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In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People
_martini_ writes "This short article suggests that, in Korea, email is used only for formal communications, or by older, less tech-saavy generations, while IMs, blogs, and SMS has taken over as the primary means of day to day messages."
I can understand how IM appeals to kids (regardless of nationality), but I find IM incredibly distracting. I guess it's the natural evolution though. As telephones cut into the postal load, so are chat functions overtaking email.
In Korea, (current subject) is only used by old people!
Don't Tread on Me
The best way to get ahold of my mom is to IM her!
How do they get their v4lub13 P3n!s 3n1arg3men+ notices?
On slashdot, engadget is for dummies!
Seriously though, no credit? Come on!
I wonder how the legal community operates? In this country, you'd be disbarred for sending an SMS to a judge or use AIM to communicate with opposing council (for serious matters). As much as email is used, all the documents we use at our firm are typed up and made official.
SMS still costs some money, IM isn't as formal, and email is more wide-spread. Doesn't mean anyone has to do what HelloKitty loving teens are doing in a place where technology changes daily.
A blog like any other.
email is for old people what do they think of those who use the "physical" postal service...
Get your torrents...
Please give me a way to explain what a telegram is to my 8 year old.
I still have boxes of unused punch cards from a fortran class thirty years ago that I am saving for the day that I take the second half of the class.
I agree with old people in Korea then that e-mail is quite fast enough thank you very much.
Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.--Solomon Short
I try to use proper grammar with SMS. SMS with auto complete is nifty.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
From the article: "Email's efficiency falls in terms of promptness, convenience and credibility," observed Yoo Hyon-ok, president, SK Communications. "With the continuous emergence of new communication means, communication formats will develop further in the future."
How do IMs, blogs or SMS provide any more credibility than E-Mail?
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People
;)
Of course, there is the corollary: IM, blogs, and SMS are kiddy tech.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
The article said that one of the major reasons people don't like e-mail is that there is no immediate assurance that the message has arrived at its destination. Does SMS (or IM, for that matter) have any guarantee?
The article makes sense, though. SMS and IM are attractive in that you don't have to express every thought on the subject at once, but you can at least have some conversational simulation with these.
I'd use SMS, but I refuse on principle to pay 10 cents for each message I sent.
I love Korea a lot, but it's got some drawbacks, particularly in its journalism and media. The impetus behind this article might have a lot less to do with the actual oncoming death of email and a lot more to do with maintaining a tech-obsessed culture -- much easier to do if you're constantly promoting new toys, which Korea is.
It'd be like a Hollywood tabloid saying that indipendent film is on the way out.
The ebb of email is confirmed by a diminishing trend in pageviews, a tabulation of frequency in service used by email users. Daum Communication, the top email business in the country, saw its email service pageviews fall over 20 percent from 3.9 billion in October last year to 3 billion in October this year. By contrast, with SK Telecom, the nation's No. 1 communication firm, monthly SMS transmissions skyrocketed over 40 percent in October from 2.7 billion instances last October. Cyworld, a representative mini-homepage firm, witnessed its pageviews multiply over 26-fold from 650 million instances in October last year to 17 billion in October this year.
This paragraph, for instance, is as much about corporate branding as it is about giving email stats.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
THats something that I hope does not evolve here. Mainly because people complain about emails sometimes getting lost, but they are more institutionalized and easier to find/access than blogs, SMS, and IMs. It is also more of an "on-demand" service. That you can send files, reply immediately [even if the user is not online], etc. And best of all is it automatically keeps your messages...
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
... a lot of old spammers there. A lot of the spam my server blocks is from .kr addresses.
sigs, as if you care.
Netcraft says old people are dying!!!!111
i'm not surprised, korea is one of the worst spam sewers on the net outside the US, and many mail admins just pre-emptively firewall or ACL korean (or all of apnic) net space. Apparently Korean isp's could care less about all the firewalling, ACL's, and blacklists they end up in and their users are just moving on to IM's.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
All your email belong to old Korean people.
I came across a nice way to use IM as a primary means of communication. I run naim with GNU Screen on a server on which I have a shell account. This way, naim functions as an "answering machine" when I'm not online, and a normal IM client when I am. Enjoy.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
It's like that here (in America) too. Most teenagers in America use AIM, IRC, or MSN more than they email. Reasons for this are pretty simple. IMs (and chat rooms) provide instant communication (this is comparable to a phone call, or talking in the halls), whereas an email is like passing a note. The reader has to read and respond seperately.
And as far as blogs, teens like talking about themselves, so this gives them a place to write about themselves as much as they want. Then anyone who knows how to get to it can read it, so its spread to the masses.
And SMS. Many teens have cellphones, and aren't at their computer 24/7, so an easy way to communicate is to a device that they carry with them all the time.
Coincidentally, the spam problem in Korea is also worse than just about anywhere else, it's for good reason that much of the world is firewalling the country off. So I wonder how much of the decline in e-mail usage there is due to the spammers.
Some how I was so much more interested in the story on Deprived of Business and Sex, Two Men Petition Constitutional Court over Prostitution Law
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
Most of the reasons they give for email being shunned for other mediums are pretty flimsy.
