A Byte out of the Apple, Ch. 1

Hey look at this cool smart phone thing in my hand.   Its does so many things.   Its just plain awesome.   I wonder what its going to morph into next?  What the Samsung  Galaxy 10000 phone will be like in the future.   It would be rad if they used nanotechnology and had the thing embedded in my brain so that I could access it with a thought.  I wouldn't have to access the cloud.   I would be the cloud!   I would be the network.  Long live the network!

But whatever innovation occurs, it sure ain't going to come from here in the good olde Midwestern U.S..   That's fer dang sure.  Because we are not riding the wave of the future like our counterparts in Asia in so many ways.   And I'm not just talking about K-Pop.

South Korea has the highest per capita broadband penetration in the world.   Over half its homes have broadband access compared to only ten percent in the United States.  By 2015 South Korea will replace all of its paper textbooks with electronic tablets in public schools by 2015. 

Not only does South Korea have broadband in most homes but if you venture in its shopping malls, down its alleys, or up its office stairs there are almost 30,000 shops with online game rooms or PC baangs as they are called--and that's just Seoul alone.  These gaming rooms are the new internet mediated combination of pool hall, bar, or front porch of the entire culture.  Singles are video chatting in these game rooms all over the city.  More importantly, PC baangs support a massive online gaming community which is the national sport.    Five million people (the equivalent of 30 million in the United States) play "Starcraft" alone.   Three cable stations broadcast full time competitive gaming to the TV audience.  

And Steve Jobs is dead.  And don't get me wrong.  He created the smart phone.   And yes if I were on the jury in the patent infringement lawsuit in the Apple v. Samsung case, I prolly would have ruled in his favor.   Samsung copied the smart phone as surely as K-Pop would not exist without its historical antecedents in U.S. rock, funk, rap, dub, or whatever else its a hybrid of.  But i'm not talking about the past.  Who is going to come up with the next cool thing, someone sitting in an isolated cubicle in Cupertino or some kid in Korea whose had a network embedded in every aspect of his life since birth?   And don't even get started on China.  I wouldn't even know where to begin when they get fully plugged into the network. 

wow, nd 8-0 after oklahoma, the whirles cook cookes, and the brother in law reveals a surprise....