Photography of Jaz Hee-jeong Choi by special permission of the Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries Faculty Research Office Photographer: Jen Brazier
Playpolis: Transyouth and Urban Networking in Seoul
Thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
written and submitted by
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi BCI Comm. Design (Hons) QUT BMultimedia Griffith
Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia
Supervisors: Distinguished Professor Stuart Cunningham ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT
Associate Professor Michael Keane ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT
Associate Professor Marcus Foth Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, QUT
To all playful beings.
Abstract The overarching aim of this study is to create new knowledge about how playful interactions (re)create the city via ubiquitous technologies, with an outlook to apply the knowledge for pragmatic innovations in relevant fields such as urban planning and technology development in the future. The study looks at the case of transyouth, the in-between demographic bridging youth and adulthood in Seoul, one of the most connected, densely populated, and quickly transforming metropolises in the world.
To unravel the elusiveness of ‘play’ as a subject and the complexity of urban networks, this study takes a three-tier transdisciplinary approach comprised of an extensive literature review, Shared Visual Ethnography (SVE), and interviews with leading industry representatives who design and develop the playscape for Seoul transyouth. Through these methodological tools, the study responds to the following four research aims:
1. Examine the sociocultural, technological, and architectural context of Seoul 2. Investigate Seoul transyouth’s perception of the self and their technosocial environment 3. Identify the pattern of their playful interaction through which meanings of the self and the city are recreated 4. Develop an analytical framework for enactment of play
This thesis argues that the city is a contested space that continuously changes through multiple interactions among its constituents on the seam of control and freedom. At the core of this interactive (re)creation process is play. Play is a phenomenon that is enacted at the centre of three inter-related elements of pressure, possibility, and pleasure, the analytical framework this thesis puts forward as a conceptual apparatus for studying play across disciplines. The thesis concludes by illustrating possible trajectories for pragmatic application of the framework for envisioning and building the creative, sustainable, and seductive city.
1 Keywords
City Convergence Digital lifestyle Transdisciplinary research Korea Network technology Mobile media Open design Play Shared Visual Ethnography Seoul Social networking Transyouth Ubiquitous computing Urban ludology Urban networks Urban informatics User-led innovation
2 List of Publications This section outlines all publications that have been resulted during my doctoral research.
Publications that form part of this thesis
1.1 Choi, J. H.-j. (2007). Approaching the Mobile Culture of East Asia. M/C Journal, 10(1). Available: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/01- choi.php
1.2 Choi, J. H.-j. (2008). The New Korean Wave of U. In H. K. Anheier, Y. R. Isar, A. Paul & S. Cunningham (Eds.), The Cultural Economy (pp. 148-154). London: Sage.
1.3 Choi, J. H.-j., M. Foth, & G. Hearn. (2009). Site specific mobility and connection in Korea: bangs (rooms) between public and private spaces. Technology in Society, 31(2), 133-138, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2009.03.004.
3.1 Choi, J. H.-j. (2010). The City, Self, and Connections: Transyouth and Urban Social Networking in Seoul. In S. Hemelryk Donald, T. Anderson & D. Spry (Eds.), Youth, Society and Mobile Media in Asia (pp. 88-107). London, New York: Routledge.
3.2 Choi, J. H.-j. (under review). The Role of Open Design in the Evolving Economic Life of Korea: From Chaebol to SME. Journal of International Business Studies.
3.3 Choi, J. H.-j. (2010). The City is Connections: Seoul as an Urban Network. Multimedia Systems, 16(1), 75-84, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00530- 009-0173-1
4.0 Choi, J. H.-j. (under review). Play in the City: Pressure, Possibility, and Pleasure in Seoul. International Journal of Cultural Studies.
3 List of additional publications arising from this study
Book Chapters
Choi, J. H.-j. (2009). Searching the Self in Seoul: Trans-youth and Urban Social Networking in Korea. In K. Nyiri (Ed.), Engagement and Exposure: Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking (pp. 121-130). Vienna: Passagen Verlag.
Choi, J. H.-j., & Greenfield, A. (2009). To Connect and Flow in Seoul: Ubiquitous Technologies, Urban infrastructure and Everyday Life in the Contemporary Korean City. In M. Foth (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City (pp. 21-36). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Conference Proceedings
Foth, M., C. Satchell, M. Brereton, & J. H.-j. Choi. (2008, Oct 15-18). Internet Technology and Urban Sustainability. AoIR Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2008). The City of Connections: Urban Social Networking in Seoul. Proceedings ACM SIGCHI MindTrek conference (pp. 189-193). Tampere, Finland. [Best Paper Award]
Foth, M., J. H.-j. Choi, M. Bilandzic, & C. Satchell. (2008, Oct 7-9). Collective and Network Sociality in an Urban Village. Proceedings ACM SIGCHI MindTrek conference (pp. 179-183). Tampere, Finland.
4 Workshop Proceedings
Paulos, E., M. Foth, C. Satchell, Y. Kim, P. Dourish, & J. H.-j. Choi. (2008, Sep 21- 24). Ubiquitous Sustainability: Citizen Science & Activism. Tenth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp). Seoul, South Korea. Available: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/14130/
Choi, J. H.-j, M. Foth, G. Hearn, E. Blevis & T. Hirsch. (2009, Nov 23-27). Hungry 24/7? HCI Design for Sustainable Food Culture. OZCHI 2009. Melbourne, Australia. Available: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/31087/
Conference Papers
Choi, J. H.-j. (2009, Jun 11). The City as a Network. Paper presented at Lowy Institute New Voices Conference. Sydney, Australia.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2008, Sep 25-27). Searching the Self in Seoul: Transyouth and Urban Social Networking in Korea. Paper presented at Communications in the 21st Century: Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking. Budapest, Hungary.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2008, July 9-11). Toying with Me, Here, Now: Play in Everyday Life of Trans-youth in Seoul. Paper presented at the International Toy Research Association World Congress: Toys and Culture. Nafplion, Greece.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2008 June 25-27) Playful Smoothness. Paper presented at the Creating Value: Between Commerce and Commons Conference. Brisbane, Australia.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2007 Dec 5-5) Ready, Unsteady, Go: Trans-youth Mobile Media and Spatial Experience in Seoul. Paper presented at the Interactive Entertainment Conference. Melbourne, Australia.
5 Foth, M., & J. H.-j. Choi. (2007). Exploring the Local Impact of Web 2.0 Paradigms on the Communicative Ecology of Urban Residents. Paper presented at the Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0 Conference. York, UK.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2007 July 5-6) All Things Big and Small: Rising Importance of Mobile Media in South Korea. Paper presented at the China | East Asia | Media | New Media Conference. Brisbane, Australia.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2006, Sep 28-30) Living in Cyworld: Contextualisation of Cyworld Blogging in Korea. Paper presented at the AoIR 7.0 Internet Convergences Conference. Brisbane, Australia.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2006, Aug 4-5) Mixing Self with Media: Online Audience Participation in Consuming Media and Self in Korea. Paper presented at the Media and Popular Cultural Flows in East Asia Conference. Melbourne, Australia.
Doctoral Colloquia
Choi, J. H.-j. (2007, Jul 16-27) Being Mobile in Fantasy Reality: Transyouth Mobile Play Culture in Seoul. Invited presentation at the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme, Harvard University. Cambridge, MA, USA.
Choi, J. H.-j. (2006, Sep 28-30) Being Mobile in Fantasy Reality: Transyouth Mobile Play Culture in Seoul. Invited presentation at the AoIR 7.0 Internet Convergences Conference. Brisbane, Australia.
6 Table of Contents
Playpolis: Transyouth and Urban Networking in Seoul ...... 1
Abstract ...... 1
Keywords ...... 2
List of Publications ...... 3 Publications that form part of this thesis ...... 3 List of additional publications arising from this study ...... 4
List of Figures ...... 11
List of Tables ...... 13
Statement of Original Authorship ...... 14
Acknowledgements ...... 15
Introduction ...... 16 Play Today ...... 17 The City of Seoul ...... 20 Changing Individuals ...... 23 Research Question and Aims ...... 26 Significance of Research ...... 26 Thesis Structure ...... 27
Section 1 Theories and Context ...... 35
Chapter 1.1 Approaching the Mobile Culture of East Asia ...... 36 Abstract ...... 37 Introduction ...... 38 Technology/Sociality ...... 40 Productivity/Play ...... 41 Cultures of East Asia ...... 42 Polychronic Perception of Time ...... 42 Interdependent Self-Definition ...... 42 Facework ...... 43 Digital Youth of Asia ...... 44 Mobile Phone: Access and Uses ...... 45
7 Emergence of Mobile Media ...... 46
Chapter 1.2 The Korean Wave of U ...... 50 Abstract ...... 51 Introduction ...... 52 The Rise of Hallyu, the Korean Wave ...... 53 Riding Global Tides ...... 55 Inflow of Hallyu Riders ...... 57 The New Wave of Convergence ...... 58 U: the Future ...... 59 Reconceptualising Cultural Economy ...... 60
Chapter 1.3 Site Specific Mobility and Connection in Korea: Bangs (rooms) between Public and Private Spaces ...... 62 Statement of Contribution ...... 63 Abstract ...... 64 Introduction ...... 65 The Bang Culture in the City of Flux ...... 68 Mediated City of Bangs ...... 69 Fragmented vs Modularised ...... 72 Ubiquity and Mobility: Changing Reality/ies ...... 72 Conclusions ...... 74
Section 2 Methodology and Research Design ...... 77 Literature Review ...... 80 Shared Visual Ethnography ...... 81 Principles for Using Images ...... 82 The Process of Shared Visual Ethnography ...... 87 Pre-discussion ...... 88 SVE Activities ...... 89 Post-discussion ...... 91 Outcome and Reflection ...... 92 Pre- and Post-discussion ...... 92 SVE Activities ...... 93 Interviews with Industry Representatives ...... 97 Understanding Place ...... 98 Understanding Technology ...... 99
Section 3 Analysis and Discussion ...... 104
8 Chapter 3.1 The City, Self, and Connections: Transyouth and Urban Social Networking in Seoul ...... 105 Abstract ...... 106 Introduction ...... 107 Context and Exploration ...... 109 City, the Urban Network ...... 110 Transyouth ...... 115 Research Approach ...... 118 Mobile Transyouth in Seoul ...... 119 Transyouth: Discontinued and Distributed Self ...... 119 Seoul: the Cool, the Distasteful ...... 121 Connected: Essence for Access ...... 123 Future: The City, Self, and Connections ...... 129
Chapter 3.2 The Role of Open Design in the Evolving Economic Life of Korea: From Chaebol to SME ...... 131 Abstract ...... 132 Introduction ...... 133 Interviews with Industry Representatives ...... 136 Selecting Chaebols for Interviews ...... 136 Selecting SMEs for Interviews ...... 138 Results and Discussions ...... 140 Technology: Condensed and Ubiquitous ...... 141 Place: Changing Urban Landscape ...... 144 People: New Generations, New Economic Agents ...... 147 Conclusions: Open Design for the Future ...... 149
Chapter 3.3 The City is Connections: Seoul as an Urban Network ...... 153 Abstract ...... 154 Introduction ...... 155 The City: Seoul ...... 156 People: Transyouth ...... 163 Layers: Technosocial ...... 165 Cyworld ...... 165 Cocoon House ...... 167 u-City ...... 170 Conclusions ...... 171
9 Section 4 Play in the City: Pressure, Possibility, and Pleasure in Seoul ...... 174 Abstract ...... 175 Introduction ...... 176 City as a Network ...... 178 What is ‘to Play’? ...... 180 Textualisation: Pressure, Possibility, and Pleasure ...... 183 Networked Play ...... 185 Seoul as an Urban Network ...... 186 Playful Seoul ...... 189 Conclusions: Seductive (re)Play ...... 195
Section 5 Conclusions ...... 198 Responses to the Research Aims ...... 198 Limitations and Future Directions ...... 203
References ...... 208
Appendix 1: Questionnaire ...... 225
Appendix 2: Semi-structured Interview Questions ...... 226
Appendix 3: Example of an Activity Diary Entry...... 228
10 List of Figures
Figure 1: Thesis structure ...... 29
Figure 2: Dimensions of access ...... 31
Figure 3: Import export of Korean broadcasting ...... 56
Figure 4: Research component and perspective ...... 79
Figure 5: An example of Photosynth process ...... 83
Figure 6: Participants’ images of Seoul ...... 87
Figure 7: Process of Shared Visual Ethnography ...... 88
Figure 8: Tag cloud created for the research group ...... 93
Figure 9: Photographs for the theme ‘play with the mobile phone’ ...... 94
Figure 10: Spatial categories of the selected organisations ...... 99
Figure 11: Inter-relations of the selected business enterprise ...... 102
Figure 12: Chapter structure and relationships ...... 103
Figure 13: Galleria Department Store ...... 112
Figure 14: PC-bang ...... 113
Figure 15: Students after the University Entrance Exam ...... 116
Figure 16: A participant’s image of Seoul ...... 122
Figure 17: Examples of Participants’ Mobile Phones ...... 125
Figure 18: Transyouth Communication Cycle ...... 127
Figure 19: Public Internet booth in subway station ...... 145
Figure 20: A small cluster of old buildings hidden behind high-rises ...... 146
Figure 21: Apartments in Seoul ...... 157
Figure 22: Screens in subway ...... 160
Figure 23: Mini-hompy in Cyworld ...... 166
11 Figure 24: Example of a cocoon house ...... 168
Figure 25: Enactment of play ...... 184
Figure 26: Creating simultaneous layers of reality through portable devices 185
12 List of Tables
Table 1: Themes and tags ...... 90
Table 2: Overview of paradigmatic shift in Korean IT policy ...... 144
13 Statement of Original Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi
Signature
Date
14 Acknowledgements
To all special human connections that have touched me, thank you.
Mum, you’re the most special of all (엄마가 가장 소중한 인연입니다).
This study was supported by scholarships from QUT, CCi, iCi, and the Urban Informatics research group.
Much gratitude goes to:
Interviewees - Yong Joon Hyoung (enfra), Jong Sung Hwang (NIA), Jong-soo Jung (Full House), Yeun Bae Kim (Samsung), Chang-woo Lee (10x10), Soo-jin Lee (yanolja.com), Jongchae Oh (SK Holdings) for your valuable time and insight; All the research participants for sharing your stories;
Larissa and Dr Park for helping me find the participants and good times in Seoul; John Hartley for introducing me to Homo Ludens; Adam Greenfield and Greg Hearn for the words we wrote and new beginnings; Sal Humphreys for truthful questions and answers; Julie-Anne Edwards for the get-things-sorted awesomeness; Tim Milfull for friendship as well as the exceptionally proper Asingrish and English line by line; My ladies in L221 for enticing me to come to work and so much more;
My supervisors – Stuart Cunningham, for letting me start, change, and go on; Michael Keane for knowledge, wisdom, hugs, and believing in me; and Marcus Foth for being my mentor and mate – if I could make as many Korean pancakes as the things I’d like to thank you for, I could feed the whole world. We’ll also have green tea ice cream;
Lovers for the thrills; Friends for being themselves; Friendly waitresses for inspirations; My family for embracing my human flaws; I love you.
The real fun begins now.
15 Introduction
The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.’
Mark Weiser (1995, p. 933)
Today, many people work, play, and communicate online. Network technology is deeply embedded in everyday life. Its presence has become mundane to say the least. We have indeed already entered the era of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) though in a form that differs from Weiser’s (1995) vision of smooth interactive space created by calm technologies. Ubiquitous computing, also commonly known as pervasive computing, ambient computing, physical computing, and everyware (Greenfield, 2006), has been known as omnipresent context-aware computing embedded in objects and environments (Bell & Dourish, 2007; Weiser, Gold & Brown, 1999; Weiser, 1995). However, today’s cities as ubicomp environments are ‘messy’ (Bell & Dourish, 2007) compositions of old and new technologies, practices, and spaces that are transforming ceaselessly. Although technologies create many frictions, we have learnt to deal with the frictions by changing facets of our lives to accommodate them (we have learnt that the computer crashing does not equate crashing of the world, but simply a need to restart). As we modify and innovate our practices, technologies have become integrated into our lives in ways that are almost smooth and calm. Amongst many aspects of such technosocial transformation, my research focuses on ‘play.’ I will argue that play is an agent for interactive participation in changing the network society, and ubiquitous technologies are used for such transformative playful activities. In recognition of the current ubicomp era, I look beyond computer screens to the city. Thus my exploration of play occurs at the intersection of people, place, and technology, the three core elements of urban informatics (Foth, 2009). In the following sections, I introduce the central concepts of play, place, and people in relation to ubicomp. I then present the aims and significance of this research, followed by the thesis structure, summarising each chapter as part of a coherent research narrative.
16 Play Today Play is an ambivalent concept. It is a riddle void of language, a maze without structure, a metaphysical but fundamentally sensorial entity, and a unique phenomenon that concurrently exists in multiplicity. In his seminal book Homo Ludens, Huizinga ([1939] 1955, p. 89) attributes such definitional complexity to play’s totality; play is ‘an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody at a glance right down to the animal level … We play and know that we play, so we must be more than merely rational beings, for play is irrational’ (ibid, p. 3). Therefore, for us playful beings (homo ludens), society is built upon the soil of play, and thus play exists beyond our ontological realm. As such, the discussion of play remains diverse and ongoing across cultures until today apart from the common understanding that play is a voluntary, pleasure-provoking experience. One way of examining the concept is a discipline-specific approach as seen in education (cf. Piaget, 1962; Sutton-Smith, 1997), psychology (cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Ghani & Deshpande, 1994), and game studies (cf. Salen & Zimmerman, 2006). Alternatively, we can frame the scope of examination with specific contextual elements such as time, place, and culture (for example, children’s toy play in Argentina during the Peronist government – cf. Pelegrinelli, 2007). This study takes the latter approach.
There have been two major institutional shifts that continue to frame contemporary play culture in the West (particularly Northern America and Europe) since the enlightenment era. They are the rise of modern nation states and capitalism. These institutions have had profound and transformational effects globally. With these changes came two new prominent ways for perceiving play. First, with a growing emphasis on the notion of public sphere, play became a subject of morality – that each individual has the right to be happy and therefore the right to play. Consequently, ‘leisure’ and ‘recreation’ became social issues – since these concepts were easier to reference and manage than play – that require legislative or political interventions (Goodale & Godbey, 1988, p. 113; Hall & Page, 1999, p. 142), which contributed to general perceptions of play chiefly in relation to (or as opposed to) work. This in turn affected how time and space are designed and managed; there were strict boundaries between the work and play time – for example, week days and weekend – and between spaces for work and play, as evidenced in development of
17 urban parks designed to be leisure and recreational places for the working class (Taylor, 1999, 2005). Such spatiotemporal division during that time led to the second approach to perceiving play: play as commodity. The Hoover Conference on economic changes in the United States reported in early 1920s, ‘closely related to the increasing rate of production – consumption of products is consumption of leisure’ (Goldman, 1983, p. 89), reflecting the rapid proliferation of capitalistic ideologies and dissection of work and play. The public perception of play increasingly became an intermission between work schedules through which play can be purchased. However, many traditional forms of play still prevail. Cultural rituals such as the wedding ceremony, carnivals, and festivals remain close to their traditional forms, reflecting the socio-cultural context in which the ritual form was originally constructed. Cultural specificities are also evident in newly emerging forms of play that are experienced via network technologies. For example, traces of the pan culture of Korea, the cultural practice of co-creating a flexible spatio-temporal zone for shared playful experience, remain visible in how people use the internet to communicate and socialise (Lee, 2002), adding uniqueness to the burgeoning Korean Internet culture.
How, then, does the perception and practice of play evolve in the current age of convergence where, via network technologies, people have means to break, create, and merge boundaries – amongst many others, between work and play, public and private, and producer and consumer? In fact, technologies not only permit but also encourage people to manage multiple layers of reality at any given moment by raising awareness of other possible interactions, particularly those of playful nature, such as games, instant messaging via a messenger or short-message-service (SMS), and leisurely Internet browsing. There are actively growing practices that merge mediated and non-mediated reality layers to create a unique experience that is fun, social, and responds to the user’s context. Examples include Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) such as I Love Bees (http://ilovebees.com) and The Beast (Szulborski, 2007), as well as the social phenomenon amongst Japanese youth who use their mobile phones to create virtual layers of reality for socialising away from the traditionally rigid social hierarchy apparent in the physical reality (Ito & Okabe, 2001). Currently, a fundamental shift is occurring in the notion of productivity and play, as well as the meaning of the self and community.
18
In fact, since the arrival of the information society – and subsequently network society through the so-called digital revolution at the end of the 20th century – there has been a widespread use of the suffix -tainment such as infotainment and edutainment, denoting people’s growing desires to use media to participate in playful interactions in multiple facets of life; from serious topics of politics to trivial events of everyday life, wide-ranging aspects of social life can become, and many are already, spectacles that are results of creative expressions (though the size of the audience may vary). Satiric political videos on YouTube (www.youtube.com), and posts about mundane aspects of life on a personal blog or Flickr (www.flicrk.com) are examples of such expressions. In this respect, Burgess (2006, p. 206) has introduced a useful notion of vernacular creativity, which refers to ‘a productive articulation of consumer practices and knowledges (of, say, television genre codes) with older popular traditions and communicative practices (storytelling, family photography, scrapbooking, collecting)’ reducing the cultural distance between production and everyday experiences. Similarly, the rise of participatory culture (Jenkins, et al., 2006) or DIY culture (Hartley, 1999) has also led to examinations on new epistemological paradigms, as evidenced in Paulos’s (2008) notion of citizen science, which refers to the use of sensors and mobile devices by everyday people to participate in collecting and sharing environmental data around them. The growing trend of playful participatory activities across various social realms today denotes:
1. people have desires to play more than what is offered in their current situations; 2. network technologies allow interactive communication of such desires; 3. this encourages voluntary participation in the playful interactions; 4. an amalgam of such participation at a collective level brings about significant social changes, particularly through interchanging power position of the central with peripheral.
Therefore, play functions as a vital transformative element in human society. My research directly addresses this issue.
19 The City of Seoul Seoul became the capital city of Korea in the late 14th century, and has been at the centre of numerous significant events in Korean history since then – including the annexation by Japan (1910-45), the Korean War (1950-3), the Olympics (1988), and more recently, becoming the World Design Capital (2010 – cf. International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, 2009). What makes Seoul a unique and fascinating research case is its rapid economic, socio-cultural, and technological development since the end of the Korean War. Within half a century, Korea has made a leap forward from one of the smallest to the 11th largest economy (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 2007) with the highest Digital Opportunity Index in the world, based on internationally-agreed ICT development indicators (International Telecommunication Union, 2007). While the National Capital Area centring Seoul covers less than 12% surface area (11,686 sq. km) of Korea (99,720 sq. km), nearly half of the national population live in the region, contributing to approximately half of the national GDP (Fujita & Thisse, 2002). Seoul covers only 0.61% of the national surface area but is home to 21.6% of the entire Korean population. OECD reports that Seoul has the second highest population density amongst small region with 16,534 per sq. km (OECD, 2009, p. 17). As such, Seoul presents potentiality for diverse urban encounters (Lefebvre, 1996). Further adding to this is the rapid deployment and adoption of network technologies – a process that has been described as the ‘broadband miracle’ (Hazlett, 2004). Currently, Korea has one of the highest rates of broadband and personal computer penetration, both of which amount to approximately 80 per cent (MIC, 2008). This situation presents even more opportunities for people to interact with other tangible and intangible constituents of the city.
This study advocates the importance of play in creating a technosocially sustainable city today by examining the meaning and practice of play in the era of ubiquitous computing, where remixing of cultures, experiences, technologies, and facets of the self is open for participation and happening in everyday life via always-on everywhere network connection. For this exploration, I chose the city (of Seoul) as the field of research. The reason for this selection is twofold: first, in the context of ubiquitous computing, the city exists as a network of technosocial connections that
20 bring together people, place, and technology; and second, while cities are by default more digitally included than non-urban environments, 1 we are also currently witnessing an epochal shift in urban growth. More than half of the entire global population is now living in cities. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA, 2007, p. 2) predicts that the urban population will grow even further to reach 60 per cent of the entire global population by 2030. Such an exponential rate of growth implies increasing difficulty in urban planning and at the same time, opportunities for bottom-up or user-led innovations for transforming various infrastructures of the city, be they technological, social, and cultural.
In considering this trend, Lefebvre’s (1991) theories on the social production of space offer useful ways for understanding the role of human subjects in reconfiguring the city – the technosocial network that urban residents imagine, use, and change. Although such ideas have precursors in fields such as geography and anthropology (cultural geography is an archetypal example), Lefebvre’s postulations are particularly helpful for their analytical formulation of spatial production. He presents a conceptual triad, which consists of the conceived space (mental), perceived space (physical), and lived space (social). He asserts that spatial reality – through temporality-dependent transformation – is constructed by ‘spatial recognition, spatial knowledge, and ideological struggles for subjectivity’ and thus human geography should take account of ‘a discourse on spatial literacy and the struggle for spatial consciousness in order for the socio-spatial structures of everyday life to be named, deconstructed, and transformed’ (Allen, 1999: 258). The city as a collective social space reveals itself to us ‘in its particularity to the extent that it ceases to be indistinguishable from mental space (as defined by philosophers and mathematicians) on the one hand, and physical space (as defined by practico-sensory activity and the perception of ‘nature’) on the other’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 27). What Lefebvre asserts in this statement is that development of the city is not only about bricks and mortar, but it is also constructed by people’s mental and physical actions (cf. Klaebe, et al., 2009). As such, ubicomp today allows means to diversify and
1 Although a great share of urban residents around the world are living in slums without owning personal computers, the mobile phone is a pervasive feature in many slums, used as a tool to connect people and make socio-economic innovations (cf. Neuwirth, 2006; United Nations, 2008)
21 amplify people’s social construction of the city by reconciling the virtual and physical and/or abstract and concrete. People are active agents for sustenance of the city, as they ‘take positions, adopt strategies of engagements, and respond to the environment in active ways’ (Borden, et al., 2001, p. 13). As Tuan (2007, p. 6) asserts, ‘what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.’ In fact, people – the citizens or the users of the city – are the essential place-makers: people are both the constituents and creators of their cities, which are constantly in the process of re-making. Therefore, self- perception becomes the building block of the city through the individual’s practices in everyday life, while concurrently the city becomes the mould that shapes one’s identity.
In this regard, Seoul is a compelling case. Once known as the capital of the hermit kingdom, the city has metamorphosed itself to one of the most connected, densely populated, and economically dynamic metropolises in the world. This process has been tumultuous with political interferences including the Japanese occupation (1910-45), the Korean War (1950-3), and subsequently a long period of repressive authoritarian regime until 1987, when the transition to democratic rule came with president Roh Tae Woo (Haggard & Kaufman, 2008, p. 136). As with some other East Asian countries such as Singapore and Taiwan, South Korea’s economy prospered during the authoritarian era, chiefly through the affordances of consolidating executive leadership in decision making, and insulating policymaking from distributional pressures (Moon & Kim, 2000, p. 142). Within half a century, Korea made a leap from being one of the poorest countries to the 11th largest economy (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 2007) through export-oriented industrialisation. Perceptibly, political repression in conjunction with intense industrialisation led to the public’s growing dissatisfaction with the state of affairs and the government. This consequently brought about numerous demonstrations and collective movements especially amongst young Koreans, against which the government often undertook violent measures in response (Bedeski, 1994; Son, 1989).
Meanwhile, the government’s more pacifying approach to make its authority and legitimacy was through use of spectacles (Lee, 2005, p. 159; Manheim, 1990). As
22 well as international events such as the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and the World Expo in 1993, constantly reforming Korean urbanscape overlaid with omnipresent high- rises and digital screens demonstrates the government’s effort to legitimise their authority by visually manifesting ‘modernisation—amidst a broad concomitant suppression of nature, history, and human right’ (Choi & Greenfield, 2009, p. 22). Along with this came the emergence of culture de flux (culture of flux) as compared to culture de stock, or the museumisation of cities of the West (Gelézeau, 2007b). What then, is the people’s role in constructing this city of changes? In fact, throughout the development of modern day Korea till today, people have been a largely invisible element. Behind the gleaming exterior of skyscrapers and screens all around the city, people work, play, and live all the while reshaping the city together. Despite the active and constant participation of Koreans in (re)creating mediated and non-mediated spaces, for the most part much attention has focused on the government’s planning rather than people’s practices, even around subjects such as broadband penetration and media development (for example, the Korean Wave: the sharp increase in popularity of Korean popular culture especially in Asia starting at the end of the twentieth-century). It is more important now than ever, that we acknowledge the significance of people as agents of change and place-makers and integrate them in understanding and developing the city as a (techno)social place. This is the second vantage point that my research takes. By presenting the case of Seoul, the study hopes to provide useful knowledge for future technological, social, and urban developments in different geographical and cultural milieux.
Changing Individuals The self and the city constantly influence each other in forming their identities; this process operates ‘under erasure in the interval between reversal and emergence’ (Hall & Du Gay, 1996, p. 2). To put it simply, the identity – of a person or city – remains flexible yet inextricably interwoven with its history and current context. This means that people’s role as the place-makers involve creating and circulating meanings or values that are constantly changing. Therefore, the city that encompasses many types of infrastructures—social, technological, and cultural—is fundamentally based on how the self is defined and communicated with others;
23 though individuals have various degrees of influence on manifesting their will.2 While such constant changes in every facet of life including oneself evoke a sense of fragmentation, communication connects people in a way that gives – though temporarily – a sense of continuity. Although mainly directed towards eroticism, Bataille’s (1986) view on (dis)continuity and pleasure resonates strongly in this respect. Bataille argues that in our world of discontinuities, humans have innate needs to constantly pursue the ultimate joy, which ensues the – unsustainable and thus illusory – overcoming of discontinuity. Thus until death (the ultimate form of continuity as there can be no discontinuity), we go through metamorphic interplays in which we constantly recreate an environment for the imagined continuity and thus pleasure. Therefore communication, in its holistic form (of human interaction) is an instinctive activity for humans to fulfil both needs and desires to attain pleasure. With the two previously mentioned theoretical positions, this forms the point of departure for this research.
This study therefore explores this notion by examining how people perceive themselves, their environments, and interact with others through a variety of mediated and non-mediated communication channels I have selected a demographic called transyouth. At its core, the term refers to people in the transitional period between youth and adulthood and this demographic may be found in any given society (cf. Arnett, 2004 for a similar definition of extended adolescence or 'emerging adulthood'). However, I have selected this group for the unique technological and socio-cultural environments in which they are situated. They are as follows:
1. As evident in the emergence of neologisms such as tweens, kidults, adultescents, and middle-youth in contemporary consumer culture, borders around existing social categories are blurring. It is not coincidental that this
2 This is not to suggest that the existing structures imposed by the original designers of the structures – including cities – play arbitrary roles. While the designers can be considered planners, the users are the architects or developers as they actively recreate their experience with the system. Flaneurie (Baudelaire, 1995) is a good example of observant-participant practice that takes account of both subjective and objective understanding of the city and consequently (re)making the place.