I know people who set up their AIM client so that you can't tell whether they're idle, and only respond to messages 10 hours after you've sent them, and i know people who watch their inboxes like obsessive hawks.
as for email being less "fun" than aim... I don't know, i think my gmail account is pretty cool... and conversational for that matter.
This debate is pretty silly, after all, all we're talking about is persistant electronic messaging. In terms of user experience, email and a client like ICQ aren't -drastically- different. Presumably email will get faster and friendlier, and hell, at some point probably may as well be the same as an IM system.
There are lives at stake here!
(like I didn't know that) ...and IM and SMS is supposed to be a more credible alternative?
The one thing I like about email is that I can get to it when I need to. IM basically requires both parties to be at a computer and logged in at the same time. SMS solves that, I guess, but is it as reliable as email yet?
I'd try SMS if it weren't so much more expensive than email and if I weren't charged to recieve messages I didn't want. I suppose SMS in Korea is a lot cheaper.
You know, writing decent email is an art form, something we used to take pride in. But these days, with these kids texting ungrammatical half-phrases all over the place, it's becoming something of a lost art. I tell you, kids today can't write a complete sentence, and they barely even know how to use an emoticon properly. :-\ It won't be long before people forget how to type. Oh, the inhumanity!
My grandparents prefer e-mail. Why? Because they have always enjoyed writing letters. It was the preferred method of correspondance to people who they couldn't otherwise call on the telephone. E-Mail for them is just a "new fangled" way of writing letters.
If shown Instant Messaging they wouldn't use it as nifty as they think it might be, because it's a paradigm they don't neccesarily buy into.
I would imagine this would apply to many older people. Hell, I even enjoy the eloquence of well written letter.
--J
"The ebbing of email is a phenomenon peculiar to Korea, an IT power."
At least this article doesn't read like propaganda. Nope, nothing to see here, good Red citizens. Continue on to your factory jobs, use our government-provided SMS because it will strengthen our glorious country. Not like those outmoded, capitalist pigs and their filthy capitalist email.
Hmmm.. they studied "high school and college students". Study the same kids when they have to use the computer at the office all day and you'll see a different trend.. at least typing an email can look work-related. Sometimes.
Study my peer group back at university and you could have drawn conclusions that communication through talkers and MUDs was replacing email.
Instant messaging? I barely use e-mail. The phone is the only way to be sure you're actually talking to the correct person.
IM clients piss me off, always in your face. They have pop ups, blink in your tool bar, whatever to get your attention. Then to top it off there are 4 major IM's and the good multi-im clients tend to have bugs and not support all the features. There is a good console multi-IM client that works well under screen, but has proxy issues.
Email works, hell, I'd rather have an IM2mail gateway so I can use a mail client. Mail is passive and you control it, IM wants to control your life. (No this isnt a in Russia joke.)
I can also sort mail, pop web mail, attachments, etc. Mail is much more powerful. And newer IM devices include email accounts (POP or Ldap) Even ATT Wireless (Er Cingular now) the Ogo.
I'm American. I use IM for normal Internet communication with my peers. The majority of my e-mail inbox (not spam) is stuff for the state executive board of math club (I'm webmaster). I just looked at my inbox; other than mailing lists and the aforementioned math-club e-mails, I can't find a "normal" e-mail since after about early October.
The nature of e-mail is such that it lends itself to longer, infomative messages. "Chatting" - that is, discussion or talking - is much more suited for IM.
You're telling me the most savvy users are transacting information with the lossiest clients? That they huddle over cramped phone screens instead of email clients? BS.
Must... control... urge... to... fire... quick... yer mama joke...
For me, email is not instant. It is also (more?) susceptible to spam. I use AIM (grudgingly) and have never had a problem with spam.
My email setup mostly consists of me running "fetchmail" on some pop3 accounts. I also have a mail server which I must get messages from (offlineimap). Both of these methods are "pull" rather than "push". I.e. if someone sends me an email, it isn't possible for a window to pop up and say "here's the email"; I have to fetch it first (even if this step is completely automated, it isn't instant).
Now that I'm off topic, I'd like to pose the question: what kind of software exists to make email "instant"? I have control of my own mail server, but my desktop computer is not my mail server, and is behind firewall, NAT, etc. Thus messages to my email address are not delivered directly to my computer.
Basically, I want something on the mail server end that: 1) queues up received mail. 2) when my desktop connects as a client, it receives the queued mail and does with it as it wishes (runs it through the local mail system). 3) the desktop remains connected indefinitely, and new mail received by the mail server is pushed down to the desktop "instantly". 4) If the desktop client ever disconnects, the mail server resumes its queueing.
IMAP is nice, but my server is dog slow latency wise. I like having a local copy of my mail. While I'm designing my ideal system, it'd also be capable of supporting multiple clients (main desktop and web client at least). The server would retain some number of emails so any client that connected would see the old email. The primary client would download all the emails to have a local copy and for archival purposes, and nothing would prevent multiple clients from doing the same.
Back the topic, it remains much easier to fire off a quick instant message and expect an immediate response than with email. (Though the MS Exchange setup at work comes close. Here the network is fast enough for it to work without local delivery, just the Outlook client connecting to the server.)
email is used by smtphunter and a bunch of other spam relaying 'people'...but then I guess a new article could be, only old people spam from Korea?
