Chris Brauer Media Project [BLOG]

There is a tendency in current sociological theory to wax on endlessly about the 'western' influence on the world and the importance of not looking at the world through 'western' filters. I'm not sure if there is a fundamental lack of understanding about the changing socio-demographic and socio-political makeup of the global community, or if the discourses are simply lagging behind the reality. Like how the Chinese Government is a bigger threat to the emerging open-standards and interconnectivity of information and knowledge than the Fortune 500 put together.

Maybe it will be more obvious when South Korea, the world's most wired country, puts a robot in every home by 2015. And not just the $500 robots who sweep and clean the house, using sensors to chart a path around the kitchen table, but robots that teach and converse in dozens of languages, sing and dance for children when they are bored and patrol public areas.

That's right folks. The future is here. Well not here really, but in South Korea. As we speak, South Koreans watch free government-subsidized TV over cellphones, are connected anytime, everywhere, through blanketed national high-speed wireless Internet access, and over 40% of the population has a home page. Every school is interconnected by high speed Internet and collaborative educational initiatives. Homemakers enroll regularly in IT courses targeting use in real life situations and low-income families receive tax credits and subsidies for the purchase of hardware and software to participate in the national explosion in digital data.

But perhaps the most interesting developments are in the service sector initiatives to create robots capable of integrating into daily life. According to the South Korean Ministry of Information and Communciation, instead of operating independently, these service robots derive their information from being part of a network - a kind of collective robotic intelligence.

So beware to 'western' sociologists. The time for self-loathing and great laments on what we have done and what we should never do again is nearing an end. Soon we will speak of how the Koreans thrust their robots upon us and we scrambled around in a disoriented, robotic state.

Labels: sociology, technology