24 phenomenon has occurred in parallel with widespread adoption of information and communication technology (ICT), which provides means for users to join various communities to exchange information and socialise without geographic constraints (I am, however, not arguing here that there is a clear separation between the online and offline identities). The extensive adoption of ICTs among Korean youth presents an exciting opportunity to explore how transyouth identify themselves socially, and how such self- identification is helped by and reflected in their use of network technologies.
2. Today’s transyouth are the children of the generation who were pressed to work hard under the authoritarian government. To some degree, the parents readily sublimated their personal desires and needs to the national good because they believed that their sacrifice would purchase more democratic and consumerist choices for their children. Now transyouth have become legal adults themselves – and perhaps more importantly, have passed the period of university entrance exam, a major rite of passage – they are socially encouraged and have more flexibility to develop an individual self-identity that is different from the previous collective identity of students (who must diligently study to enter prestigious universities). Therefore, how they perceive their sociocultural context presents a unique insight into the current state of development (including social, cultural, and technological) in Korea.
3. Transyouth have experienced both analogue and digital eras in their lives; they have also led the ‘Korean broadband miracle’ (Hazlett, 2004) by quickly adopting new technologies and actively participating in network interactions. While I acknowledge that they have varying levels of techno-efficacy and access to network technologies (cf. Livingstone & Helsper, 2007), their perception and use of technology for various day-to-day interactions can give indications for the future trajectory of technological development, and hence the city as a network.
By capturing the changes in people, technology, and place with playful communicative interactions as the connective tissue, this study presents an insight into the role of transyouth as agents for change in the society of flux.
25 Research Question and Aims The above three sections on ‘Play Today,’ ‘The City of Seoul,’ and ‘Changing Individuals’ have offered an introductory overview of some of the background that this study is built upon. The key ideas to take forward are:
1. play functions as a vital transformative element in human society; 2. people are agents for change, the place-makers of the city as a (techno)social network; and, 3. communication is an instinctive activity for humans to fulfil needs and desires to attain pleasure from connecting the self with others.
I place these three ideas in the contemporary urban context to form the central question for this research:
Given the constant interplay of changes between the self and the city, how does such transformative process occur through playful interaction via ubiquitous technology?
In answering this question, the following research aims guide this study by examining play at the intersection of people, place, and technology:
1. Examine the sociocultural, technological, and architectural context of Seoul; 2. Investigate Seoul transyouth’s perception of the self and their technosocial environment; 3. Identify the pattern of their playful interactions through which meanings of the self and the city are recreated; 4. Develop an analytical framework for enactment of play.
Significance of Research As a transdisciplinary project, this study allows for both theoretical and empirical contributions to diverse fields from cultural studies to human-computer interaction (HCI). The study principally contributes to four domains of knowledge: youth
26 studies (chapter 3.1), economics (chapter 3.2), urban informatics (chapter 3.3), and play theory (chapter 4). These areas are noticeably under-researched in relation to the local specificities of Seoul; existing literature to date consists mostly of technical or policy-driven studies regarding the extensive deployment of network technologies (cf. Frieden, 2005; Jyoti & Lee, 2004; Lau, et al., 2005). While it is true that Korea has taken the fastest path to become one of the most connected nations in the world (OECD, 2006), and that policy has played a significant role in this process, we also need to recognise and explore the contribution that individual users make through their continued and innovative use of network technologies and the city in their everyday lives. Similarly, while chaebol – large family owned conglomerates – have been an indispensible partner for the government in developing and deploying technologies in Korea as well as general development of economy, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) have also been filling gaps in niche markets. My thesis is an original contribution to a multi-layered understanding of playful interactions in Seoul today as conceived, perceived, and experienced by its people.
Moreover, the study takes an innovative methodological approach that includes what I call Shared Visual Ethnography (SVE), which undertakes visual ethnography (cf. Pink, 2007) in a participatory manner. The process involves use of network media (in this case, the photo-sharing site Flickr) to share both verbal and visual (photographic) descriptions of the self and environment, and create a holistic depiction that is co-created and refined by the researcher and the participants. As shall be discussed in the methodology section, SVE generates images that reflect images of the participants’ social values, which can be very difficult to verbalise and therefore to deduce exact meaning.
Thesis Structure This thesis is presented by published papers, and thus consists of a collection of writings on the research topic that have been published or submitted for review and publication during my candidature as per the following guidelines in QUT MOPP Appendix 9:
27 14.1.1 The Queensland University of Technology permits the presentation of theses for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the format of published and/or submitted papers, where such papers have been published, accepted or submitted during the period of candidature.
14.1.2 Papers submitted as a PhD thesis must be closely related in terms of subject matter and form a cohesive research narrative.
There are five main sections in this thesis: 1. Theories and context 2. Methodology 3. Results and discussion 4. Summation of theoretical and empirical findings: Play in the city 5. Conclusions
Figure 1 depicts the structure of the thesis. Of the seven publications presented, three are included in the first section, three in the third, and one in the fourth. All publications stand on their own, but have also been ordered to provide a conceptual flow that forms a cohesive research narrative; therefore, the order of presentation is not chronological.
28
Figure 1: Thesis structure
Section 1: Theories and Context
This section presents the outcome of an extensive literature review (see the methodology chapter for in-depth discussion on this process) to contextualise Seoul as a technosocial network. To achieve this, I start with examining the environment of Seoul in Chapter 1.1. Leading scholars of communication technologies (cf. Ito, et al., 2005; Katz & Aakhus, 2002; Ling & Donner, 2009) identify network communication as a sociocultural phenomenon. Similarly, in their discussion of the transition of the mobile technology from telephony to media, Goggin and Hjorth (2007, p. 8) emphasise the need to pay attention to local contingencies that influence the conditions for connection, disconnection, and disruptions. Thus I begin by looking at some of the most prominent cultural characteristics in the East Asian region. As with many other regions, East Asia is experiencing the culture of convergence in which values that were once considered dichotomous, now meet in confluence to create a wide variety of derivative cultural practices. By examining cultural qualities – however, by no means I claim to be an essentialist; this discussion derives from a larger body of literature in intercultural communication –
29 such as the polychronic perception of time (Hall, 1976), interdependent self- definition (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), and facework (Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998), the inter-relation between the use of mobile media and the existing cultural practices become unequivocally explicit. One of the most notable aspects in this case is the parallel between the distributed identity as necessitated by interdependent culture and afforded by mobile media. This suggests that the adoption and adaptation of digital communication differs amongst societies with varying cultural predispositions within the independent – interdependent dichotomy.
Chapter 1.2 narrows the scope further to discuss how cultural sensibility similarly played a vital role in the rise of the Korean Wave, a phenomenon that swept across Asia with Korean popular culture. Korean media products were received effortlessly in the region because of its foreign-yet-alike qualities – in other words, rendering common cultural sensibilities with new modern aesthetics. There are other factors too: the state of global economy contributed to the sales of Korean media that were less costly than its Japanese or North American counterparts; and the Korean government made a significant economic investment in the media industry under the regime of globalisation. However, at the core of this rise were the individual Koreans who have transformed what could have been a failed attempt by the government to a global phenomenon that contributed to a 0.18 per cent increase in the national GDP at its peak (Trade Research Institute, 2005). By utilising the prevalent broadband connection with one of the highest bandwidths in the world, the local audience became (re)creators who enhanced the quality of media through real-time critiques and suggestions, while also actively creating alternative channels for faster circulation and translation of media.
In Chapter 1.3, I deal with the concrete and physical configuration of Seoul. In pursuit of modernisation and economic development, the city is now imagined as a machine that is expected to generate happiness for the public (Choi & Greenfield, 2009, p. 32), but the process of such generation fundamentally overlooks those at the receiving end: people. I take this concern to examine the making of Seoul from the bottom-up by means of technology adoption and spatial creation. In particular, the bang (room) culture is explored in regards to how social spaces are created to connect abstract and concrete layers of reality. A close investigation into Seoulites’
30 use of space through prevalent screens and bangs reveals a significant shift in social paradigm towards distributed nomadism. In other words, the self exists as an amalgam of distributed nomads traversing across various interwoven layers of reality. Hence I argue that the self must be perceived as a modularised whole, rather than fragmented entities. Furthermore, such nomadic mobility is practiced in tactical response to and in context of the locally specific environment of the user; therefore it is fundamentally as much a public occurrence as private. This chapter highlights the indeterminate and contingent subjectivity of people, technology, and place.
Section 2: Methodology
According to Bucy and Newhagen (2003), the interpretation of new media access must go beyond the boundaries of technological tangibility, and encompass sociological and psychological realms, as the ultimate object of access is to understand ‘meaning,’ or more specifically, seek access to ‘a stream of words and images structured into narrative units called content (ibid, 5). They propose four main access dimensions, all of which must be deliberated in order to achieve a holistic understanding of new media access. Figure 2 is a simple visual representation of these dimensions:
Figure 2: Dimensions of access
With Bucy and Newhagen’s (ibid) view as the point of departure, the three main domains of enquiry are established: the self; access; and meaning. This chapter presents the methodological bricolage that weaves together elements of sociology, cultural studies, and ubiquitous computing, based on three research components of an extensive literature review, Shared Visual Ethnography, and interviews with industry representatives. Language, as a cultural product can be an inadequate tool for communicating topics that are abstract (haptic experience, for example – cf.
31 Marks, 2002). To surmount this, I ground the project in participatory methods involving both verbal (text and oral) and visual (photographic) communication with and amongst participants. Though with variations in competency, my research participants have capacity to use – and a keen habit of using – network media in their everyday lives. The study involves the research participants in documenting their daily lives and expressing opinions about the self and their environments via various communicative modes, then also sharing some of the documented data with the other participants. Furthermore, as research subjects, transyouth are positioned as the users of the technosocial system that is Seoul. Therefore, their practices are considered as reflective of the micro-level, user-led activities. To balance the viewpoint of the dynamic place-making process, I also examine the macro-level process by conducting interviews with high profile persons in industries germane to contouring the playscape in Seoul.
Section 3: Analysis and Discussion
This section presents the main body of empirical research, and incorporates interview data with high-profile industry representatives. The three publications presented in this section correspond to people, technology, and place under the overarching theme of play. Chapter 3.1 is an account from the perspective of ‘people.’ I describe a poignant sense of discontinuity amongst transyouth as a result of historic and contemporary political, economic, and sociocultural circumstances. I then present a model of playful communicative interaction that transyouth employ in multiplicity to evoke a sense of continuity. While the connection is a given parameter for transyouth, ‘social access’ becomes their need and desire. The foundational element for transyouth’s identity is ‘I am accessed, therefore I am’ the way Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ ([1637] 2007) was for the Western Philosophy.
In Chapter 3.2, I change the focus of examination from transyouth (Chapter 3.1 - People) to the business sector. I analyse interviews with high-profile industry representatives, including chaebol (Samsung and SK Telecom) and SMEs (10x10 and yanolja.com). I present contrasting views from the chaebol and SME sectors on the current Korean economy at the intersection of technological, urban, and socio-
32 cultural developments. While the chaebol and the state continue to favour the systemic sustenance of the existing technological and economic arrangements, SMEs and users continue to find new ways to break, disrupt, and recreate those systems to better meet their own needs and desires. Using the interface and interaction in metaphoric reference to control and freedom, I conclude by suggesting ways for chaebols, SMEs, and the Korean government to co-create a more usable and sustainable economic future based on user-led innovations, as Korea rapidly transitions from an industrial to post-industrial economy.
Chapter 3.3 presents an urban studies and informatics perspective. This chapter compares three types of spaces as the respective representations: public, private, and in-between with u-City (ubiquitous city); cocoon housing (new form of petite individual housing); and Cyworld (the largest Korean social networking site). The analysis of three interviews with the project leader of u-City, the owner of a cocoon house, and the founder of Cyworld, shows that despite emerging practices of user- led spatial production in both abstract and concrete forms, the government’s view – though technically advanced and future oriented – principally remains resistant to such possibilities. While offering an empathetic consideration to difficulties of incorporating legitimate consent to potential user-led micro-innovations over master- planning, I propose utilising network technologies to seek opportunities for novel methods of finding ways to identify, understand, and respond to such difficulties.
Section 4: Summation of Theory and Practice – Play in the City
This section ties all of these findings and looks towards the future of urban networks through the conceptual lens of play. I start by looking at the city as a contemporary techno-social network. I then examine key theories of play guided by Huizinga ([1939] 1955) and Caillois (1961), which affirm that play is a dialogic interaction between control and freedom. Textualisation of play – seeing play as text ‘within the network of intertextual relations’ (Morris & Frow, 2000, p. 328) – provides a logical means to explain ‘pleasure’ that ensues playful act, by situating the player as an active agent in the process of creating the meaning of playful experience. Based on these findings, I construct an analytic framework, or a conceptual model of play enactment that involves pressure, possibility, and pleasure. Having established the
33 theoretical basis for understanding play, I then examine Seoul as an urban network, and the role of play within it, specifically from the perspective of the government, business sector, and youth in Korea (in reference to Section 3). I argue that play is one of the key agents to support social sustainability in urban environments, and as such requires more vigorous explorations across disciplines.
Section 5: Conclusions
The final chapter brings together and summarises the main contributions of this study, reasserting the need to embrace nascent playful interactions by individuals to ensure social, technological, and cultural sustainability of the city. More importantly, the chapter identifies areas and questions that deserve further exploration and suggest ways in which this study can be usefully extrapolated in the future. There is no one-size-fits-all panacea for all issues stemming from the existing or emerging fragmentations contained in the city, because fragmentations themselves evolve from locally specific contexts. Therefore, this thesis does not claim to offer a prescriptive path to creating an ideal sustainable city for all. However, I argue that the most effective way to progress towards a better urban environment is through play – in other words, through understanding and encouraging playful interactions amongst people who live, work, and play in the city.
34 Section 1
Theories and Context
1.1 Approaching the Mobile Culture of East Asia 1.2 The New Korean Wave of U 1.3 Site Specific Mobility and Connection in Korea: Bangs (rooms) between Public and Private Spaces
35 Chapter 1.1 Approaching the Mobile Culture of East Asia
Choi, J. H.-j. (2007). Approaching the Mobile Culture of East Asia. M/C Journal, 10(1). Available: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/01-choi.php
Publisher: M/C Publication, Brisbane, Australia
Web: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal
Status: Published
Preamble This chapter has the broadest scope in section 1, which establishes the contextual basis of the thesis. The chapter introduces the conceptual background to the study by acknowledging and exploring the theoretical founding for the thesis: the convergence between technology and social, and productivity and play. It then presents East Asian cultural qualities germane to such convergences. The purpose of this chapter within the structure of the thesis is to create a conceptual space – setting the broadest boundaries of the space – the details and dimensions of which are explored and revealed in the following chapters and sections. Subsequent chapters (1.2 and 1.3) further build upon the notions probed in this chapter with a more focused scope (for example, the scope narrows from East Asia to Korea and Korea to Seoul in terms of locality).
36 Abstract Convergence is a term that has been gaining increasing attention across the globe. In recent years, wide diffusion and convergence of digital communication technologies – wired and wireless – have resulted in the emergence of two key paradigmatic convergences: between technology and sociality, and between productivity and play. This chapter introduces these two convergences in regards to the emerging mobile culture of East Asia, mainly focusing on Korea, Japan, and China, and examines some of the most commonly observed cultural characteristics specific to the region – for example, polychronic perception of time, interdependent identity, and facework – and their implications in shaping the mobile culture by adding local specificities in its configuration. By considering this in conjunction with youth’s playful use of the mobile phone as part of identity negotiation, the chapter argues for the need to explore the intersection of mobility, playful participation, and technosocial contextualisation in approaching the mobile culture in East Asia.
37 Introduction What are commonly perceived as ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ cultures differ greatly from food to communication, including the way one’s postal address is written, as aptly described by Uh-Ryoung Lee in Digilog Manifesto (2006, p. 89). In the West, one’s name comes first, followed by the street address, city, state, and the country; in contrast, in the (North-) East, one needs to write their address in the completely reverse order, starting with the country name and ending with the person’s name. Yet, Lee (ibid) further asserts, such disparity is annihilated in the World Wide Web, as each individual must uniformly write their address in the form of id@domain. However, such uniformity and/or convergence cannot be applied to the Internet as a whole; in fact, the situation is the opposite of that. Cultural traits of offline environments to which each user belongs affect those online, and the reverse process occurs simultaneously; in other words, society develops technology as much as technology develops society. From a geographical perspective – although this is not the only and entirely valid way of cultural classification – there are qualities that are unique to East Asia, and this is true for each sub-geographical component of the region.
Convergence is a term that has been gaining increasing attention across the globe. Conceptually situated between technological and sociocultural domains – as has been intensely debated by the technological and social determinists since the birth of computer mediated communication (CMC) – mobile culture is no exception. It is powered by interoperable and multifunctional mobile telecommunication technologies, which are also becoming increasingly high functional especially via fixed-mobile convergence, interconnecting fixed and wireless broadband networks. Wide diffusion and convergence of digital communication technologies – wired and wireless – in recent years have resulted in the emergence of two key paradigmatic convergences: between technology and sociality, and between productivity and play. I will first elucidate these convergences; I will then discuss cultural characteristics of specific East Asian cultures, focusing on South Korea, China, and Japan.
38 I would like to clarify at the outset that it is not my intention to essentialise or generalise about a pan-East Asian culture. I believe that such an attempt is an unproductive and misinformed generalisation. This is especially so in the lexicon of today’s transforming global culture with the rising notion of networked-identity (cf. boyd & Heer, 2006) and transnationalism. Instead, my general statements about cultural characteristics of East Asia derive from the results of my study on Cyworld, the most popular social networking site (SNS) in Korea, in 2004. The study was transdisciplinary in nature, and involved a quantitative analysis of one hundred randomly selected Mini-Hompies (Cyworld blogs) and twenty hybrid email questionnaires, which included a mixture of closed and open-ended questions. The results confirm that the basis of Cyworld’s success is not only in its accommodating newly forming individualistic predispositions of Korean youth, but also in its appeal to traditional attributes of collective Korean culture. From the initial motivations for joining, to interactions within and attitudes toward Cyworld, users utilise and seek the existing and potential ways to communicate themselves in a traditional cultural context; for example, amalgamations of multimedia elements are used as a form of high-contextual social cue provision to express the user’s current status as the interdependent self within collective in-groups.
These findings can be further extrapolated to other East Asian cultures as evidenced not only in comparable traditions, but also in some of the recent parallel technosocial developments in the region. Examples include the Korean Wave that has swept across Asia in recent years (on the emergence of East Asian identity through consumption of popular cultural products cf. Chua, 2004; Shim, 2006); and flourishing of SNSs that are based upon offline social networks – such as Cyworld and Mixi – that demonstrate strong collective in-group tendencies in the region. In this chapter, I conceptually base the findings from my earlier study to contextualise mobile phone use in East Asia, and conclude with an emphasis on three crucial elements of consideration in understanding mobile culture(s) of today.
39 Technology/Sociality Though not designed purposely for computer-mediated or intercultural communication, one of the most frequently cited theories in the field of communication is the two communication models suggested by James Carey (1989), in which he proposes the transmission and ritual models of communication. According to the former model, communication is defined by such terms as imparting, sending, transmitting, and giving information to others, projecting communication as ‘the transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control’ (ibid, p. 15). The latter model, in contrast, is described by terms such as sharing, participation, association, fellowship, and the possession of a common faith. Unlike the former, this model is ‘directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs’ (ibid, p. 18). At this point, however, it should be reiterated that these two models are not to be perceived as opposing modes, but rather as views, neither of which ‘necessarily denies what the other affirms’ (ibid, p. 21). Just as ‘a ritual view does not exclude the processes of information transmission … even writers indissolubly wedded to the transmission view of communication must include some notion … of ritual action in the social life’ (ibid).
In the domain of digital communication, Leaning (2002) suggests that CMC entails participation in a social unit in which information (meaning) is constantly recreated; thus the Internet should be ‘regarded as a social area’ (ibid, p. 22) Consequently, online communication highlights the ritual view of communication, and functions as an extension of existing offline social networks, which supports Matei and Ball- Rockeach’s (2002, p. 410) claim that differences in social connection on and offline can be influenced by social contexts, and by value orientations inherent in the individual’s cultural background. Conversely, because computer-mediated communication occurs in a technological system, technology reflects the social aspects of both the individual and community. This clearly demonstrates that researching digital communication should focus on technosocial contextualisation: the interplay between technological and social development, rather than the differentiation.
40 Productivity/Play Carey’s (1989) communication models can also be applied to the productivity/play concept. Initially, the main use of CMC technologies was to efficiently facilitate and coordinate emergency tasks among geographically distanced individuals or groups (Liu, 2002), which corresponds to the transmission model of communication. In this case, the communication is initiated and conducted for a specific goal or a task, which is to share particular information. On the other hand, with an increased level of interactivity via multimedia communication, CMC has been proving to be more and more a social activity, involving the user as both the producer and consumer in a loop of distributed information construction process (cf. Jenkins, 2004; Mann & Niedzviecki, 2001; Rheingold, 1994). In particular, Mann and Niedzviecki (2001, p. 181) describe the effect of this process as ‘an entirely different kind of synergy between the individual and the community,’ which emphasises the socio-emotional dimension of distributed digital communication.
Furthermore, such a process is clearly evident in the decreasing use of the term media consumer in today’s society, as the audience now acts as an active participant in the media production cycle in which the desired object of consumption is not only the product itself, but also, and more importantly, the experience. Bruns (2005) aptly frames the phenomenon as produsage. This term, according to Bruns (ibid), differs from Alvin Toffler’s (1980) now commonly used idea of prosumers, which denotes the advanced knowledge of consumers yet without altering their status as consumers. The most active produsers today – or digital natives in Prensky’s (2001) terminology – are undoubtedly the youth. Currently, and more so in the near future, these digital natives will be further empowered by the advancement of mobile network technologies, which allows ubiquitous multi-modal communication amongst individuals. Such mobile communication takes place regardless of, yet paradoxically in relation to, the user’s current spatiotemporal and social contexts as the communication concurrently takes account of the virtual – created in and through the mobile device – and the physical – where the user is physically located – realities. Reality construction, as proven in various fields of research, differs procedurally and configuratively from culture to culture.
41 Cultures of East Asia Korea, China, and Japan share a traditionally collective (Hofstede, 2006), interdependent (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), and high-contextual (Hall, 1976) culture, as opposed to individual, independent, and low-contextual cultures, which are predominantly evident in the West. These East Asian nations are heavily influenced by Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian ideologies, and therefore often embrace rigid social hierarchy or class distinction, conformity, and dedication to one’s duties within one’s own position (study for students, for example). An illustrative case of this is the intense social focus on the university entrance exam in these countries. The most important cultural value is in keeping the harmony within one’s in-groups, in which the self is defined in relation to one’s significant others, or in-group members, and communicate in an implicit non-verbal manner. This is a more textual – and also ritual in Carey’s (1989) definition, as alluded earlier – way of communication, which assumes more demands on the listener to actively infer social cues implied in the message, as compared to explicit low-contextual, and transmissional communication. The following three cultural characteristics play particularly crucial roles in making East Asian culture unique.
Polychronic Perception of Time According to Hall (1976), low-context cultures focus on explicit linear communication, so time is managed and rationed through the use of schedules (Smith & Bond, 1993). On the other hand, a polychronic tendency is evident in many high-context cultures, in which harmonious maintenance of selective relationships is more valued over prompt time management. This temporal dimension becomes even more substantial when applied to the everyday context of mobile phone use. The mobile phone acts as a ‘remote control’ that allows the user to switch from one reality to another by connecting the user to other people, applications, or contents. The omnipresent mobile phone embodies perpetual identity management. Clearly, this is a polychronic way of life. East Asian users’ familiarity with polychronism, therefore, is expected to lead to forms of interaction that are eminently dissimilar to those that occur in monochronic societies.
Interdependent Self-Definition In most cases, it is possible to say – at least in theory – that each individual exists as
42 a physically separate entity in society, yet retains their rights as a human being. This is to say that the significance of an individual, or a node in the human social network, is automatically accorded to the individual from their existence as a human being. However, the system of digital networks does not allow such automatic awarding of meaning to a particular node unless the node is ‘alive,’ or ‘active,’ in the network that it constitutes. The Internet consists of individual nodes interconnected in ‘an unconstrained, weblike way’ (Berners-Lee, 2000, p. 3).Therefore, nodes that are not in interconnection with other nodes within the network are considered not in existence from the network’s perspective, and ‘thus must be ignored (if it is not relevant to the network’s task), or eliminated (if it is competing in goals or in performance)’ (Castells, 2000, p. 15). This view of digital network configuration shares fundamental similarities with the concept of interdependent self-construals. In interdependent cultures, the self is primarily formed and sustained by its social environment (Kim, 2002, p. 73). This is the fundamental aspect that is analogous to digital network systems. Naturally, implications regarding the acceptance and utilisation of digital communication are expected to be different in cultures with different predispositions within the independent – interdependent dichotomy.
Facework As has already been discussed in this chapter, Western and non-Western cultures can be fundamentally distinguished by applying the dialectic dimensions of collectivism–individualism, which subsequently relate to the interdependence- independence and high context–low context dimensions. Across these three key dichotomies, a disparity is found in the way self is defined in different cultures. Ting-Toomey and Kurogi’s (1998) face-negotiation theory highlights this phenomenon. While every individual endeavours to keep a relatively positive and respectable face in society, the key distinction lies in the objective of the maintenance of face, or facework (Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998, p. 188).
In individualistic cultures, the self remains the predominant focus of facework over others; therefore, the nature of facework is self-oriented in most communicative situations. Conversely, in collectivistic cultures, focus exists in duality: firstly to maintain one’s face as an appropriate member of the social network; and secondly, to save the faces of the significant others in a similar manner (Gudykunst &
43 Matsumoto, 1996; Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998). This particular aspect is manifested in many different customs of East Asia. In Chinese culture, this dual facework functions as one of the cardinal element of guanxi, a central concept of social relation; in Japan, it is socially expected of a mature individual to have honne – true feelings that one is expected to keep inside only – and tatemae – socially expected face; in the case of Korea, nunchi – ability to interpret the social cues of others – is an essential social component. What needs to be emphasised here is that the self that is constructed, sustained, and distributed via network technologies – the mobile phone provides a more immediate means than wired devices – and is consequential to the user’s facework strategies. Hjorth and Kim’s (2005) study on young people’s performative gendered representation of the self on Cyworld is an exemplary case of such virtual facework.
Digital Youth of Asia Youth have always played a significant role in the reception and production of new technological phenomena. In many cases, young people, especially females, transformed the pragmatic purpose of the technology to essentially social purposes and avail themselves to new technologies as seen in the evolution of the mobile phone from a business technology to social necessity (cf. Matsuda, 2005; Miyata, et al., 2005; Okada, 2005). A tendency for value transformation is also evident in their increasing individualism and capitalist ideologies, as reported by Tesoro (2000). A study by Na and Duckitt (2003) on cultural consensus and diversity shows similar findings, but some traditional values such as conformity and benevolence are mutually shared across generations and genders. This indicates that traditional collectivist and interdependent qualities still remain inherent in Asian youth culture.
My study of Cyworld (Choi, 2006b) finds that technological innovations are built upon existing social values, and further developed by youth to tactfully project both traditional and new facets of their identities. Weber (2002, p. 347) makes a similar observation in his analysis of identity negotiation among urban Chinese youth – ‘functional coexistence of individualistic and collectivist values systems’ – in Wei Hui’s semi-autobiographical novel Shanghai Baby. In Japan, escapism and social
44 deviance are found to be predominant results of youth’s struggle at the nexus between the traditional and new individualistic social values. Examples include Aoki’s photographic depiction of youth identity negotiation through Shibuya street fashion in Fruits (2001) and Fresh Fruits (2005); to a certain extent, Ito and Okabe’s study (2001), in which students are found to use their mobile phones to create virtual layers of reality separate from the traditionally rigid social hierarchy apparent in the physical reality; and Hikikomori phenomenon, a mental affliction affecting over 1 million young Japanese, of which sufferers typically lock themselves up in their rooms and only interact with digital media such as television and video games (Jones, 2006; Murakami, 2000; Ogino, 2004).
Mobile Phone: Access and Uses According to a recent press release from Nokia (2006), the global penetration rate of the mobile phone is expected to grow to three billion by 2008. Eighty percent of this growth will come from new growth markets, particularly China and Asia-Pacific region, which are expected to make up 50 percent of the next billion subscribers. These statistical data confirm that the mobile phone has become the most prominent universal form of wireless communication technology, especially with the global diffusion of 3G contents and applications.
From a macro, statistical perspective, each of the three nations shows a high level of technological access and presents unique areas of strengths in the sphere of mobile use. Japan, one of the global frontiers of technological developments, has been one of the most successful countries in mobile data penetration, especially since the introduction of i-mode by NTT Docomo in early 1999. Korea is catching up fast with an increasing 3G penetration rate, which currently exceeds 40% (3G, 2006). Considering the synergistic potential of national mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and LG with the nation’s high broadband penetration rate – one of the highest in the world – Korea presents an exciting research case as evident in recent technological developments such as DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) and WiBro (Wireless Broadband). China’s strength, on the other hand, lies mostly in the enormous number of mobile phone subscribers, which currently exceeds 400
45 million, making the nation the world’s largest mobile market (Gonsalves, 2006).
The low technological barrier of the mobile phone allows for no noticeable divergence in access to the multi-functional mobile technologies amongst many countries around the globe. This has been evidenced in the UN’s wireless universal connectivity initiatives to reduce the global digital divide in recognition of the mobile phone’s cost-effective deployment and hardware distribution (Wireless Internet Institute, 2003). Therefore, the unique position of East Asia in terms of mobile access arises from social access rather than technological; more specifically, the robust social motivation and acceptance of the technology distinguishes the region from the others. The mobile culture of Europe and the keitai (ke-tai) culture of Japan, for example, do not only differ in names. Ericsson’s senior market analyst Atsuhiko Ohkita puts it this way:
In Europe, a mobile phone is still a phone … In Japan, the ke-tai means web access, e-mail, games, and so on – that’s the definition. Voice is just a very small part of the handset’s function. (Ericsson, 2006)
Therefore, interpreting experiences that occur through the mobile phone necessitates a significantly increased focus on individual-level communication that takes account of sociocultural and cognitive contexts.
Emergence of Mobile Media Previous studies regarding the uses of the mobile phone tended to focus on empirical research into the use of mobile use by youth of various cultural backgrounds, including Japan (Ito & Okabe, 2001), UK (Berg, et al., 2003), and Finland (Oksman & Turtiainen, 2004). These studies present a surprisingly large number of similar (if not identical) findings, particularly in the magnitude of text messaging practice as compared to that of voice call. This provokes two assumptions: firstly, the cost of mobile messaging is generally lower and more controllable than voice calling; and secondly, factors such as lifestyle, established social norms and regulations make the act of text-messaging more appropriate than the act of making and receiving voice calls. A point that should be emphasised here is that mobile text messaging normally takes a form of linear interpersonal communication between two participants. However, rapid developments in wireless network and multimedia technologies –
46 mobile Internet and DMB, for example – present additional dimensions to mobile communication beyond such communicative linearity. In a pragmatic sense, the era of mobile media has truly begun at least in some countries such as Korea, Japan, and the USA.
