This article originally appeared in the Munhwa Ilbo on August 1st, 2011.
이만열/경희대 후마니타스 칼리지 교수, 아시아연구소장
최근 서울 안국역 주변 지역을 중심으로 일고 있는 활발한 예술의 흐름을 보다 보면 놀라움을 금치 못한다. 지금 서울은 세계 어디에 내놔도 그 창의성 면에서 돋보이는 작품들을 선보이는 갤러리가 하루가 다르게 늘어가고 있다. 그것은 문화재나 TV 드라마, 가요뿐 아니라 개념예술, 조각, 회화 등의 예술 영역으로 빠르게 확산되고 있다. 이곳 서울에서 일고 있는 문화의 바람이 아시아를 넘어 세계를 향해 나아가고 있는 것만은 확실하다.
I wrote this thought piece in April of 2000 at the very beginning of my consideration of the implications of technology for society and globalization. At the time, I was focused primarily on classical literature, but had been exposed to some discussions about technology at University of Illinois. The essay is erroneously titled “The Economy of Information.” It would be tempting to find a new title, but that act would create a historical inaccuracy. This essay is what led to much of my writings about the internet.
Computer Networks Recapitulate the Human Mind that Gave them Birth
The most interesting, and most powerful confluence in technology is the parallel process of genetic research and computer chip design. Perhaps the more appropriate terms are silicon & carbon engineering. At the very same time that the human genome is being mapped out and a one-to-one correspondence between the specific gene and the trait is imagined, increasingly minute wafer fabrication at a microscopic level is conducted at the same scale as the process of DNA replication. Both carbon and silicon engineering at the microscopic level are developing in parallel. Oddly, silicon engineering seems more and more like carbon engineering (DNA) because unlike previous technologies, like the sewing machine, or the automobile, today’s chip could not be readily replaced if the supporting technology for production disappeared. That is to say, if you destroyed all parts factories and research laboratories in the automobile industry, you could still produce a vehicle rapidly if you knew the principles of manufacturing. If we lost the factories and data behind a modern silicon wafer, however, we could not reduplicate because the previous generation of computer needed to design it, as the generation before that one was employed before it.
The recent Miraesotong Forum was introduced in English by the Korea IT Times. You can read about it at the link.
“Housewife Life” (jubu saenghwal 주부생활) contains a feature about Emanuel, his family and his book from Nomad Books: Life is a Matter of Direction, not Speed: Notes of a Robinson Crusoe in Korea.
I made a presentation at the Mirae Sotong (Future Communications) Forum on July 28, 2011 in which I described my thoughts on the “Intellectual Korean Wave.” I suggested that the time has come to go beyond the Korean Wave of pop songs, dramas and Kimchi and start to introduce the best of Korean artists, intellectuals and writers to the world in a serious fashion. See these materials for more in Korean on the talk. “The Intellectual Korean Wave” is Forthcoming as an article from Korea IT Times and Munhwa Ilbo Newspaper. The Korean language article follows after the break.
A short essay about the time I spent with Murakami Haruki back in the summer of 1993.
On Murakami Haruki
The summer of 1993 followed the very intense period of study that made up my first year at Harvard-a period of readjusting to American society and also American academics. I was selected for a small research grant that allowed me to concentrate on reading in depth the Tale of Genji, the grade medieval Japanese novel, with my advisor for Japanese literature Edwin Cranston. Oki Yasushi, a professor of Chinese literature from University of Tokyo whose classes I had taken previously, was also visiting Harvard. It was a remarkable summer indeed as I remember an unending series of intense discussions about literature and history contemporary society and politics with fellow students and faculty. Harvard over the summer was different than during the year. Graduate ` major institutions around the world poured in.
When first I came to Korea to study for a year back in 1995, you could walk a mile to find a cup of coffee in Seoul. In the morning, there simply were no places to go out and get coffee and no habit of meeting with individuals for coffee to talk, or simply to read a book.
If one drank coffee, even five years ago, the standard was to rip off the end of a round packet about seven centimeters in length and one centimeter in width. Inside was a delightful coffee mix, famous for its use of transgenetic fats. Then there were the dabang 다방, but those old coffee shops were the domain of men from a previous generation and not particularly welcoming to us.
But now coffee shops are springing up everywhere and just about every coffee shop offers café latte and cappuccino—although the quality may vary. In some cases, there seems to be no economic logic to the number of cafes springing up. The pastries also have improved by leaps and bounds, now rivaling what is found in other major metropolitan centers around the world. What we can say is that the coffee shops often do not open until 8:30 or 9:00, so do not go too early. This particular coffee shop took my fancy. Here we see the long-predicted “death of ideology” when the very concept of ideology becomes a consumer good, proper for a fashionable place to consume espressos .
Koreans have not been so big on maps. Whereas in Japan highly accurate maps have traditionally been a mainstay for citizens and a symbol of good living, Koreans prefer to ask the way, or if necessary, use a navigation device. But that aspect of Korea is now changing as well. Rather well organized maps are going up around Seoul that are as good as anything one finds. In fact, several subway stops now feature both maps and photographs taken from above to allow the observer two means of understanding the geography of the neighborhood. Seoul Metro also has come up with an innovative manner of providing maps to riders.
Emanuel Pastreich
It is almost August and Seoul is lost in the most serious torrential rains I have ever witnessed. I was starting to grow my own vegetables at home and at work, but agriculture is rather negatively impacted by this level of rain, at least agriculture as we have known it. Needless to say, although climate change is everywhere in the media, I don’t hear anyone saying in daily conversation that this odd rain is related to climate change. Just not a polite thing to do, and so I do not mention climate change much either. Of course climate change is not a simple matter of CO2 emissions. After all, the climate change that turned the Middle East into a desert began before the massive CO2 emissions. But that the desertification of Saudi Arabia was linked to human activity is beyond doubt.
It would be nice if all the consumption that is so negatively impacting the environment were at least helping people to live better. But, unfortunately, there are homeless, and those who struggle to feed themselves, who wander around Seoul and of course many other countries, trying to make a living. The homeless are the most seriously impacted by the heavy, unrelenting rains. For many of them it is matter of survival. There are a large number of elderly in Korea who survive by pulling wagons on which they gather old newspapers and other recyclable goods. For these individuals climate change is a matter of life and death. Of course what impacts them today, may impact us tomorrow.
Yoyo Ma is a close friend of my father’s whom I have known since I was a child. Whenever he visited San Francisco he was certain to stop by our home. He knew me before I could speak a word of Chinese and he met me repeatedly as I learned Chinese, Japanese, and finally Korean.
As a Chinese who has spent his career between the Chinese and Western cultures Yoyo Ma understood my work between cultures better than most people and we are able to communicate with a greater degree of depth than might otherwise be the case. I felt great closeness to Yoyo because we both found ourselves deeply imbedded in more than one culture. Yoyo, as a Chinese who had fully embraced the Western classical music tradition and spent his time at Harvard, and later in life, reading Aristotle and other great thinkers and me as a European who had embraced the Asian tradition and spent so many years trying to understand the classics, both of us had to find a space between the two cultures.