TechnoKimchi ::

'2009/02'에 해당되는 글 2건

2009/02/27 Emerging new world order? Dubai and Korea stand tall. (5)
2009/02/27 Why Korean Internet industry is a labor intensive industry (2)

2009/02/27 17:19

Emerging new world order? Dubai and Korea stand tall.

2009/02/27 17:19 in basic info

I just came across a report published by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUA) on the projections for the world's 20 tallest buildings in 2020. (You can view the entire document here. A pretty interesting report.)

What's really interesting is that out of the 20, Dubai has 6 and Korea has 4. Overall, the Middle East has 10 (50%) while Asia has 7 (35%). There's only 2 in the U.S. (10%), only one in Europe (in Moscow), none in Japan.

Now one question I'm tempted to throw is "could this possibly be any indication for the emerging new world order in the not-too-distant future?"

Sure, there are many factors to consider. First of all, you might say "having many tall buildings don't mean jack about the new world order." Some cultures and people just might be more obsessed with tall buildings (I believe Koreans are, in general.) Some governments are strategically doing that just to impress many investors when they come to visit. (Again, I'm pretty sure the Korean government is doing this.) I mean, if you are already rich and powerful, you don't need to show off to prove anything, right? Also, we shouldn't forget that the current economic crisis could simply kill many of those projects. We've been hearing over and over again about the not-so-rosy situation in Dubai.

But, this still has many important implications. The catch-up-from-behind countries are really speeding up. That's including Dubai, China, and Korea. Morever, think about what kind of technology you would need in order to complete a project like this. Remember architecture is a combination of business, technology, arts, social dynamics, and culture. (For example, look at the shape of the building that's being built in Maccah, which is near Mecca.) Think about the urbanization effects. Each of those buildings will probably hold over 100,000 habitants and probably even more during business hours. Basically when you could have monuments like these, you can't take these too lightly.

What do you guys think?

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Posted by Danny Kim twdanny

Architecture, building, china, Dubai, Korea, new world order, Technology

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2009/02/27 01:27

Why Korean Internet industry is a labor intensive industry

2009/02/27 01:27 in basic info

No, Korean Internet companies don't use child labor for harvesting coffee beans. Obviously no workers stuck to assembly lines. Most of the Internet companies don't even have labor unions. After all, labor and the high tech Internet industry wouldn't ring a bell as a good marriage, right?

Wrong. Who are the "labor" people to the Internet companies? It's none other than us, the users.

Especially in an environment like in Korea where the scale is relatively small and homogeneity is the word that governs the culture.

What does that mean? By instigating a small number of zealots to form an opinion, you can easily maneuver in the direction of the crowd at will. How does that happen? By making them work FOR YOU.

Now, add in the "pali pali" culture as an ingredient . Everything in Korea moves just F-A-S-T, as if holding on to something old is actually a shame. As a result, what you get is people lined up to react to changes and do something dynamically 24/7. And it's all done manually, often even without getting paid.

It's widely known that much of Naver search is operated manually by hiring people to add links for certain topics and to edit the search results (for like $4/hr. Now I call that cheap labor!) Even when it comes down to content creation, many people are still paid to do so at an extremely fast pace, going after popular keywords at the moment. What's even more interesting is we have armies of 댓글알바, a.k.a. paid comment spammers, who'll just paint the Internet plaster with commercial content while masquerading as innocent housewives, students, or prosumers. Wrong. They aren't. They're often just college students that are dying to make the same $4/hr for leaving 100 comments on a designated topic.

Again, this is possible because Korea has a relatively small Internet market; people's interests don't vary much so it can be covered through manual editing. For Google, which tries to cover the entire Web, this might not be as cost-effective. You can't hire people or even instigate people to cover every single topic on earth. It just won't cut it. At the same time, for Korean users, Naver's handpicked materials are far higher quality meat than the automated version like Google's. This partially explains why Google still holds less than 5% of search market in Korea and the siloed portals are still dominant.

Want to succeed in Korea? Hear my words: work hard. I mean, real hard.

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