Two emerging areas in the growing mobile media research are personal identity formation and location-based applications. With the proliferation of social networking sites – such as Cyworld (www.cyworld.com) and Myspace (www.myspace.com) – and media sharing sites – such as Flickr (www.flickr.com) and YouTube (www.youtube.com) – came an escalating interest in research on visual self-projection online. Much of the literature on Korean mobile media is found in gender-related issues, with most of studies examining the young women’s use of camera phone (cf. Hjorth, 2006; Hjorth & Kim, 2005; D.-H. Lee, 2006; Yoon, 2006a). This frame of analysis then bifurcates into the gendered technology discourse and the male gaze in relation to feminine beauty.
Kim (cited in Hjorth & Kim, 2005, p. 51) claims that although the initial take up of the mobile phone was led by males, its flourishing, especially through social convergence via social network sites like Cyworld – was and still is pioneered by young females. Lee and Sohn (cited in D.-H. Lee, 2006) provide empirical support for Kim’s standpoint by showing that women are more active in adopting multimedia functions than men. Lee (ibid) states that there is evidence that women are aware of the male gaze, and conform to gender roles by means of performative identity presentation through digital imaging. However, the fact that women do not passively consume culture but actively participate in production, Lee asserts, signifies an optimistic start in gender equality in traditionally patriarchal Korean society. The issue of gender performativity in Korea has been discussed in various contexts, ranging from plastic surgery (Woo, 2004) to mobile photography (Hjorth, 2006) in which women are found to actively perform their gender identity through aesthetics – physical alteration or creating the atmosphere of “cuteness.” Paradoxically, women were also found to be more comfortable with and actively engage in projecting their individuality through mobile photography than men. Ito and Okabe’s (2005) ethnographic study on camera phone use in Japan also demonstrates more individual or ‘intimate’ approach to mobile imaging. They attribute this propensity to the
47 portable, ubiquitous, and private/selectively shared quality of the mobile phone.
The freedom of mobility afforded by the mobile phone did not nullify the spatial dimension of its use. Instead, it brought about an increased attention to and attempts toward connecting mobility and space and objects within the space. In his presentation ‘Pervasive Electronic Games,’ Bleeker (2006) argues that pervasive games can invoke increased awareness to objects and subjects that are often ignored, and thus provoke new social perspectives. One example of this development is Silverstone and Sujon’s (Silverstone & Sujon, 2005) ‘Urban Tapestries’ project, which explores the inter-relations amongst the human, technology, and space. Using a wireless location-based application called Urban Tapestries, the user is able to embed textual or audio narratives to places that inspired them. The user can also view and interact with other users’ narrative trails on the map, thereby creating a multi-layered shared history of the city. The project noted the following findings:
1. Human-technology relationship is both liberating and constraining. 2. Technologies as extensions of the self are now crucial parts of one’s identity. 3. However, humans still desire control over technologies. 4. Creativity emerges from playing. 5. Urban Tapestries is one way to create ‘cultural meanings’ through the mutual relationship amongst people, technology, and place.
In a different context, following their previous work on mobile camera use in Japan, Okabe Ito, Chipchase, and Shimizu (2006) present another anthropological study that is ostensibly counter-conceptual to the former: investigating the location- specific photo taking and modding culture of Japanese youths, at the centre of which is Purikura, the sticker photo booth. The studies of Silverstone and Sujon (2005) and Okabe et al. (2006) are inventive and up-to-date empirical efforts to examining playful interactions connecting the human, technology, and space, in relation to (or in contrary to) mobility. They also address an important role that sociality and pleasure play in user-led cultural productions. However, they do not – as is the case with the current literature in general – offer much needed insight into some fundamental questions: what do ‘mobility’ and ‘playfulness’ mean to the user? What is the motivation for participation? How is the participation negotiated in an everyday context? And what are the implications of such participatory culture for
48 technological and sociocultural domains?
These are some of the questions that need to be answered in order to understand and construct the future of the multifarious mobile culture(s), which is found in the area of convergence amongst multiple layers of virtual and physical realities. These realities can be constructed and entered into via a network device – both wired and wireless – on a voluntary basis. Here, the two converging dichotomies of technology/social and productivity/play become unequivocally explicit. By entering the mobile media network, the user automatically turns into an active node of the network society, a participant in transforming the ever-evolving media ecology of various strata. As Jenkins et al. (2006, p. 7) assert, ‘it matters what tools are available to a culture, but it matters more what that culture chooses to do with those tools.’ In studying transformations of contemporary society, there are at least three fundamental elements of consideration stemming from today’s prevalent and expanding mobile interactivity: mobility, playful participation, and technosocial contextualisation. The intersection of these elements is precisely where the fundamental sources of future sociocultural transformations can be found, and therefore where rigorous cross- and trans-disciplinary explorations must take place.
49 Chapter 1.2 The Korean Wave of U
Choi, J. H.-j. (2008). The New Korean Wave of U. In H. K. Anheier, Y. R. Isar, A. Paul & S. Cunningham (Eds.), The Cultural Economy (pp. 148-154). London: Sage.
Publisher: Sage, London, UK
Web: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId= Book230746
Status: Published
Preamble This book chapter builds and further expands on the notion of technological/social and productivity/play convergences and cultural characteristics that were introduced in Chapter 1.1 in order to examine how cultural sensibilities and playful participation has brought about the (rise of) contemporary Korean media industry. The Korean Wave (also known as hallyu or hanryu) is used as a case study. The chapter acknowledges and reviews the critical role of policy as a means of top-down control for exogenous (international circumstance and interventions such as the International Monetary Fund’s involvement in the Korean economy) and endogenous (national media and economic policy) transformations in the Korean mediascape. However, the chapter highlights the impending need to recognise and reconsider playful interactions as a means for bottom-up reconfiguration of their technosocial environment, by revealing that young Korean’s participatory network culture has been and will be the main generator of this major media-cultural phenomenon known as the Korean Wave. This is one of the key arguments of this thesis. I iteratively refer to the argument with empirical findings in Section 3.
50 51 Chapter 1.3 Site Specific Mobility and Connection in Korea: Bangs (rooms) between Public and Private Spaces
Choi, J. H.-j., Foth, M., & Hearn, G. (2009). Site Specific Mobility and Connection in Korea: Bangs (rooms) between Public and Private Spaces. Technology in Society, 31(2), 133-138, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2009.03.004.
Publisher: Elsevier, Amsterdam
Web: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc
Status: Published
Preamble As the final chapter in Section 1 (Context), this chapter narrows the scope of exploration even further than Chapter 1.2 and deals with issues that are more locally specific (Seoul as compared to Korea) and concrete (physical configuration of Seoul as compared to the Korean mediascape). This chapter establishes a critical conceptual position for the thesis: that the city exists as a technosocial network as exemplified by Seoul, one of the most connected and socioculturally unique metropolises in the world. Furthermore, the notion of bang (room) is explored as a locally-specific metamorphic space. Various forms of bangs have proliferated with the growing embeddedness of network technologies in everyday life of Seoulites. As such, I note a need to reconsider bangs as interweaver of reality layers – be they media, sociocultural, and architectural – that concurrently exist while constantly transforming in Seoul as a technosocial network. I demonstrate how this process occurs in day-to-day lives of Seoul transyouth with support of empirical data in Section 3.
62 Statement of Contribution The authors listed below have certified* that: • they meet the criteria for authorship in that they have participated in the conception, execution, or interpretation, of at least that part of the publication in their field of expertise; • they take public responsibility for their part of the publication, except for the responsible author who accepts overall responsibility for the publication; • there are no other authors of the publication according to these criteria; • potential conflicts of interest have been disclosed to (a) granting bodies, (b) the editor or publisher of journals or other publications, and (c) the head of the responsible academic unit, and • they agree to the use of the publication in the student’s thesis and its publication on the Australasian Digital Thesis database consistent with any limitations set by publisher requirements.
In the case of this chapter: Site Specific Mobility and Connection in Korea: Bangs (rooms) between Public and Private Spaces (2009) Contributor Statement of contribution
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi
Wrote the manuscript, revised and edited Signature
Date
Greg Hearn Contributed to Introduction and conclusion; revised and edited Contributed to Introduction and conclusion; revised and edited; liaised with the Marcus Foth editor
Principal Supervisor Confirmation I have sighted email or other correspondence from all Co-authors confirming their certifying authorship.
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63 Abstract Although social and cultural research on mobile communication is exploding, many studies tend to take a technical view on the mobile phone as a personal networking device that connects people ‘anywhere anytime.’ Little cultural research has examined the uptake of mobile applications that are anchored to specific sites, especially outside Euro-Americo localities. To address this, we analyse media experience in the lived spaces of the Korean bang (room) culture. These rooms provide various social spaces such as DVD-, Jjimjil- (sauna), Norae (karaoke)-, and PC-bangs. We position mobile technology along a blurring border between work and leisure and conceptualise the use of mobile phones for the symbolic creation, demarcation, and integration of public and private spaces in a digitally connected urban environment. This analysis helps us gain an understanding of the socioculturally specific rationales and desires behind technology design and adoption in the South Korean context.
64 Introduction The increasing ubiquity of mobile phones and wireless devices in both developed and developing countries affects the communicative ecologies of personal social networks with broader repercussions on employment, business operations, education, and health services. Mobile phone applications and services such as 3G (Third Generation), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), mobile email, and Internet are more multifunctional than basic – though popular – conventional services such as SMS (Short Messaging Service); the growing social, cultural, and economic impact of mobile digital content and services is evidenced in North-American, European, and South East Asian nations in particular as the major telecommunication carriers commit to 3G, next-G (Next-Generation), and associated enhanced services in the coming years (Bach, et al., 2003).
Many mobile phone users now have a means to synchronise everyday life (Ling, 2002) with home, school, and work through SMS, mobile email, photo and video messaging. These innovative, though arguably straightforward mobile phone applications do not fully portend evolving and undetermined cultural and social reappropriations and implications. Documented examples to date of mobile phone effects and applications beyond voice call functions in, for example, the health area include: the use of mobiles for electronic transfer of tracheal breath sounds to remotely monitor asthma patients (Anderson, et al., 2001); research showing adolescents using mobile phones as a complementary behaviour to taking up smoking to demonstrate maturity (Anderson, et al., 2001); stress-related atopic eczema caused by mobile phone ringing (H. Kimata, 2003); and the use of SMS as a form of contact tracing in a hospital (Newell, 2001). In 2004, medical workers sent data about medical trauma injuries to other clinicians via mobile network from remote locations in Bande Aceh in Indonesia after the Boxing Day Tsunami (Maslog-Levis, 2005). Not as antidotal was the case of the hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans in 2005, during which the lack of communication capacity, especially amongst medical team members, was found to be one of the main obstacles for effective and efficient recuperation (CBS News, 2005). The variety of usages of mobile and wireless technologies extends far beyond voice and SMS. A Japanese company already offers the possibility for artificial fingernails to be embedded with
65 small LEDs. Powered remotely by the phone, they glow when the phone is in use (Townsend, 2000). It has been envisaged that micro-devices may be inserted into teeth to provide a direct and discrete conduit between mobile signals and the body (McKenna, 2002). Current Bluetooth technology advances such body-phone integration, the so-called Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A wide variety of technologies such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identity) tags, GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking, PDAs (Personal Digial Assistants), digital cameras, and music players are being converged and embedded in mobile and wireless
devices in various combinations with local and global network connection.
Research situating new media use in place found that the Internet and other forms of global networks enable the exchange of business information and the real-time communication between corporate players across nations. Conversely, there is also a noticeable trend towards using the global network for local, place-based, and social interaction (Fallows, 2004; Horrigan, 2001; Horrigan & Rainie, 2001). New web services such as Google Maps and upmystreet.com pay tribute to this trend by providing location-based directories, services, and discussion boards. This line of thought is also evident in the large volume of phone calls and emails that connect people within a close geographical proximity (Urry, 2003): the same city, company, and community.
In this respect, Davies’s (2004) report on proxicommunication provides a solid overview of the various roles and impacts that ICTs can have in the local public realm. In the report’s summary, he rightly argues that:
New technologies tend to be met with a hail of predictions about their social ‘impact’. Over the past decade, digital technologies have often been presented as forces for globalisation and the ‘death of distance’, yet the vast majority of people’s day-to-day activities remain fairly local. So does this mean that these technologies do not have a role to play in such activities? Not at all. (ibid, p. 86)
Couldry and McCarthy present a concept of mediaspace in a similar vein (Couldry & McCarthy, 2004), a concept that they define as ‘a dialectical concept encompassing both the kinds of spaces created by media, and the effects that existing spatial
66 arrangements have on media forms as they materialise in everyday life.’ An exemplary case of this concept is Silverstone and Sujon’s Urban Tapestries project (Silverstone & Sujon, 2005), which explores the inter-relations between people, technology, and space. They suggest that the human-technology relationship is both liberating and constraining, and argue that technologies as extensions of the self are now crucial parts of one’s identity. Urban Tapestries allows participants to recreate cultural ‘meanings’ by playfully yet productively creating mutual relationships between people, technology, and place. In the case of Japan, Okabe, et al., (2006) present the location-specific photo taking and modding culture of Japanese youths, at the centre of which is the Purikura, the sticker photo booth. The studies of Silverstone and Sujon, and Okabe et al. examine playful interactions connecting the human, technology, and space, in relation to (or contrary to) mobility, while unpacking the important role that sociability and pleasure play in user-led cultural productions.
In this chapter, we attempt to expand on these current findings with the fundamental understanding that social meanings are recreated in lived spaces as much as they are encoded and transformed in media. More specifically, we ask the following essential questions:
• How can mobile technology be conceptualised in a wider technosocial ecology? • How does the place of engagement interact with use of mobile technologies?
We observe that mobile technology can be both pervasive and persuasive. At the same time, access to wireless technology is affected by the user’s socio-geographical environment, which is also pervasive and persuasive. So then, how is the boundary between work and play being negotiated? How are cultural meanings negotiated? How does the technology / place / person mix evolve? And how can we make sense of different stages of development of mobile culture, especially when variations in such stages are evident even in the same society? An appropriate answer to all these questions would require a large and longitudinal study. Within the scope of this chapter, we respond to these by examining how mobility and connection are
67 established and integrated into work and leisure at a specific site of the bang in one of the most connected and urbanised societies in the world: South Korea.
The Bang Culture in the City of Flux Today Korea is home to over 49-million people (Central Intelligence Agency, 2007); it is also home to some of the largest electronic corporations such as Samsung and LG; it boasts one of the highest broadband penetration rates and the fastest adoption rates of new network technologies (OECD, 2006). Not surprisingly, the country has been ranked at the top of ITU’s Digital Opportunity Index for the past two years (International Telecommunication Union, 2006). However, before reaching this status, Korea went through a series of major metamorphoses: from a hermetic oriental kingdom to a Japanese annex, then to a war zone, to which the end – two ends, to be exact – came with the physical division between North and South. The mass destruction of war positioned the divided nation at the bottom of the global economy, barely comparable to some of the poorest countries in Africa (The World Bank, 2006). Half-a-century later, South Korea stands on a far different economic plane to its other half; it has seen an eleven-fold increase in GDP per capita (ibid), making it the 11th-largest economy in the world (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 2007). According to Fujita and Thisse (2002), 46.2% of the GDP is generated in the capital region of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. Evidently, Seoul is a concrete manifestation of the rapid and rumbustious development of contemporary Korea, which resonates with the concept of culture de flux – also evident in other East Asian cities such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai – as compared to culture de stock, or the museumisation of cities of the West (Gelézeau, 2007b). Seoul, as one of the most densely populated and also most technologically connected cities in the world – at 16,551 people per square kilometre, it has a higher population density than Tokyo (13 657) and New York (9 475) (Population & Social Statistics Bureau, 2007) – is in constant and accentuated flux, in which every constituent is intricately and inherently inter-connected.
The complex technosocial configuration of Seoul is aptly framed by comments by the former Vice Mayor of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Hong-bin Kang, who notes the city’s evidently ‘paradoxical combination’ of ‘too much planning’ and ‘too
68 little planning’ (Kim, 2005). Adding to this multi-layered, seemingly non- typological complexity is the emerging erosion of spatial boundaries not only in a conceptual sense but also sensorial and structural. This aspect can be shown by examining the space of the high-rise, one of the most identifiable features of the contemporary urbanscape. While the design of its exterior obscures the physical limit through visual sensory effects, its interior (how sub-spaces are used) re- territorialises the building and further, the entire city, by creating a sense of trans- spatiality. We explain this idea further below.
Architectural metamorphosis of lived spaces into media infrastructure is not a new concept and has been a common – largely commercial – fixture of the urbanscape for the past few decades. However, as Vanderbilt (Vanderbilt, 2005) suggests, Seoul presents an especially interesting case for its accommodation of the ubiquity of the screen in the fabric of its ‘illegible’ urbanscape. Screens can be found inside – at the lobby, in subways, elevators, cars, and each individual’s hand – as well as outside in public spaces; not only in the form of billboard LED screens, but also as the exterior surface of the building. A prime example of this is the Galleria department store in Apgujeong-dong: the entire façade is made up of light-reactive, programmable screens that are capable of generating 16-million colours (Arup, 2004). The familiar straight seams of the building are overshadowed by forms projected by changing lights and colours on the screens, and thus the sensorial and conceptual demarcation of physical space becomes obscured. Such architectural developments together with other infrastructural developments turn the entire metropolis into what Vanderbilt calls ‘circuit city’ (Vanderbilt, 2005), with an extensive and multi-layered technosocial ecology. Here, the notion of spatial specificity becomes markedly individualised and subjective in terms of interpretation and reconstruction of the human subject’s spatial experience, which encompasses not only the pre-defined space itself – both physical and non-physical – but also technosocial components.
Mediated City of Bangs The increasing lifestylisation of screens, however, does not make physical spatiality obsolete. Rather, it augments and heightens collective spatial sharing through the ubiquitous inter-media communication afforded by screens, as well as the strong
69 collective cultural tendencies of Koreans, as evidenced in the contemporary commercial bang (room) culture (Kim, 2005; Vanderbilt, 2005). The Korean Pavilion at the 9th Architecture Biennale of Venice was dedicated to the theme City of the Bang. The following excerpt from Sung Hong Kim’s curatorial statement describes the essence of this culture (emphases added):
While the room has traditionally been considered a walled segment in a domestic space, the bang has infiltrated the Korean urban landscape of commercialized space with enterprises such as the PC bang, Video bang, Norae bang, Jjimjil bang, Soju bang, and others. The Norae bang, a scaled-down version of the Karaoke bar, is the primeval cave festival in the midst of the contemporary city. Visual, audible, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory sensations are simultaneously experienced in this tiny black box. Meanwhile, the Jjimjil bang, which combines a steam bath, fitness room, lounge, restaurant, and sleeping area, provides space where half-clothed bodies intersperse between a variety of functional areas. The Jjimjil bang blurs the lines between the collective and the individual, normal and deviant behaviour, privacy and voyeurism. The bang is an incarnation of the room, the house and the city, but it does not belong to any of them. The city of the bang oscillates between the domestic realm, institutionalized place, and urban space. (Kim, 2004)
A single building can consist of vertically layered eclectics of bangs – Jjimjil bang underground, café on the ground floor, PC bang on the first floor and so on – the randomness of which is not evident from the exterior of the building itself (ibid), if not through the common fixture of a great assortment of signs and screens covering the building. Kim further asserts that Koreans’ use of bangs stems from the ‘fear of alienation’ and the subsequent need to ‘constantly reconfirm their sense of relatedness’ (ibid). Although we feel that this is an overstatement to a certain extent, we note that collective cultural tendencies still prevail in many East Asian cultures, including Korea, as suggested by Choi in her discussion of East Asian mobile culture (Choi, 2007b – see Chapter 1.1).
70 Linguistic translation of bang also requires understanding of such cultural connotations. Although bang is literally translated as ‘room’ in general, such a translation only correctly conjures up the measurable geographical configuration of space and fails to convey another important – perhaps more important – aspect: the social construction of space, especially the types of social activities that take place within, which evidently (re)define the space for the occupant. Essentially, a bang is an architectural manifestation of a multifunctional space contrary to the Western definition of room, a single-purpose space that is designated for a specific function. For example, the traditional custom (which continues to be in practice in smaller residences) of serving food on a low fold-away table transforms the living room into the dining room, which can then turn into a study or for entertainment during the day before finally becoming a bedroom when a Yo (Korean futon) is unfolded on the floor at night. The bang is a typologically flexible, multifunctional space (Choi & Greenfield, 2009) in which multitudes of individual and collective activities occur, obliterating the boundaries between social dichotomies such as work and leisure, as well as public and private. Furthermore, the lack of personal space, in combination with the group-oriented social expectation, functions as a complementary key driving force behind the proliferation of bangs in geographically dense and culturally collective Korean society. In this line of thought, bangs are places for both work and leisure that can be readily reconstructed according to the individual’s needs. Moreover, screens – on mobile phones, televisions, computers, and so on – are palpable features in bangs, even in Jjimjil bang, which has sub-bangs with temperatures that can be as high as 70°C. Clearly, urban screens are ubiquitous; so are the Koreans’ individual and collective needs and expectations for such communicative ubiquity, to play and to work in and through screens – to live life in urban Korea.
71 Fragmented vs Modularised In 2002, Nicola Green stated (emphasis added):
The decentralization of communication creates new webs of potential interaction between atomized individuals, which on the one hand increases the communication activities carried out, while at the same time fragmenting that communication into more numerous communications of shorter duration. (Green, 2002, p. 284)
This statement conveys the notion of holistic, ritual communication (for discussion of Carey’s transmission vs ritual communication model in the context of computer- mediated communication, cf. Choi, 2007b – see Chapter 1.1), while taking a dependent, atomised view of individuals as nodes of a communication network. Such a view appears to be losing its validity, even from a strictly technological perspective, as today’s communication networks become increasingly multi-layered and inter-related, involving multiple networks and interoperable devices. Within the context of ubiquitous technology, the conceptualisation of the self extends beyond the autonomous physical self; it demands a transformation to the self that is readily and flexibly adaptive to the current spatiotemporal context, as much as it demands the reversal. Therefore, one useful way of approaching technosocial development would be to adopt the concept of modularisation as opposed to fragmentation by acknowledging the fundamental element of complex relationality in the broader network of human society (Urry, 2005), encompassing non-linear, multi- evolutionary interaction amongst the constituents. As a multifunctional network device, the mobile phone is increasingly acting as the management platform through which such modularisation is configured and interpreted.
Ubiquity and Mobility: Changing Reality/ies In a recent news column, Lee (2007) compares the current state of Korean IT to Acromegaly, accusing the public’s over-consumption of technology, including the shortest mobile phone life cycle in the world (1.44 years, approximately half of the global average) and the youth’s excessive use of SMSs (Korean teenagers between
72 fifteen and nineteen send an average of at least sixty messages each day). Lee (ibid) also refers to a recent report by the Bank of Korea on household consumption expenditures: the figures show that Koreans spend more money on communication – such as broadband and mobile phone subscriptions – than on food and accommodation. Discussing the significance of this phenomenon is beyond the scope of this chapter; however, the situation clearly heralds imminent and fundamental sociocultural transformations that need to be discussed.
As asserted throughout this chapter, the current technosocial context is complex, and this precludes formulaic predictions for its future trajectories. Nevertheless, Minsuk Cho’s (2007) paper at the 2007 Holcim Forum, ‘Urban_Trans_Formation,’ provides a plausible sketch by describing two contrasting lifestyles: revolving around what he calls Hilberseimer’s dream (the spatial house) and the Flâneur in the digital age (the temporal residence). The former refers to the majority of Koreans’ dream of owning a residence (a brand-name apartment) in Seoul, and the latter to the emerging mobile lifestyle of contemporary flâneurs or urban nomads, who are capable of creating and appreciating subjective experiences of space: those who are able, in Baudelaire’s (1995, p. 9) words, ‘to be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world.’ In Cho’s (2007) depiction, this new mobile urban tribe constantly and spontaneously travels through the plethora of bangs and other 24-hour establishments, such as convenience stores, to fulfil their needs. The priority and schedules for such travelling are decided by the individual, not according to existing social norms. This intrinsically individualistic life is only possible via the mass collective sharing of heavily mediated and networked spaces, where a multiplicity of sub-spatial components of various natures are intertwined within a dense urban environment. Atelier Hitoshi Abe’s Megahouse project (2006) conveys an analogous view, envisioning the future form of residence as based primarily on permeating the boundary between private and public by sharing rooms that are dispersed around the urban environment according to the individual’s temporal and spatial needs. These envisionings confirm our view that the current rhetoric of reality will need to be re- conceptualised as its transformation will evidently evolve from the fundamental changes in how mobility and connection are experienced and understood.
73 Conclusions There is a long history of examining the relationship between media and space (cf. Castells, 1996; Couldry & McCarthy, 2004; Giddens, 1984; Greenfield, 2006; McLuhan, 1994; Meyrowitz, 1985). Culture is inscribed in every human artefact, including those that define spaces. ‘Old’ media have already radically changed the nature of the space-time habitat of individual humans, and, as Giddens (1984) argued, modern media are the principal means by which social order is maintained beyond immediate presence. Mobile media are infiltrating domestic and industrial spaces alike. Yet as Couldry and McCarthy (2004, p. 1) point out, ‘the spatial orders that media systems construct and enforce are highly complicated, unevenly developed and multi-scaled.’
Our analysis shows the organic and complex inter-relations amongst culture, technology, and use, suggest that site-specific uses are difficult to disentangle from ubiquitous uses. For this reason, it is imperative that we understand mobile use in its varied forms as a ‘modularised whole,’ especially in today’s complex, ubiquitous, and mobile society in flux, where wired and wireless do not require significant technosocial distinguishing from each other. ‘Space’ is not only geographical, but is also technosocially established, and further transformed in relation to technological and sociocultural developments. There are numerous further questions that could be pursued in relation to this agenda; for example, at the macro level, issues of digital divide, surveillance and governance, and at the micro level, notions of personal orientation in the local aural cocoon. Our commentary speaks primarily to a different set of issues, namely to the way spaces and media co-evolve in defining the uses that are enacted in specific locales. In this regard, we would point to two particular illustrative axes: the mediation of public and private spaces, and the boundaries between work and leisure.
A fundamental dimension of the social milieu is the distinction between private and public space. Understanding and feeling comfortable with this distinction is basic to a sense of wellbeing. After the home and the workplace, public spaces are the most prominent building blocks of a city. They act as ‘social catalysts,’ places where urban residents and members of neighbourhood communities meet to create and
74 maintain social ties and friendships and engage in discussion and debate. They are paramount in establishing the identity and culture of a city and a sense of cohesion and belonging (Foth & Sanders, 2008), ultimately leading to sustainability of the city. In public spaces, the different personae one adopts are usually guaranteed a certain level of safety when there is also a certain level of performativity that is adequately harmonious with established behavioural norms, but may not be a true reflection of one’s desires. Therefore, public space is still a relatively vulnerable sphere when compared to our private selves.
As Satchell (2004) suggests, locative mobile applications draw on the intimacy and trust that users have with mobile mediated communications by providing a peer-to- peer, ‘walled garden’ interaction space, where small networks of established friends, who have regular face-to-face contact, can find each other. This provides a useful lens to reflect upon the nature of mobile phone space itself, which is seen by users as less vulnerable than the public sphere with increased intimacy. As was the case with computer-mediated communication (CMC), such new spatial engagement afforded by mobile technology may provoke communitarian criticisms that this is yet another means to ‘bowl alone.’ We would like to bypass the debate, and instead suggest that the focus of deliberation be broadened to acknowledge the ‘fluid oscillation between the collective and network sociality’ within each community member’s ‘greater communicative ecology’ (Foth, et al., 2008, p. 183) that encompasses multi-spatial social frameworks.
The spatial experience portrayed in our case study of South Korea appears to merge, break, and connect many forms of technosocial dynamics present on various levels of space, including public, intimate, and private, through ubiquitous screens and bangs. Similarly, the redefinition of the boundary between work and leisure is another example of the shift in the notions of private and public space engendered by wireless technologies. Not only are the sites where work and leisure are engaged blurred through various forms of distributed work, but shifts in the form of leisure also blur the boundary between private and public.
75 As the basic notion of private and public changes in society, the individual human (dis)connection with others is also perceived differently by each constituent of the society. Notions of private and public spheres are about connection and disconnection from others, and control over these two processes. Mobile media challenges our notion of this fundamental human interconnection. Mobile media creates new opportunities for spatial experiences that are constantly recreated at the intersection of people, place, and technology.
76 Section 2
Methodology and Research Design
A comprehensive and accurate portrayal of the self and the environment of which the self is part cannot be accomplished by capturing a single perspective or undertaking one particular method of enquiry. In After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, Law calls the dominant Euro-American paradigm of reality a ‘singular view … wrapped in expectations for generality and universalism’ (2004, p. 9), which fails to address – or results in ‘the othering’ – what is ‘invisible’ in the existing dominant ontological paradigms. In using the term, singular view, Law refers to the one based on binary oppositions – in this case, particularly in perceiving ‘the other’ subjectivity or reality. We must therefore find a way to penetrate the veneer of a dominant singular view and recognise new and recurring patterns of what we see underneath, as well as better ways to communicate these findings. He urges researchers to be more flexible and audacious about employing new ways of knowing, asserting that in the current sphere of social science research, ‘method still tends to summon up a relatively limited repertoire of responses’ (ibid, p. 3). In response to these concerns, this study takes a transdisciplinary approach to explore playful experiences that occur at the intersection of people, place, and technology.
Coined by Jean Piaget in 1970, and pioneered most notably by Nicolescu (2002), transdisciplinarity has become ‘the focus of important theoretical contributions’ as a useful conceptual tool to create ‘innovative research strategies and methods tackling complex objects and contexts’ (Lawrence & Després, 2004, p. 397). Transdisciplinarity is not a method, but a principle or approach that seeks to create new overarching knowledge through integrative research (cf. Blevis & Stolterman, 2008; Lawrence & Després, 2004). Nicolescu maintains:
Transdisciplinarity transgresses the duality of opposing binary pairs: subject/object, subjectivity/objectivity, matter/consciousness, nature/divine, simplicity/complexity, reductionism/holism,
77 diversity/unity. This duality is transgressed by the open unity that encompasses both the universe and the human being. (2002, p. 56)
Transdisciplinarity differs from similar integrative research approaches such as multi- and interdisciplinarity. While multidisciplinary research refers to a study in multiple disciplines concurrently, interdisciplinary study allows for transferring of methods. Both approaches ‘overflow’ the discipline and remain within the framework of disciplinary research; transdisciplinary research is ‘at once between the disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all discipline’ (ibid). Methodologically, transdisciplinarity allows the researcher to flexibly yet rigorously explore and integrate research methods from various disciplines to result in coherent knowledge rather than united knowledge across disciplines (cf. Ramadier, 2004).
Therefore, my study was particularly well-suited for transdisciplinarity, in that it not only deals with complex topics of play and the city, but also necessitates interdisciplinary exchanges amongst studies of urban environment, technology, and people as citizens and users. The study employed a transdisciplinary approach to coalesce facets of the research subjects’ everyday lives expressed through various modes of communication, share the collected data, and further discuss with them what may be beyond the limit of visibility.
