Why a Book on Digital Development in Korea: Reason 1

Here goes.  The idea occurred to me some time ago and I've decided to act on it.  In a series of posts over the next 4-6 months, I'm going to share with readers of this blog some of the reasons why I teamed up recently with Dr. OH, Myung to write our forthcoming book, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society Routledge, March 2011.  Let me be clear from the beginning that these posts reflect my own perspective, not necessarily that of my co-author, who has a long and distinguished career in Korea's ICT sector, and has written or spoken publicly on many of these issues.

One of the first reasons for undertaking this book project was quite simple.  There appeared to be no other scholarly book in existence that examined South Korea's ICT development over the past three decades.  Back in the 1990s I had spent more than two years researching and writing The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1995)  Well over a decade had passed since that book was written, years which I spent as an administrator with the Fulbright Commission in Seoul, formally known as the Korean American Educational Commission, with responsibilities for our academic testing (mainly TOEFL) and technology (the web was becoming the principal channel for study abroad advising).  My personal experience of Korea's burgeoning networks and electronics sector convinced me that an update of my book was in order.  So, I contacted editors at Oxford University Press in New York, London and Hong Kong with my idea.  After some weeks of e-mail consultation, they declined to even receive a proposal for a new book, citing the lack of a market for such in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries.  Whether or not there is/was such a market is a topic for another post.

To some extent it is true that the world took note of South Korea's digital development, especially when it emerged with the arrival of the new millenium as the world leader in broadband internet penetration as shown by leading international measures.  It is also true that the ITU published a short monograph entitled Broadband Korea:  Internet Case Study in 2003, the OECD has published voluminous statistics, and the World Bank has paid attention to the Korean experience through its project and series of publications on Korea As a Knowledge Economy.   Ahonen and O'Reilly's book, Digital Korea, which appeared in 2007 is an industry-oriented survey of the Korean experience.

In addition to these efforts, there was a measureable increase in the number of articles appearing in scholarly journals about the Korean experience.  However, given the magnitude of Korea's ICT-fueled development, one might have expected a dozen doctoral dissertations and at least half that many books to appear over the past decade and a half.   The story of why such research was not undertaken and published in English is a complex one involving lack of Korean language and area expertise on the part of Western scholars, coupled with a lack of incentive for leading Korean scholars to publish in English for a world academic audience.

However, I stand by my argument.  One of the first reasons for co-authoring Digital Development in Korea, was that there were no other books available that offered a similar treatment of this important topic!

Digital Textbook Plan hits Snag

Korea's Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is planning to spend about 18 billion won ($US 15.5 million) to establish e-book infrastructures in 110 schools in rural communities around the country. However, as The Korea Times reports today, there are concerns that the project could be derailed. The consortium that the government selected to provide the e-book readers, led by LG-Dacom and Hewlett Packard, are finding it difficult to keep the price of each device below 1.3 million won, while the government insists it will pay no more than 1.1 million won per reader.

This seems like a laudable project, given the rapid convergence that will soon lead to widespread availability of mobile broadband and the ability to download books from such vast digital libraries as the one made available through Google Book search. The Korea Times article notes that the Ministry of Education Science and Technology had approached both LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics to support the project but the companies both declined, citing lack of market size! Perhaps this is the same lack of market size that explains why Apple's iPhone and also Android phones are so slow in arriving in the Korean market. An alternative view would be that Korea's large electronics firms, along with their telecoms service providers, should view the Korean market, although small, as a valuable test bed for products that will be part of the future information society.

Publications going Digital

This post has to do with all of my journal articles, books and other writings going digital. It relates to Korea's information society only in that this transition has occurred while I've been working for the Fulbright Commission here in Seoul.

Last week I walked across the street to DHL with new copies of two of my books, Television's Window on the World and The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea. Following the explicit instructions provided on the website of the Google Books Partner program, I shipped them via DHL to Google in California. I now expect that they will be available to read, to anyone in the world with an internet connection, within a matter of weeks. You see, the publishers of the books, Greenwood Press and Oxford University Press, have reverted the copyright to me as author. That gives me the freedom to join the Google Books Partner program and to make the books 100% browseable via the web.

I'm delighted with this development. These two books, in particular, are ones that I want to make available to everyone, including people from developing countries. The first book was an outgrowth of my doctoral dissertation at Stanford, which I completed in 1978, and the book was published in 1984. The second came after two years of research in Korea during the early 1990s with financial support from Dacom Corporation and the cooperation of a multitude of Korean colleagues. Both of the books were influenced tremendously by my doctoral training at Stanford from 1974-1978. While I was at Stanford, it was a leading center for research and training on the role of communication in development, along with the obvious fact that Silicon Valley developed next door, owing to the influence of Stanford.

When I was in graduate school, South Korea was widely acknowledged to be a "developing country." Today, it is one of the world's advanced economies, in large part because of (1) education and (2) the IT revolution that it so enthusiastically embraced.

I've also placed digital copies (PDF) of two of my journal articles on my personal website. Given the current developments in Iran and the influence of the internet on politics in Korea, these may be of interest to some of you. My intent is to place publicly available copies of all my publications on the internet as soon as is practical. I'd welcome comments from any of you that find these publications of interest.

Two of My Books Are Going Online Soon

This post is a bit more personal than my usual posts on this blog, but no less illustrative of the rapidly-emerging and converging digital information age in which we live.   Yesterday I walked across the street to the DHL office and shipped new copies of two books to Google. Television's Window on the World:  International Affairs Coverage on the U.S. Networks (Ablex: 1984) was based on my doctoral dissertation at Stanford.   Thanks in large part to an outstanding group of faculty on my dissertation committee, the study seems to have stood the test of time and become a benchmark that is frequently cited by younger researchers.  The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea (Oxford University Press, 1995) was the outcome of two years of research in Korea, supported by Dacom Corporation and with cooperation from a host of government, industry and academic colleagues here.

I'm pleased to announce that the publishers of both these books have reverted copyright to me as author.  I intend to use all of the services of the Google Book Search Partner program to make 100 percent of the content of these books browseable over the internet and to make them searchable via my personal website, www.jamesflarson.com  How quickly you will see them there depends on how long it takes Google to scan and process these volumes upon receipt.  Of course, I'll announce their availability here and on my personal site, with links to the pages that will allow online reading, searching or download of these books.

Another Breakthrough by Google! Book Search Class Action Settlement

In its own understated way, Google has announced another breakthrough on its Google Book Search service.  The line on the Google Book Search page reads simply

"Google has reached a groundbreaking agreement with authors and publishers."

As the author of several books and monographs, I heartily agree.  I am hoping that there are no delays in the final court approval of this class action settlement, and I look forward to having all of my books available electronically and searchable via Google's new service.  Watch this space for notification of when you'll be able to read and search Television's Window on the World , Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympics , The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea  and others of my publications.  By the way, Google has reportedly digitized more than seven million books!