With the advent of technology, we have managed to facilitate our lives in every aspect of life. From smartphones to virtual assistants, new forms of communication technology are constantly being developed and released as we speak.
One example is a self-driving car, which has been equipped with radar, computer vision, GPS and other features to perceive its surroundings and safely navigate its way to a certain destination. Introduced to diminish cost, increase customer satisfaction and reduce crime, automated cars can also lead to better traffic flow and lower fuel consumption. Even with these benefits, however, ongoing experiments show that their efficiency and safety are still quite debatable.
Just last month, The Washington Post published an article reviewing Waymo, an autonomous car company which started out from Google’s self-driving project. After testing out a 24-7 robo-taxi service with over 400 volunteer riders, it has identified several challenges that will take years to solve. These include complications like making informed judgments, which can take a while and slow down the journey.
As part of my rewiring exercise, I went to the application I use most frequently throughout the day – Instagram.
Every time I get the chance, I find myself refreshing my Instagram feed and going on the Explore page to see watch videos that have by this time become very tailored to what I’m interested in. A lot of these tend to be about Kpop, like official music videos, choreography covers, live performances of Kpop idols, etc. I’ve always enjoyed watching them but had a different thought after reading Zuckerman’s book and reflecting on the kind of information I’m getting from all these videos. They are for entertainment but in no way inform me about what’s going on around the world or the bigger complexities involved in this Kpop industry.
One real-world issue that arises from such a appearance-centred, image-building industry is the unrealistic expectations we as the audience start forming about these entertainers, and projecting them later onto the Korean population in general. The media portrays a lot of girls in Kpop to be cute and innocent – from their makeup and outfit to music video concepts and dance choreographies.
Recently, a famous female singer called IU released a song called “Bibi” that addresses these unrealistic expectations of women in the industry and she goes onto counteract them in the music video by refusing to smile. This song highlights the huge feminist movement that is happening in South Korea right now, following the Me Too movement that shed light on numerous assault and harassment cases with high profile celebrities. With this as my basis for trying to get in touch with deeper concerns existing in the Kpop industry, I tried to rewire my Instagram feed so that I would see more of these enlightening videos/pictures instead of generic Kpop.
I tried to do this by searching for specific posts/videos/pictures such as the #metoomovement. From my experience, using the search function and clicking on/viewing similar posts have shaped what I see on my Instagram Explore page. So I went ahead and tried to look for these posts whenever I was tempted to go on Instagram.
In the process, I learnt that it was important to find the right tags to see the posts I’m looking for. Since I wanted to look at gender dynamics in Korea, I searched for #koreanfeminism, #feminisminkorea, #metookorea, etc., none of which had a lot of results (all under ten posts). Then it hit me that the Koreans posting about these topics would be using Korean instead, so I typed them again in Korean and the word #feminism in Korean already gave me 81.1K posts, including personal accounts, comics and news reports.
It was interesting to scroll through the posts under this specific tag and I was immediately made aware of the latest local and international stories regarding feminism and #metoo movements. My initial aim was to see this kind of posts start populating my Instagram feed without me having to search for them. As of today, even after doing this for over a day, there hasn’t been much change to my overall feed, but I trust that it will happen as time passes. What’s important is that even just beginning to think about the deeper social and cultural dialogues that might be taking place in an area I’m interested in has made me more aware of what is really going on in my country and my people’s stance on various issues.
Social media platforms like Instagram have definitely proved to be a great source of entertainment, but this exercise shows that there’s more we can get out of this digital space and using it more meaningfully. As Zuckerman puts it, we need to “understand how we’re connected and disconnected” by staying aware of our interactions online.
First of all, I was amazed by how many different kinds of platforms were available on stack exchange. I’ve only ever used stack overflow so I took a while scrolling through the page checking out the various topics being covered.
I decided to contribute to a platform that I was knowledgeable in, so I first went into the Korean language (also because it was very fitting considering my paper was on Hangul).
Once I was on the page, I was surprised by how difficult the questions actually were. For some reason, I assumed it would be foreigners posting questions so they would be very simple and straightforward, but I found quite complex ones instead that needed a lot of thinking (and even researching on my part).