Another important aspect for the study was to balance macro- and micro- perspectives, with the central notion that the city is a complex network of dynamic connections rather than a static entity. Therefore, it became crucial to examine not only the macro-level making of the city as a network (through policy, for example), but also its micro-level construction – in simplistic terms, bottom-up or user-led innovations as experienced by people in Seoul. In consideration of these aspects, my research approach consisted of three main components:
• an extensive literature review; • participatory ethnography with transyouth; and, • interviews with high profile people in industries germane to contouring the playscape in Seoul.
78
Bucy and Newhagen’s (2003) multi-dimensional approach to new media content provided helpful guidance in identifying specific areas for investigation and influenced the overall research design. Bucy and Newhagen illuminate four micro- and macroscopic dimensions that affect the user’s motivation and process in accessing new media content, or ‘the meaning’ of what is being accessed. These dimensions fall under the dual categories of content (cognitive and social) and technological (physical and system) access. With this as the point of departure, the self, access, and meaning became the three domains of enquiry at the most fundamental level in order to understand the urban play culture of Seoul transyouth. The process involved the participants offering their individual perspectives on the topic through Shared Visual Ethnography (SVE), while I as the researcher formed my own contextual perspective via SVE and other additional methods. The outcome of our collaborative efforts was a shared view on the self, access, and meaning. In other words, the shared view describes and elucidates on the current state of transyouth urban play culture. Figure 4 illustrates this process:
Figure 4: Research components and perspective
As a result, it was possible to achieve a clear perspective into a subject that is fundamentally abstract and complex: identifying the intersection of multiple
79 perspectives generated a clearly defined perspective on the play culture of transyouth in Seoul. Importantly, the perspective was co-created, discussed, and verified with the study participants as active data gatherers. I explain this further in the following sections, which will present detailed discussions on each of the three research components.
Literature Review Review of literature was particularly important for my study, as the theories and contextual understanding achieved through this process formed new perspectives on play and the city (Seoul). I then used these new perspectives to adjust variables of the research design, and compared them with the insights gained through empirical research. As a transdisciplinary study that takes a technosocial view (rather than distinct technological or social), the literature review involved sources across multiple disciplines including sociology, cultural studies, media and communications, as well as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Data sources for review included, but were not limited to, various on and offline news articles and books, as well as White Papers published by the Korean government bodies, such as the Internet White Paper outlining up-to-date state of infrastructure and use of the Internet, and the Leisure White Paper, which was inaugurated in 2006. The key aim of the literature review was not only to evaluate and benefit from previous studies but also, more importantly, to gain a ‘sense of place or a [techno-]social picture of the setting and its people’ (Allan Kellehear, 1993, p. 17). Hence examining sources in both languages – English and Korean – was necessary and beneficial, as I was able to compare views from the inside (of Korea) and outside. The core theoretical and contextual frameworks that remained constant (which have been presented earlier in this thesis in chapter 1) were then compared and further developed with empirical data acquired from the other two research methods – Shared Visual Ethnography (SVE) and interviews with leading industry people – which are outlined in the following sections.
80 Shared Visual Ethnography I developed Shared Visual Ethnography as a means to overcome two main methodological difficulties I faced in my research. Firstly, it is problematic, if not impossible, to gain a full understanding of ‘user experience’ when it comes to ubiquitous technologies. For example, it is fundamentally different to examine the user experience of a desktop computer, which can be monitored in a controlled lab environment. A scenario-based approach can be utilised (cf. Satchell, 2003), but this is essentially a design-driven approach to result in inspirations for immediate development of user-driven products, and therefore unsuitable for my research. Within the given time and financial scope as a PhD project, ethnographic field study was uniquely suited to the purpose of this study because of its capacity to generate ‘large amounts of rich and grounded data in relatively short time’ especially in studying human-computer-interaction (HCI) (Kjeldskov & Graham, 2003, p. 319). By employing a photo-sharing practice that has already become mundane for Korean transyouth, I hoped to gain insights into transyouth’s private experiences with technologies in relation to their understanding of themselves, play, and their surroundings.
The second difficulty was capturing and communicating such abstract subjects. There was a need for a different communicative means other than words between the participants and myself as the researcher. Therefore, the aim of SVE was to investigate human agency and its role as part of the technosocial environment of Seoul in creating a phenomenon of play through both visual and verbal communication. The term ‘shared’ maintains a key conceptual position in this ethnographic research component as active involvement of research participants in data collection allows for a detailed microscopic view of the technosocial reality as imagined, experienced, and shared by transyouth themselves. Reality is perceived as a holistic experience of multiple abstract and symbolic systems, and thus ‘capturing’ of reality is certainly a difficult task. Therefore, verbal descriptions alone are likely to be too limited in its communicative capacity to be an effective capturing tool in this case. I chose to use photography as an additional mode of communication. According to Harvey (1989, p. 214), ‘symbolic orderings of space and time provide a framework for experience’ through which the social self is defined. He further
81 argues that with the accentuated sense of discontinuity in postmodern society, photographs and events ‘become the focus of a contemplative memory, and hence a generator of a sense of self’ (ibid, p. 292). In this respect, Chaplin (1994, p. 141) also confirms that spatial images – photography is a good example – play an important role today as a communicative means to construct collective and individual memories. As Fyfe and Law assert:
A depiction is never just an illustration. It is the material representation, the apparently stabilised product of a process of work. And it is the site for the construction and depiction of social difference … Depiction, picturing and seeing are ubiquitous features of the process by which most human beings come to know the world as it really is for them. The point is not that social life is guaranteed by some shared visual culture, neither is it that visual ideologies are imposed on individuals. Rather, it is that social change is at once a change in the regime of re-presentation. (1988, pp. 1-2)
For this reason, I selected photography as an investigative instrument in this study.
Principles for Using Images Some recent studies on locally-specific use of new media by youth have also taken research approaches involving visual data, which had an influence on fine-tuning SVE. In particular, Ito and Okabe’s (2005) ethnographic study on camera phone use and Wang’s (2005) study on Chinese youth culture, music, and mobile phone branding offered helpful insights into the design of visual research approaches. Ito and Okabe (2005) asked participants to keep a diary of their mobile phone use, both general and camera specific. This was followed by in-depth interviews, during which the participants discussed what they had written in their diaries and the photographs archived on their mobile phones. In a similar manner, Wang (2005) analysed theme- based photographs taken by the participants. From carefully studying the design of these and other projects, I came up with three principles to be applied to using photographs to ensure its validity and rigour as a research mechanism. Each provision is outlined below, along with its rationale:
82 1. Photographs are themed and collected en masse In his seminal book Argonauts of the Western Pacific: an account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea, Malinowski (1922, p. 25) emphasises the importance in ethnographic studies of grasping ‘the native’s point of view, his [sic] relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.’ He further asserts that while each (native) individual may not comprehend ‘the total outline of any of their social structure,’ their knowledge in their own individual actions within the broader social system provide valuable pieces of information. The role of the ethnographer here is to integrate and synthesize these pieces to ‘construct the picture of the big institution’ (ibid, p. 84). The technological equivalent of this concept – though purely at a technical level – would be Microsoft’s Photosynth (http://photosynth.net), which analyses multiple digital photographs, and ties them together to generate a three dimensional virtual environment that the user can explore (Fig. 5).
Figure 5: An example of a Photosynth process
With images sourced from photo-sharing sites such as Flickr (www.flickr.com), Photosynth functions as an integrative apparatus that conjures up a somatic, explorative space built upon participatory visual inputs (images uploaded and shared by Flickr users); a space that is accurate in its portrayal of all constitutive elements. The main point to be noted here is that although a single photograph
83 can contain many crucial interpretive possibilities, images en masse provide – with an analytic perspective – means to reveal substantive threads and conceptual patterns that are running through them. Together, the threads construct what Malinowski (ibid) calls ‘the total outline’ of the social structure that is germane to the research topic. In the same vein, Bateson and Mead claimed that placing various ‘mutually relevant photographs’ side-by-side allowed them to state ‘the intangible relationships among different types of culturally standardised behaviour’ (1942, quoted in Chaplin, 1994, p. 210). Goffman, in his discussion of gender disparities in visual advertisements, also notes how images en masse depict the overarching message that may be concealed in individual photographs:
It is the depth and breadth of these contextual difference which somehow provide a sense of structure, a sense of a single organization underlying mere surface differences. (ibid, p. 25)
Therefore, I decided that photographs collected for the study needed to be sizable in total number and themed for comparative analysis.
2. Complementary verbal (oral or text-based) data are collected The Chinese proverb ‘one picture is worth ten thousand words’ refers to the potent communicative/influential capacity of the image that exceeds that of the verbalised expression (Hepting, 1999). However, although this idea has spread and is now widely used around the world, the domain of knowledge has remained fundamentally resistant to the notion. Chaplin (1994, p. 3) argues that despite the deep influence – if not more than words – that images exert on human thoughts and actions, ‘the pre-eminence of the written text in almost all areas of knowledge’ is still taken for granted today. It makes sense then to combine verbal and visual means of data that can work complementarily, the outcome of which will be richer in detail and more descriptive. This is where the ‘shared’ communication via visual and verbal means becomes particularly useful. I explain this in the following section.
84 3. Shared and flexible interactions of the participants are encouraged There are two dimensions to ‘sharing’ in my research approach. The first concerns involving participants as active agents in generating visual and verbal data; the second is additional data that are generated in the interactive process amongst the participants. It would be possible to have the researcher as the photographer – and thus the only observer. In this case, the role of the researcher would be to depict the state of affairs as they see it. It would be more useful, however, if such depiction can also be commented on by the research subjects (or the natives of the research subject) and compared to the natives’ own depiction. In this case, the collected visual data will be double-layered with depiction (by the researcher) and visualisation (by the natives). Chaplin (1994, pp. 186-187) describes visualisation as representing ‘part of the subjective process of thinking, problem solving, [and] theorising’. Therefore, the involvement of the participants in generating visual data invokes reflection on topics germane to the research at an individual and private level. Such reflection is then extended through interactive communication with other participants and the researcher, which ‘would avoid the tendency, inevitable among ethnographers, to record only the differences from one’s own world and the unexpected similarities’ (ibid 1994, p. 212). This, in turn, fills potential gaps between ostensibly disparate pieces of information, and discovers new critical aspects.
My design of Shared Visual Ethnography involved sharing of visual ethnographic data that were created, shared, and verbally communicated by the participants and myself to elicit meanings concealed (intentionally or not) in the images. What is unique about SVE compared to other applied anthropological methods – including the previously mentioned examples by Ito and Okabe (2005) and Wang (2005) – is that SVE has a greater emphasis on participation and collaboration (i.e. the hitherto outlined Principle 3) – two crucial elements of applied anthropology that are usually short-term and context-adaptive (Pink, 2006, p. 94). Viewing photography involves both the photographer and the viewer as active agents in constructing the ‘meaning’ of the image; hence it is impossible to assume that the photograph shows a neutral, unequivocal account of the reality – as experienced by the photographer or by the subject/s captured – at the moment of capturing. Pink argues:
85
[T]he idea that we can feel other people’s feelings and sense their sensory experiences by viewing how they are metaphorically represented in audiovisual media, can mean that without written cultural contextualisation we will actually experience what we think are their experiences in terms of our own cultural and individual biographical knowledge. Their experiences cannot really become ours and will always to a certain degree be incomprehensible. (2006, p. 88)
SVE provided a way to overcome this aspect of ‘incomprehensibility’ through sharing – by permitting the participants and the researcher to contribute to the constantly accessible and iterative interpretation of photographic data that embrace both rational and sensorial (therefore hard to verbalise) experiences. This, in turn, served to flexibly ‘cross-check, support, or challenge’ (A. Kellehear, 1993) the researcher’s own interpretation and viewpoints. For example, the depiction of ‘Seoul’ by many participants predominantly featured the city’s nightscape exuding an image of a cool, modern, and vibrant city occupied by busy crowds (Fig. 6). During interviews, participants confirmed that this is how they perceived Seoul. It also resonates closely with the image the modern Korean government has been trying to project as a visual manifestation of their legitimacy (Choi & Greenfield, 2009, p. 22); an aspect I confirmed in my literature review. Therefore, in addition to making connections between theoretical and empirical data, I also (re)verified findings by employing different modes of communication.
86
Figure 6: Participants’ images of Seoul
In the convergent era of ubiquitous computing, researchers can remain detached observers, or they can be embedded in the actual practice of media production. SVE takes the latter approach at the intersection of three prominent characteristics of contemporary society – flexibility, inter(con)textuality, and networked community.
The Process of Shared Visual Ethnography Two rounds of fieldwork were conducted in November 2007 and February 2008. Forty-four Korean transyouth were recruited through a snowball sample technique. With an intention of stratified sampling, I used word-of-mouth to invite participation from transyouth (aged 18 - 24) living in Seoul or surrounding areas that are within two hours public transport travel. Culture Vouchers (http://www.cultureland.co.kr/asp/index.asp) worth 10,000 Korean Won (approximately A$12) were offered as an incentive for completing all activities as listed in the agreement for participation form. Culture Vouchers can be used in place of cash to purchase a wide range of cultural products such as books and movie tickets on- and offline. A total of fourty-four participants were recruited, including twenty-three females and twenty-one males. The process of SVE for this study took place over approximately ten days, and consisted of three steps of pre-discussion;
87 photo-sharing and diaries; and post-discussion. Figure 7 is a visual representation of this process
Figure 7: Process of Shared Visual Ethnography
The following sections discuss each of these three phases in detail.
Pre-discussion (1 – 1.5 hours) In this initial phase, the participants introduced themselves to the researcher and other participants in the same interview group. There were three activities conducted in this phase:
a. Questionnaire: each participant completed a questionnaire about their basic personal information (e.g. age, sex, income, and contact details), residential and mobility status (e.g. living environment and transport use), and technology use (e.g. place, frequency, and cost of the Internet and mobile phone) (See Appendix 1)
b. Interview: a semi-structured interview was conducted with four interrelated themes as topics of discussion: people (e.g. self, transyouth, and Koreans), place (e.g. Seoul, Korea, and bangs), technology (e.g. mobile phone, user-created-contents, and Cyworld), and play (e.g. definition and examples) (See Appendix 2)
c. Induction to SVE: the participants were introduced to the SVE activities that would take place for one week – namely photo-sharing and activities diaries. Instructions regarding the use of relevant technologies were given, and the participants were also informed
88 about the post-discussion that was to take place after the week of activities.
After the pre-discussion, all the participants started the SVE activities on the same designated day.
SVE Activities (1 week) Considering the high technological competency of transyouth and embeddedness of network technologies in their lives, I decided that digital photography would be used and shared via the online photo-sharing site Flickr, as this process would present minimal difficulties for the participants. The participants were advised that they could use any camera regardless of its resolution or functionalities, as long as the photographs can be uploaded to Flickr. All participants had camera phones, and most had access to digital cameras. In addition, although the participants would have been most familiar with the interface of Cyworld (www.cyworld.com) – over 90 per cent of Korean Internet users in their twenties are members of this locally developed Social Networking Site (SNS) (Yoo, 2005) – I opted for Flickr for technical and social reasons. Technically, Flickr offers simpler presentation of group photo pools as well as detailed exif (exchangeable image file format) information by default. In addition, personal online space – one’s Cyworld account, for example – entails not only technological but also, more importantly, sociocultural values in its construction and reception. My previous study on Cyworld (Choi, 2006a) revealed that users consider it an integral part of contemporary Korean society, as it provides extended support for their social endeavours, as well as entertainment and therapeutic factors. Furthermore, I also learned from the previous research that the participants were reluctant to let me take a closer look at their own Cyworld pages for privacy reasons, even though most of them had their accounts open to the public. Therefore, the participants’ desire to detach their social space from a space meant for research purposes had to be acknowledged and accommodated. For this reason, I selected Flickr, for it was a relatively new service in Korea yet with a fairly intuitive interface with an easy commenting capacity, which I believed would significantly encourage verbal discussion among the participants about the images.
89 Photo-sharing and daily activity diary-keeping took place concurrently over one week. I nominated fourteen simple themes related to the subjects of the self, play, and environment. The participants were asked to take photographs according to these themes and upload the images to Flickr. A semi-open group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/play_seoul) was created on Flickr allowing the group’s members (the participants) to freely share photographs and initiate discussions (on the main discussion board). Each theme had a corresponding – and intuitively simplified – tag (for example, the theme ‘where I live’ had a tag of ‘live’) for better organization of the collected photographs (see Table 1).
Theme Tag Fun fun Boring boring Play with the mobile phone phone Play play Where I live live Where I work work Where I play playground Where I don’t play noplay Adult adult Youth youth What’s important to me important What worries me worry Seoul seoul Korea korea Table 1: Themes and tags
The participants also were allowed to upload non-theme-based photographs in order to strengthen a sense of community in which individual voices can be readily raised and heard. The research site (Flickr group) functioned as a networked community of practice (Foth, 2006); in our case, the practice focused on gathering (while presenting and re-gathering) elements of what constitutes the everydayness of their lives. In this environment, subjectivity and objectivity were enfolded in a broader sense of community. Therefore, the effect of granting the participants liberty to act upon their will was to amplify the rate and profundity of participation, in view of the
90 increasingly fluid oscillation between the collective and networked sense of contemporary community membership (cf. Foth, et al., 2008) to which the participants belong.
Similarly, there was no limit on the image resolution or number of photographs each participant could upload. However, I advised participants to try to upload at least one to two photographs for each theme and upload regularly throughout the week rather than uploading the entire photo-set at the end of the week; furthermore, making and responding to comments were strongly encouraged for greater interaction amongst the participants. The comment function also provided me with opportunities to ask questions regarding particular photographs to obtain answers and provoke discussions – though in a very concise manner. The photographs were also openly accessible to the general public to attract potential feedback from those not involved in the project.
During the same week, the participants were also asked to keep a daily activity diary for one week, detailing each event and its type, location, participants, reason for attending, modes of transport for travelling to and from the location, involvement of technology, their reflection of the event, and additional comments they would like to make (see Appendix 3). Seven files, each of which contained a diary template for one day, were given either in a printed or downloadable compressed format. The diary enabled complementary integration of a view on temporal mobility, for images by themselves cannot, by nature, provide accurate details in that respect (it was also more resource-efficient and feasible than handing out cameras that the participants could attach to themselves for the same purpose but with greater details). As the diaries contain details that may be deemed private, they were returned to myself privately either via email, or in person during the post-discussion.
Post-discussion (0.5 – 1 hour) Following the same format as the pre-discussions, post-discussions were organised and conducted to talk about newly emerged areas during the pre-discussion, to elicit further details about the shared visual data (for which comments had not produced satisfactory results in their simple form), and to gain participant feedback about the research process.
91 Outcome and Reflection As a considerable amount of time commitment was required for participation, some showed reluctance to partake in the process. This is why snowball sampling was particularly useful, as it created an ambience that resembled ‘peer-pressure’ to participate; adding to this was the ‘shared’ aspect that offered a sense of social fun.
Pre- and Post-discussion As much discussion needed to focus on personal aspects, I provided as much flexibility as possible in terms of time and place for pre- and post-discussions. Many showed preference for online chatting via NateOn Messenger, which is essentially affiliated with Cyworld, and the most widely used messenger application in Korea (Chang & Wohn, 2005). In terms of research and data transcription, this was an efficient method of data collection, as the messenger provided an automatic transcript for each discussion session. Face-to-face meetings were audio-recorded and later summarised in English by myself. I had to remain flexible with unexpected changes regarding the timing for these meetings. An illustrative case involved the participants contacting me via SMS (short-messaging-service) late in the evening to change or organise an imminent online meeting. Some participants who were outside then went into a nearby PC-bang (cyber café, an omnipresent feature of Korean cities) to attend the discussion. This aspect of the research process in itself was a reflection of rising individual and networked spatiotemporal organisation or lifestyle management. Ling and Yttri’s (2002) notion of ‘micro-coordination’ is evident here, and refers to nuanced, logistical coordination through which the meeting parties can adjust the agreement as the need arises; a practice that has emerged with the widespread adoption of the mobile phone in everyday life. Reviewing the participant diaries also confirmed that many habitually use the Internet late at night and until early hours of the morning.
Furthermore, although the participants were hesitant to reveal some facets of their personal lives, during the post-discussion they expressed that they had appreciated the entertaining aspects of this process, which offered a chance to interact with others, and also granted an opportunity to reflect upon their lives (describing themselves as individuals – Choi, 2010b – see Chapter 3.1). In this respect, SVE
92 proved to be mutually beneficial for both the researcher and the participants. On a more negative side, while participants commented on issues primarily involving minor difficulties with Flickr, these were not about lacking skills to use the system, but rather its unfamiliar interface design, which was ostensibly perceived as inefficient (see the following section). Furthermore, the participants observed that multi-tasking (both image sharing and diarising) and prolonged participation (over one week as compared to one day) was rather time-consuming. Considering the fact that I was able to recruit participants for the second round of fieldwork through the participants in the first round, I view the process to have had a more positive than negative impact on the participants.
SVE Activities A total of 273 images were collected, excluding twenty-eight taken and uploaded by myself. Along with the specified tags, the participants added other tags at their will, which increased my awareness of some of the important values in their lives. The tag cloud function in Flickr – showing all the tags in weighted font size relative to their frequency – also highlighted the themes that the participants found relatively easy (large font) or difficult (small font) to depict (Fig. 8). Those themes were then explored further during the post-discussion.
Figure 8: Tag cloud created for the research group
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Photographs reflected a wide variety of the participants’ understanding of the theme. For example, the theme - play with the mobile phone (Fig. 9) resulted in photographs that could be categorised as objects they would usually photograph with their mobile phones; applications and services they would use on their mobile phones for leisurely purposes – for example, games and Japanese animation via DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting); and performative – playful activities that would intentionally conducted to be photographed with the mobile phone.
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Figure 9: Examples of photographs for the theme - play with the mobile phone
On the conceptual level, ‘flexibility’ emerged as the most noteworthy point in conducting SVE with Seoul transyouth. This characteristic was essential in dealing with the participants in terms of mode of communication, ways of expression and
95 interpretation (of given themes), and time and place for interaction (as illustrated earlier). Selecting Flickr over similar local services drew observable comments from the participants, most of which concerned its ‘inefficiency’ and/or ‘slowness’ in handling data compared to other local and familiar services. In regards to the content of the photographs, the following aspects are worth noting:
1. Many participants decided to share old photographs that had been taken before the beginning of the research either with or without asking the researcher for permission/clarification. This suggests that the participants were capable of and willing to involve themselves in reinterpretation of their own visual narratives. This also implies a possibility of inquiring into other facets of the participant’s life that are not covered within the given research timeframe. For example, one participant indicated that playing soccer with other members of their church is an important aspect of their ‘play life’; thus he uploaded a previously taken photograph of himself playing soccer, as he was unable to attend the game during the research period.
2. Some photographs functioned as prompts for discussions. One illustrative case involved a Seoul-based participant uploading a photograph of the view from his home, which then prompted envious comments from those who live outside the city. This contrasted with interview data in which most expressed unwillingness to choose Seoul as their future residence. This then led into a more in-depth discussion during the post-interview about their desires and thoughts about the issue.
3. Similarly, SVE proved to be useful for comparatively ‘measuring’ the geographical and perceived personal spaces: for the theme - where I live, the majority of the participants, whether living by themselves or not, only took photographs of their own rooms rather than shared spaces within their home such as the living room. In later discussion, the participants revealed that they spent a lot of time in their own rooms at home, as much entertainment can be obtained from digital media on their computers and other types of media players, as well as mobile phones.
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Despite some minor difficulties with Flickr, utilising SVE in this project allowed me to bypass more substantial challenges involved in eliciting and communicating information that is difficult to be conceptualised and verbalised; SVE successfully generated images that reflected images of the participants’ values, environment, and their notion of the self in relation to the framework of urban play. This research has made possible a broader conception or understanding of the city, and the self as the ‘user’ of the city: the inherent (yet constantly shifting) contextual inter-relation between the particular people and place at a given moment in time and history.
Interviews with Industry Representatives As stated at the outset of this chapter, there are three domains at the intersection of which is the focus of the research: people, place, and technology. SVE provided rich details about and from transyouth’s experience of urban play in Seoul, which focused on the people aspect. This section presents interviews with high-profile industry people in sectors that are germane to the contours of the playscape in Seoul. The industry sectors included a government agency, on- and offline hospitality and retail, and consumer electronics production and network services. The appropriate domains and individuals were identified after reviewing the data collected during the first round of fieldwork. I conducted semi-structured interviews (to be introduced in the following sections) with seven participants who were recruited through professional networks in and out of Korea. The questions addressed the following eight areas:
1. Brief introduction about themselves and the organisation 2. Who: is the place designed for? 3. Where: is this? (Situating the business in the commercial and social domains) 4. What: interactions take place here? 5. When: do they (consumers and transyouth) come here? 6. How: do they use this place? 7. Why: do they come here? 8. Vision: for the future in the relative domain
97 Each interview was conducted in Korean at a place of the interviewee’s choice (mostly their office), and took between thirty to ninety minutes, depending on the their availability. As with the discussions with transyouth participants, I audio- recorded and summarised each interview in English.
Understanding Place To further examine the interrelation between Seoul transyouth and the business sectors as both users and constructors of the city from the spatial perspective, I conducted interviews with industry representatives who are involved in designing and/or providing technosocial spaces in Seoul:
• Yong Jun Hyoung – the founder of Cyworld, and now the CEO of Enfra Networks. As mentioned earlier, Cyworld is a social networking site that plays a crucial role in the communicative ecologies of young Koreans.
• Jong-soo Jeong – the owner of a cocoon housing development in Shinchon, one of the most vibrant commercial / university districts in Seoul. A cocoon house is a new type of compact residential establishment targeting young students and professionals, and has been spreading rapidly around Korea.
• Jong Sung Hwang – the director of the National Information Society Agency (NIA), which leads the u-City (ubiquitous city) project. NIA is a ‘think-tank agency’ providing advice to the Korean government regarding future information and communication technologies (ICTs) and ICT-related policy trajectories. u-City is one of the major projects that the Korean government is actively pursuing as representing the ‘future city’ (cf. Hwang, 2009).
The selection of these three spaces serves a two-fold purpose. Firstly, these places are closely integrated in transyouth’s life (Cyworld is widely and frequently used; many live in cocoon houses; u-City represents a national agenda will affect many cities in Korea, particularly Seoul and surrounding cities). Secondly, the spaces reflect three loose categories of dwelling – public/macro (u-City), private/micro (cocoon house), and in-between (Cyworld) (Fig. 10).
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Figure 10: Spatial categories of the selected organisations
Understanding Technology In order to balance this micro-level perspective from the Korean youth as users, interviews with high-level technology industry representatives were also conducted. As the Korean financial system has been built upon the chaebol economy (large family-owned conglomerates), it was crucial to choose business enterprises carefully to present a balanced view between chaebols and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), which have been playing an increasingly vital role in animating the domestic media market since the Asian Financial Crisis (and global market through the Korean Wave phenomenon – cf. Choi, 2008b – see Chapter 1.2). Accordingly, two chaebols and two SMEs were selected on the basis that all are founded in the field of digital network technology across the continuum of products and services, as well as that of individual and collective. The following presents details of the interviewees:
• Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology Samsung Group is the most prominent chaebol in Korea and trades in a wide range of domains from building constructions to electronics. Samsung Electronics is the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer (The Economist, 2009). Expectedly, Samsung has significant influence on Korean
99 society in terms of economy, politics, and culture. Samsung’s vision for the future products and services has a considerable impact on the overall techno- social developments particularly in Korea but also on a global scale. SAIT is at the core of creating such visions; it is the central laboratory for Samsung Group’s future innovation research, ranging from biology to human- computer interaction (HCI). I interviewed Yeun Bae Kim, Research Director who specialises in HCI for consumer electronics.
• SK Telecom Part of SK Holdings (with SK Energy, together previously known as SK Corporation), SK Telecom is the largest wireless telecommunications provider in the country with over 50% market share, and thus exerts significant influence in the ICT industry in Korea. One of its main subsidiaries, SK Communications, owns N@te Cyworld, the most popular social networking site in Korea with over 90% of Korean Internet users in their 20s as members (Choi, 2006b). Much of the profit is currently made from providing competitive domestic ICT services. I interviewed Jong Chae Oh, the Manager of Future Research, a division that looks at the future trajectory for SKT. From the consumers’ perspective, one of the main differences between SKT and Samsung with regards to network technology is the tangibility of the products, that is, SKT sells services and “virtual” goods without physical presence, while Samsung by and large sells hardware (although much of it runs on specific software under Samsung’s licence). A simplified translation of this difference would place SKT in the services and Samsung in the products industry sector.
• 10x10 10x10 was established in 2001 as Korea was entering a new economic era by paying out the IMF bail-out package. After a slow start in the first couple of years, the company has become the leading online lifestyle and design products store with a current market share of approximately 38% in the category, according to rankey.com. It sells a wide range of products from fashion accessories to electronics. It also has offline franchise shops in
100 various cities, its own brand of DIY products, and Fingers Academy, which runs different types of hobbies and interests-related classes. Over 50% of customers are in their teens and 20s, demonstrating a growing demand amongst young Koreans to express themselves through unique pre-made and/or DIY artefacts. 10x10’s slogan “You are already different” reflects the desire that may be contributed to the cultural predicament and subsequent negotiations that today’s Korean youth must face at the juncture between traditional and foreign, and collectivism and individualism (Choi, 2007b; 2010b – see Chapters 1.1 and 3.1). I interviewed CEO Changwoo Lee, who stated that such unique “sensibility” contributes most significantly to the product value at 10x10.
• Yanolja.com At the outset Yanolja was conceived as a Daum Café, where members came to share information about (love) motels, hotels, and pensions. Daum Café refers to the online community service offered by Daum, one of the largest online portals in Korea (Café is now used synonymously for an online community/club/forum). The café was transformed into a private business in 2007. Rankey.com reports that yanolja is currently at the top of its category – online accommodation reservation services – with a market share of 33%. Continuing with the original model of operation, yanolja is fundamentally sustained by user-generated content, for example, motel reviews created and responded by users. Members receive benefits such as access to exclusive information and discounts at affiliated accommodations. Currently there are approximately 320,000 members, with the main profit sources being advertisement on the website, content creation (including multimedia review of accommodation), and yanolja’s own accommodation venues. I interviewed Soo Jin Lee, one of the original mangers of the café and now the CEO.
The inter-relation of these four enterprises can be visualised as below (Fig. 11):
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Figure 11: Inter-relations of the selected business enterprises
The collaboration between government and business sectors has a significant impact on shaping the city’s infrastructures. The government, businesses, and people jointly create a triad of place-making for the city. Accordingly, the interviews with the industry representatives provided a lens through which view the dynamic transformation of the city; an alternative to the view created through SVE. Figure 12 depicts the relationship between each component of my research approach and the published outcomes.
102
Figure 12: Chapter structure and relationships
103 Section 3
Analysis and Discussion
3.1 The Self, City, and Connections: Transyouth and Urban Social Networking in Seoul 3.2 The Role of Open Design in the Evolving Economic Life of Korea: From Chaebol to SME 3.3 The City is Connections: Seoul as an Urban Network
104 Chapter 3.1 The City, Self, and Connections: Transyouth and Urban Social Networking in Seoul
Choi, J. H.-j. (2010). The City, Self, and Connections: Transyouth and Urban Social Networking in Seoul. In S. Hemelryk Donald, T. Anderson & D. Spry (Eds.), Youth, Society and Mobile Media in Asia (pp. 88-107). London, New York: Routledge.
