CNN: Eye on South Korea

CNN International has been running adverts for this for a couple of weeks. It's set to air next week and, as a demi tech geek, I'm sooooooooo very excited.

Eye on South Korea

Linked by high-speed broadband lines and blanketed by wireless signals capable of sending HDTV to tiny cell phones, South Korea is the world's most wired -- and wireless -- country.

CNN takes an in-depth look at how South Korea is leading the rest of the world into the future.

Basically, it will be a week where they feature South Korea and its technology. I know it will run on CNN International. I'm not sure about CNN in the States. Look for it is all I can say.

This will be great because you don't know how frustrating it is to have people thinking I'm living in some backwards wasteland. It's nothing close to that, and it hasn't been for awhile.

In fact, from that perspective, I hate traveling home because of the dearth of Internet access and other technology is so behind. The fact is Korea has invested more in its infrastructure and the US has an aging infrastructure that it hasn't invested in upgrading.

For more on that topic look up Stephen Flynn, PhD. I got turned on to his work earlier this year and have been lucky enough to briefly correspond with him. He's an expert on it. He's looking at it more from a security perspective, but he's got some great points.

Anyway, as a result, the US is being left in the dust. What's funny is in all of the time I've lived here I've never had to deal with a power outage. However, it's very common in my home state of California, and I'm not looking forward to coming back to that. What's funny is this comes as a shock to my friends and family when I go home. It seems that a lot of us, "us" being Americans, think that we're at the pinnacle when it comes to modern amenities. However, I think that was the case maybe 30 to 40 years ago and now the US is being left behind. There is a certain level of clueless arrogance that many back home have primarily because people don't bother to travel very far and wide.

It's funny to see experience at times. I remember having a friend ask me if it was really true that South Korea has one of the most wired countries in the world. Well, yes, it's true. Just because the US hasn't figured out it's a good idea doesn't mean other countries haven't.

I remember another friend being more vexxed at getting a text message than being disturbed by a phone call. Her reply to me was "call me" whereas in Korea the reply probably would have been "okay, c u then." I thought that was weird because that's the benefit of an SMS. You send a message, update the person and all they do is glance at the phone rather than have to pick-up to have a conversation.

I remember another not even knowing that LG was a Korean brand. Of course, now I know and I wonder how much I knew before living here?

Having an infrastructure that's modern and being in a country that willingly adopts technology rather than poo-poo it will be things I'll really miss when I finally leave. It's going to be very hard adjusting once I get back. I've got over a year to prepare myself for the hard fall. I'm very spoiled now.

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