The phone is the only way to be sure you're actually talking to the correct person.
I wonder what Mitnick would have to say about that.
However, this is not only in Korea. I live in Hong Kong, and essentially all casual communication is done via SMS (which is extremely cheap here) or IM (ICQ being the favorite of the various messengers).
We use e-mail for our help desk for example. You send an e-mail to the help address, it creates a new ticket for your issue. This works well, as we get documentation of everything you say to us, and us to you, and it allows us to deal with your problem when a person with the requisite knowledge has time.
IM would be totally unsuited for this. When peopel have your attention in realtime, they want results in realtime. If I answer a chat about a Solaris problem, I'm not the one you want, you want the Solaris admin. With e-mail, this is all taken care of. Someone submits their request, and when the Solaris admin is available, he deals with it.
I certianly don't think IM is useless, but I think young people (I include myself in this category, I'm 24) are a little too caught up with the wow factor. When it comes to bussiness, there are major reasons to want to use e-mail instead.
I don't know about you, but reading all that makes me feel old and outdated. I need to upgrade the internet...
SlashIM, it's gonna be all the rage.
Each serves their purpose. If I need to speak to someone interactively and immediately, IM is generally a better choice. On the other hand, if I want to send a good bit of information to someone that they're likely going to want to refer back to, or they're not online when I think of something I need to tell them, email is a much better alternative.
I quite like the way gmail is set up, and that is certainly done well to support a "conversational" format. I don't see why this persistent need in the tech community that one tool is always and for everything better than another. It seems pretty frequent though (Windows vs. Linux vs. *BSD vs. Solaris, email vs. IM, blogs vs. newsgroups, I could go on but I'd fill up the server.)
Why doesn't anyone acknowledge that, quite like in reality, software is a tool, and one type of tool is generally better at a given job then another? You don't use a hammer to loosen a nut, nor a wrench to drive a nail, and you wouldn't want to be stuck without either when the need arises.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
No matter how funny you may think you are, there's no place for the bigotry/racism in your post. Please work on your sensitivity.
In Soviet North Korea, Old People's Email Reads YOU!
Oh well. Burn, karma, burn.
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
It works here like that too. At my university, the most common use for emails is contacting profs, sending and recieving student organization news and updates, schoolwork, and other more "formal" dialogues and communications just like the article indicates. If I'm going to get a hold of a friend, I use AIM. On the other hand, I frequently receive emails from my grandfather, most of which are the typical chain letter types that have circled through every church listserv in five states.
Personally E-mail ends up being mostly to my parents or attaching files for those with picky firewalls. I tend to use IM for the rest (end have a few university profs who use IM - the "younger" ones only; the rest just use email)
"In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People"
Oh my God! I'm OLD!!
*sob*
And I didn't even see it coming.
This was sort of the norm for me + friends in HS.
Of the tech-oriented people where I live, an IM is this generation's social phonecall, email is their voicemail, and the cellphone... is a cellphone, used to get in touch with people, not really something to talk in depth on.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
In North Korea, old people are only used by (current subject)!
Moo!
this is the case in the United States, too. I'm 25 and I only use email for formal communications or some large, organized "packet" of information that I need to send to someone. Just about all of my friends are the same way.
I realize you can't generalize based on your own anecdotal experience... but does anyone really send one or two-line emails anymore when IM is a hundred percent easier and instantaneous?
+++ATH0
my email looks like a bulletin board! full of crap like "hey look at this", "hey what are you doing tonight?"... i want my email to be for meaningful correspondence.
this creates alot of email that one has to sort through.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
If you're going to steal an article and the title, at least steal the whole thing. http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000260021869/
Old People eat email!!
that I'm that old now.
I'm 30 years old, a programmer in Korea.
But I don't use cellular phone. Actually I don't even onw it.
Your ego is Matrix!
Korea is still very much divided into two completely different countrys. South korea is rich, modern, and the most wired country on earth. North Korea is very poor, essentially unchanged in the last 50 years, and the Internet is illegal, along with cell phones. Pyongyang tried an experimental rollout of cell phone service but it was stopped, probbably because the authorities couldn't keep adequate control over it. I've oftened wondered what it would be like if the North actually invaded the South. It would be almost like time travel for the poor Northern soldiers.
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
Think about it for a minute.
Spam typically COMES from Korea. It would make sense then, that Koreans generally do not use email (which, in most Korean's minds is for SPAM only) as a communication means.
Only old people using mail, that explains the tons of spams plugging viagra, levitra, and other impotency medicines !
What a dumb article. Email is hear to stay in one form or another for very basic reasons that make it different from IM. Each is suited to a different task. Email isn't well suited to saying things like "how did your day go" just like IM chat isn't well suited towards critiquing a paper. Really what this article is about is how email was being used for quick forms of communication where it really was never very well suited.
Email is a medium best suited to explaining large topics where you need to compose and edit a message. That does tend to be more formal communication. Really it's an inherently different way to communicate because you get to compose a message rather than have a conversation. IM is realtime conversation, whereas email is a form of writing.