Publisher: Routledge, New York
Web: http://www.routledge.com/books/Youth-Society-and-Mobile-Media- in-Asia-isbn9780415547956
Status: Published
Preamble Section 3 contains the main body of empirical data produced and analysed in this research project, presented from three perspectives according to the urban informatics principles (Foth, 2009a): people (Chapter 3.1), technology (Chapter 3.2), and place (Chapter 3.3). The first contribution is a book chapter that analyses the findings from my fieldwork with a focus on transyouth – how they see themselves, how they perceive Seoul, and their technosocial relations with the city. The results reveal a poignant sense of discontinuity amongst transyouth. I explain the reasons for this as expressed by the research participants themselves, while drawing a connection between their responses and the contextual background for the research as discussed in Section 1. This refers to the continued interplay between the historic and contemporary political, economic, and sociocultural circumstances. The chapter reiterates the findings of Section 1 (that playful interactions have capacity to function as a means for bottom-up reconfiguration of their technosocial environment), and emphasises the growing – and increasingly conspicuous – agency
105 of people as users and constituents of Seoul as an urban network through access and connection, a premise that is carried on through Chapters 3.2 and 3.3.
106 Chapter 3.2 The Role of Open Design in the Evolving Economic Life of Korea: From Chaebol to SME
Choi, J. H.-j. (under review). The Role of Open Design in the Evolving Economic Life of Korea: From Chaebol to SME. Journal of International Business Studies.
Publisher: Palgrave Mcmillan, UK
Web: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/index.html
Status: Under review. Submitted on 1 March 2010.
Preamble Whereas Chapter 3.1 had a focus on people, particularly their relationship with the city as its users and constituents, this chapter mainly focuses on technology. In order to develop a multi-dimensional, and thus more accurate view on the urban play culture of Seoul, this chapter presents viewpoints of the private sector that designs and develops technologies that contour the playscape for Seoul transyouths. Using the interface and interaction in metaphoric reference to control and freedom, the chapter argues for the need to change towards a more open and flexible technosocial environment. This makes a conceptual connection with, and further expands one of the main arguments of this thesis – that people are users and constituents of the city as a network; therefore the interface (system) must allow for flexible interactions from which innovation and reconfiguration of the interface can emerge. The chapter thereby speaks directly to practitioners and scholars in domains of policy, business, and technology design / development.
131 Abstract This article examines the meaning of open design for the economic life of South Korea, currently one of the most digitally connected and culturally dynamic societies in the world. The article presents contrasting views from representatives of chaebols (family-owned conglomerates) and SMEs on the current Korean economy at the intersection of technological, urban, and socio-cultural development. The article concludes by suggesting ways for chaebols, SME, and the Korean government to co- create a more usable and sustainable economic future based on user-led innovations, as Korea rapidly transitions from an industrial to post-industrial economy.
132 Introduction This article investigates the South Korean (hereafter Korea) economy as a network that is shaped by evolving production and consumption processes. More specifically, the article examines the intersection of technological, urban, and socio-cultural dimensions of the Korean economic development as the country transitions from a heavily industrial to a knowledge economy. The empirical basis of this article is in- depth interviews with two leading representatives of chaebols (large family-owned conglomerates) and two from SMEs (small-to-medium enterprises), coupled with the author’s ethnographic fieldwork that contextualises the findings. The article’s significance for the field is firstly supported by calls for a more open approach to scholarly disciplinarity (Leung, et al., 2005; Sullivan & Daniels, 2008). The article presents fresh insights that have not been available in the existing literature on the Korean techno-social environment, in particular, its emphasis on design as an agent of economic evolution. Investigating a given economic system must acknowledge that the continuously changing macro- and micro-level circumstances reshape the connection amongst constitutive elements of the system. It is here that ‘design’ becomes crucial to thinking about what post-industrialism means ‘on the ground’ in Korea.
Nigel Thrift asserts that the design for the economic ecology that is constantly transformative can have no definite aspiration, but rather, ‘through the activity of design the process of production provides information for itself about itself’ (Lury, 2004 cited in Thrift, 2006, p. 295). Therefore design of a usable economic system should be about making visible possibilities for open innovations within and of itself: interaction design that has both controlled and open resources for profit generation. Chesbrough (2003, p. xxiv) defines open innovation as ‘a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology.’ Evolutionary economists (for example, Dopfer & Potts, 2004; Foster & Metcalfe, 2004; Witt, 2008), suggest that the future of an econmic system can only be fundamentally speculative and plural. They argue that the economy is in constant transformation through dynamic endogenous changes, which include ‘convergence, emergence, and divergence’ (Boschma & Martin, 2007, p. 537) of economic agents.
133 As Neff and Stark (2004) observe, the contemporary economic system is in a ‘permanently beta’ state, evolving through open ‘user-centric’ (Von Hippel, 2005, p. 1) innovations that overcome institutional barriers. These innovations therefore often come unexpected. Thrift introduces three factors that foreground the ‘absolute importance of design’ (2006, p. 282): information technology, built forms, and social group formation. These factors also coincide with the core elements of modern urban economies as proposed by Foth (2009): technology, place, and people, respectively.
Network technologies in particular have been developing intensively and extensively in recent years. So too has been its impact; it has been manifested, amongst in many other forms, in changes in dynamics amongst constituents of the global to individual economic organisation – for example, from management of global financial networks to daily monetary transactions of individuals. As such, we must not only consider network technologies as more efficient means of communication but also, more importantly, as entities that co-evolve with political, socio-cultural, and economic systems. Rapid decrease in the production and use cost of information communication technologies (ICTs) combined with political impetus for digital literacies (Tornero, 2004; Wynne & Cooper, 2007) as well as growing social demands for ‘being connected’ for communicative and social engagement (Jenkins, et al., 2006; Ling & Pedersen, 2005) have been observed concurrently with the rise of collaborative amateur production and user-led innovation (Leadbeater, 2008) in recent years. Through such significant technological and social – or techno-social – changes commonly referred to as the rise of ‘participatory’ (Jenkins, 2006) or ‘DIY’ (Hartley, 1999) culture, a new economic order has emerged. Eden and Lenway call it ‘an irreversible paradigmatic shift in political, economic, and social relations from industrial capitalism to post-industrialism’ (2001, p. 387).
Over the past decade, Korea has ambitiously looked towards a digital future, recreating its image from ‘the land of the morning calm’ to that of the ‘broadband miracle’ (Hazlett, 2004). Korea has also created a popular cultural buzz through media export particularly to the Asian region. This has led to the rise of the new ‘Korean cool,’ a phenomenon known as the Korean Wave or Hanryu (Hallyu). As a
134 Korean colloquial saying goes, ‘a decade changes the river and the mountain.’ The past decade may very likely have changed the Korean landscape with its continuing urbanisation. The current development of the u-City vision (ubiquitous city – cf. Hwang, 2009) conveys the Korean public’s general acceptance of and hope for a technological future that is globally pioneering (though fundamentally Weiserian in its absolute pervasiveness and smooth integration of technologies in space – Choi & Greenfield, 2009). Over the same years, the flow of communication and accrual of knowledge about the self and the world has also changed amongst Koreans, especially amongst the young. This change has been reflected in their consumption patterns for products and services, which have then become drivers of new waves of economic activity.
The following sections will examine technology, place and people, as themes in understanding Korea’s rapid and intense socio-cultural, technological, and economic development in recent history. Firstly, I will outline the rationale and process of interviews with leading Korean industry representatives on obstacles and opportunities for the past, present, and future Korean economy. The findings show that the chaebol and SME representatives have divergent, often contrasting views. To explicate the differences, I will contextualise the findings with technological, urban, and socio-cultural developments of contemporary Korea, at the intersection of which is where its economic order is constantly renewed. This situates the Korean economic system in a network that is enmeshed with a wide range of variables at this moment in time, emphasising the need for a broader theory that is applicable to and useful for orchestrating the connections amongst its nodes, or, designing the economic system as an open interactive network. The article concludes with a proposition to reconsider the notion of sustainable design for the economy as a network, and encompass and encourage micro transformations towards broader positive shifts.
135 Interviews with Industry Representatives There were three broad selection criteria for interviews: first, all selected businesses are imminently affected by and intricately involved with ICTs and their adoption by consumers in Korea; second, there is a balance between chaebols and SMEs; and third, each interviewee is in a qualified – uppermost – position to represent a senior level understanding of their firm and related industries. The second point may sound simple and inclusive, yet requires further explanation as it takes account of unique qualities of modern Korean economic history.
Selecting Chaebols for Interviews Once known as the ‘Hermit Kingdom,’ Korea had a long history of insulation – and isolation – from cultural and trade exchange, which came to an abrupt end with the Japanese occupation (1905 – 1945) and the Korean War (1950 – 1953). Such mass destructions further deteriorated Korea’s chance at international trade, which was already only comparable to some of the poorest African countries at the time (The World Bank, 2006, p. 1). Park Chung-Hee’s coup with a promise to ‘end starvation’ (The Economist, 1990, p. 19) led to the beginning of a new administration in 1961. His heavily authoritarian regime – and successive governments – enacted institutional means that were conducive to centralised and discretionary resource allocation in their power, which in turn kept the market fundamentally oligopolistic but fast growing. The selected few firms such as Samsung, Hyundai, and Sunkyoung (later to become SK) became widely known as chaebols. As the “de facto ruling elite,” chaebol owners and their families promptly seized the opportunities to diversify subsidiaries and maintain their influence through a vertical integration strategy (raw material to final product), political funding, and intermarriages with political and business partners (Kwon & O'Donnell, 2001, p. 24). The chaebol economy has since played a pivotal role in Korea’s modern economic development (Cumings, 1987; Mason, 1980) – through its rise and fall. While the chaebol were the unquestionable strength behind the ‘miraculous’ per-capita increase from US$82 in 1961 to US$10315 in 1997 (Chang, 2003, p. 3), their heavy reliance on short-term debt for capacity expansion in the fast growing domestic economy mostly resulted in low capital investment returns, and eventually in the country’s downfall during the
136 Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s. Despite Korean public’s devoted efforts to save the nation’s financial situation, which included personal donations of gold jewellery in response to the government’s plea, the chaebol’s foreign debts could not be alleviated (Choi, 2008b, p. 151 – see Chapter 1.2). Korea resorted to a bail-out package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This led to draconian regulatory changes that forced structural reorganisation of chaebols, constraining each chaebol’s business lines to a selected few; this in turn presented opportunities for new SME business ventures. The selection of interviewees was based on this critical change in Korean economy. Representatives from two chaebols that survived the tumultuous period and SMES that emerged as a result agreed to take part in the face-to-face interviews despite difficulties in regards to strict company policies on public communication. The interviews took place between January and March 2008.
Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) Samsung Group is the most prominent chaebol in Korea and trades in a wide range of domains from building constructions to electronics. Samsung Electronics is the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturer (The Economist, 2009). Expectedly, Samsung has significant influence on Korean society in terms of economy, politics, and culture. Seoul-based net artists Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES (http://www.yhchang.com) describe Samsung’s omnipresence: ‘Samsung will help me get over being dead... and being alive’ – one can be born in a Samsung hospital, attend a Samsung school, marry in a Samsung chapel, live in a Samsung home, and be buried in a Samsung casket (Choi & Greenfield, 2009, p. 29). Hence it is not an over-exaggeration to say that Samsung’s vision for the future products and services has a considerable impact on the overall techno-social developments particularly in Korea but also on a global scale. SAIT is at the core of creating such visions; it is the central laboratory for Samsung Group’s future innovation research, ranging from biology to human-computer interaction (HCI). I interviewed Yeun Bae Kim, Research Director who specialises in HCI for consumer electronics.
SK Telecom (SKT) Part of SK Holdings (with SK Energy, together previously known as SK Corporation), SK Telecom is the largest wireless telecommunications provider in the
137 country with over 50% market share, and thus exerts significant influence in the ICT industry in Korea. One of its main subsidiaries, SK Communications, owns N@te Cyworld, the most popular social networking site in Korea with over 90% of Korean Internet users in their 20s as members (Choi, 2006b). Much of the profit is currently made from providing competitive domestic ICT services. I interviewed Jong Chae Oh, the Manager of Future Research, a division that looks at the future trajectory for SKT. From the consumers’ perspective, one of the main differences between SKT and Samsung with regards to network technology is the tangibility of the products, that is, SKT sells services and ‘virtual’ goods without physical presence, while Samsung by and large sells hardware (although much of it runs on specific software under Samsung’s licence). A simplified translation of this difference would place SKT in the services and Samsung in the products industry sector.
Selecting SMEs for Interviews The number of SMEs is incomparably greater than that of chaebols, which makes the selection process more complex. The exponential growth in Korean SMEs is demonstrated in the changes in number of venture capital firms, which made a leap from only four at the height of the industrial era in 1984 to 152 in 2000 (Zacharakis, et al., 2007, p. 693). Some venture capitalists view the entrepreneur’s network relations with chaebols as a necessary resource in addition to their human capital, for such relations potentially reduce opportunism and risks for accruing the desired return (ibid). With this understanding, I applied additional criteria for sampling: first, both SMEs must not be child companies of or directly affiliated with chaebol establishments; second, analogous to the chaebol interviewees, they must diverge in the tangibility of their products (on x-axis in Figure 11); and third, they were established after the Asian Financial Crisis era (Korea paid out the bailout in August 2001) and are currently in successful operation. Applying these additional measures was to ensure, respectively, a balanced view between the chaebol and SME; a comparative view on business operation between the two; and a more accurate reflection of the emerging trends on Korea’s path of economic recovery.
Considering that ‘successful operation’ is difficult to measure, I needed to determine specific domains of business and a tool to help identify leading firms in the selected
138 domains. Findings from the ethnographic fieldwork carried out alongside this study showed two new facets of youth urban life in Seoul that are accentuated: first, distributed self-expression and identity formation through the consumption of mediated and material objects [removed for blind-review] and second, proliferation of heavily networked and mediated micro-spaces that are used for temporary living and leisure [removed for blind-review]. Niche markets have been forming around these domains. With the affinity of network technology, these domains correspond precisely to the conceptual triangle of ‘technology – place – people’ suggested by Thrift (2006) and Foth (2009) as mentioned earlier in the article. I then used rankey.com, a major Korean Internet market analytics site, to identify key businesses (with the most traffic in terms of session times) in these markets.
10x10 (10x10.co.kr) 10x10 was established in 2001 as Korea was entering a new economic era by paying out the IMF bail-out package. After a slow start in the first couple of years, the company has become the leading online lifestyle and design products store with a current market share of approximately 38% in the category, according to rankey.com. It sells a wide range of products from fashion accessories to electronics. It also has offline franchise shops in various cities, its own brand of DIY products, and Fingers Academy, which runs different types of hobbies and interests-related classes. Over 50% of customers are in their teens and 20s, demonstrating a growing demand amongst young Koreans to express themselves through unique pre-made and/or DIY artefacts. 10x10’s slogan ‘You are already different’ reflects the desire that may be contributed to the cultural predicament and subsequent negotiations that today’s Korean youth must face at the juncture between traditional and foreign, and collectivism and individualism (Choi, 2007b; 2010b – see Chapters 1.1 and 3.1). I interviewed CEO Changwoo Lee, who stated that such unique ‘sensibility’ contributes most significantly to the product value at 10x10.
Yanolja (yanolja.com) At the outset Yanolja was conceived as a Daum Café, where members came to share information about (love) motels, hotels, and pensions. Daum Café refers to the online community service offered by Daum, one of the largest online portals in Korea (Café is now used synonymously for an online community/club/forum). The
139 café was transformed into a private business in 2007. Rankey.com reports that yanolja is currently at the top of its category – online accommodation reservation services – with a market share of 33%. Continuing with the original model of operation, yanolja is fundamentally sustained by user-generated content, for example, motel reviews created and responded by users. Members receive benefits such as access to exclusive information and discounts at affiliated accommodations. Currently there are approximately 320,000 members, with the main profit sources being advertisement on the website, content creation (including multimedia review of accommodation), and yanolja’s own accommodation venues. I interviewed Soo Jin Lee, one of the original mangers of the café and now the CEO.
Figure 11 is a visual illustration of the selected firms positioned in relation to their products (x-axis) and business type (y-axis).
Figure 11. Selected Businesses (identical to the figure on p. 102)
Results and Discussions I conducted an in-depth interview with each of the representatives for 1 – 1.5 hours. The interview questions were open-ended with a broad guidelines addressing the who, where, what, when, why, and how (5W1H) of the techno-social context for
140 their business practices and trajectories. The following three sections – technology, place, and people – present and discuss the results.
Technology: Condensed and Ubiquitous All interviewees shared a view that Korea’s condensed techno-social development driven by a vision for economic growth had a profound impact on the shaping of innovation culture: that, so far, the growth was based on ‘chasing’ countries that are ahead of Korea in the global economy. Oh (SKT) sums up the history of the Korean commercial technology sectors as follows:
‘Korea has a long history with a rich cultural soil for content development. However, we opened our gate too late, and we had much interference such as the war, so we had to create everything from nothing with the West or Japan as our role models … Koreans worked diligently to actually reach a status comparable to these role models, as seen in the frame of OECD and GDP – but until now, it’s been exactly just that: chasing. There was no need for us to think too hard about what (to produce). For example, if Sony does it, Korean companies do it too. Then if Sony makes 10, they make 12 … then now Korea has more or less caught up with those who used to be considered more advanced, we have a problem because there has been no contemplation both at the corporate and governmental level on the subject of what.’
In the earlier industrial period, chaebols undertook strategies that allowed them to maximise their preferential privileges given by the state and low-cost local labour: they imported technologies as well as parts and raw materials for assembly by Korean labour, then exported the final products, commonly back to the countries where the technologies for production had come from (Bloom, 1992, p. 33). Their strategy worked particularly well in the consumer electronics market and has led to sustained joint ventures with and OEM production for foreign firms. However, the interviewees pointed at the main problem that stems from such a condensed technological development based on ‘catching up’ with foreign firms for cost- efficiency: deliberation on innovation. Korean consumers also embraced technologies rapidly. Kim (Samsung) comments that Korean consumers have a ‘let’s
141 just do it mentality … people are dynamically adoptive of new technologies, which makes Korea a great testbed.’ He further stated, ‘Positively described, it’s dynamic; negatively, it’s chaotic.’ I am not suggesting here that there has been a lack of innovation in its full spectrum. Rather, it is the informed strategic approach to creating global paradigmatic shifts – or megatrends – in technological and economic spheres that has not received an adequate level of consideration in comparison to the benchmarking of developed countries, which has been a central guidance for the political and business sectors with a plausible effect on shortening the developmental timeframe. Copying is easier and quicker to achieve than innovation.
Another point of interest is the differing assumptions about the technological future between the chaebol and SME interviewees in terms of the span and extent of infrastructural development. Chaebol representatives assumed real-time technological infrastructure while effortlessly conjuring up a vision that converges the physical and virtual; on the other hand, SME representatives expressed that they do not even have adequate access to some of the broadly available technologies such as wireless networks. From Lee’s (yanolja) perspective, ‘the mobile environment is currently quite limited,’ mostly in two domains of user-interface and profit margin. Lee (yanolja) states, ‘the screen is too small’ to achieve many functions available on a computer screen, reflecting the common broadband-accustomed multimedia-heavy interface design of Korean websites (as observed in Cyworld – cf. Choi, 2006b). From the economic perspective, Lee (yanolja) claims that ‘the mobile market has been pretty hostile; for example, all they (network providers) do is providing “lines,” so I think that a 10-20% commission would be a reasonable rate. But they demand about 50%. It’s not a friendly environment for SMEs.’ He further asserts that it is not a friendly environment for users either: ‘individual customers have to pay the content provider for content access, and at the same time, they also have to pay their wireless network provider for the data usage.’ My study [removed for blind-review] on Korean youth also shows that although Korea’s mobile phone penetration is as high as its broadband penetration with an estimated national penetration rate of 90% (Korea National Statistics Office, 2008b), wired access to the Internet remains as resilient as before amongst youth; as wired connections are ubiquitously available, mobile technologies function as an augmentation rather than an alternative means of communication (2010b, p. 102). Given this situation, yanolja remains focused on
142 providing computer-based services but with a plan to invest in mobile applications development in preparation for ‘the next mobile generation’ and when ‘the networks will be more affordable and open.’
Similarly, 10x10 has not yet expanded its services to the mobile domain but instead been utilising existing media channels including its website and magazines in addition to actively pioneering the niche market for the sale of limited edition goods for popular TV shows such as Impossible?! Possible! The Unlimited Challenge! Lee (10x10) said with the extensive ICT adoption in Korea, ‘the possibility of offering unique products is rapidly declining’ simply by repackaging of foreign imports as people continue acquiring necessary digital skills to seek and purchase products from around the world. Therefore it is necessary to ‘find ways to incorporate cultural(ly specific) items’ that can only be found at 10x10 to increase buyer value.
The current policy in Korea is ‘favourable to building new technological infrastructures (e.g. next generation broadband networks)’ and shows ‘intense propulsion in deploying new technologies’ (Choi, 2010a, p. 82 – see Chapter 3.3). Hence such divergent views on access to technology between chaebols and SMEs may be attributed to the alliance between the chaebol and the state that still remains strong, as seen by the government’s authority and readiness to deploy technology at the request of the chaebol. In fact, the Korean government’s active role in building a broadband society through policy and market regulation, technology deployment, and education has been highlighted by many scholars (cf. Kelly, et al., 2003; Lee, et al., 2003; Picot & Wernick, 2007). The initial drive from the top-down (government to citizens in this case) can be traced back to the pervasively promoted slogan in the early 20th century, Eastern Spirit, Western Technology, denoting the importance of protecting traditional cultural values from the foreign influences while seeking to catch up with the superior technological knowledge of the West (Shin, 2003, p. 8). Within only three decades, Korea was ranked at the top of ITU’s Digital Opportunity Index (International Telecommunication Union, 2007). Recently Korea has begun the fourth – ubiquitous – phase (see Table 2, adopted from Ryu, 2004, p. 6), highlighting an imminent need to carefully examine, in particular, its geographical and sociocultural contexts.
143 Phase Digitisation Network Convergence UbiComp
2008 – Period 1980 – 1994 1995 – 2002 2003 – 2007 current
National Backbone Broadband IT Project Cyber Korea u-Korea Network Korea
Information Data sharing / Intelligent Objective Computerisation Distribution Knowledge objects creation Table 2. Overview of paradigmatic shift in Korean IT policy
The following sections will respond to this need from the business perspective.
Place: Changing Urban Landscape Between 1960 and 2002 the urban population ratio in Korea grew drastically from 35.8% to 86.5%, owing to an immense exodus of young Koreans from rural areas in hope of securing a better future by obtaining education and/or jobs, and eventually higher social status. High population density has contributed significantly to the swift diffusion of broadband in urban areas (Jyoti & Lee, 2004; Lau, et al., 2005). In the capital city of Seoul with the sixth highest population density in the world (City Mayors, 2007), many people live in multi-unit housing, most notably in massive chaebol-branded apartment complexes, which are estimated to comprise 98% of recent residential construction (Cho, 2007, p. 25). The technical convenience of network distribution in such an environment in conjunction with the national ppalippali (hurry hurry) ethos quickly enthused the citizens’ adoption and adaptation of network technology. Today, availability of broadband connection is ubiquitous not only in homes but also in many corners of the city, some for selective groups but most for general public; they are found in schools, cafés, local council offices, subway stations (Fig. 19), and other places.
144
Figure 19. Public Internet booth in a subway station in Seoul
All interviewees acknowledge the cultural and economic significance of Seoul as the allegorical ‘urban Korea.’ As well as being Korea’s cultural hub, the capital region is the generator of approximately half of the national GDP (Fujita & Thisse, 2002, p. 2), home to half of the national population, headquarters of most chaebols and one of the largest global testbeds for technologies and services (Seoul Metropolitan Government, 2007). This is also the birthplace of the Miracle of the Han in conscious emulation of the post-war economic miracle of West Germany commonly referred to as the ‘Miracle on the Rhine.’ Seoul’s development history shares fundamental similarities with that of technology: condensed with a multitude of unexpected circumstances. Massive urbanisation and urban population growth took place after the Korean War owing to the state’s need to make its authority and legitimacy visually manifest in modernisation. The condensed development shaped the city to a tumultuous mixture of the planned and unplanned that are still visible today. The former Vice Mayor of Seoul Metropolitan Government, Hong Bin Kang’s statement that the city is a ‘paradoxical combination … of too much planning and too little planning’ (Kim, 2005) clearly reflects the city’s state; it is an amalgam
145 of many conflicting elements, with its configuration under constant and rapid transformation, both minor and major (Fig. 20).
Figure 20. A small cluster of old buildings hidden behind high-rises in central Seoul
Given such a chaotic mix of constituents in the city, the most salient theme emerged from the interviews expectedly concerned spatial unification/distribution through ubiquitous technologies. Kim (Samsung) asserted that the imminent development in urban environment would involve ‘ambient technologies using sensor networks … though there needs to be a suitable infrastructure first.’ He envisioned that intelligent and ubiquitous technologies would connect the interior and exterior of existing architectures – including home, work, and commercial spaces – while emphasising the need for ethical considerations especially regarding privacy. Similarly, Oh (SKT) foresees the ‘physical and non-physical spaces merging, and the catalyst for such connection is probably going to be an evolved version of the mobile phone.’ Further, he states, ‘once the infrastructure is in place to allow real-time access to information … the current social practices will change’ as communicative networks take precedence over space.
Unlike their chaebol counterparts, SME representatives stated that their main source of profit is achieved through value innovation, by providing access to ‘niche private spaces’ that are hidden from such techno-social territorialisation imposed by the state, traditions, and hectic urban life. Lee (yanolja) observes that there has been a
146 shift in the perception of love hotels and motels in recent years, as they are increasingly equipped with cutting-edge technologies such as large LCD screens, sound systems, game consoles, and computers with broadband connection; younger generations have started to perceive these venues as less of a ‘taboo space for sexual encounters’ but more as a ‘private entertainment multiplex where they can also watch movies, play games, and have a bath together with their partners’ outside the existing social and spatial boundaries. Likewise, Lee (10x10) expressed similar observations. He metaphorically compared 10x10 to ‘a little café next to a Starbucks or a grandfather telling old stories rather than a big library.’ He stated that the main attraction for a large portion of the firm’s customers is the way 10x10 creates space – by means of its web interface design, brand image, and product selection – for what he calls the ‘human sense’ or sensibility/aesthetics of humanness in Seoul, the chaotic urban environment that was forced to continue to transform itself ‘amidst a broad concomitant suppression of nature, history, and human rights’ (Choi & Greenfield, 2009, p. 22).
People: New Generations, New Economic Agents The Korean public showed resilience to such suppression during the industrial period in the hope that ‘their sacrifice would purchase all the fruits of choice (both democratic and consumerist) for their children’ (ibid, p. 23). Kim (Samsung) drew attention to the socio-cultural difference between the older generations who led ‘intensely work-focused hand-to-mouth life’ the ethics of which no longer translate to younger generations today: in other words, changes in the dominant value system have been occurring in accordance with Korea’s technological, economic, and urban growth. This is not to suggest that traditional values are fast becoming obsolete. Rather, like the Korean urbanscape, contemporary Korean culture is shaped by the dynamic combination of traditional and foreign ideologies. Despite rapid development and subsequently introduction and adoption of new ideas – particularly of Americo-European origin – traditional values prevail in the social ethos of Koreans today (Lett, 1998; Na & Duckitt, 2003). In fact, the sociocultural mélange of not only old and new but also other various contradictory ideas was a likely outcome considering the lack of opportunity for Koreans to adequately grasp, translate, and appropriate new concepts and practices within a condensed
147 developmental timeframe of a few decades. In Oh’s (SKT) words, ‘Korean socio- cultural development has not been parallel to its national GDP.’
Young Koreans who have grown up in the transformative cultural landscape are now emerging as the dominant workforce. The interviewees identified four main characteristics of this generation that are germane to their businesses: technologically competent, individualistic, leisure-seeking, and with low brand- loyalty. Oh (SKT) laments that the Korean digital content industry has remained at the level of providing light entertainment platforms in order to profit from such tendencies of young Koreans, despite the existing network infrastructure that was favourable to experimental and innovative endeavours. Oh compares the situation to the Silicon Valley as an example, where people have been working on projects with no immediate financial gain but potential of bringing about creative transformations to the industry in the long run by developing technologically advanced products that meet individual user’s needs in an entertaining/pleasurable manner, which can harness a broad customer base.
Both Lee (yanolja) and Oh (SKT) noted the rise of play culture, of various kinds, in the early 2000s, when broadband networks started to be integrated into the everyday lives of Koreans. In reference back to the paradigmatic shifts in Korean IT policy discussed earlier in the article, this period refers to the ‘convergence’ phase (Table 1). It would be plausible to argue that distributed broadband networks allowed more varied and easily accessible means for Koreans to express and share their desires. In fact, my study on Korean youth [removed for blind-review] found that they commonly feel ontologically insecure owing significantly to the rapidly changing cultural landscape, and they utilise ICTs as a tactic of adaptation to such a transformative socio-cultural environment: they habitually and extensively use network technologies to express themselves and communicate multiple facets of their identities in order to validate themselves as individuals.
All interviewees acknowledged the importance of accommodating such shifts. However, their response to this phenomenon appears to differ according to the nature of their enterprise. Chaebol entities emphasised the need for designing improved technological and social interfaces: Kim (Samsung) claimed, ‘We have to try to get
148 people addicted to our products, and that’s why user-interface is so much more important. For example, you can’t really change the layout of the computer keyboard. What we are trying to achieve is for young consumers to … remain loyal to our brand until their old ages.’ This is attributable to the fact that the effect of chaebol is immensely broad in the domestic market. A large number of people are familiar with the technological interfaces that have been implemented and improved by chaebols over they years, and the chaebols already have an existing socio- political interface in contemporary Korea. Thus their imperative remains more intact in maintaining the existing consumers based on their needs for familiar interfaces. Oh’s (SKT) statement clearly reflects this view: ‘SK is no longer desperate to attract users.’ The chaebol’s approach can be described as the ‘sustaining innovation,’ a fundamental purpose of which ‘is to sustain the performance improvement trajectory in the established market’ (Christensen, et al., 2008, p. 46). On the other hand, SME representatives, Lee (10x10) and Lee (yanolja), take a contrary approach by encouraging consumers to interact with like-minded others to challenge and renovate dominant interfaces, and recreate their own techno-social spheres. Users are enticed to participate in such interactive processes to fulfil their own desires through which profits are generated for SMEs. In this sense, SMEs take the ‘disruptive innovation’ (ibid, 47) approach contrary to the chaebol, by providing access to temporary private niche for recreation and re-creation.
