2010-07 - Korea IT Times

Analysis
What Does U-City Subvert
in its Forward Motion?
A sketch assessment of how U-City might transform as judged by what it may subvert
In April 2010 Korea signed an MOU
with the World Bank to propagate ICT in
developing countries for the transformation
of those countries. But how does the
unveiled, at Global Smart 2010, U-City
plan for Korea stack up in terms of what it
transforms? Aside from the gloss talk on
the obviously successful Korean Digital
strategy, there is a deeper dialogue.
Subversion is the aggressive undermining
of systems. According to Yuri Bezmenov,
as cited on youtube, a country can
be subverted in the following areas and
wind up changed: Education, religion, law
and order, power structures and labor relations.
This article looks at how the U-City
plan might transform in terms of what it
may subvert.
To subvert : Indigenous religion must
be ridiculed and replaced with small cults
to detract.
K U-City : Not expressly implied.
To subvert : Education should not be
pragmatic.
K U-City : Not expressly implied.
To subvert : Power Structures, should
take away links between people and replace
with bureaucracy.
14 KOREA IT TIMES | July 2010
K U-City
a) Social networking, a component of U-
IT, subverts socialisation and ways of
socialising essentially replacing with a
bureaucracy, if a bureaucracy is viewed
in terms of changing the way thing are
managed. Further, goverments have
made it their realm to initiate subtle attempts
at underming social behavior
and culture by attempts at policing behaviors
they have not had control of before,
in most countries anti-cyberbullying
is a rule system based on adverse adherence
punishment, yet in Korea, the
goal of the anti-cyberbullying program,
which is a fair thing to police normally,
is sunny-ness, positive comments made
to people. This could be viewed as an
undermining of social hierarchies by the
assumption that it is government that
knows best, thereby a subtle relinquishing
of a type of power.
b) Distance education entails a new bureaucracy
and disestablishes human
links.
c) e-govt. used for the express purpose of
staff reductions destroys human links
and replaces with bureaucracy.
d) U-IT/IPTV entails a new bureaucracy
and disestablishes human links.
To subvert : law and order should consist
of moral relativity and a slow substitution
of moral principles.
K U-City
a) e-govt/civil processes introduce new
'game like' rules where if a system malfunctions
a civil servant might, irrespective
of the law, willfully ignore crime.
This oversight is remedied in the
Korean situation where all those in
Korea are required to report all crimes,
a higher law, though the 'game like'
rules could prolong a process if abused
via ignorance [who knows everything
right?] or purposefully. This is a type of
subversion of moral principles as it is
subject to moral relativity via the introduction
of a perception of choice in law
adherence as the system if new and
anomalies untested. E-civil processes, if
the humans operating them abide by
law, do not appear to impact moral relativity
adversely.
b) RFID if employed beyond bracelets on
convicts, the subject of which is an international
debate, could be open to abuse
by ill intentions or a collapse in exercise
of political structure type. The use of
RFID for citizen law and order is more
open to the abuse end of the spectrum in
terms of moral relativity and a subsequent
substitution of moral principles.