After looking through all the questions, I noticed there were also some Korean users asking questions about how they would describe the Korean language in English. This meant that the user was assuming that some people on this platform were knowledgeable enough about the language to be able to help with translation. Thus, I think this website as a whole would then work well for both groups (Koreans and non-Koreans) to have a fruitful discussion about the language. I also liked the function of voting up/down a question, but at the same time I felt like it would make people more wary and conscious about their posts. This is good in that people wouldn’t be posting inappropriate questions, but at the same time may make them feel insecure about whether it is too easy of a question to post online.
I’ve answered the some questions regarding pronunciation of some Korean words, and I hope they’ve been helpful. (I look forward to my up-votes :3… on this note, I think this is a good function also because it encourages people to engage and contribute more.)
Premodern communication technology that emerged and developed in Korea:
#1 Hangul (한글): Korean alphabet
The words on top are Hangul, and on the bottom are Hanja (Chinese)
China influenced Korea’s civilisation since the earliest dynasties and one of the most prominent contributions it gave was writing. Before Korea had a writing system, they adopted Chinese characters and it was not until the 15th century that King Sejong introduced Hangul.
Today, each Korean letter has a Chinese equivalent, making it easier to understand what a word means if one knows the translation. But this by no means suggests that the two languages are similar as, for example, Chinese has an SVO (subject-verb-object) construction whereas Korean has an SOV construction.
The main reason for King Sejong to create a new set of alphabets was because Chinese characters were complex and only the intellectuals learned to speak and communicate in it fluently. Hangul thus became a secondary writing system that the illiterate masses could learn more quickly and use it. Hanja (Chinese characters) were still used as the primary language associated with elite status and Hangul as the vernacular language.
The movement to use Hangul began in late 19th century more as a tool of resistance when Japanese colonized Korea (1910-1945). Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names and were punished when they used their own language. Textbooks were reproduced in Japanese and they removed courses on Korean history and geography, which were central in teachings of national identity. It was in this period that the current rules of spelling and standard language for Korean developed. After the liberation, there was a push for the exclusive usage of Hangul.
#2 Cartography: Korean maps
One of the earliest surviving maps in Korea portraying the country in 5th to early 7th century was found on the wall of a tomb in Pyongan province. There were some concerns about Chinese security as their maps were being exported to Korea. Two maps that have survived before the Japanese invasion in of 1952 are Kangni-do and another by Yi Hoe and Kwon Kun. It’s believed that ‘Buddhist maps’, also known as ‘maps of the five Indian kingdoms,’ were invented in Korea.
The first form of the world map was called a ‘wheel map,’ which featured a large continent containing both China and Korea surrounded by water, which is also surrounded by a circular land mass that is again surrounded by a circular sea.
New approaches came after Ricci’s world map arrived in Korea in 1603 and paved way for different types of maps. The use of each map varied, such as to illustrate written materials in historico-geogrpahical texts and to help merchants understand the topography and communication routes better as inter-regional commerce developed (maps in style of Cho Sanggi).
One of the most famous maps was that of Kimg Chongho, which is praised today as the finest product of Korea’s traditional geography. He was not a geographer and spent 30 years wandering up and down the Korean peninsula to gather information. He added towns, military bases, and government offices. But the government was afraid that this map could be used by their enemy and arrested Kim.
These are the three original emojis that I created with Illustrator:
The first one is kimbap, an equivalent to a Korean sushi roll. The second one is steel chopsticks, which all Koreans use to eat their meals. The third one is called songpyeon, which is a traditional Korean food made of glutinous rice.
When I was making these emojis, I think I was subconsciously aware of the Korean autumn harvest festival that was right around the corner. On this day, Koreans usually gather with their families and relatives to eat good food, including the songpyeon. But this is a good (and very accurate) thing cause Koreans are obsessed with food. We love food – we love making them and even watch people eat them (this is actually a very profitable market in the country).
When I sent these three emojis to my Korean friends and asked them what they thought, they all replied that these reminded them of the festival and of eating. I asked them if the emoticons were easily recognizable, to which most replied yes except for the kimbap. I asked for feedback and one replied that the white part didn’t look too much like rice.