Conclusions: Open Design for the Future The article began with the premise that technological advancement co-evolves with political, socio-cultural, and geographical dimensions of a given economic system. I referred to Thrift (2006, p. 282) who asserts that designing a usable and viable economic system must essentially take accounts of technological, physical (built- form), and social dimensions – or technology, place, and people respectively in Foth’s (2009) terms. Following the rationale for the selection of interviewees across business sectors, I presented the findings for each of these three dimensions and contextual explanations for the current environment. This contextual triangulation revealed the transformative economic dynamics shaped by a multitude of parameters, the most significant parameter being the embeddedness of network technologies in daily practices of economic agents from individuals to multi-national
149 enterprises. Specifically for Korea, an equally significant parameter was the country’s condensed timeframe for technological and urban developments, which, according to the interviewees, have not been paralleled by socio-cultural growth. The main reason behind the compressed development was the Korean government’s strategy to use rapid industrialisation – and thus economic growth – as a symbol of not only Korea’s recovery from the ruins of the war but also as a symbol of modernisation.
This strategy led to the development of chaebol economy, the implications of which are still clearly apparent today as shown in the contrasting views between the chaebol and SME interviewees on all of the three spheres of technology, place, and people. The overarching premise of the findings was the contemporary Korean economy as the contested yet correlated space between the ‘interfaces’ invoked by the state and chaebol and ‘interactions’ performed by SMEs and individuals. In this regard, chaebol and SME function on the ambivalent equilibrium between sustenance and reframing of the existing system, in other words, by appealing to the user’s needs ('sustaining innovation' – Christensen, et al., 2008) and desire ('disruptive innovation' – ibid, 2008). These two seemingly binary yet inter-related milieux metamorphose through convergence. Indeed convergence was the key term in all the interviewees’ lexicon of the future development; and by definition convergence suggests openness to taxonomic fusion and sometimes confusion. The interviewees affirmed that the rapidity of technical and economic development has caused Korea to lack adequate contemplation and reflection on their own contextual evaluation for what should come next, which in turn reduces its strategic capacity for global megatrends.
The article has demonstrated that Korean economy today is built upon and within the innate interconnectedness of various technological, geographical, socio-cultural, and political elements; it is a complex network that consists of connected nodes across a magnitude of strength, transience, and nature. In recent years an increasing number of scholars has been exploring the notion of network economy, highlighting the inter-relational agency of individuals, businesses, and institutions (cf. Barabasi, 2003; Benkler, 2006; Kirman, 1997; Landry, 2000; Potts, et al., 2008). Such avid interest in conceptualising networks can be attributed to the emerging network
150 technologies that are becoming increasingly crucial in sustaining human society while also making connections amongst various nodes within the network increasingly conspicuous.
According to Mitchell (1995, p. 107), communication networks have ‘become as fundamental to urban life as street systems’ today. In this regard, the rapid advancement of ubiquitous technology accentuates the imminent and immanent convergence between entities that have previously been perceived dichotomously – such as private/public, and collective/distributed – through which continuous re- innovation, thus network sustainability, takes place. Kelly (1998) concurs with the emerging view across disciplines (Banks & Potts, 2010; Dopfer & Potts, 2004; Thrift, 2006) that it is to understand the logic of networks in order to understand and profit from current economic transformations. He further argues, ‘at present, there is far more to be gained by pushing the boundaries of what can be done by the bottom than by focusing on what can be done at the top’ (ibid, p. 18), pointing at the emergence of prosumer (Toffler, 1980) and produser (Bruns, 2005) – the convergence between production and consumption/use afforded by fundamental systemic changes particularly in relation to ICTs. Given that the economic system is a dynamic complex network, the design of a usable and sustainable economic system must thus be based on making visible possibilities for innovations through the interplay between the interface and interaction. This is the core of ‘open design’ – design that presupposes fusion and confusion (convergence) and has flexiblility to adopt and adapt to new systemic transformations constantly (re)created by the interplay between the interface and interaction.
As discussed in the article, Korean SMEs are currently profiting from the same core principle by providing individuals means for micro-innovations. Therefore, the design implications for SMEs would be continuing their discovery of opportunities for trade to develop innovative business models that are adaptive to the transformative techno-social environment. For chaebols, which have been taking a fundamentally incremental approach to innovation, it is imperative to provide some channels for open innovation to meet the socio-cultural demand, and at the same time, produce technological platforms that appeal to the global market and are resistant to external disruptive innovations. This can be achieved by utilising their
151 existing relation with the government for further endorsement of developing technological standards and patents, as well as active knowledge-sourcing from their overseas R&D arrangements (cf. Song & Shin, 2008). The key role for the Korean government would therefore be animating the interplay between the ‘interface’ and ‘interaction.’ This means that at the most fundamental level, there needs to be recognition of individual citizens as valid, and more importantly valued, political, socio-cultural, and economic agents – as active nodes in contemporary Korean economic network – in planning and implementing state-led initiatives such as the u- City project (cf. Choi, 2010a, p. 82 – see Chapter 3.3). Furthermore, the government must also take stimulus measures for growing SMEs, providing them with counteractive capacities against chaebols. Such a fundamental systematic change is likely to be a lengthy process even in the ‘hurried’ culture of Korea, owing to its long history of authoritarian – top-down – approach to governance.
However, Korea is now facing a fundamental necessity for transformation as it enters the era of ubiquitous networks, an aspect more deeply felt here than any other place because of its unique techno-social context. With the recent global economic crisis, the Korean government is in a favourable situation to ground systematic adjustments for positive and valuable accommodation of what is likely to be one of the most significant paradigmatic shifts in Korean history, let alone global. Open network design allows for the connections to be broken and mended constantly, thus (re)creating needs and desires, as well as interfaces and interactions. Only through multiplicities of this process can usability and sustainability of the network be ensured. The future of Korean economy must be built upon the open network design principles.
152 Chapter 3.3 The City is Connections: Seoul as an Urban Network
Choi, J. H.-j. (2010). The City is Connections: Seoul as an Urban Network. Multimedia Systems, 16(1), 75-84, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00530-009-0173- 1
Publisher: Springer, London, UK
Web: http://www.springer.com/computer/information+systems/journal/530
Status: Published
Preamble After Chapters 3.1 (people) and 3.2 (technology), this chapter discusses the third element of urban informatics, place. In doing so, the chapter continues the thread of micro- / bottom-up innovation by people with and through technology in the city as an urban network. By taking the convergence between private and public spaces in conjunction with the emergence of spaces between the two as the point of departure, this chapter acknowledges difficulties of incorporating a balance between control (master planning) and freedom (user-led innovation), and proposes effectively utilising network technologies to seek opportunities for novel methods of finding ways to identify, understand, and respond to such difficulties. By doing so, this chapter mainly speaks to researchers and practitioners in fields of policy, urban studies, and ubiquitous computing.
153 Abstract With the rise of ubiquitous computing in recent years, concepts of spatiality have become a significant topic of discussion in design and development of multimedia systems. This chapter investigates spatial practices at the intersection of youth, technology, and urban space in Seoul, and examines what the author calls ‘transyouth’: in the South Korean context, these people are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, situated on the delicate border between digital natives and immigrants in Prensky’s (Prensky, 2001) terms. In the first section, this chapter sets out the technosocial environment of contemporary Seoul. This is followed by a discussion of social networking processes derived from semi-structured interviews conducted in 2007-8 with Seoul transyouth about their ‘lived experiences of the city.’ Interviewees reported how they interact to play, work, and live with and within the city’s unique environment. This chapter develops a theme of how technosocial convergence (re)creates urban environments and argues for a need to consider such user-driven spatial recreation in designing cities as (ubiquitous) urban networks in recognition of its changing technosocial contours of connections. This is explored in three spaces of different scales: Cyworld as an online social networking space; cocoon housing – a form of individual residential space which is growing rapidly in many Korean cities – as a private living space; and u-City (ubiquitous City) as the future macro-space of Seoul.
154 Introduction As the poet John Donne remarked, ‘No man [sic] is an island’ (2004, p. 62). The statement conveys a generally accepted notion that people have an inclination, as well as a basic human need, to be connected with others (cf. Baumeister & Leary, 1995). However, degrees and intensity of connectivity vary. Social networking sites (SNSs) make more visible social connections, especially amongst young people. The reasons for using SNSs also vary. For example, LinkedIn is predominantly used for professional networking, whereas MySpace operates on the border of business and leisure. The latter can be used to promote a user’s professional endeavours as well as to manage on- and offline social connections. A good example sees bands using it to break through in the market as well as to communicate with their fans. In this respect, identity is inevitably the ground on which online social networking activities grow. As self-definition is inherently context specific, ‘interaction is intimately connected with settings in which it occurs’ (Dourish, 2001). Socioculturally specific elements are evident in the design and uses of Cyworld (www.cyworld.com), the largest social networking site in South Korea (hereafter Korea) (Choi, 2006b). Cultural patterns are also conspicuous in mobile phone usage – for instance, the girls’ pager revolution (Fujimoto, 2005) and mobile email use amongst Japanese youth (Ito & Okabe, 2004). Scholars across disciplines have noted the global convergence of public and private platforms that are supported by network technologies (Benkler, 2006; Castells, 1996; Katz & Aakhus, 2002).
With this understanding, this chapter investigates the connection between spatial practices and urban social networking in Seoul. As one of the most connected, densely populated, and rapidly transforming metropolises in the world, Seoul is often portrayed in global media in terms of ‘technological fetishism and techno- orientalism’ (Hjorth & Koo, 2007) or alternatively the hot test-bed of ‘digital Asia’ where the latest technologies coexist – however transient the existence may be – with some of the oldest cultural traditions. The result of such a convergence is a unique technosocial environment that is constantly recreated by newer technologies and social practices.
155 If Seoul’s environment is so unique, what effect does this have on the lived reality of the population? How does the complex intermix of mobility and ubiquitous media connect users of the city? These are important issues to consider, particularly in the context of inter-disciplinary research into communication, urban design and social connectivity, which together create strong pillars of future multimedia environments. By reflecting on the localised development of ‘urban network lifestyle’ in a Korean context, this chapter provides useful and comparable knowledge for future technological, social, and urban developments in different geographical and cultural milieux. In particular, the chapter argues for a need to consider user-driven spatial recreation in designing cities as urban networks in recognition of its changing technosocial contours of connections within each localised network. To achieve this, this chapter first examines the technosocial environment of contemporary Seoul. Then an analysis of interviews with Seoul transyouth presents experiential perspectives of the city. This is followed by a discussion of interviews with industry representatives of Cyworld, a cocoon house, and u-City to reflect on multilayered technosocial interactions as urban fabrics of Seoul, the city of connections.
The City: Seoul Nearly half of the entire Korean population live in the capital city of Seoul, making it a massive economic engine contributing half of the national GDP together alongside the surrounding Gyeonggi Province (The World Bank, 2006). Seoul is also the capital of the ‘broadband miracle’ (Hazlett, 2004), home to the electronic corporations such as Samsung and LG. Approximately 80 per cent of Korean households own at least one computer with broadband internet (MIC, 2008). However, Seoul was not always a locus of economic wealth and technology. The damage from the Korean War (1950-3) soon after the end of Japanese annexation (1945) placed the country at the bottom of the global political and economic scale. At that time Korea was comparable with poor countries in Africa (ibid). However, within several decades, the country rose to be the eleventh-largest economy in the world (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 2007). With rapid development came infrastructural reforms: political, social, and physical.
156 Through turbulent reformations, Korea has transformed significantly: economic growth delivered cultural revitalisation and cultural adaptation. Opportunities for regaining traditional values were a welcome change (people were prohibited from practicing such values during the Japanese occupation, for example). However, the authoritarian government’s radical reforms under the name of modernisation forced Koreans to adopt ideologies from more economically advanced countries, particularly those from North America and Europe, which were often contradictory to traditional ones. Such confusion was also evident in urban (re)developments, particularly in Seoul. The mayor of Seoul in the late-1960s, Hyeon-ok Kim famously stated, ‘the city is lines,’ mirroring the massive reconstruction of the city during his administration. Many, but not all old winding roads and unstructured commercial/residential clusters were quickly replaced with straight lines of asphalt and concrete. For example, apartment megaplexes with an identical matchbox-like exterior have become an iconic feature of Seoul as a modern city (Fig. 21); further, such a dense urban residential distribution contoured by apartment living has been reported to have contributed significantly to the rapid penetration of broadband Internet in Korea by allowing relatively easy deployment and close proximity to telecommunication exchanges (Jyoti & Lee, 2004; Lau, et al., 2005).
Figure 21: Apartments in Seoul
OECD reports that Paris and Seoul are the top two cities with the highest population density amongst small region with 20,501 and 16,534 per sq. kilometer, respectively (OECD, 2009, p. 17). In fact, if we are to accept the dense, apartmentalised, residential environment as one of the fundamental strengths for rapid adoption of broadband Internet by Koreans, then we can aptly expect similar observations in the case of Paris. However, the figures show divergence from such an expectation.
157 ITU’s Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) reveals that while Korea and France share a similar level of opportunity, Korea demonstrates a more advanced level of infrastructure, and even stronger degree of usage, placing Korea at the top with a DOI of 0.80 and France at the 26th-place with DOI of 0.64 (International Telecommunication Union, 2007, p. 37). This suggests that while architectural environment facilitates diffusion of network technology, an equally – if not more – significant role is played by sociocultural elements.
In this respect, Valérie Gelézeau offers an evocative insight in The Apartment Republic: Korean Apartments in the Eyes of a French Geographer, claiming that there are fundamental differences between the public’s perception of apartments in France and Korea, particularly in their image as a residential space and reasons for occupancy (Gelézeau, 2007b, pp. 75-77). For example, although the literal translation of the Korean term danji (megaplex) in French would be grand ensemble or cité, the French terms convey negative connotations and refer to a problematic and/or precarious area emphasising marginalisation and exclusion. In contrastingly, while Seoul has a physical dimension that is approximately six times larger than Paris, apartments are rarely peripheral but often central to the dynamics of the city and telecommunication networks (ibid). This situation is not only due to the design of the urban infrastructure as planned and managed by the state. Rather, it is attributable to the Korean public’s imagining of the apartment – similarly to digital technology – as a symbol of modernity, security, and thus adequately respectable social status that is equivalent to the urban (upper) middle class (ibid).
Gelézeau thereby argues that simplistic assumption that population density was the main force behind the proliferation of apartments in Korea ineffectively negates the complexity of the situation; rather, she claims that it is the interplay of socio-political contexts that has been creating the ever-evolving configuration of the city in a way that is distinctively Korean (ibid). This argument is convincing and resonates strongly with the notion of convergence in framing the development of network society, as opposed to the presupposed hegemonic relationship between technology and society apparent in technological- or social-determinism. Just as the apartment metamorphosed from housing to a habitat (Gelézeau, 2007a), network technology for the Korean public also has transformed from a conceptually external,
158 autonomous domain to be adopted for modernization, to an essential embodiment of habitus and thus more broadly, of the habitat that is Seoul. Indeed, approaches to understanding this city have been particularly complicated by its rapid modernisation process, which has mixed old and new without adequate opportunities for reflection. A former Vice-Mayor of Seoul, Hong-bin Kang aptly frames the city’s complex techno-social configuration by noting its evidently ‘paradoxical combination’ of ‘too much planning’ and ‘too little planning’ (Kim, 2005). In this respect, I have previously described contemporary Seoul as a city in flux, of screens and bangs (Choi, 2007a). This notion is discussed in detail in the following paragraphs.
Western technology, Eastern spirit was a prevalent slogan in Korea in the twentieth- century. This reflects a desire among Koreans to adopt, copy, and reappropriate Western technology and science (Shin, 2003), a symbol of modernity and supremacy in global economy. However, unlike Western science, Western values were portrayed as detrimental to the preservation of Korean cultural traditions, and Korea’s positioning in the global market (Yoon, 2003). In this regard, technology has come to symbolise modernisation and a means to accomplish productivity in labour, a socially positive attitude presumably leading to the nation’s growth. Bright and colourful digital screens became visual spectacles of Seoul urbanscape, conveying rising consumerism (Debord, 1977), and a sense of pre-eminence as the capital. Furthermore, screens are becoming increasingly conspicuous in varied scale – from the façade of an entire building (as seen in the Galleria Department Store in Apgujeong, of which the façade is made up of 4330 light-reactive, programmable discs that are capable of generating 16-million colours) to small TV screens in subways (Fig. 22) and elevators, as well as tiny screens on mobile phones.
159
Figure 22: Screens in subway
To a somewhat limited extent, these screens together create a spatial experience of ubiquitous media in the city, thereby emphasizing the multiplicities of reality – both mediated and non-mediated – at any given moment. Therefore, screens at their core act as the visual interface to a more profound sensorial and conceptual experience complemented by the bang culture, as I shall explain in the following section.
If screens visually augment space, bangs (rooms) do so sensorially by allowing their participants to recreate or participate in recreating the space. In discussing the prevalence of screens in Seoul the circuit city, Vanderbilt (2005) mentions the equally prevalent number of bangs, while also noting the transitional spatial quality that bangs provide between public and private realms. However, the notion of a bang requires greater discussion beyond a simple binary confluence of public and private, as the bang is one of the most fundamental pillars of socialisation in Korea. The consideration must acknowledge the significant role bangs play in Korean culture, especially in relation to spatiality, communication, and the sense of selfhood:
160 1. Spatiality: Bang is often literally translated to ‘room.’ This is correct, but only to an extent that both words refer to a confined space, which mainly denotes the physical or geometric dimension of the space. Such literal translation of bang to room overlooks the fundamental difference between the Korean way of creating a place (in other words, social construction of space) and that of the West. While a room is perceived in Western cultures as a pre-provisioned space with a specific purpose, a bang is considered to be a flexibly provisioned multifunctional space, which metamorphoses into a context-specific space according to the occupant’s will (Choi & Greenfield, 2009). For example, a bang changes into the bedroom by folding out yo (Korean futon); when the yo is folded up and put away in a cupboard, a low table can be put out to turn the space into the study; when the table is set up with food, the space becomes the dining room. Although modern housings have changed to conform to Western architectural traditions and thus contain designated spaces—dining room, living room—in smaller dwellings, the traditional spatial practice of bang is still maintained.
2. Communication: A traditionally collectivist (Hofstede, 2006), interdependent (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), high-contextual communication (Hall, 1976) society, Korea is also defined as a polychronic culture in which time is perceived to be flexible and fluid rather than discrete and fixed (seconds/minutes/hours etc) and thus is subordinate to harmonious maintenance of selective relationships (ibid; Gudykunst & Matsumoto, 1996). This suggests the possibility of flexibly creating manifold spatial realities according to the multiple temporal realities one needs to manage at any given time. In turn, this implies the possibility of utilising communication technologies to create such multiple spatial realities, which in the Korean context, manifest in a form of bangs – virtual or not.
3. Sense of Selfhood: In such an environment where there is a need for one to be ‘present’ in multiple spaces at once, it is natural to assume and practice the notion of the distributed self. This relates directly with the notion of ‘interdependent self-construal’ (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), which refers to the self being defined not as an autonomous entity but in relation to the social
161 environment, or one’s in-group members (Kim, 2002, p. 73). In this respect, the adoption of and adaptation to network technologies would be different for Korean culture as compared to Western cultures, where the self is perceived as an autonomous entity. It would be then plausible to say that the configuration of network technology is fundamentally interrelated with the locally specific cultural characteristics of socialisation in Korea, thereby influencing the prompt and substantial embedding of network technology in everyday life.
Therefore, in a simplistic sense bangs indeed converge public and private realms in Korean society as Vanderbilt (2005) observes. More profoundly, however, bangs signify inclusion, sharing, and metamorphosis, through which one’s existence is validated on the border of belonging, an aspect that has been made particularly conspicuous with the contemporary development of network technology. The commercial sector has promptly embraced this aspect. Walking in the streets of Seoul (or any urban districts of Korea), one would frequently come across many different types of commercial bangs such as PC-bang, Norae-bang (Karaoke), and DVD-bang, often as an eclectic collection contained within a single building. As Kim states in the curatorial statement for the 9th International Architecture Exhibition 2004 Venice Biennale, ‘The bang is an incarnation of the room, the house and the city, but it does not belong to any of them’ (Kim, 2004). Such typological obscurity of bang is best exemplified in the popular Jjimjil-bang, a large-scale commercial establishment, which typically consists of multiple types of bangs such as themed sauna-like rooms, baths, sleeping rooms, snack bars, and a PC-room. Screens are a common feature of jjimjil-bang: many sub-bangs have televisions installed, and people commonly carry their mobiles into them. Considering some sub-bangs have temperatures of over 70°C, ubiquity of screens in this environment shows profound desire among Koreans for constant connection on the border of many belongings and (un)belongings. This aspect is particularly evident amongst Korean youth.
162 People: Transyouth Young people tend to use and experiment with new technologies more than older people. They are familiar with digital technologies. At this point, I would like to bypass the debate of applicability of the now broadly used expression, digital native (Prensky, 2001). The term is commonly used to refer to a distinctive generation born in the digital era (in the last ten to fifteen years of massive digitisation) and thus share relevant sensibilities that older generations may find novel and even challenging. However, such a generational and homogenising approach to users raises concerns for its theoretical validity (Bayne & Ross, 2007; Owen, 2004). However, the proliferation of social networking sites, as well as participatory (Jenkins, et al., 2006), DIY (Hartley, 1999) and remix cultures (Lessig, 2005) amongst youth indicate their desire and competency to incorporate digital technologies into everyday life, and be constantly connected to their social networks via technological means; they perceive such connection as a given social parameter. For my research project on urban mobile play culture of young Seoulites, I selected a demographic between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. I call them transyouth to refer to their transitioning from youth to adulthood (cf. Arnett, 2004 for a similar understanding of extended adolescence or 'emerging adulthood'). This is a period when they are temporarily and partially emancipated from rigid social traditions; more specifically, it refers to the in-between period bridging student and worker identity. Transyouth have been pioneers of network communication in Korea (Choi, 2008a); they have experienced both analogue and digital technologies growing up in a period of rapid urbanisation, digitalisation, and globalisation.
A total of forty-four transyouths (twenty-three females and twenty-one males) were recruited; the research approach incorporated surveys, photo-sharing and daily activity diaries. For the purpose of this chapter, I draw on the data from interviews, the total duration of each being 2 – 2.5 hours. Details of the specific process and outcomes of this part (specifically methodology and empirical findings) have been discussed elsewhere (Choi, 2009; 2010b – see Chapter 3.1) while key reflections germane to this chapter are presented here. During the interviews, the research participants indicated being Internet-savvy and open (to other cultures and ideas) as distinctive features of transyouth. Contrary to my original hypothesis that the
163 transyouth period was not a flexible ‘in-between playtime’ linking two social identities of student and worker, I discovered that the period is a ‘go-between prep- time’ during which they prepare for the uncertainty of the future. The uncertainty evident in many fundamental facets of selfhood – their sense of who they were, or who they were becoming – owed much to the uniquely intense geographical, technological, and social changes that constantly occur in Seoul. In order to overcome such ontological insecurity, they strive to create a sense of continuity through social networking: in spatial terms, the cycle starts in a wide social field of online SNSs (Cyworld); then moves to a tighter and more direct communication space created by mobile phone communication (texting and voice-calling); finally, the most intimate and secure place (to express themselves without a great need to perform their socially-framed roles (Goffman, 1975)) is created through their Face- to-Face (FtF) interactions in places that are affordable to enter/stay and which are socially acceptable in a form of ‘coolness,’ such as cafés in trendy precincts like Hongdae and Shinchon. Carefully selecting the place for interaction is an important issue, as such interactions are recorded on their SNSs and shared with the involved parties and others; at this point, their social networking process forms a cycle.
Forming multiplicities of such cycles with others within one’s social network invokes a sense of social continuity in which the self is updated, shared, and thus assured. As I have argued elsewhere (Choi, 2010b – see Chapter 3.1), the notion of the bang resonates considerably here, as bangs signify inclusion, sharing, and metamorphosis, facilitating and encompassing various scales and types of such multiplicities. With the assumed ‘always-on’ connection, the space of urban social networking for Seoul transyouth is ubiquitously accessible and instantly (re)created in a form of physical and/or virtual bang. Transyouth actively engage themselves in using, creating, and recreating bangs at intersections of their cyclic interactions within the network of mediated and non-mediated reality layers. In this sense, the phenomenological reality for transyouth is a network of technosocial layers.
164 Layers: Technosocial To further examine the interrelation between Seoul transyouth and the business sectors as both users and constructors of the city, this section reflects on the interviews with industry representatives who are involved in designing and/or providing technosocial spaces in Seoul: Yong Jun Hyoung, the founder of Cyworld now the CEO of Enfra Networks; Jong-soo Jeong, the owner of a cocoon housing in Shinchon, Seoul; and Dr. Jong Sung Hwang, the director of the National Information Society Agency (NIA) leading the u-City project. The selection of these three spaces serves a two-fold purpose: first, these places are closely integrated in transyouth’s life (Cyworld is widely and frequently used; many live in cocoon houses; u-City as a national agenda will affect many cities in Korea, particularly Seoul and surrounding cities); second, they reflect three loose categories of dwelling – public (u-City), private (cocoon house), and in-between (Cyworld). Each industry representative was interviewed for an hour. The interview questions addressed the six areas of who, where, what, when, why, and how of the current and future Seoul in technological and social domains in relation to their business practices and trajectories.
Cyworld It is hard, if not impossible, to delineate online social networking in Korea without also discussing Cyworld, the most prominent multimedia SNS in the country. Approximately 90 per cent of Korean Internet users in their twenties are members of Cyworld (Yoo, 2005). For them, Cyworld is a quotidian and integral part (Choi, 2006b) of their communicative ecologies (Foth & Hearn, 2007). It is a private space where they can express themselves; at the same time, it functions as an augmented self, which, as a node within a technosocial network, must entail performative aspects. Its openness to various types and scales of social ties fundamentally necessitates the user to evaluate the level of performativity applicable to such a wide range of audience. In this respect, Cyworld continues its appeal to Koreans: it allows the user opportunities to flexibly and tactically employ low and high-contextual communication through direct (text) and indirect (image, audio, and avatar) languages to codify their desire for further interaction with their close(r) ties on their page known as a mini-hompy (Choi, 2006b) (Fig. 23). Such codification can be useful when the user wishes to discuss a particular issue through other
165 communicative channels without explicitly disclosing the issue to everyone on their buddy-list (1-chon list in Cyworld). As well as codification, ‘courtesy’ was found to be another main reason why transyouth use more multimedia elements on their personal pages (mini-hompies) compared to their mobile phones. As one of the participants said, “Cyworld is a place for people to come. It has to be presentable if not inviting. The mobile phone is just for me. I’m the only one who hears the ringtone.”
Figure 23: Mini-hompy in Cyworld
In his interview, Hyoung, the founder of Cyworld, noted that its initial purpose – originally named ‘people square’ – was to facilitate trust-oriented information sharing amongst people (precisely in the transyouth demographic – university students and young workers) based on what he calls personal resource program. He stated, “Personal resource is unique. It accumulates as the person ages. Everyone has it regardless of how much financial resource they may have access to. The personal resource is only exchanged through social networks.” Furthermore, ‘people square’ had a human resources function with which the user could search through one’s contacts to locate the most suitable candidates for a particular employment position, for example. Therefore, while Cyworld was situated at the seam between the business and social, its initial design appears to have leaned towards pragmatism more than pleasure. According to Hyoung, the affiliation with SK Communications
166 in 2003 has steered Cyworld away from its original trajectory since it was founded in 1999, essentially to widen the user demographic and increase the revenue channels. With this understanding, it is plausible to suggest that the key force behind recreating Cyworld as a social space was the users – transyouth – themselves. This is in much resonance with the girls’ pager revolution in Japan (Fujimoto, 2005) where young Japanese girls turned the pager from a business-oriented to a social and playful medium to connect with their close social ties. The rising presence of the girls in public spaces was found to be intricately interconnected with the rising technological paradigm shift of the pager. Similarly, young Koreans in need of their own space of connection saw an opportunity to create such a space with the existing technological (for example, broadband and Cyworld as a system) and social (for example, globalisation and ontological insecurity) infrastructures, not only leading to Cyworld becoming an SNS embedded in their everyday life today, but also to a paradigm shift of social networking in contemporary urban Korea.
Cocoon House A similar shift has been occurring in the domain of residential properties development, led by the industry in response to needs and desires arising in emerging lifestyles of young Koreans. A cocoon house is an example of such a shift. Although it is also known as livingtel or goshitel, ‘cocoon house’ is most descriptive of this particular space. It is a new type of small residential establishment that has been spreading rapidly around Korea, especially where a high volume of young and mobile populations are present. There are clusters of cocoon houses around universities, business districts, and subway stations in large cities, particularly in Seoul. Similar with bangs, many cocoon houses are part of a building in which differently-purposed spaces coexist – for example, the building may contain a restaurant on the ground floor, and different bangs on the floor above with a cocoon section somewhere in between. Jeong, the owner of a women-only cocoon house in Seoul confirmed in my interview that these residences are essentially targeted at young people. In fact, a synonymous term, goshitel, derived from goshiwon, a rental- room housing that caters for young people preparing for judicial, civil or similar examinations. Like goshiwon, a cocoon house is extremely small in size; the total area of each room commonly varies from approximately 6.5 to 15 sq. metres
167 inclusive of some shared spaces such as the corridor. This is an advanced form of goshiwon, with modern facilities including a broadband connection, cable television, security cameras, swipe-card access, and a private bathroom in some cases. The room is fully furnished with a single bed, a desk/chair, mini-refrigerator, a cabinet, and a wardrobe, necessitating a very high spatial efficiency (Fig. 24).
Figure 24: Example of a cocoon house
The kitchen (with basic utensils and food), dining room and laundry are shared with other tenants and maintained by the management. This convenient and accessible housing, especially for young and mobile people, requires no need to save for a deposit, purchase furniture, or organise Internet or cable TV connections. Naturally, cocoon housing appeals to both domestic and overseas university students, as well as young unmarried workers living alone and unable to afford more private and spacious accommodation. As the notion of share-housing with strangers remains uncommon in Korea, a growing number of young people are living in cocoon houses, paying between 300,000 to 700,000 KRW (approximately US$280 - 650) per month.
168 It should be noted that similar concepts have been spreading widely in the hospitality industry, initially in Japan followed by the rest of the world. Known as capsule, pod, or cube hotels, they provide small, no-frills yet ultramodern, broadband-connected, cubicle-like rooms at a lower cost than conventional hotels (The Economist, 2007). The Qbiq, citizenM, and Yotel are examples of such hotels flourishing in Europe. Japan’s Manga Kissa is a slightly different type of establishment containing booths that are equipped with broadband connected entertainment systems and single mattresses as well as access to a large library of Manga, Japanese comics. Although the cocoon house shares similarities with mini-hotels and Manga Kissa, status of the cocoon house as a socially accepted long-term residential establishment makes it a unique phenomenon. Single-person households are growing rapidly in number in Korea and are expected to make up nearly 25 per cent of the entire Seoul households by year 2030 (Korea National Statistics Office, 2008a). Perceptibly, there will be numerous changes occurring in many fundamental social concepts, such as ‘home’ and ‘family.’ This is also evident in the sense of loneliness felt many of the research participants in their small rooms, and the consequent excessive use of media to alleviate such a feeling by immersing themselves in games or aimless net-browsing, or connecting to others on and offline. Furthermore, the extremely limited spatial availability discourages the occupant from having physical social interactions in their cocoon house. This suggests an upcoming broader paradigmatic shift in social constitutions. For example, reinterpretation of Oldenburg’s notion of first place (home), second place (work), and third place (community interaction) is one of the areas we would need to consider in this regard, particularly in relation to de- clustering of the city (blurring of home, work, and play spaces) and the urban nomadism supported by hyper consumerism of 24/7 service economy and ubiquitous computing. Foth et al. (2008) have explored the notion of network sociality in an urban village neighbourhood. The need to reconceptualise social networking – more specifically, the fluid oscillation between the collective and networked sense of community membership facilitated by network technologies – is crucial in imagining localised development of urban technosocial environments, and on a broader level, of cities.