I've had chat capability almost as long as email, probbably started somewhere around 1991. I actually do tend to use email to talk to people that are less tech savy, and IRC or IM to those that are more tech savy, so it's not just a Korean thing. The core reason for the tech-gap is because email caught on much quicker than chat because email doesn't require a constant on connection. With people having broadband connections that're always on more and more it's obvious why IM is becoming a more and more popular a form of communication. Most communication people do is the short "can you do blah" rather than "here's a long winded explanation of blah".
AccountKiller
There is a program for teens, $25 for unlimited SMSes for a month.
The cheating via SMS for university entrance exams was uncovered, and investigated. Teens in SK cannot live without the cell phone, especially SMS, that's the major communication device quick and easy.
They can send messages at the same speed as we type on keyboards.
E-Mail? Bah who needs it. The reporter just doesn't realise G-Mail is a type of E-Mail ;)
In a more serious note I don't use E-Mail for anything other than forum reply notification and mailing lists. I don't think mailing lists would work too well out of the e-mail form beacuse I like to go back to past ones and check the links I haven't checked yet.
Unlike IMs where I have to dig through 1000's of lines just to find the URL that someone told me to check out.
"Still another reason is that you send messages through SMS or messenger as if you were playing a game, while doing so through email makes you feel as if you are doing homework or performing a task."
Hey guys I got the high score on Mozilla Thunderbird!
How many people do homework via E-Mail? I am intrested! My school offers no such choice. Performing a task? Uhh I think playing a game or sending a message IS a task!
Have you metaroderated recently?
SMS it's like IMs but without a "computer", although current moviles are mini-computers. Both can be used for conversations.
In my opinion old Telephon calls are better than IMs and new Movil calls are better than SMS, may be kits are being prepared to Mars-Earth lagged conversations.
blogs: All its content it's Public. Some people can use it to have a conversation but it can be weird.
E-Mail it's great for off-line messages. You aren't in front of a computer 24/7, may be Slashdot users can do it but "normal" people can't, so you can check all your mail when you have time.
But finally the teenagers do whatever their friends are doing.
My city: Barcelona.
old people are only for email.
---------------------------- DevNull - a discernible void in the province of Saskatchewan
One added advantage of emails is the formation of groups. U can stay in touch with all ur friends and similar-interests people without having to increase your friends list in IM grow unmanageably long. And when u have something to announce to somebody, mails are more convenient ... and U certainly dont want to see a long offline message in ur IM... thats irritating.
There are a hundred emails in my inbox right now. Most of them are communications from my various classes, formal inquiries, mailing lists, and invoices.
All of these things are very important. I would say that email is meant for more permanent, longer purposes. I wouldn't want to get any of these messages over IM or SMS. I have had delays of up to 20 minutes receiving SMS messages, as well. Why on earth would I want to use a phonen keypad to type a letter?
Instant Messenger also has its place, but not for this kind of deliberate correspondence. Not to mention that I can't receive IMs when my home computer isn't turned on!
I don't like the immediate interaction of IM for the same reason I don't like phones, cell or otherwise. I don't like people virtually popping in and demanding my attention no matter what I am doing. Most of my calls go to VM and when I tried IM I found that I left it set to 'away' most of the time.
If you need to get a hold of me, email is the fastest way. I check them every hour or so. I check the VM only 1-2 times a day. If only I could turn off the phone at work as well.
I'm in my early 20s, and have some major difficulties with IM. Some of my contacts are younger and do prefer IM for almost everything, but I get the sense that they are suffering from continual distractions. Some have admitted to me, jokingly, that they are "addicted to MSN". I think this isn't far from the truth.
An instant conversation is nice to have, but if you have ongoing conversations throughout the day you simply can not focus on your computer work!
People often think they are smarter than they actually are. I am willing to acknowledge that I don't have the mental capacity to seriously work on more than one thing at a time. I prefer the operation of email, since communications get queued up and will be answered at my convenience. Not only are they queued up (Jabber, ICQ does that too of course) but this is the expected mode of operation, so there is no etiquette problem with delays on the order of days before a reply.
Another thing is, most of my friends who are non-techies have given up on email because: spam, and junk from friends. Well, neither of these is really a problem: wonderful, free spam filtering systems exist that will reliably get rid of 99% of your spam, and simple self discipline (and being politely firm with your contacts) will prevent your inbox from becoming the destination for circulated crap.
If I want instant conversations, I pick up the phone or go outside. This is coming from a young guy who is plenty literate with computers! Besides, you can't reliably pick up cues from girls behind a keyboard.
This adds to the suckitude of Korea's Communication Law as it pertains to US Military stationed in Korea.
As part of this law, many activities (including getting a cell phone contract, or using just about any ecommerce site) require the use of a resident registration number. This is something akin to a social security number in the US, except that non-citizens can get one legitimately when they register as a legal resident. I cannot, however, as US Military in korea cannot register.
So I'm stuck using a damned prepaid phone, with almost no services available except voice. There's internet access, but at least according to the cell phone salespeople I spoke to, most SMS services can't receive from or send to regular email accounts (so much for Korea's vaunted technological lead on the US cell phone market!)
