Book Reviews Journal of Business and

Technical Communication
Volume 23 Number 3
July 2009 372-375
Book Review Editor: Jeffrey Jablonski, # 2009 Sage Publications
University of Nevada, Las Vegas http://jbt.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Ahonen, Tomi, and O’Reilly, Jim. (2007). Digital Korea: Conver-

gence of Broadband Internet, 3G Cell Phones, Multiplayer Gaming,
Digital TV, Virtual Reality, Electronic Cash, Telematics, Robotics,
E-Government and the Intelligent Home. London: Futuretext.
284 pages.
DOI: 10.1177/1050651909333223

If you ever wonder why, as a technical communicator in North America,

you need to learn about digital technologies in a Far Eastern country, please
look at these sets of data, which are as current as 2006: South Korea had the
highest broadband penetration rate per capita in the world (51%), and 90%
of household Internet access was broadband; 43% of South Koreans used
mobile Internet (via cell phones) in 2005 whereas only 19% of Americans
did 1 year later; 43% of South Koreans maintained personal profiles in
Cyworld, a social networking Web site whereas 21% of American users had
a personal profile in MySpace; the South Korean multiplayer game Lineage
enjoyed 14 million subscribers worldwide whereas its western counterpart
World of Warcraft had 8 million subscribers; 57% of music sales in South
Korea were digital whereas only 10% of music sales in the United States
were digital; 21% of South Koreans checked e-mails on cell phones in
2005 whereas 11% of Americans did so by March 2006; 63% of South
Korean cell phone owners used mobile payment, and 25% of all Visa card
transactions in South Korea occurred via cell phones; 42% of South Korean
cell phone owners sent picture messages whereas 19% of German users did;
and, finally, the online daily newspaper OhmyNews, a pioneer of citizen
journalism that was founded in 2000, had 50,000 citizen contributors and
1.2 million daily readers by 2006, and after Roh Moo-Hyun took the South
Korean presidential seat, he had his first press interview with OhmyNews.
As ‘‘a guidebook and overview of how advanced the society of Digital
Korea is overall,’’ Digital Korea presents a remarkable tour of what a digi-
tal life looks like in South Korea, covering a broad range of topics, such as
youth communities, social networking Web sites, intelligent home technol-
ogies, online shopping, digital government, telematics, TV watching,

372

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 Book Reviews 373

music, gaming, and robotics. Reading this book will help you to better
understand why Apple and Google have been eager to enter the mobile
phone industry and why the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft was
unsuccessful.
A few years ago, Standage stated that ‘‘many people expect the mobile
Internet to be the same as the wired version, only mobile, but they are wrong.
. . . Instead, the mobile Internet . . . will be something different and will be
used in new and unexpected ways’’ (cited in Rheingold, 2002, p. 1). Digital
Korea documents how the mobile Internet would change our lives in ways
in which people have never imagined. In a country that has ‘‘the highest
penetration of broadband Internet, highest usage of online videogaming,
highest penetration of cameraphones, highest penetration of 3G advanced
cellphones, the highest adoption of digital TV broadcasts to portable
devices’’ (p. 225), the exciting processes of convergence are happening
as the industries of ‘‘datacommunication’’ (e.g., the Internet), telecommuni-
cation (e.g., cell phones), and broadcasting (e.g., TV) are integrated: For
example, to avoid the cumbersome entering of URLs via your cell phone
keypad, you can use your camera phone to scan the 2-D barcode offered
on the huge advertisement bulletin board to find and access the Web site
that you wish to visit. Or, to share the excitement of your 6-year-old child’s
birthday party with friends and relatives, you can shoot a video clip with
your camera phone, send the clip to the TV station, and turn on your
panorama high-definition television (HDTV). In a few minutes, you will
find that your child is a little star on the local TV channel. And if you are
worried about your dress style for tonight’s party, you can stand in front
of an intelligent mirror that will scan your clothing and offer suggestions
about colors and styles. It can even go online to help you find the latest
trends. Do these scenarios sound like science fiction? Most of them are
already realities in Koreans’ everyday lives.
What I find interesting about this book is not its repeated theme about the
impact that the ever-increasing speed of the Internet and 3G network will
have on us, but its analysis of the power of convergence. When a technology
reaches a certain speed, the power of convergence is as amazing as dyna-
mite. For example, observers have been puzzled about why Western users
are not as interested in picture messaging as some might expect. One pos-
sible reason, according to this book, is that the speed for the mobile Internet
is not high enough in Western countries, so the datacommunication and tel-
ecommunication industries have not yet reached the converging point. In
South Korea, where converging is happening, half of cell phone users sent
at least six picture messages daily, and 90% of these pictures were uploaded