169 u-City u-City is the driving force of future urban development in Korea conceived by National Information Society Agency (NIA). According to the organisation’s director, Hwang, NIA is a “think-tank agency” providing advice to the Korean government regarding the future ICTs and ICT-related policy trajectories. The prefix u- stands for ubiquitous. The u-City concept envisages the city as a holistic and intelligent system of ubiquitous technologies (cf. Hwang, 2009). u-City can be developed through three stages, which are also its three foundational qualities: real- time data gathering; context-awareness (in processing the gathered data to provide the optimum solution within the given context); and finally, autonomy in its operation, turning the city into an intelligent and autonomous network system. Hwang stated that this unique project differs from similar projects around the world, most of which predominantly focus on establishing physical network infrastructures. He predicted that the next ten years would see Korea reaching the first phase of the u-City development. Though such a short timeframe may sound overly ambitious for many, he asserts that its possibility is high because of two reasons: firstly, the current policy is favourable to building new technological infrastructures (e.g. next generation broadband networks); and secondly, both political and commercial sectors show intense propulsion in deploying new technologies, understanding yet essentially overlooking possibilities of failure. This is due to Korea’s situation in the global economy. As a small nation with limited technical advantages and resources, Korean government and businesses are forced to roll out their products and services as quickly as possible because extensive testing and risk management are likely to cause delays, and thus decreased competitiveness at the international and domestic level. This also resonates with the well-acknowledged ppalippali (hurry hurry) ethos of the Korean public, who in turn are eager to adopt and adapt the ‘next big thing.’
Hwang emphasised that u-City still remains at a conceptual level considering its embryonic state of development. Therefore, NIA limits its current discussion on u- City to formulating an authoritative definition of the term itself without much consideration to issues pertinent to other domains such as sociology and the humanities. Meanwhile, various new towns around Korea have come up with their own definitions of u-City, and started using the term to promote themselves at the
170 national level. On a smaller scale, as discussed earlier in the chapter, various bangs provide typologically obscure spaces presenting opportunities for re/deterritorialisation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) for the user. Given this context, it is plausible to say that despite the seamless environment that the current u-City project paints as the future, the Korean city is likely to be built on infrastructural ‘messiness’ (Bell & Dourish, 2007) or ‘overspill’ (Choi & Greenfield, 2009). Hence for the u-City to be successfully established and sustainable, it must not only imagine the city as an efficient network system. Rather, even at a cost of decreased operational efficiency, it should ensure, if not endorse, possibilities for the users to recreate their own spaces at junctures of multiple technosocial realities. This is a concept that is lacking in the current u-City vision – understandably so in view of its pre-developmental stage – and must be given significant consideration in its further progress.
Conclusions This chapter has examined the technosocial environment of contemporary Seoul, one of the most connected and rapidly transforming cities in the world. I have argued that growing up in the midst of continuous massive and rapid changes has produced ontological insecurity amongst Seoul transyouth. Such insecurity has engendered a fervent integration of network technologies in their everyday lives as a social device to counter the constant feeling of discontinuity and pressure. By utilising ubiquitous media within their daily lives, transyouth have appropriated autonomy in (re)creating personal spaces of social networking (cf. Choi, 2009; 2010b – see Chapter 3.1). Bangs are the manifestation of such spaces in both mediated and non-mediated forms. Bangs exist at junctures of multiple geographic, technological, and social reality layers, connecting people, technology, and place.
As the reality layers change for individuals en masse, broader social changes follow. Commercial ventures such as Cyworld and cocoon housing indicate that a demand for transformations in how society is imagined and lived is high and present. For Korean transyouth, demand is expressed by a propensity to flexibly create their own bangs to manage their activities as individual nodes within shifting technosocial
171 networks. From the urban development perspective, such user-driven spatial recreations present both difficulties and new possibilities for future cities as urban networks. It is in this contested space at the crux between the users and authority (in the city as a not only technological and sociocultural but also civic network) that ubiquitous technologies play a crucial role as the medium of negotiation. This negotiation continues to (re)shape the contour of micro- and macro-connections within the city.
What then, are the steps that all of us in our varied roles in the society can take to ensure better and sustained negotiation between the top-down and bottom-up, or macro- and micro- influences? As one would logically expect, there is no one-fits-all solution. At the core of this conundrum is a twofold issue of ‘context and scale.’ These two aspects are inherently inter-related. Measuring contextual importance is vital in terms of making – or rather, rebuilding – a locally specific technosocial environment (for example, as stated at the outset, the Korean context is certainly different to that of a different society). Amongst myriad contextual elements that ‘a single moment’ encompasses, what are the most critical ones? By answering this question a generic model of the ‘most relevant context’ consisting of ‘most pertinent contextual elements’ can be established at a particular moment in time. This then invokes the question of scale: on what scale should the context applicable? Would it be individual / community / regional / national / global, for example? Furthermore, the issue is also emphasised as the scale of media convergence increases from multi- to ubiquitous media, consequently requiring design and development of media products to respond to diverse desires and needs of users. The potential difficulties of creating media contents that are interoperable across various platforms and adoptive of / adaptive to the ever-changing preferences of users is obviously immense. This is particularly accentuated in a large-scale construction of a contemporary place, as we have seen in the case of u-City.
However, the distributive nature of network technologies not only presents difficulties but also opportunities for novel methods of finding ways to identify, understand, and respond to such difficulties. The government’s effort to open their
172 communication channels to the citizen can benefit greatly from the democratic potential of network media. Therefore, the future of socioculturally sustainable communities will need to involve innovative ways to allow if not encourage voluntary participation in continued recreation of the community via communication technologies that are intuitively designed according to the locally specific context. On a broader scale, through similar participatory civic engagement, the democratic potential of the city as an urban network could be realised to create positive changes in society at the local and global level. Many urban centres around the world are already facing an imminent and immanent era of ubiquitous media. In confronting the challenges of building a sustainable and desirable city for its users, we need to acknowledge existing technosocial infrastructures built and sustained by users themselves. The future of cities based on ubiquitous computing is not going to involve environments with seamless interactions but full of messy overspills – across people, technology, and place. The connections amongst these are the fabrics of the city without which it cannot exit. The city is connections.
173 Section 4
Play in the City: Pressure, Possibility, and Pleasure in Seoul
Choi, J. H.-j. (under review). Play in the City: Pressure, Possibility, and Pleasure in Seoul. International Journal of Cultural Studies.
Publisher: Sage, London, UK
Web: http://ics.sagepub.com/
Status: Under review. Submitted on 3 March 2010.
Preamble This chapter conceptually integrates the three key arguments made in the previous sections within the overall conceptual framework of play. I revisit Seoul as discussed in the thesis: in the contexts of East Asian culture (Chapter 1.1), media (Chapter 1.2), and the configuration of the city as designed and developed from the top-down (government-led) and bottom-up (citizen-/user-led) (Chapter 1.3). This final chapter weaves theoretical concepts from Section 1 with empirical findings from Section 3 to develop a model of play enactment, which in turn responds to the final Research Aim (#4). The conceptual basis of this chapter is that play is a mluti-faceted phenomenon that gives the player a sense of agency between control and freedom through pleasure-provoking and (re)creative interactions (as discussed in Section 1); the empirical basis is the case of Seoul (Section 3). The chapter therefore advocates the importance of play as the core of contemporary urban sustainability.
174 Abstract The significance of ‘play’ has been accentuated in recent years across various domains such as education, business, as well as technology and urban design. This article examines the meaning of play and its role in today’s networked urban environment. Based on existing play theories, the article proposes a model of play enactment based on existing theories on play, which is then applied in the context of Seoul, South Korea, one of the most connected and urbanised metropolises in the world. The article examines the current state and forms of urban play culture in Seoul at the intersection of technological, urban, and socio-cultural developments. The article concludes by arguing that play is one of the key agents to support social sustainability in urban environments.
175 Introduction As David Harvey declared, the twentieth century was the ‘century of urbani[s]ation’ (2000, p. 7). The twenty-first century has clearly been the century of ‘networks’ (van Dijk, 2006, p. 2) till now. With the rapid development of network technologies, people are presented with growing opportunities to openly and voluntarily participate in how society is or should be imagined, conceived, and experienced. The city is increasingly imagined as a place in and with which its users can interact for pleasurable experiences within agreed and in some cases flexible ground rules. Hence the city is not a smooth utopia – as initially described by Mark Weiser (1995) – but rather, a stimulating playground: a creative, sustainable, and seductive city of integrative techno-social networks. According to Rykwert (2004), a seductive place is built upon unexpected developments stemming from individual inhabitants’ desires and action, a place where negotiations of control and freedom are dynamically reified. Dourish, Anderson, and Nafus (2007) make a similar observation about network technology that they see as embedded in everyday urban life while referring to the two modes of spatialising proposed by de Certeau (1988): strategic (design and regulation) and tactical (use and resistance). Dourish et al. problematise the perception of network technologies as ‘a tool of regulation and surveillance’ rather than ‘a site for creative engagement with space’ and further assert that an equal emphasis must be placed on individual and collective agency (2007, p. 106). This article examines the notion of the seductive networked city by applying a conceptual lens of play, inclusive of the term’s general connotations – fun, pleasure, and stimulation, to name a few. The article is not specifically about playing games, but about a broader sense of playing as a mluti-faceted phenomenon that gives the player a sense of agency between control and freedom through pleasure-provoking and (re)creative interactions.
Despite the importance of play in social life of the individual and community, it has received less attention than it deserves in contemporary academia outside domains such as education (cf. Piaget, 1962; Sutton-Smith, 1997), psychology (especially around children’s play as a developmental instrument – cf. Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Ghani & Deshpande, 1994), and more recently, games studies (cf. Salen & Zimmerman, 2006). Such an insufficient scholarly exploration on the topic may be
176 because play is prevalent and inherent in human life, and is thus considered trivial by some when it stretches beyond the epistemological realm. Distinct disciplinary borders in academia, or in Henricks’s term, ‘compartmentalisation’ (2006, p. 2) may also have contributed to difficulties of studying play, as play by definition is a transdisciplinary subject. Nevertheless, there have been some seminal efforts to establish a universal definition of play. Huizinga ([1939] 1955) and Caillois (1961) are two such notable cases. Although there are some disparities between their views, they both essentially agree that play is totality in itself – that the purpose of play is simply to play. As such, play denies an autonomous structure outside of its own context.
A useful way of approaching play today then is to consider it in the context of the network society (Castells, 1996). Information Communication Technology (ICT) is at the core of any contemporary form of networks – including political, economic, and cultural networks. Hence the network is both social and technological, or techno-social, in nature. Interactions that occur within techno-social networks are amongst people and technological entities such as the mobile phone and sensors. This creates additional interactive dimensions including cognitive, aesthetic, technical, and social, and thus calls for a more open and flexible approach to studying human interaction (cf. Hearn, et al., 2009). This kind of epistemological environment presents opportunities for understanding what human play is at this moment in time. Furthermore, there has been an increasing demand for the play(ful) element across various domains in society, as seen in the prevalent use of the suffix ‘-tainment’ (for example, edutainment and infotainment) in recent years. As we enter the era of ubiquitous computing, this pervasive playfulness – or opportunities for it – is likely to intensify further. In this regard, Seoul presents a notable case for exploration as one of the most connected, rapidly urbanised, and fast transforming metropolises in the world.
This article looks towards the future through the conceptual lens of play following the centuries of urbanisation and network technologies – the century of urban networks. The article begins by looking at the city as a contemporary techno-social network. Then the article examines the notion of play first, by reviewing the key literature on play guided in particular by Huizinga ([1939] 1955) and Caillois
177 (1961); second, by defining play through textualisation – seeing play as text ‘within the network of intertextual relations’ (Morris & Frow, 2000, p. 328); and third, by constructing a model of play enactment that could be useful as a conceptual apparatus for the study of play in diverse disciplines. The article then presents the case of Seoul as an urban network, and the role of play within it, specifically from the perspective of the government, business sector, and youth in Korea. Finally, the article concludes by arguing that play is one of the key agents to support social sustainability in urban environments, and as such requires more vigorous explorations across disciplines.
City as a Network At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only sixteen cities in the world with more than a million people (Harvey, 2000, p. 7). Today, more than half of the global population live in cities. A rough calculation shows that within the next minute, 15 more people would start calling cities their home (UNFPA, 2007, p. 1). Contemporary cities commonly conjure up images of dense skyscrapers, fast moving streets full of strangers, pollution, crime, and heartless connections, yet at the same time they exude vibrancy and excitement, accentuating intensities of modern life. Such an ambivalent image of the city mirrors the complexity of its definition and points to the question: what is the city? Wirth (1938, p. 1) famously claimed, ‘a city is a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of heterogeneous individuals.’ As many other scholars across disciplines have proven over the years (cf. Benjamin, 1999; Jacobs, 1961; Lefebvre, 1991; Simmel, 2004), this statement is only partially valid. In fact, the statement fails to address the most important aspect of the city: the connection that holds together the ‘mosaic of little worlds’ (Park, et al., 1967) within it. I argue that the answer is ‘dialogic interaction.’ The following paragraphs explain why.
History shows that there have been world economies centering around cities ‘if not always, at least for a very long time’ (Braudel, 1992, p. 24). As such, the city has often been viewed as a machine – an economic generator – that can be prefigured to produce specific output. Approaches in early urban studies were grounded in economic and technological determinism. As Harvey (2000, p. 29) notes, the
178 deterministic approach was based on the ‘persistent habit of privileging things and spatial forms over social processes. It presumed that social engineering could be accomplished through the engineering of physical form.’ However, through ‘a traumatic self-examination’ (Zukin, 1988, p. 432), the old deterministic interpretation was superseded by more open approaches incorporating socio-cultural perspectives in the postmodern era.
Therefore, in the current urban studies discourse, the city as ‘a mosaic of little worlds’ (Park, et al., 1967) is not black and white in colour; and unlike the original statement, the constituent ‘little worlds’ formed around ethnic, socio-cultural, and economic common grounds, can touch as well as interpenetrate one another. 2 According to Lefebvre (1996, p. 129), such interpenetration amongst the vast array of contradictions are at the core of urban life.
Social relations continue to become more complex, to multiply and intensify through the most painful contradictions. The form of the urban, its supreme reason, namely simultaneity and encounter, cannot disappear … As a place of encounters, focus of communication and information, the urban becomes what it always was: place of desire, permanent disequilibrium, seat of the dissolution of normalities and constrains, the moment of play and of the unpredictable.
In a similar vein, Soja (1980) proposes the notion of socio-spatial dialectic, which refers to the reciprocal relationship between spatial structures and social – and other processes, such as economic, political, and cultural, whereby ‘social and spatial relations are dialectically inter-reactive, interdependent’ (ibid, 211). To put it simply, places shape people as people shape places. Considering the heterogeneity of attributes and values amongst and within individuals and groups, the encounters among people, objects, and systems of the city are closer to Bakhtin’s notion of
2 It should be noted that the original statement ‘… a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate’ was made mainly in relation to the urban zoning and population segregation that create moral milieux for which transport and communication provide means for potentially superficial travelling between one milieu to another.
179 ‘dialogic processes’ (Bakhtin & Holquist, 1981) rather than ‘dialectic’ in meaning as the encounters involve pluralistic inter-related entities engaged in dynamic, iterative processes of becoming rather than towards the state of equilibrium. The change in this case is reformation of the system as well as its constitutive elements. Therefore, the city’s configuration resembles most closely to an open network that consists of an unfixed number and type of inter-related nodes. Numerous scholars have commented that network technologies provide creative and vital means for users to participate in challenging the established socio-cultural hegemony (cf. Castells, 2004; Hartley, 2009; Livingstone, et al., 2007; Rheingold, 2008). As ICTs are increasingly embedded in everyday urban life and the era of ubiquitous computing begins, cities as networks have more opportunities to be seductive places (Rykwert, 2004), where negotiations for control and freedom are dynamically reified. In the next section, I will delineate how play is based on the dialectic of control and freedom
What is ‘to Play’? Finding an adequate language and conceptual apparatus to define play has been difficult. Some prominent efforts have been made, the inauguration of which can be traced to the seminal book Homo Ludens by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1955). He begins the account by entitling play a totality: play is ‘an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody at a glance right down to the animal level … We play and know that we play, so we must be more than merely rational beings, for play is irrational’ (1955, pp. 3-4). Huizinga (ibid) examines the element of play in law, war, science, poetry, philosophy, and art, to corroborate his central argument that humans are essentially playful beings – Homo Ludens – and thus human civilisation is built upon the primordial soil of play – play came before culture. Although incomplete in and of itself, Huizinga’s (ibid) definition is useful to this date, as it captures the universal and fundamental role of play in human society. Play for Huizinga is free, voluntary activities that are performed for pleasure according to fixed rules and order in bounded time and space temporarily outside the ordinary life, which he calls the ‘magic circle’ (1955, p. 12).
180 Caillois’s (1961, p. 4) sociological account of play builds on Huizinga’s (1955) work but critiques two key issues. Firstly, Caillois (1961) points out that despite the important role of chancy games, such as gambling, Huizinga (1955) fails to address this particular domain of play. Viewing that games of chance are a legitimate form of play holds theoretical significance, as it implies that play – although it is often developmental – does not have to lead to development of the participants’ capacities. Play, Caillois asserts, is ‘an end in itself’ (1980, cited in Chester, 2004, p. 37). While the developmental aspects of play are valuable to society and thus have been instrumental particularly in education (cf. Sutton-Smith, 1997), the prime objective of play is to play, not to ‘learn’ or ‘learn to progress.’ This way of thinking about play evokes a fundamental aspect of play: the interrelation between systematic control and individual freedom.
Caillois addresses this issue by introducing the continuum of control and freedom. In some play activities, players must comply with the internal rules for the activity’s continuation, as seen in cases such as chess and football. These rules create a fiction in which activities are performed for real (as opposed to the reality). On the contrary, some forms of play, such as playing with dolls and imitating airplanes, do not impose such rules. This leads to a conclusion that play is not ruled and make- believe, but rather, it is ruled or make-believe (Caillois, 1961, p. 9). Caillois calls these two components ludus (controlled) and paidia (free) (ibid, 13). Paidia and ludus are interdependent values, each of which cannot exist as an autonomous attribute in the paradigm of play. They are comparative and complementary measures, and as such, pure forms of paidia or ludus are simply unattainable. This is due to the extensively wide range of levels to which these concepts can be applied; Caillois describes the breadth of applicability of the concepts as follows,
In general, the first manifestations of paidia have no name and could not have any, precisely because they are not part of any order, distinctive symbolism, or clearly differentiated life that would permit a vocabulary to consecrate their autonomy with a specific term (1961, p. 29)
181 This statement insinuates that pure form of play resides outside of the ontological realm, which resonates with Huizinga’s (1955) idea of primacy of play in human existence.
The permanently co-existing ludus-paidia or controlled-freedom relation is also reflective of the second critique that Caillois (1961) raises about Huizinga’s (1955) definition. While both share the view that play occurs in an imagined realm (secret and mysterious), Caillois (1961) argues that the play-realm is deeply implicated with the social and material realities; play, therefore, is a fundamentally profane activity that takes place in a middle-space between real and imagined realities. Turner’s (1974) concept of liminality3 offers a useful explanation for this in-between state. According to Turner (ibid, p. 13), in the ‘interim state of liminality, the possibility exists of standing aside not only from one’s own social position but from all social positions and of formulating a potentially unlimited series of alternative social arrangements.’ The significance of Turner’s (ibid) definition of liminality as compared to Huizinga’s ‘magic circle’ (1955, p. 12) is its emphasis on the inevitable transformative quality of this transient in-between state – that the realm of play is transient and contested, and therefore, play can lead to open-ended innovation of the current arrangement of the player’s world towards their desires. Again, Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism – which assumes the impossibility of being neutral and finds the basis of existence in dynamic (re)creative interactions – resonates strongly here, particularly considering its inherent conceptual link with the ‘carnivalesque’ discourse based on the carnival, a well known form of social play (cf. Bakhtin, 1984; Bakhtin & Holquist, 1981). Play, then, is a voluntary, transient, and an innovative experience in between the pressure of control and the possibility of freedom; it is a ‘protest against determinism, a claim that humans need not merely endure existential conditions but can reform these according to their own desires and insights’ (Henricks, 2006, p. 185).
3 Turner also introduces the term ‘liminoid,’ which was derived from pre-industrial form of liminality; liminoid is more individualistic and flexible in structure, in line with the ascendency of voluntary play over obligatory rituals in the industrial era. I focus on the in-between state, which is common in both limality (or liminality?) and liminoid, and thus only introduce the original concept of liminality here.
182 Textualisation: Pressure, Possibility, and Pleasure The previous section explained how the play realm exists in the contested space between control and freedom, or between pressure from imposed control and possibility of overcoming that pressure. This process must necessarily involve pleasure; otherwise it would not be voluntary, and thus not be defined as play. Fiske (1987, 1989) and Barthes ([1973] 1990) provide a useful perspective on pleasure in this respect. Following de Certeau’s (1988) assertion that the oppressed actively and tactically resist the geo-social strategies imposed by institutions through everyday practices, Fiske (1987) challenges the notion of the passive and powerless audience – or ‘cultural dopes’ (Hall, 1981, p. 232) – and sees media texts as sites of ‘struggles for meaning that reproduce the conflicts of interest between the producers and consumers of the cultural commodity’ (Fiske, 1987, p. 14). The reader, therefore, is a secondary author whose readings of a text – challenged and negotiated according to their own needs and desires – can transform dominant ideologies imposed by the existing system of the viewer’s everyday life.
Fiske (ibid) also uses the notion of jouissance and plaisir in reference to Barthes’s (1990) The Pleasure of the Text, in which Barthes presents two categories of pleasure produced by texts. The first category, plaisir, refers to a ‘readerly’ conformist pleasure that does not challenge the reader’s subjective position. The second category is jouissance, an intense ‘writerly’ sensual bliss through which the reader is able to break out of their subjective position beyond the governing ideological restraints. Although two scholars apply these concepts in different domains of media – Barthes (ibid) in literature and Fiske (1987) in television – they both see the inherent inter-relation between play and pleasure; for ‘the pleasure of creating the text out of a work involves playing with the text’ (Fiske, 1987, p. 230). Fiske further asserts, ‘Games and texts construct ordered worlds within which the players/readers can experience the pleasures of both freedom and control’ (ibid). In regards to Caillois’s (1961) theory of play, this suggests that the player desires to be in the play-world in order to experience different types and extents of pleasure that fall at various points on the continuum between jouissance and plaisir. Pleasure is contingent upon the amount of freedom and control, in other words, the position of the play-world on the continuum of paidia and ludus.
183
It is then plausible to perceive play experience to be activated at the intersection of pressure, possibility, and pleasure: as the player experiences a kind of ‘pressure’ in their current settings, they seek/recognise ‘possibility’ for opportunities to tactically change the situation, which in turn leads to a sense of ‘pleasure’ – at this intersection a particular form of play has been enacted. This process comprises the action of play. The following visually represents this view (Fig. 25):
Figure 25: Enactment of Play
This model of play enactment is presented here as a conceptual apparatus that could help further studies on play across various domains, and as such remains minimal and generic. The model is not to be interpreted as suggesting that play enactment is a linear and singular process. Rather, the usefulness of the model is found in its atomic quality – that it represents the most basic conceptual unit of ‘the play matter.’ Like the atom in science, the model presupposes interaction with other atomic entities and external forces, through which matters are (re)created. In today’s networked cities, ICTs have great influence on the ‘playful interactions.’
184 Networked Play The rise of the network technology has transformed many aspects of everyday practices for many people. It has also transformed the ‘playscape’ in contemporary society. New forms of play activities are constantly emerging allowing various kinds of pleasure. Social connection has been one of the most prevalent forms of emerging play around the world in recent years. Online games – such as World of Warcraft and The Sims Online –, social network sites – such as Facebook and MySpace –, Flashmobs, and many other new forms of pleasure seeking now involve some elements of connecting with others of human or technological nature. Thus there rises a need for paradigmatic shift in framing the notion of play, which is becoming increasingly embedded in everyday life via wired and wireless connections.
Ubiquitous technologies provide users with abundant freedom and possibilities to enter the play space for various kinds and degrees of pleasure. The virtual playground can be readily constructed via portable devices such as the mobile phone and maintained as an additional temporary layer to the existing holistic experiential reality (Fig. 26). Furthermore, each virtual playground takes techno-social account of all layers of reality at play, regardless of their spatial or temporal scale at the moment of concern.
Figure 26. Creating simultaneous layers of reality through portable devices
185 Research into this complexity and ambiguity of play in and with ubiquitous technology is yet to be seen in the literature – understandably so as ubiquitous media as a global phenomenon is still in its infancy (yet fast growing). The current environment may be quite dissimilar to the smooth space of ambient intelligence painted by Mark Weiser (1995). However, currently, cities as ubiquitous networks are full of messiness (Bell & Dourish, 2007) and overspills (Choi & Greenfield, 2009), stemming from locally specific techno-social developments. In this respect, Seoul presents an illustrative case as the most connected city in the world with its 5,000 years of history, an urban incarnation of paradoxical combination between control and freedom.
Seoul as an Urban Network Seoul is the capital city of Korea, and one of the most connected cities in the world. Approximately 80% of Korean households own at least one computer with broadband access (MIC, 2008). To examine it as an urban network beyond technological exotification requires understanding of the city’s ‘other’ infrastructures – social, political, and architectural, for example – that have developed through its long and tumultuous history. Korea has been emblematically known as ‘the land of the morning calm’ and ‘the hermit kingdom,’ illustrating its earlier seclusion in the global culture and economy, as well as conservative progression in these areas. Traditionally Korea had a hereditary caste system and gender segregation as a rigid social hierarchy; its culture was greatly influenced by Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and Muism or traditional shamanism (Kihl, 1994) with Hangul – a language isolate (language with no known genealogical relatives) (Song, 2005, p. 15) – as the national language, which also contributed to the on-going ‘cultural insulation.’ However, such isolation became no longer feasible at the gunboat diplomacy of Japan, followed by forty years of Japanese occupation (1905 – 1945). Massive infrastructural changes occurred during this period, including political, social, economic, and cultural: traditional heritage such as language, religion, relics, and even individuals’ names were no longer to remain the same under the Japanese rule. The situation deteriorated during the Korean War (1950 – 1953), which destroyed much of the existing infrastructures yet again. After the end of the war, a long period
186 of authoritarian regime followed, during which so-called ‘Korean modernisation’ took place.
The modernisation process for Korea was essentially rooted in economic development as a result of export-oriented industrialisation, a heavily orchestrated collaboration between the government and large family-owned conglomerates otherwise known as chaebol. This controlled capitalism pushed Korea’s economic status at the end of the war – comparable to some of the poorest African countries (The World Bank, 2006) – to the 11th largest economy in the world only within half a century (Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 2007). Today, Seoul is home for more than half of the entire Korean population and generates half of the national GDP as the centre of the capital region (The World Bank, 2006). There are two main aspects of this condensed development that are germane to the topic of this article,
1. Use of technology and urbanisation as a visual manifestation of authority: As the then omnipresent slogan ‘Western Technology, Eastern Spirit’ suggests, the state propagated technology as an object for aspirations, but with caution to filter out new ideas and practices from the Western world (Shin, 2003, p. 8). The government directed the citizens’ eyes to the inside by visually manifesting its authority and legitimacy through rapid deployment of technologies and construction of modern architecture – ‘amidst a broad concomitant suppression of nature, history, and human right’ (Choi & Greenfield, 2009, p. 22) – especially in the capital city of Seoul. Bright urban screens on high-rises have now become the spectacle of Korean urbanscape, while also keeping the remains of the past in the dark.
2. Lack of cultural reflection led to ontological insecurity: Thrust for economic growth over-emphasised labour (for manufacturing and industrial production at that time) and left little time for Koreans to reflect on cultural aspects at the individual and collective level. Foreign ideologies (mostly imported from the US and Europe and thus promoted as advanced yet immoral) were quickly ‘glossed over’ as people had inadequate time and resources to interpret or reappropriate them. For the workers of this period, cultural elements were only secondary and thus play scarcely integrated in
187 everyday life as they sublimated ‘their personal hopes and dreams to the national good’ … believing that ‘their sacrifice will purchase all the fruits of choice (both democratic and consumerist) for their children’ (Choi & Greenfield, 2008, p. 23). The consequence of the rapid development was not only the illegible cityscape but also a mélange of ideologies and cultural practices, leading to ontological insecurity particularly amongst young Koreans (cf. Choi, 2010b – see Chapter 3.1).
The Korean government has been visibly pursuing the so-called ‘digital future’ with significant investment in the integration of information and communication technologies in Korea. Since the ‘Enforcement Plan for Adapting Education to the Information Age’ was enacted in 1996, computer education has become a compulsory part of curriculum from the first year of primary school, and at least one computer lab has been built in every primary and secondary school with free or almost free broadband access in addition to the deployment of computers and relevant education to students from low socio-economic backgrounds. At the same time, the thriving online gaming and PC-bang (Fig. 14) culture (Internet café mostly used as a gaming and socialising place – cf. Chee, 2006) indicates that Korean youth also actively use their digital literacy and existing networks to create their own play space outside the rigid social configurations.
188 Figure 14. PC-bang (identical to the figure on p. 113)
Beyond the glamour of technological advancement, Seoul exists today as a network of many conflicting elements in constant micro- and macro-transformation. The city as an urban network is a paradoxical and contested space – indeed bursting with ‘messy overspills’ (Bell & Dourish, 2007; Choi & Greenfield, 2008).
Playful Seoul In Korean language, play (nolda as a verb) may not have entirely positive connotations – for example, one would respond with ‘you are playing (nolgoitne)’ to a nonsensical / exaggerated / deceitful statement or action. Similarly, an unemployed person would be described as ‘playing’ in colloquial expression. This may be attributed to the strong work commitment widely encouraged during the modernisation era when hard work was praised and thus play – or resting – was approached with passivity. In fact, it was only in 2006 that the Korean Culture and Tourism Institute published the inaugural Korean Leisure Whitepaper. On the contrary, play with an emphasis on collective interaction is a fundamental part of the traditional Korean culture. According to Choi (2002), ‘chaos’ and ‘irregularity’ are the two main foundational elements of Korean aesthetics. As such, many Korean play forms embody elements of spontaneity, free-flow, and rule breaking to invoke collective involvement in sharing fun and/or humorous experience even at the bleakest moment. Adding to this ‘fun of paradox’ is a unique cultural concept of han stemming from the hardship Korean people experienced during tumultuous eras of political oppression, war, and poverty. Han is described as connoting ‘both the collective and the individual genealogical sense of the hardship of historical experience. In implying the accumulated anger of resentment born of such experience, it relaxes the temporal and geographic patchwork of passive and active, resistance and nonresistance – by not forcing the distinction’ (Abelmann, 1996, p. 37). One of the most illustrative cases of the Korean playfulness founded in the aesthetic basis of chaos and irregularity is Dashiregi performance that continues to exist – though limitedly – in Jin Island till today:
189 Dashiregi is an ‘empty bier’ play that takes place a night before the coffin gets carried out from the house, known for its chaotic humor. Although the funeral is naturally expected to be sacred and grave, right from the beginning it brings irregularity to the scene. The performers roam around the house like gate crashers, randomly picking up food from jesang (sacrificial table for the dead) and even go further to utter ‘you must be over the moon now that your useless father who’s just been holed up in your house eating away (your rice/money) has finally gone,’ to sangju (chief mourner who is usually the first son or the father of the dead), adding spices of black humor. It does not stop there. Another group of performers casually put on a show about a love triangle involving a Buddhist monk, a blind devotee, and his wife who later gives birth to an illegitimate child. Then these three start having a loud and lewd fight over the ownership of the child, instantly replacing even sangju’s sadness with laughter. Later playful moments involve vulgar melodies or folk songs as well as Byungshinchoom (dance of the handicapped), turning the funeral into a fun-filled playground (Choi, 2002, p. 45).