So basically, this is just one more thing helping to prevent US military in korea from ever seeing koreans as anything but a bunch of back-stabbing scam artists who want nothing but to separate them from their money (no shortage of those right outside the gate...not that they're all bad, of course, but that's how a lot of americans see them) and koreans from seeing US military members as a bunch of drunken assholes, or drunken rubes. How many straws can this camel hold?
....used only for formal communications, or by older, less tech-saavy generations
I somehow cant figure out how email requires lesser tech-savvyness than IM. Typically an old person will find some younger "tech savvy" person to set up the mail client or IM client anyway right ?
Assuming a grandpa has his IM and Email client both installed and configged with his alias and email account respectively. To use the IM, all he has to do is GO online and it logs in by default. He just double clicks on a contact's name and starts talking (i.e. type and press Enter). Even easier if someone else messages him since he just has to reply.
Now with an email client, he has to (typically), MANUALLY start the mail client, squint his eyes on all those funny icons with titles all over them, dig through a seperate address book app to find addresses, explicitly write mail messages hitting the "Compose" button, navigate some obscure menu to press "Send" (I doubt if most people mug shortcut keys let alone old people). If it flags some error most elderly folks dont even bother reading them and are left in suspence if the message actually went or not. If he/she uses online mail it only gets worse since he has to go to a site and then do all the above and more.
IM can at best be easier and at worst be AS difficult. The only obstruction I see is that older folks might be more familiar with email and are unwilling to switch because they arent used to adapting as quickly as we are. That doesnt mean they are less tech-savvy, just means they are not as flexible in adapting in general to new things.
Who uses blogs for messaging? - The last thing I would want in a buisness environment is an RSS feed of my boss's thoughts haha..
How does phone use in Korea compare to phone use in the West? What IM service/protocol do they use mostly? (MSN, AOL, Jabber?)
I hate to say this but you can safely ignore anything Chosun Ilbo brags in their so-called 'tech' section. it's nothing but corporate PR stunt. IMHO ETNews is far more reliable source of tech news in Korea. (And yes, I'm a Korean)
When I was young, we used to have an IBM PCjr. Our word processor was IBM Writing Assistant v1.01. Here are a complete list of instructions to boot it.
1) Put in disk.
2) Type "g"
3) Hit enter.
She asked me how to do this every time she used the program.
She cannot use email. I setup a gmail account for her, made it her homepage, and she still has trouble.
I am very envious of the Koreans now.
How about plucking a feather from your pet goose, and starting a long love letter by scratching its inked tip on the surface of a ruguous sheet of yellowed paper instead?
Now _that's_ writing. Forget about emoticons, let your emotions flow instead.
.... _Voting_ is for old people!
Besides, I'd rather have the choice to interact at my leisure than have the implicit requirement to reply all the time.
It would be helpful to point out that everyone, everywhere, at ALL TIMES (no, i am not exagerrating) is within arm's reach of their mobile phone: on the subway, walking, in the car, meetings, in the hwajongshil, everywhere, always. The same does not hold true for what Koreans consider "email", where you sit down at your desk, open up Outlook, type a message, and send it off.
The other cultural thirk here is that Koreans, especially in Seoul, are very very demanding of instant answers to the slightest issue. As such, there is no taboo for answering your cell phone in the middle of a meeting (by contrast, this is as bad as farting in a meeting in Japan).
I will say that email is still used for "official" stuff: official sales responses, bids, inquiries, and for formal appointment arranging.
davejenkins.com |
We've blocked every IP block from Korea at the router level. The level of spam originating from their IP space is simply astronomical. Maybe if their telcos got their act together, more of their citizens who might want to contact people outside the country might be able to do so. Otherwise, I suspect the reason most people don't use e-mail is because it's completely unreliable due to spammers taking over their networks and being RBL'd.
Well, being that my email is 95% Viagra spam, that makes sense. Face it, spam has made email nearly useless.
Table-ized A.I.
"This short article suggests that, in Korea, email is used only for formal communications, or by older, less tech-saavy generations, while IMs, blogs, and SMS has taken over as the primary means of day to day messages."
Good for Korea. Unfotuantely, it becomes a largely moot point once you leave korea due to the vastly different billing structures found in other countries. It's the primary means of communication in korean youth, therefore...? What's the conclusion we're trying to reach here?? Old people aren't tech saavy? OOOooh, big story there. That the rest of the world is not as tech saavy? Korea is hardly unique concerning the abundant use of IMs, blogs and SMSs, especially when compared to it's neighbors. Or maybe this story is just here to inform you that you're all tech backwards weenies.
I mean, for crying out loud, there's not enough to story here make a decent squirrle carcass, let alone something news worthy. I could have taken you on my last trips through japan and Singapore and told you that.
Debug that story selection script bot already. Meager crap like this submission shouldn't be seeing the light of day.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Maybe now the gooks will stop shitting in my mailbox
and have themselves a nice IM/SMS spam circle jerk.
http://www.chevent.co.kr/doumi/298806_2.jpg
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
No matter how heterosexual you may think you appear, there's no place for the faggotry/gayness in your post. Please work on killing yourself
Maybe the next big thing is converting text messages to pictures before sending them.
considering I've at the same ATTWS number for several years now. The vast majority of messages I get on my cell-phone are spam. Now compare this with the highly effective spam filtering I get from running razor and SpamAssassin and email beats the pants off my phone as far as messaging goes.