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374 Journal of Business and Technical Communication

to picture-sharing Web sites in 2006. In North America, however, cell

phone users mostly exchange picture messages between each other. But the
process of digital convergence is not always smooth. Different business
models might collide. For example, broadband Internet tends to offer free
content by charging for advertisement space whereas mobile Internet would
charge cell phone users for every piece of content. So where should revenue
come from when broadband Internet and mobile Internet are converged?
The discussion of digital convergence raises many interesting issues to
technical communicators, and anyone who is interested in knowing how
future IT development might shape the field of technical communication
should read this book. The book might serve as an intriguing discussion
starter for introductory technical communication seminars or as supplemen-
tary reading for seminars on technology studies. Clearly many communica-
tion practices will change as different types of technologies converge.
E-mail has been a dominant communication mode in workplaces in the
Internet age. What will replace e-mail in a time of digital convergence?
Nowadays, user documentation usually takes a digital format, and users
access it via their computers. Imagine a time when users access documen-
tation via their cell phones, or through the embedded smart-screen panel of
the equipment itself, and the documentation is also linked to a user forum,
where a confused beginner user could pose a question to the forum directly
or just speak to someone who happens to be online at that time. Such a con-
vergence would entail more than just writing for print or writing for digital
media (the Web or mobile devices), or writing with visuals and audio; it
would require developing a communication scheme that would address con-
tent and communication issues across different technological platforms.
How would this convergence impact the enterprise content management
systems or XML architecture? How should we address audience concerns
in a connected age? And how can we prepare our technical communication
students for these upcoming challenges?
The two authors of this book are clearly enthusiastic about technology
advancement and digital convergence in South Korea. More than once, they
claim that our future exists in South Korea because South Korea is the
leader and pioneer of almost every frontier of digital communication, and
thus South Korea’s today will be our tomorrow. But the picture they paint
in the book might be just one of many future possibilities because their
argument is based on an oversimplistic linear logic. Unlike Internet commu-
nication, researchers found that the use of mobile communication is often
characterized by local culture and conditions (Donner, 2007; Ito, Okabe,
& Matsuda, 2006; Sun, in press). As Ito (2006) suggested in her coedited

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 Book Reviews 375

book about Japanese mobile phone usage, we should regard local uptakes of
mobile communication ‘‘as a heterogeneous set of pathways through
diverse sociotechnical ecologies’’ rather than ‘‘a single trajectory toward
a universal good’’ (p. 6). The digital success of South Korea should be better
explored in its local context. Rather than only looking at the convergence of
various technologies, authors might also want to probe more deeply into the
converging forces that come from the social, cultural, technological, and
economic conditions of South Korea. Unfortunately, this discussion is lack-
ing in Digital Korea.
Although Digital Korea is written by two visionaries, you might be dis-
appointed if you are looking for engaging stories such as in Rheingold’s
(2002) Smart Mobs. Digital Korea is more like a technical report, composed
of data about mobile use and statements of observation, based on their inter-
views with technology leaders and policy makers in South Korea. For many
of their case snippets, the authors did not identify sources. So skeptical read-
ers might wonder where these cases came from: Did they come from field
research or market surveys? Or were they imagined user scenarios? And the
book contains more typographical errors than you would expect to find in a
published book.

Huatong Sun
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

References
Donner, J. (2007). The rules of beeping: Exchanging messages via intentional ‘‘missed calls’’
on mobile phones. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13. Retrieved September
20, 2008, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vo113/issue1/donner.html
Ito, M. (2006). Introduction: Personal, portable, pedestrian. In M. Ito, D. Okabe, &
M. Matsuda, (Eds.). Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life (pp.
1-16). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ito, M., Okabe, D., & Matsuda, M. (Eds). (2006). Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile
phones in Japanese life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart mobs: The next social revolution. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
Sun, H. (in press). Towards a rhetoric of locale: Localizing mobile messaging technology into
everyday life. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.

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