[Korea.net News, Science / Tech, April 28 2007] The next technology revolution

By Arnold Stockard
arnoldstockard@technologykorea.com

Much of what we see in South Korea today sounds like science fiction. These are the words from a description of Digital Korea, a book about convergence within Korea's information industry. But convergence is about to produce even more sci-fi moments, and Korea appears well positioned to take part in the coming wows.

However, the paragon of the information society, as the book's authors, Tomi Ahonen and Jim O'Reilly, see Korea, could still miss out on the fruits of the next big convolution of technologies because of something as mundane as a communication problem, a problem that continues to hinder the nation's scholarly progress. Deep into his commentary on improving academic research in Korea, which appeared last year in Nature Materials, Oh Se-jung of Seoul National University writes: “One immediate task is to lower the barriers between disciplines and university departments.”