospitals build intelligent floors, when bridges are built with sensors and parking places become intelligent (not that I can pay for my parking by mobile phone, but where is the nearest available parking place...). Yes, and the abuses? Kids cheat in class using text messages, virtual properties in multiplayer environments are stolen, etc. What happens to the police in a virtual digitally converged world? They adapt of course. In South Korea already today every police department has a cybercrime unit. And those home robots? Yes, South Korea says every home will have a robot in ten years. You might ask yourself what kinds of robots will these be, there has to be more to it than an intelligent vacuum cleaner. And there is. Read the book...

The book Digital Korea costs 25 UKP / 39 Euro / 49 USD and is available direct from the publisher at www.futuretext.com or from your regular bookseller such as Amazon. The book includes a foreword by Dr Yoo the CEO of SK Communications (owners of Cyworld, Melon Music, Nate etc). Jim O'Reilly and I have set up a website for the book at www.digitalkorea.info "