A second digital revolution is under way in
East Asia, writes Andy Yee, a policy analyst for Google in Asia Pacific. This
time however, he says it will be driven by the region’s diverse cultures.
East
Asia has long been at the forefront of the hardware digital revolution,
boasting some of the world’s most highly connected societies.
And
with a second digital revolution under way, the region’s diverse cultures are
set to find new ways of combining technology and culture. Previously unimaginable
levels of information richness and new ways of engaging with it mean users are
not only passive consumers who browse and download information from the
internet, but also active creators who upload and share their own material with
others.
The
scale of production and distribution is staggering. There are now more than 800
exabytes of digital information in the world: every minute, there are 100,000 new tweets, 6 million
Facebook views, 30 hours of video uploaded to YouTube, and 3,000 photos added
to Flickr.
East
Asian countries are traditionally strong in hardware-driven innovations: Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan, and China are home to manufacturing powerhouses like Sony,
Samsung, and Lenovo. Collectively, these countries make close to 90 percent of
the world’s digital gadgets. The other side of the digital economy – the supply
of digital content and services – attracts less attention in the region, but is
already emerging as a formidable social and economic force, and will continue
to grow as technology connects more and more people. The next digital
revolution in East Asia will direct entrepreneurial energies toward creating new
tools, content, and forms of expression.
In
2002, Douglas McGray coined the term ‘Gross National Cool’ to explain how cultural exports
such as Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and anime fuelled Japan’s emergence as a cultural
superpower during its ‘lost decade’. Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi
was one of the first to acknowledge the power of ‘Cool Japan’. Former prime
minister Taro Aso went a step further and described himself as an otaku,
a person who takes a keen interest in anime, video games, and manga. And
starting in 2008 Japan formally deployed its soft power by dispatching ‘cute ambassadors’ and appointing
Doraemon as ‘anime ambassador’.
In her
new book on otaku culture, cultural
anthropologist Mizuko Ito explores how this participatory fan culture has
flourished in the digital age because it enables fans to connect niche to niche
and make an international cultural force of otherwise isolated cultural
manifestations. Through fan fiction, anime music videos, fansubbing, and
various other remixes, fans have created rich international networks where they
distribute their own content ahead of traditional media and producers.
Following
the Asian financial crisis of 1998 South Korea also turned to Hallyu,
or Korean wave, as an
instrument of soft power. Korean pop culture first gained Asia-wide
popularity thanks to the rise of satellite broadcasting. Today, Korean
producers are using social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube to attract
tech-savvy and culturally curious audiences in North America and Western
Europe, with astounding success: in 2011, K-pop established itself as a global
trend, with nearly 2.3 billion YouTube views.
Cultural
power is subtle, but it may prove effective. Roh Moo-hyun, president of South
Korea between 2003 and 2008, once remarked that Hallyu will
someday unify the Korean Peninsula. While that may be a long-term prospect, a
recent survey conducted by the Korea
International Trade Association found that 80 percent of respondents
from Japan, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam believed that Hallyu has
positively influenced the purchase of South Korean products. In 2011, South
Korean cultural exports, including films, music, and TV shows, hit a record
US$4.2 billion.
The
increasingly global reach of South Korean culture has given rise to a variety of start-upsthat develop creative digital tools
to eliminate barriers to content distribution. These include the website viki.com, which relies on
millions of volunteer users to translate acquired movies and TV dramas into
multiple languages.
Another
website, flitto.com,
aims to create a real-time translation tool for what South Korean movie stars
say on social networks, and for globalising South Korean cartoons.
Taiwan
is also beginning to turn its attention from hardware manufacturing to software
system integration and content development. The government has set an
ambitious goal of turning Taiwan into the hub of Chinese language-app
creativity, with plans to produce some 20,000 app programs and train 1,000
app-software specialists per year. Software innovation requires a very
different mindset from hardware research because it aims to enrich people’s
social experience or personal organization, and this cannot be achieved without
a deep understanding of people and culture.
This
second digital revolution will be one to watch because it sits at the
intersection of culture, diplomacy, and technology. It will lead to new revenue
streams for talented creators, and it will allow ideas and cultures to
influence one another; the diversity of East Asian languages, cultures and
social experiences underpins the richness of this revolution. Differences can
be celebrated and more widely understood.
In the
future, competition and innovation will be less about hardware than about
people, cultures and social experiences — and about organising a value chain around
them. Facilitating the next phase of the digital revolution — one that is based
on innovation in social technologies and soft power — will be the challenge for
the next generation of government and business leaders in
East Asia.
Andy
Yee is a policy analyst for Google in Asia Pacific. He has worked at the
Political Section of the EU Delegation to China in Beijing and blogs at Global Voices Online and China Geeks.
Source: East
Asia Forum.
No comments:
Post a Comment