When I asked them if they would use the emojis on a daily basis, one of them replied, “I’d use the chopsticks but don’t know about the others.” I found this comment very interesting so I asked her why, to which she said she just wasn’t sure when to use them and would want some words to guide her. When I asked her on what occasion she would use the chopsticks emoji, she replied, “I’d message my friends saying ‘let’s go it!!’ and add the chopsticks. The others aren’t that straightforward to use.” I found this information to be very valuable as this is an issue specific to Koreans — we almost always have some kind of words on top of, or around, an emoji. We think a simple phrase add to an emoji much more and interesting. For Koreans, more information is better. (Hence why Google is unpopular in Korea, where Naver, as its main search engine, populates its website with lots of information, unlike Google’s single search bar. Check it out!: www.naver.com)
After this feedback, I made some adjustments to two of the emojis:
I added more texture and shade to both emojis, using Photoshop. I also put in a long piece of rolled omelet inside kimbap as it’s one of the main ingredients (how could I have forgotten!). I even included a short text that says “wanna eat?” in formal/playful Korean for the songpyeon emoji.
When I sent these two emojis, along with the chopsticks, to two more Korean friends, I was surprised by how both friends liked songpyeon most. They said this emoji is particularly cute and they liked the words on top. I think the phrase definitely contributed a lot to its popularity as it took into consideration what Korean emoji consumers were looking for.
The
digital detox has been a very enriching experience overall. It was a perfect
excuse for me to get offline and focus on real-world interactions and give
myself time to think more. This is ironic because we’ve said that we use
computers as a tool to think. But when we’re too engrossed and consume too much
of it, we become lost and unable to think clearly about what matters in life.
I’ve
found that most of my phone usage has been focused on checking social media,
refreshing my feed and watching countless videos throughout the day. This
wasn’t for me to think about anything, but purely to entertain myself. The
amount of new entertaining information had become addictive over time and I
found myself checking my phone every time I had the chance.
During my digital detox, I was able to fully concentrate on
my readings and assignments without distraction. I was able to talk with
friends without checking my phone constantly and even have some deep
conversations. But this was by no means easy – I was so tempted to just switch
my phone back on and get back to my oh-so-convenient life. I was surprised that
I even had to do some preparation for this before I started. For instance, I
had to tell my friends and family that I won’t be able to contact them online,
I had to print out everything that I would have otherwise read on my computer,
and even had to take out my IDs from the back of my phone so I don’t carry the
device around. The most fundamental parts of my ability to function daily
seemed so dependent on my devices – I actually don’t have a watch so I had no
idea what the time was unless I asked someone else.
This made me reflect a lot on myself and my uncontrollable
usage of my devices. I’ve let my phone and computer become the brains of myself,
giving it my daily notes and reminders, my contact information, everything. As
E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” puts it, technological devices seem to “feed
us and clothes us and houses us, through it we speak to one another, through I t
we see one another, in it we have our being.” After the detox, I’ve become much
aware of my relationship with my phone and will consciously reduce its influence
over how I live everyday. To do this, as I’ve written in my journals, I’ll look
for offline alternatives and keep my mind focused on real-world interactions.
Communication and technology for me has always been a way to stay connected to the rest of the world. Since I study in a foreign country, the Internet allows me to keep in touch with my close ones back home as well as making new friends abroad. As more and more people feed the system in this rapidly globalizing world, the Internet only grows with time and becomes harder to live without it each day.
As James Gleick’s book “The Information” points out, this phenomenon stems from our need for, and constant search of, information. We need to constantly interact with the people around us in order to live in this world. Humans are social creatures by nature, and communication is key to our survival. The mediums through which we communicate have developed over time, but they’ve always been there from the start.
Today, various applications like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google, and multiple news platforms pervade my life, bringing me information from all around the world and keeping me aware of whatever is required to get through the day. I wake up every morning to check what my family and friends have been up to, what the weather is like, what new announcements are up, etc. With information made so easily accessible, modern technology has perhaps made our lives too convenient for our own good. Sometimes our routine seems almost systematic, losing its value and lacking any real meaning. There are multiple side effects to this, such as creating false and deceiving images of ourselves online by choosing to only present the best parts of our lives and hiding our hardships and problems, which can affect our mental health.
The proliferation of the Internet is inevitable, as new generations born into this tech-saturated world will continue to use and thereby fuel the industry. However, I think it’s important to be aware of our usage of it and make sure that we’re the ones in control. I personally think I’m pretty addicted to it myself since I check my phone at every possible moment, but I think being cognizant of it is the first step towards controlling my consumption and avoid becoming too reliant on technology. I could perhaps do this more by going on a digital detox every now and then, seeking information offline instead of refreshing my social media feeds, and focusing on real-life interactions rather than sending bland emoticons on messages.