I'll grant you, the ogo would be a pretty nifty tool to have, but I can't justify spending an extra $13 a month just for remote IM and email from a select few ISP's.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
(Kim Ki-hong, dama90@chosun.com )
To me this is not about spam at all. SMS/IM are light weight messeges halfway between email and a phone call. It fills a gap somewhere between the formal letter and the informal conversation. For work purposes I still use email internally, but even here IM is beginning to flourish.
In America, e-mail is more widely used because it has a longer history. It's been around since the beginning of the Internet, and e-mail was a much better method of communication during the dial-up era. If you're getting charged by the minute (which is what used to happen on dial-up), you want to download your e-mail, read it offline, compose replies (still offline), then connect to send them so that you're not getting charged for nothing. Even after broadband became more popular (and dial-up cheaper), e-mail remained popular because it was well established.
In Korea, Internet access exploded onto the scene with broadband access almost from the start. Imagine a situation where barely anybody uses the Internet, and then one day everybody's on a DSL or cable connection. Also imagine that these users have never been exposed to e-mail. Sure, some of them will use e-mail (especially in the academic circle), but most of the users will be drawn to the communications applications that are more interactive, less boring(?), and require more bandwidth. E-mail just has that much less of an established reputation in such a situation.
Another eason may be cultural. E-mail is time consuming (compared to cell phones or IM), and it is a much more private medium. Koreans are very impatient, and they are also a very community-oriented nation of people. E-mail just doesn't cut it for these types of people, since you never know how long it'll take to get a reply back. Message boards, blogs, IM, and cell phone conversations do, however, satisfy the need for instant communication and community-oriented communication.
Just my $0.02 (or roughly 20 won)...they'd better send us this fad as well.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I have id's for all the major IM's (icq, msn, aim, jabber) and I also use it from time to time, but I always and ever prefer signed e-mail-ing. Why ? Because I usually don't have the time for IM-chitchatting. People tend to be extensively gassy when talking over IM channels. With e-mail, I check when I have the time, I answer when I have the time (usually 2-3 times a day) and I "speak" only that much as time permits. I find it simply more effective.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
E-Mail is essential for doing business. Koreans are a different sort of people so what they do doesn't really apply to the rest of the world!
ISPs, ACLs and IMs! You're free! Run!
Yarr!
I'm living in Beijing, China and have a lot of friends from Korea (both North and South)
:)
What you have to remember is that in this part of the world, not everyone can afford a computer desktop, but even my maid has a mobile phone, with SMS messaging.
Another important factor is that young people don't always have a personal computer that is private from their parents, while their mobile phone is typically very private. Also, most younger people don't like to hang around the house, they are typically out meeting with friends in some youth oriented location. This is both personal preference and the fact that they want some privacy. So SMS get's really popular because you can always have your mobile phone around.
There are some political issues. Lots of people are more concerned that the gov't is checking emails servers for what is classified as subversive activity. Not that SMS is more secure, but I think that the gov't hasn't quite caught on to it yet, dispite what happened in the Philopeans a few years ago
Another thing is that SMS and IM are more interactive, and during that time of life you are working a lot to develop your interpersonal skills, so you want to spend a lot of time chatting.
Why not just call and talk? Well, typically SMS messagin is very cheap compared to talking on the phone. Actually when I first got to Beijing I really annoyed some people when I was calling them, because I was costing them a lot of money.
You can also type SMS with your hand hidden in a coat pocket or in a purse, which is something that a lot of younger people in class do. You can SMS your friends while sitting in class much more easily than calling them on the mobile.
When you get older and have your own apartment you don't mind spending so much time there because your parents are not peeking into your bedroom. So you will be more comfortable to use technologies like email with a desktop, that is tied to a single location. I don't worry that my parents will walk in and see me blowing kisses at my girlfriend when we talk online, for example.
But yeah, this can be a big generation gap. I run a couple of social groups that I use email mailing lists to organize, and several of the younger people in the group are always sending me SMS's because they don't read the emails. So I guess I will look into some sort of SMS to email gateway, since the whole point of having the mailing list is so that I don't spend too much time organizing the projects.
Anyway, just remember that tech is always evolving and that if you want to keep of the lines of comunication you need to stay on top of it.
Peace, or Not?
maybe half of it is the speed you can type your SMS's? Personally I don't SMS with short forms because they're just harder to type when you have your T9 dictionary on - but on the comp, they r faster 2 type. BTW, if we're talking abt Korean here, I don't know if the ungrammatical thing still applies.
I wouldn't use Email in Korea either. They are a spam haven and if they get spammed as bad as I do from Korea, I would switch to AIM and SMS. Did they also address the computer ownership in Korea? I heard that Korea has a lower number of Computers in households and alot more cyber cafes. Also, email is worthwhile if you stay on top of it. Most email is delivered to me in 5 minutes or less of it being sent. If that's not fast enough for you, You need to stop drinking the coffee.
Which is rather than distinguishing by age, they really should consider it by social status. There are young people who don't like to be disturbed and find IM to be an annoying intrusion. This and SMS are more for people who like to gossip and need to feel like they're part of a group. That's not necessarily a measure of age.