The formation of this playful act came about from realizing the possibility to transform a profound social and emotional pressure of death into pleasure through unanticipated actions of liberally breaking rigid social rules. Evidently the play culture of the Land of the Morning Calm defies such emblematic description through challenges to the existing social and cultural system on the individual and collective level. However, dashiregi as a performative ritual is an obvious example of a traditional parodic carnivalesque spectacle (Bakhtin, 1984). However, its spatio- temporal construction offers an insight into a fundamental premise of Korean play, which is the element of pan. Within the context of funeral, the performances would be described as nanjang-pan, or messy-pan.
The term pan has an extensive range of connotations in Korean language. When pan is compounded with a nominal, -pan delineates a fixed size or space (for example, tofu 1-pan means a large block of tofu); when it is used as a suffix to an action, it conveys a temporal limit or time (for example, ‘wresting 1-pan’ means a round of wrestling); when it is a prefix to performance-related words, it conveys the contextual information of the said event (Park, 2000, p. 272). Pansori is a good
190 example: literally translated as pan-sound, it is a participatory musical story telling involving a singer/narrator, drummer, and the audience (ibid, p. 274). The former Minister of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Korea, Uh-ryoung Lee (2002) asserts that the uniqueness of the pan-culture is its reciprocal inclusiveness that permits direct and indirect participation; the participation is focused on the shared understanding that they are contributing to the overall flow of the play spirit as the pan can be opened and closed spontaneously and flexibly. Therefore, pan can be defined as a spatio-temporal zone for participatory play – similarly to the notion of ‘magic circle’ (Huizinga, 1955) and the ‘liminal space’ (Turner, 1974) – that is sustained by the flow of play sprit through dialogic interaction, which clearly mirrors the Korean aesthetic of ‘chaos’ and ‘irregularity’ (Choi, 2002) embedded in everyday life. As Park (2000, p. 273) describes, ‘In leisure and in labor, in praying and in playing, in pursuit of pleasures or compensations, in contests and sports, in games or gambles, and in life's serious challenges, Koreans visualize a pan.’
Despite the strong cultural roots in playfulness, contemporary everyday life for many Koreans remain saturated with work. According to an OECD report (2008), Korea has been the country with the longest actual working hours over a decade. The hours stand at 2357 per year in 2008, which is 580 hours longer than the OECD average, and 732 hours longer than the average of 15 OECD nations in the EU. The report also indicates that average Korean household’s expenditure on recreation and culture is in the bottom four. The amendment was made to the Korean Labour Standards Act in 2005 to implement a five-day workweek system in 2005 (as compared to six or more), potentially giving increased opportunities to Koreans for play and leisure. However, the life of a majority of Koreans remains unconducive to their individual desires and needs but firmly focused on work. Furthermore, the recent Leisure Whitepapers (2006-2007) signify the Korean government’s awakening to the people’s need for play, or more specifically leisure. While the whitepapers show the state’s recognition of digital media as one of the most fundamental modes of fostering novel recreational cultures (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2007, p. 27), in practice, the government employs a great deal of caution towards what is considered ‘excessive use’ of digital technologies. For example, harsh and unfair portrayal of users of technology – youth and women in particular – for their ‘excessive use’ has been widely made through various media channels in recent
191 years (cf. Yoon, 2003); also, Korean government has recently established a rehabilitation boot camp programme for Internet addiction. The camp titled Jump Up Internet Rescue School requires young participants to undergo military-style activities while being ‘denied computer use and allowed only one hour of cellphone calls a day, to prevent them from playing online games via the phone’ (Fackler, 2007). Therefore, for the Korean government, economic development continues to be the main interest for which the citizens’ dedication to work is deemed necessary and thus more important than play. It appears that for the government, play is secondary and an area to be regulated.
In the case of the business domain, the approach to play appears to be ambivalent. Although the purpose for commercial enterprises is to generate profit from fulfilling customers’ needs and wants, large and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) diverge in their business strategies. The chaebol (family-owned large conglomerates) has maintained intimate affiliations with the government sector since the industrial – and politically authoritarian – era (Cumings, 1987; Mason, 1980). Hence somewhat expectedly, they share a similar direction with the government in their preference for systemic sustenance rather than embracing playful irregularities and subsequent changes – or chaos – to their existing system. The existing system refers to the pervasiveness of the chaebol in the social and business domains of Korean society, as well as the control they have on techno-social developments through standardization of processes and product interfaces. In this regard, chaebol’s refutation of challenges is founded on their need to inhabit as many facets of Korean people’s lives through branding and technological hegemony.
On the contrary to efforts from chaebol and government organisations, people continue to seek and create new communicative and epistemological approaches particularly through the use of network technologies to re-assess the existing paradigms and social values. Avidly targeting this niche market with novel products and services are SMEs. An example is yanolja.com, a specialised online accommodation booking service that offers dating related information about (love) hotels and pensions. The majority of the information available is sourced, edited, and presented by users of the site, who may be unable to share or express their creativity for outside the site. Traditional Korean culture imposed severe oppression on
192 sexuality (particularly upon women) and thus pre- and exo-marital sexual activities have been socially perceived as taboo even in modern days (Shim, 2001). However, recent years have seen more lenient reception of love hotels by young people. Love hotel businesses themselves have been changing to project an image of a social entertainment place equipped with latest media technologies including large flat- screen televisions, console games, desktop computers, and wired and wireless broadband connection, transforming itself from the ‘love hotel’ to a connected playground. SMEs profits by providing means for people – particularly young – to create a temporary space for self-expression and social interaction in a culture that places play and youth (among others including women and the poor) in the social periphery.
In such an oppressive social environment, young Koreans seek space to ‘breathe’ through digital media of which they maintain a greater understanding, and thus better control for operation than adults (cf. Chee, 2006; Choi, 2006b, 2009). A similar pattern of action has been observed in their Japanese counterparts in Tokyo, who mainly use their mobile phones to create virtual layers of reality separate from the apparent rigid social hierarchy (cf. Ito & Okabe, 2001; Schiano, et al., 2007). Further stimulating this tendency is the ubiquity of free or low-cost broadband access throughout the city – for example, many cafés and public places offer free Internet connection and/or computers, and one hour in a PC-bang normally costs less than US$1, a miniscule amount in Seoul, the third most expensive city to live in the world after Moscow and London (Sahadi, 2007). In a crowded city where young Seoulites have limited mobility or authority for social control, creating a digital layer of social space appears to be a logical choice for them. Such layers occur in multitude, and thus the complexity of these connections makes it difficult to study young people’s ‘play culture’ and ‘digital life’ in general. In this regard, the model of play enactment can be used to form an initial understanding:
• pressure is created from the wide sense of ontological insecurities amongst Koreans, one of the key contributors of which is the rapid urbanisation and technological development led by the state and chaebols for economic growth (Choi, 2010b – see Chapter 3.1);
193 • possibility in that the high accessibility to technology and services provided by SMEs offers possible solutions to temporarily overcome the pressure; • pleasure resulting as a spatio-temporal zone – noripan – that is created for pleasurable sharing of play spirit through dialogic interaction.
It is important to note that, especially with ubiquitously available technologies, a multitude of play enactments can occur simultaneously, with multiple layers of techno-social realities (or pans) shared synchronously or asynchronously with others participating in one or many of such pans.
194 Conclusions: Seductive (re)Play This paper was conceived from the observation of the increasing significance of play in contemporary urban life and the consequent concern for how we can better understand this important phenomenon. I started by looking at the city as a complex techno-social network. This was followed by examining the concept of play guided by Huizinga (1955) and Caillois (1961), which led to an understanding that play is a voluntary, transient, and innovative experience between the pressure of control and possibility of freedom. Textualisation further provided a conceptual means to identify the enactment process of play. This resulted in the model of play enactment with three elements of pressure, possibility, and pleasure as the pivotal contexts. With this understanding, I examined play culture in Seoul, one of the most connected and dense metropolises in the world. I found that Seoul as an urban network is full of old and newly created messy overspills (Bell & Dourish, 2007; Choi & Greenfield, 2009) that are created by the past and the present techno-social contexts, as well as the drive for building a more technologically advanced and economically stronger future. This drive continues to be supported by the state and chaebol by means of systematic control, while SMEs and individuls continue to interact with one another and the system in playful ways. This interactive play constantly (re)creates the fabric of the city, which in turn remains transformative.
As we were transitioning from the century of urbanisation (Harvey, 2000, p. 7) to that of networks (van Dijk, 2006, p. 2), we saw the emergence of two paradigms in urban development, which were first seen more aspirational but later became major agendas in political, economic, and institutional domains. The first of the two paradigms is ‘creative city’ put forward by Landry (2000). It is based on the premise that culture or milieu of creativity can be embedded in organisation and operation of urban stakeholders, for which Landry (ibid) suggests a number of strategic approaches. Most of the strategies are based on acknowledging and dealing with diversity of urban constituents, convergence amongst them, and finding innovative ways to turn the city into what he calls the ‘learning city’ (ibid, 266). The learning city is a reflexive city that sustains its creativity through changing times. In this regard – and as Landry also notes – there are fundamental overlaps between the creative city and the second paradigm to be introduced here, the ‘sustainable city.’
195 The premise of sustainable city – or sustainable urban development – is that the foundations for future development not to be compromised but to be achieved by means of economic processes that do not impeded regeneration of natural resources or social equity (World Commission on Environment and Development., 1987). While environmental sustainability has gained much public identification and support around the world, ‘social sustainability’ remains an obscure concept other than its reference to social equity and cohesion (Dempsey, et al., forthcoming; Polèse & Stren, 2000). It is here that I find that the creative and sustainable city together – or learning city – create a vision towards the paradigm of ‘seductive city’.
The creative city requires people, built forms, and institutions to be productively recreated through innovation. The sustainable city must be built upon diverse constituents that are creative or can continue to interact in creative ways. Therefore, for a city to be creative and sustainable, it must have pluralistic constituents with creative tendencies, and further, it needs to be seductive too: it must attract people’s presence, both permanent and temporary. According to Rykwert (2004, p. 10), ‘the city is a precious, essential, and inalienable part of the human achievement – and sometimes a splendid setting against which human actions are played out.’ The seduction of the city then depends on the how successfully it meets the needs but perhaps more importantly, the desires of people who interact with the city. Rykwert (ibid) is speaking from an architectural perspective, but the same logic can be applied to the city as an amalgam of technological (including architecture), political, economic, social, and cultural domains; and as such, it resonates with the notion of play – that the creative, sustainable, and seductive city is built upon the contested ground where multiple interactions continuously occur on the seam of control and freedom, with visible possibilities for ensuing transformation and pleasure.
However, play is rarely seen in a wide range of developments that occur in and around the city other than in controlled forms such as parks, squares, and commercial leisure and entertainment spaces. Despite the difficulty of grasping the concept of play, this situation must be rectified as it poses direct implications for the future of the city. The play enactment model is a small step towards understanding play, and more importantly towards exploring ways to make cities creative, sustainable, and seductive places (Rykwert, 2004) where possibilities for a better
196 future are found, explored, and created. As Mumford (1996, pp. 187-188) hopefully claims, ‘To embody these new possibilities in city life, which come to us not merely through better technical organization but through acuter sociological understanding, and to dramatize the activities themselves in appropriate individual and urban structures, forms the task of the coming generation.’ Play in the city is about pressure, possibility, and pleasure; and today, it is also a necessity.
197 Section 5
Conclusions
‘Play in the city today’ is the core concept of this thesis. The city is a place made of connections, a technosocial network that brings together people, place, and technology. Urban networking is the process that brings the city into being, and thus consists of an amalgam of interactions amongst various kinds of entities. In this thesis, I claimed that ‘play’ is at the core of urban networking. To conclude, I group my discussion in this chapter into two sections. The first recapitulates how I have responded to the research aims as proposed in the introduction. The second is a discussion on the limitations and future directions of this study.
Responses to the Research Aims
Four aims were conceived to provide theoretical and empirical answers to the main research question:
Given the constant dialectic interplay of changes between the self and the city, how does such transformative process occur through playful interaction via ubiquitous technology?
While Aim 1 entails theoretical and conceptual understanding of the research topic, Aims 3 and 4 are empirically-driven, involving application of conceptual frameworks developed for Aim 1, while substantiating and verifying Aim 4. On a broader level, one of the main aims of my doctoral research is to build the theoretical base for further research to design and develop pragmatic – technological and urban – innovations.
198 Aim 1: Examine the sociocultural, technological, and architectural context of Seoul
I pointed out that Seoul presents a unique case in regards to ubicomp and power relations, with its condensed modernisation driven by heavy political control, which resulted in rapid economic and technological growth. The government has pursued massive urban and technological developments in the name of modernisation. The developments were used as visual manifestations of the government’s legitimacy as the authority of control. I problematised the view – in both media and academia alike – that focuses on the glamorous surface of these developments. I do not believe that such surface-level portrayals are due to the authors’ incomprehension; rather, it is because the developments have been remarkable, and even surprising to those both in and outside of Korea. The recent rise of the Korean popular culture in the global media sphere – otherwise known as the Korean Wave – is an illustrative case in this respect. However, I urged in this thesis to look beyond the surface. Behind its exotically modern façade, Seoul is a concoction of contradictory elements, the convergence of which is left for the people qua citizens to contend with. The main predicament with this situation is that the social development has not been on par with that of technology or economy. People have been forced to gloss over foreign values and ideologies that were brought into Korean society during rapid modernisation. Now people have only limited resources to help them reflect on or reappropriate fast changing social values.
In this regard, I identified the government and conglomerates – chaebol such as Samsung and SK Holdings – as the authorities in the current social system in Seoul (and Korea), as opposed to ‘ordinary’ people and small-to-medium-enterprises. Furthermore, I also identified Seoul as a city in flux for its constant and rapid changes; of screens for the omnipresence of digital screens in its urbanscape; and of bangs to emphasise the significance of the bang culture in contemporary Seoul. Even though bang is literally translated into English as ‘room,’ bang presents a unique aspect of Korean culture of social inclusion as well as spatial practice that is flexible and spontaneous. Unlike rooms, which are normally pre-provisioned with prescribed purposes, bangs are post-provisioned according to the occupant’s will. There are also a myriad of commercial bangs in Seoul; normally a single building consists of multiple types of bangs (some of which have sub-bangs). In this respect, I noted the
199 similarity between the bang and the mediated space created with network technologies in their social inclusion, configurative flexibility, and typological obscurity.
In the environment of social discontents, people’s playful interactions through omnipresent screens and bangs (mediated and non-mediated) create a much-desired sense of connection and continuity in response to the pressures of dealing with fragmentation imposed by the government and chaebol. Here, the traditional culture of han (feeling of oppression) and ‘chaotic/paradoxical fun’ are shared through screens and bangs, the essential connective tissues in this city of flux.
Aim 2: Investigate Seoul transyouth’s perception of the self and their technosocial environment
I introduced the neologism transyouth and described its unique position in Korean society: the people exist between two rigidly defined social categories of ‘youth (students)’ and ‘adults’; they have experienced analogue and digital eras; and they have been the compelling pioneers of Korean broadband culture. As explained in chapter 2, this study took a transdisciplinary approach to achieve, across disciplines, a coherent understanding of complex inter-relations amongst transyouth, Seoul, and ubiquitous technologies. I sought to understand how transyouth use ubiquitous technologies in relation to their understanding of themselves, play, and their surroundings. This proved to be a complicated task for two reasons, particularly within the scope of a PhD research: first, observing the use of ubicomp in an everyday context requires the researcher to maintain an insight into the private lives of participants, preferably over a long period; second, communicating how one perceives themself and their everyday life can be a difficult task. For this reason, I developed a method called Shared Visual Ethnography (SVE), which involved complementary visual, text, and oral communication. By employing a photo-sharing practice that has already become mundane for Korean transyouth, communication improved, and I managed to achieve interpretations truthfully reflective of the reality as experienced by transyouth.
SVE provided a rich data set: looking at photographic images depicting the participants’ images of the self and place allowed me to ‘see what they see’; complementary use of verbal and visual data gave me opportunities to (re)verify my
200 findings; and comparison with interviews with high-profile industry representatives produced a multi-dimensional perspective of the urban play culture of Seoul as imagined, experienced, and constructed from the bottom-up and top-down. I found that the current environment of Seoul – a city built upon the history of rapid paradoxical transformations – has a profound influence on how transyouth perceive themselves and experience the city. In terms of the self-perception, there was a prevalent sense of uncertainty and isolation. Such inclinations can be interpreted as a common quality amongst people in a socially transitional period. However, the lack of cohesion in the existing cultural value system, and changes in living environment towards spatially-limited residences catered to single-person households contributed greatly to evoking such feelings, demonstrating how social and architectural domains of the city co-create a sense of place – in this case, a sense of discontinuity.
Aim 3: Identify the pattern of their playful interactions through which meanings of the self and the city are recreated
With the technological connection as a given parameter, ‘access’ became the most important variable in the self-validation of transyouth. Based on the empirical research, I developed a model of cyclic social interaction that involves three interrelated domains of connectivity that are germane to communication among transyouth in Seoul: ubiquitous (media), mobile (personal), and geographic (city). The cycle begins with personal expressions (high-contextual and performative) being made and shared asynchronously on one’s social networking site (SNS); this foregrounds mobile texting (SMS) to coordinate further synchronous interactions; then face-to-face (FtF) interactions occur in places in their ‘hangouts’ where they create a private space within the public; finally, the interaction comes to a cycle as the FtF interaction is stored and shared via multimedia on SNS. Multiplicities of such cycles invoke a sense of what is lacking in the transyouth phase, social continuity in which the self is assured through updating and sharing. Being accessed, therefore, denotes the validity of the accessed as a node in a cyclic interactive network of the accessing. To put it simply, transyouth utilised their high techno- competency to actively seek new ways to create a sense of connection by playfully creating spaces for social inclusion via ubiquitous technologies. Through this playful interaction, Seoul, the city of disconnection, transformed into the city of connections
201 for transyouth. When aggregated, the cyclic process of play yields changes, thereby ensuring the sustained transformation – continued development – of society. The city is connections; play ensures the sustainability of the connections. Hence empirical findings for Aims 2 & 3 substantiated the theoretical frameworks established for Aims 1 & 4.
Aim 4: Develop an analytical framework for enactment of play
Having ‘play’ as the main subject for research was a risky challenge that brought a multitudes of complexities, some of which had to remain inconclusive. Definition of play itself was one such case. For this reason, I created my own conceptual model of play with the viewpoints of two key theorists in ludology as the point of departure. One of them was Huizinga ([1939] 1955), who perceived the metaphysical quality of play and declared that humans are by nature playful beings (homo ludens). The other was Caillois (1961), whose notion of the ludus-paidia continuum (controlled vs. free play) led me to recognise the significance of considering the player’s agency, as the play experience embodies a constant balance between control and freedom.
Throughout history, play has been an important part of society, not only for the purpose of human development, but also for its nurturing of creativity and a sense of well-being. As Huizinga ([1939] 1955) asserts, play elements manifested in myths and rituals, where the origins of all aspects of civilised life such as law, arts, and science, can be found. In recent years we have witnessed a growing interest in play as evidenced in the widespread use of -tainment suffix, growth of adult toy markets (i.e. non-risqué toys), and erosion of the social boundary between youth and adulthood in many – particularly economically developed – societies. Therefore I argued that the rise of play is not a new phenomenon in its entirety, but rather, it is because people searching to express and manifest their desires to play now have more flexible means to do so, and are supported in their search by digital and network technologies.
I was then able to apply the concept of ‘textualisation’ as commonly practiced in cultural studies by viewing play as a subjective phenomenon or a ‘text.’ From this theoretically grounded position, I developed an interpretive framework that explains the ‘enactment of play,’ based on the three core elements of pressure, possibility,
202 and pleasure. I demonstrated that play is enacted as the player recognises and acts on the possibility to be able to overcome the pressure caused by their current environment, and in turn, generates a temporary sense of pleasure. Furthermore, this framework emphasised a need for understanding what constitutes each of the three elements in a particular play enactment – in other words, a contextual understanding of the playground.
Despite the difficulties of grasping the concept of play, having a research subject that is fundamentally ambiguous yet innate to human life inspired new and stimulating ways to think about contemporary urban environments where new happenings instantaneously become history. We are currently at a historic juncture in urbanisation, with more than half of people around the world living in urban environments. Urban environments are fast becoming as technological in nature as they are sociocultural or architectural. With this in mind, I described how the current era of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) is shaped differently to Weiser’s (1994, 1995) vision of a smooth interactive space made of encalming technologies; rather, our networked cities are full of seams connecting different, and many contradictory facets of life, including old and new, and tangible and intangible elements. In such environments, the balance between control and freedom becomes difficult to achieve; as a contested space of rapid development, Seoul makes an exemplary case. By coalescing theoretical approaches to play and my empirical findings with Seoul as a case study, I was able to construct a play enactment model that is both theoretically and empirically based (see Fig. 27) and thus is applicable in various fields including cultural studies and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI).
Limitations and Future Directions My PhD candidacy has been a long and winding exploration during which I learnt from mistakes, and to accept that my doctoral research embodies certain limitations. I saw conducting doctoral research as a process of communicating new knowledge, and I used the following three core elements that constitute successful communication as guidelines:
203 • Purpose: Create new, applicable knowledge derived from the existing literature and my own empirical research; then share the knowledge via various outlets such as publications, presentations, and forums.
• Audience: The main audience comprises those with scholarly / intellectual interests in the fields of ubicomp, human computer interaction, as well as cultural and urban studies.
• Context: This is a thesis by publications. Each of the selected publications must form a coherent narrative in itself and when compiled together. In terms of the research itself, it should be a complete study in itself yet with an outlook to apply the knowledge gained from it for pragmatic innovations, such as urban planning and development of ubiquitous technologies.
While following these guidelines brought clearer logistical directions for the study, it also brought about shortcomings. I note three main limitations in regards to publication, scale, and analysis of the research:
• Publication: Having chapters published in academic venues was tremendously helpful, as this method allowed me to access a global pool of experts through reviewing processes, and build a strong track record that enabled me to confidently apply for national competitive grant programs and postdoctoral fellowships. However, for each publication to be complete in itself, it became necessary for me to repeat some of the core conceptual frameworks of this research in many of the writings. This resulted in limited space left for writing about secondary and tangential aspects of the study I would have been able to include in a conventional monograph thesis. However, the conceptual framework and guidance provided by the publication editors and reviewers ensured that each publication presents rigorous and original research to a large and diverse audience in a tight and concise format – an advantage that I could not have achieved without the thesis by published papers pathway.
204 • Scale: As with many other doctoral research projects, this study could have conducted a larger scale investigation. Nonetheless, I do believe that involving forty-four transyouths over a period of approximately ten days in a research project and conducting interviews with seven high-profile industry representatives produced sufficient data and analysis that accomplished the aim of generating extensive and valid research findings. However, I cannot claim – and it was never the aim of this study – that the sample was representative of the total transyouth demographic in Seoul, as it was not socioeconomically inclusive (for example, no participant was suffering from poverty).
• Analysis: On a broader level, this is an exploratory single case study (cf. Yin, 2003). Although the intrinsic uniqueness of Seoul as a technosocial environment validates having a single case, it would be beneficial to follow up with comparative studies on cities with divergent geographic, socio- cultural, and technological backgrounds – whether within Korea or internationally. Similarly, comparison with demographics other than transyouth would also be useful. Furthermore, pragmatic applications of the study’s findings through innovative systems developments – for example, urban / community / ubicomp – was regretfully out of the scope for this research at this stage, but opportunities for my PhD findings to inform innovative ubicomp applications are currently being explored as the topic of my postdoctoral fellowship application. This point leads to the future directions, as I shall discuss below.
As I claimed at the outset of this thesis, this study makes transdisciplinary contributions to knowledge. The study outcomes can be applied to research in diverse fields including youth culture, community development, urban planning, computer-mediated-communication (CMC), HCI, and ludology as well as to create new domains of study – for example, urban ludology, which will be a fitting category for this research. In particular, the study proved that fostering people’s needs and desires to play is vital to the sustenance of the city. Considering the increasing global concern for urban sustainability today, the study can be a timely
205 addition to the nascent research projects in this area. Pending review and approval, a larger ARC Linkage study will commence in January 2010 to expand the work of this study. I have been able to attract seed funding from both Intel and Queensland Health for this project, which aims to design and develop digital media and ubiquitous technologies to help cultivate sustainable food cultures in urban environments. More specifically, the project aims to:
1. Examine the context of urban food culture as imagined and experienced by citizens, and analyse social, cultural, and technological challenges for active participation in sustainable food culture.
2. Explore playful interaction with technologies that motivate food practices that are healthy, environmentally friendly, and fun, and examine the impact and efficacy of associated design interventions which utilise social networking, context awareness, and locative media.
3. Design, develop, and trial digital applications that encourage and support more sustainable practices in eating, cooking, and growing food based on the user’s individual desires and needs.
The proposed study will be simultaneously conducted in three locations of Seoul, South Korea; Brisbane, Australia; and Portland, Oregon, USA. My thesis forms four conceptual pillars of:
1. Transdisciplinary approach (that the study will utilise transdisciplinary approaches including SVE)
2. Technosocial contextualisation (of the city as a technosocial network)
3. Play theory (application of the interpretive framework of play that I have developed in my research)
4. Urban networking (macro- and micro-perspective on playful interactions via ubicomp)
206
Sustainability is not an absolute categorical concept with the same core set of associations and expectations for everyone, but a term for an amalgam of diverse ideas, institutions, initiatives, and images. Sustainability is inherently ‘time and place specific’ (McGrath, et al., 2004, p. 562). In other words, it is a context that is particular to wide levels of society (individual, community, national, and global) at a given time. Therefore, design and development for a sustainable city must encompass certain necessity of top-down enforcement but also, more importantly, understanding the values of individual and ways to nurture growth of values for sustainable thinking and practices. My research has revealed that it is this precise seam of control and freedom where play is enacted. Play, therefore, is a vital element for sustained transformation. Playpolis then is a city where messy seams are playgrounds, playful interactive spaces that evoke pleasure and growth, rather than war zones, belligerent spaces evoking pressure and regression. The current seamful world seems to be fast moving beyond regression towards crisis. My study is a contribution on the hope’s edge to our growth towards playpolis.
207 References
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224 Appendix 1: Questionnaire
Name: Age: Sex: Student: Yes (Name of institution: ) No Job (including part-time work): Monthly pocket money: Mostly from Parents Siblings Relatives Others Won Other income: Won (from working etc) Hobbies:
Interests:
Brief description about yourself:
I am currently living with family sharemates alone in Dong (suburb) in apartment unit/townhouse house dormitory other (Specify: ).
My main mode of transport is subway bus car bicycle walking. I spend about hours on travelling each day.
I mainly access the Internet at school work pc-bang home elsewhere (specify ). On average, I spend hours daily on a desktop computer laptop mobile phone other (specify ).
My mobile phone is . I have owned this phone for years. My average monthly phone bill is . The bill is paid by my parent/s myself else (specify ).
Email: Phone: Personal website (including social networking sites such as Cyworld and Facebook):
Thank you! (^_^)
225 Appendix 2: Semi-structured Interview Questions
People What are the three words to describe yourself? What is unique about people around your age? How is your life different to when you were in high school? What is your image of ‘adults’? Do you consider yourself an adult? What makes me happy / unhappy? When do you want to be alone? What do you do then? What is ‘friend’ to you? How do you keep in contact? Where do you meet friends? How do you make new friends? What kind of era is it now in your life? How satisfied are you with your current life? What kind of life do you want to live in the future? How could you / Seoul / World change to make your life more fun?
Place What do you think of Seoul? What kind of place/city is Seoul? Where do you spend time in Seoul? Why? Do you want to live in Seoul in the future? Why? Where do you want to be in the future?
Technology What is the mobile phone to you? How do you customise it? What else do you do with your phone? How do you play with your phone? What is the role of your phone in terms of play? How do you decide on the mode of communication? Do you use Cyworld? How often? What for? What do you think of UCC (user-created-content)?
226 What do you use your computer for?
Play What is ‘to play’? How do you play? Where do you go to play? What’s the ‘Korean’ way of playing? Are there any play experiences unique to people around your age? What do you think of commercial bangs (rooms) – PC, Jjimjil, Norae etc? What has your experience been with love hotels? What do you do when you’re bored?
Participation How was the process? Did you have any difficulties? Did you discover anything new?
227 Appendix 3: Example of an Activity Diary Entry
Date: 2007/05/05 Weather: Rain in the morning but fine in the afternoon
Time Activity No. 1:00 1 2:00 1 3:00 1 4:00 1 5:00 1 6:00 1 7:00 1 8:00 2 9:00 2 10:00 3 11:00 3 12:00 4 13:00 4 14:00 4 15:00 4 16:00 4 17:00 5 18:00 6 19:00 6 20:00 7 21:00 8 22:00 9 23:00 10 24:00 10
228 Activity Details
Activity No. Details 1 Activity: Sleeping Purpose: (No need to state the purpose for an obvious activity like sleeping) Location: My bed Participants: Alone Reason for participating: (Again, this is obvious unless you’re out sleeping in a jjimjilbang after a night out or sleeping over at a friend’s place etc) Travel/time: (as above) Technology used: (as above) Alarm clock on my mobile phone Personal reflection: (as above) Still very tired and hung over from drinking the night before. Other notes: (as above) 2 Activity: Exercise Purpose: To lose weight Location: Local gym Participants: Alone Reason for participating: Joined the gym three months ago. Been going every day but couldn’t go a single time this week. So I thought I should really make an effort. Travel/time: On foot. 10 minutes to the gym and also 10 back home Technology used: Listened to my Ipod while exercising. Personal reflection: I’ve got a sore body now thanks to the short break from gym. There was a yoga class today and I think I might give it a go next time – looks fun, and it seems to be getting very popular in Korea. Been eating out and drinking a lot these days so I’ve put on a few kilos. Easty thing to do (^-^) Other notes: Seems this particular time is popular amongst housewives, well, ajumma-looking people. This gym doesn’t provide individual tvs on machines – only cable tv on a big screen.
229