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| I've always thought that here in the USA we had the best there is. The best highways, the best computers and the best network in the world. (This isn't a nationalist speech, bear with me.) Then I opened up my latest Wired magazine and read this article on Korea's gaming craze.
Titled "The Bandwidth Capital of the World", it might as well read "The Gamer Capital of the World". Let's get to the meat of the article, shall we? In Korea, their equivalent to online cafes is called a "baang". In the USA, we have a couple hundred of these scattered usually in big cities, subsisting on a meager flow of people checking out their email - most of them having computers at home but need a place to go after work or classes. In Korea, they have 26,000 of them. Twenty-Six THOUSAND. Divided by the population that makes a hefty "baang" to citizen ratio. But that isn't all - the power company used fiber in many residences as a way of monitoring their equipment. This has become the solution for the "Last Mile" problem, where you have fiber all the way to the telco switch. If you're not drooling yet - you aren't a tech-head. The upshot of all this (read more about it at wired.com) is that they have a vibrant community of gamers and socializing revolving around computers and online gaming. Upon reading this, I was utterly shocked. It was as if I had been transported from the 1950's, where newsreels were loudly pronouncing that ultra modern highways were going to be a reality in 20 years, only to find that Mexico had them already for 10. It is this mental shift, the sudden sucker-punch of reality that has me. Koreans as a group have more tightly knit and interesting communities than we even dreamt of during the 90's internet boom. To paraphrase "Fight Club" - Have I been sleeping? Am I awake? The long nights packing gear into a car, trucking over to someone's house, unpacking then setting it all up again - only to play for about 10 hours then tear it down and shuffle home now seems as antiquated as circling the wagons on a westward push during the frontier days. As the facts sink in about this society, how they utilize technology and just STEEP themselves in it, I can't help but think how utterly opposite we've applied it here. Sure, there are the CPL and "pro" gaming tournaments - there always will be, but the element I think that is missing is participation. Gamers, as a segment of the population are utterly dimunitive. We'd like to think that there are a whole horde of us, playing all kinds of games with reckless abandon, but the facts plainly tell a different story. Gaming, as defined in my narrow example as people who use personal computers for gaming, is a small segment percentage-wise of the population in the US as a whole. That is precisely why we lack the critical mass of the Korean society. Penetration of gaming and internet socialization still hasn't made sufficient inroads into this country where we would consider having "live" deathmatch coverage like professional broadcast sports. Most people in this country could care less. And as for "cyber cafes" they are finding their niche, but not as prevalent as Korea. Time for a bold prediction. Korea, and other countries like them, may succeed in turning the tide of english-speaking peoples dominating the internet. Don't be surprised when in 10 or 20 years, we'll be grousing about how all the good sites had to either go bilingual or switch completely to cater to the new surge of traffic and commerce from abroad. The United States participation in the grand experiment known as the internet may be reaching its logical, commercialized and ultimately stunted conclusion. Wouldn't it be the height of irony that a country such as ours that has had such a pivotal role in developing the internet ended up losing nearly all influence and domain over it? Time will tell, but for now - I wish that I could open a portal to a parallel existence where I was born in Korea, had a "baang" next door, and could revel in the fact that everyone I knew was a true citizen of the technological age. desiato_hotblack @ hotmail.com |
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