I am sure that Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and some of the major cities in China have far, far better telecoms than anywhere on earth but I don't think this is a good measure.
And in Korea, dogs are only for dinner.
Email is only for old people... in Korea!
...cost me 5 cents.
People would probably use it more if it was free -- then again, it would probably be free if more people used it.
and now back to the fallout shelter...
Email is for old people... and cat is the other white meat.
'Same speed C but faster'
So grandpa is sending me all this spam? Kewl! I only need to way the day he/she dies... :/
...who eat kimshee, is split into two parts, and one part has the craziest guy in the world running it.
I would suggest that the entire country is insane.
Would anyone be surprised that SMS is more widely used than email.
I only communicate with most, if not all, of my friends via IM and phone calls. I can't remember the last time I emailed one of my friends. E-Mail is very much for me a more formal form of communication, and I use it for older family members that don't utilize IM.
Solution: Write "I'm just on my way out" and then go offline.
For my next trick I will solve the eternal "Jews, more trouble than their worth?" debate.
I oughta know, I had some of those books when I was like, 2 or 3? First time I saw one of those Hello Kitty products, I assumed it was Bruna's work.
From the same news source, there may be other reasons for IM's popularity. . . .
People who are truly 'in the know', who value having control over their own time, don't make interrupt channels available to the world. They don't use IM, and don't even answer phone calls (instead, leaving all incoming calls to go to an answering machine/voice mail).
:-)
For the top tier people, email is the modus operandi
In Korea, Chosun Ilbo Is Only For Old People.
My wife (a South Korean) is a very impatient woman, and this is a common trait amongst Koreans; they want things instantly without waiting.
It's no surprise to me that instant messaging services are popular there.
Given the amount of spam around on the 'net these days it's also not surprising that people are sending less email.
However email is not only for old people. My wife regularly emails her family back in Korea, since it's much cheaper than placing international phone calls. Phone calls and IM don't tend to be very convenient anyway, since we're 9 time zones away.
Email won't die out in Korea, like snail-mail hasn't died, and like radio didn't die when TV came.
Seriously.
...with Gmail's thread structure and a notifier, I have found we (me and the people I correspond with) are beginning much more like IM - rapid responses and oft nonsensical posts piling up in threads.
But IM is not quite the same medium as e-mail - when you have a strongly defined subject and want to elaborate, IM is somehow just not right. It is, perhaps, too fast and things said are taken too lightly, people are jumping into each others' sentences - it's a bit like having a conversation vs. writing a letter.
Another way to look at this is not that e-mail inferior technology, is becoming outdated and will be replaced by IM once those old people die; but that those kids will gradually learn the value of writing a letter instead of having a vapid conversation on nothing as they grow up.
We can spend plenty of time arguing over how much freedom South Korea's government provides its people, but the bottom line is that I don't accept the legitimacy of North Korea's government. North Korea's government will not survive the opening of North Korea's southern border.
This is not my sandwich.
E-mail is saturated with spam, and is more or less tied to a desk, while IM/SMS are fairly mobile technologies.
The biggest reasons, though, have to do with communication style and way of thinking. In general, younger people tend to think wide-and-shallow, where older people think focussed-and-deep. Younger peeople seem to multithread with ease, able to carry on several conversations at once, task-switching very effectively. Old people do this less well and even accuse younger fold of being attention-deficit.
Focussed-and-deep is something you improve at as you age. Young people can do it, and when one conversational thread merits attention, the others melt away.
It's just a theory, and I'm no developmental psychologist. IANAL, either, but this is Slashdot.
This is not my sandwich.
Now I'm not a Korean, but I can say I gave up on email too.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, email was a valuable communication resource. I used to actually look forward to receiving email. I used to actually give my email to people, and I used to open emails from strangers. I used my real email on newsgroups. When I wrote a walkthrough for a game, I put both my email addresses at the time in it, so people can write me an email if they have questions. Some of them with attachments too, such as their saved game where they have problems or a screenshot.
But back then email was still usable, and spam was still in the range of maybe 1 spam email per week.
Nowadays, if anyone did that, especially the part about opening emails with attachments, you'd probably call them a stupid n00b.
And then the payback time came. Those email addresses I've used everywhere were hit by a tsunami of spam. I got a new email address and only told it to my family, friends and boss. It soon became flooded just the same.
Email has been plundered, raped and poluted by a bunch of idiot spammers, to the point of being useless. I'm no longer looking forward to emails. It's just not worth it any more. Yeah, I can install spam filters and whatnot, but even configuring and training those all the time is just not worth it any more.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If they end one relationship to start another, it's still a monogamy!
Or why do they send me so much Korean spam?
In Soviet Russia, email controls you!
If they end one relationship to start another, it's still a monogamy!
That's the point. They end a perfectly good relationship for the sake of monogamy. Read it again.
Three totally diferent things,
:) ... if Email's are for old people, it's just because the kids havn't grown up enough to be writing letters. 'Mr Bnk Mn, I need morgage, giv us appoimt to see u?' .. don't think so :)
Email is good for sending letters.
IM/SMS for short messages or conversations both have to improve MSN forgets messages sent when the other party is offline and SMS costs to much to have a conversation over it.
