
What Silicon Valley Can Learn from Seoul - Libertatea
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/what-silicon-valley-can-learn-from-seoul.html
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exacube
The central point discussed here in that the mobile and internet
infrastructure is far ahead of its time in Seoul. But the author makes a few
statements that don't settle well with me:

> By 2020, the [South Korean] government predicts, it will be 1,000 times
> faster — so fast you could download a feature-length movie in approximately
> one second. In the same time frame, the Federal Communications Commission
> hopes to wire most American homes with broadband Internet with speeds of at
> least 100 megabytes per second, or roughly one six-hundredth of South
> Korea’s goal.

South Koreas's land size is MUCH smaller (smaller than most US states).
Although there is something to be said about why any single US state isn't as
good at infrastructure as South Korea (probably California can be the only
candidate), that is a different interesting discussion.

> By contrast, American mobile design is fetishistically minimalist. Silicon
> Valley applauds itself for good taste in this regard, but this aesthetic has
> sprung up partly in response to a deficiency: Americans have learned to
> strip out bandwidth-guzzling elements because they slow down loading times.

This can't be farther from the truth.. "our" design aesthetic is not on a
basis of trying to save bandwidth. I don't think we will ever have "Pages are
drenched in neon and populated with googly-eyed cartoon animals." even if our
infrastructure was better.

~~~
Kalium
> South Koreas's land size is MUCH smaller (smaller than most US states).
> Although there is something to be said about why any single US state isn't
> as good at infrastructure as South Korea (probably California can be the
> only candidate), that is a different interesting discussion.

We also don't have _cities_ with better internet infrastructure. NYC and SF
both come to mind.

Basically, the appeal to density fails to account for the gap in any
meaningful way.

~~~
rayiner
We don't have cities like Seoul. Seoul's metro area has 5x the density of
NYC's, and the political power that comes from having half the population of
the whole country.

~~~
dba7dba
Even if a city has the 1/10 of the density of Seoul, there's no reason for a
city as important as NYC to have internet infrastructure as bad as it is now.

Density argument doesn't make sense. Why can't major cities in US have faster
internet than rural areas?

~~~
rayiner
What does "importance" have to do with anything? "Importance" doesn't dictate
how much money companies are willing to spend on internet infrastructure. The
number of potential customers you can hit for the cost of lying a mile of
fiber does.

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hackuser
I sometimes wonder how much of the US tech industry's success and influence
depends on, 1) access to the world's largest market (including the access that
comes from cultural familiarity), 2) the U.S.'s already enormous global
cultural influence, 3) English, it's distribution across the globe and the
fact that much IT is built on it, and 4) first-mover advantage.

In other words, to what degree are those the reasons that the world uses
Facebook and Android, and not the South Korean equivalents?

(Yes, the question is a bit theoretical and likely impossible to answer
definitively.)

~~~
exacube
This is a very good point, and I'm sure it depends on all 4 of things very
heavily.

There were multiple Facebook competitors, but Facebook executed their product
MUCH better than everyone else (real names/people, exclusive to certain
communities at first) and I would think it was a big cause for their success.

As for Android, I was told recently that it was released in a time when
carriers (Verizon) defined what apps should be shipped in phones, and largely
commissioned manufacturers to make said apps.. Android helped make this a non-
issue by letting anyone make apps, making a market, and letting every phone
manufacturer ship it for free (no one else did this). Even if Android was
crappy in comparison to the iPhone initially, it provided a lot of freedom for
the manufacturers, making it very attractive.

Not to mention every non-iOS/Android mobile OS back then was garbage in
comparison.

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auganov
I don't believe there's much causation between SK's infrastructure and the
kind of software they make. What they described in the article - horizontally
integrated apps, cluttered websites, higher adoption of online payments and a
well developed delivery culture are common all across SE Asia, including China
which until recently had pretty bad internet infrastructure (and it's still
not good).

This nature of SE Asian tech has been there for a while. It seems like they
are generally faster at adopting technologies that have been validated
somewhere else but perhaps not widely adopted.

There's definitely lessons to be learnt but I think they're sociological.

EDIT: "information-dense" is perhaps more accurate than "cluttered"

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yangtheman
This article misses a lot of things.

First of all, it's not what SV can learn from them, it's US carriers and gov't
who should learn from Korea.

Second, SV companies are doing just fine, creating products that are right for
the market under given infrastructure. Should the market/infrastructure
change, SV companies will adapt and create products/services fit for the
market. I don't believe SV companies' products behind. They are just right for
the markets they serve, as Korean products are right for Korean market.

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auvi
can anybody tell me is South Korea is still stuck with Internet Explorer for
e-commerce?

~~~
Glide
I thought it was some bit of legislation that mandated the use of an ActiveX
plugin in order to do encryption.

edit: found this link [http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/south-korea-looking-to-
scrap-...](http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/south-korea-looking-to-scrap-
activex-payment-requirement-bad-news-for-internet-explorer/)

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mjevans
'virtual stickers' == 'virtual scarcity'

Many of the points seemed good and worthy of examining when considering
policies locally, however that is one idea that I really think needs to die.

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TheMagicHorsey
The article says that Google put their first Asian campus in Seoul this May.
Hasn't Google had campuses in India and China for a while now?

~~~
Klonoar
And Tokyo, Singapore...

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devty
the trans-pacific gap described in the style of product design is interesting,
but i doubt the idea to look at the habits of seoulians as a crystal ball to
predict the future - rather, the diffrence probably stems from the internet
culture and history unique to seoul. i don't think its necessary or likely
that the tech cultures of the west and east converge anytime soon.

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andyl
NY Times loves to lecture Silicon Valley - almost as if they are rooting
against us.