And blogs are for all those amateur newspaper collomists
The ideal number of active conversations to be having is then [(reading + thinking)/(typing))], where reading, thinking, and typing are all in messages per unit time. Round down to apear responsive (and to avoid fractional conversations).
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
To my collegues (here in the US) IM is MSN.
I hate that Microsoft cr*p. So I refuse to use it. If they switched to, say, Jabber then I'd consider it.
The spelling checker has been around for a very long time now.
Please consider installing one on your operating system of choice, and then, more importantly, consider using it on articles before publishing them!!
Now, repeat after me, s-a-v-v-y.
... is fading to black!
The Bible says that a man can have as many wives as he wants (no where is this contradicted). Women can have only one husband ( :) ). Monogomy is for women. Are you a woman?
:(.
The Bible is... nice, the Church etc goes against it in many places. I wish we opressed women
Personally I never cared for the phone. I started wondering why I jumped everytime the thing rang. When e-mail became common place, I loved it. Now people could communicate with me without interrupting me. And I could shoot questions out without feeling like I was bugging them.
Then IM came along. While I find it has some benefits, it seems to bring back the interruption aspect of phones.
This isn't new. Around 1993/94 my school friends and I had CB radios, as phonecalls were charged by the minute in the UK local or not. When uni started in 95 we left our irc clients running. IM came along and I use it all the time.
The whole time though, for anything I want to pay serious attention to I'll use e-mail or the phone.
It's just kids wanting instant gratification, same as ever. Nothing has changed; rather they just have more toys to play with. Patience is a virtue.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
We had to email in 2 feet of snow, uphill both ways!!!!
I will say that email is still used for "official" stuff: official sales responses, bids, inquiries, and for formal appointment arranging.
I find it interesting that email used to be the "instant messaging" of communication. You still send all your bids, quotes, appointments, etc. via the Postal Service.
But alas, email is for old people.
"North Carolina has to deal with their own problems."
Sure, but they got rid of Jesse Helms, and the beaches are pretty nice.
Its really *very* modern there nowadays.
Well, I sure as hell haven't seen any decrease in the amount of Korean SPAM in my Inbox.
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
I'm a Canadian living in Seoul, and i get plenty of spam on my phone. They're mostly for phone chat lines, or for setting up meetings with young girls for a very reasonable price. I also get automated phone solicitation for credit cards.
I should point out that my phone is an older model, I guess the newer models have some sort of blocking system set up (or maybe it's a subscription package, I never read my phone bill that closely)...
Anyways, the e-mail is still the way businesses communicate.
Turning off idle and away notifications, and simply not responding when people IM you?
I myself tended to use ICQ in this manner - the client would be online 24/7, but it could be several hours before I respond to a query. It worked well as a simple message dropbox.
Unfortunately using this kind of tact amongst the AIM crowd seems to be 'frowned upon', as activity times are displayed to the minute, and people post their exact comings and goings as away messages.
Feh. Newbs.
From said FA:
"Japanese visitors respond differently to the first snow by wrapping up in heavy winter apparel and sneezing "Samui!" (It's cold!)."
That's Japanese visitors who are saying "Samui"
The Korean for cold is "Chuoyo".
Fuck you, man.
Proverbs 21:19
I hear postage stamps are going up to $.41 soon, its getting pretty expensive. Maybe I'll have to try out this electronic mail to send letters to my friends and family.
Why yes, I DO live in North Dakota. Why do you ask?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
... I though my 12-year old cousin was "old."
Perspective. Nothing to see here; move along.
I used to work for an unnamed ISP (DSL, Dialup, Cable) and basically issues are handled first come first serve basis regarldess of priority.
But that is because there are over 2 million customers. There was a "golden" quene in which certain groups and customer were get bumped to the top of the quene when they called in, but that was mostly a marketing thing.
I didn't handle email or chat support beyond actually getting AIM to work and person email to work and we'd email each other to verify (no I didn't work for AOL either... of course you could tell that they would email to verify anyways).
Other groups handled email and chat, but then again since the majority of the issues were connection related... Well if you couldn't connect you couldn't use email or chat so that made those features pointless with support at those times.
You have been lucky. I find the spam from AIM to be even more annyoing than with the e-mail variety. If somehow your AIM handle gets known to spammers (many of the same ways apply here as the e-mail account name can get spammers) you get a near constant stream of messages like:
"Hey sexy dood: See me naked at this website: http://www.noclothes.com/"
"WANT A MILLION DOLLARS? I REPRESENT A CLIENT FROM AFRICA AND NEED A TRUSTWORTH PERSON TO HELP ME OUT."
"Stop getting spammed by AIM. Let me show you how."
or from the truly pathetic:
"I'm lonly. Do you want to talk?"
I am not kidding on any of the above either. They have all happened to me with AIM, and unless you kill your account, once you start to get one of those spam messages it gets worse and worse until you finally turn the bleeping thing off.
It is slightly easier to track down and kick off AIM spammers, but professional spammers can still get away without geting into any real trouble from ISPs or even the law, just like e-mail spam.
It's SPAM which makes EMAIL unreliable for me.
If I had a message from a trusted source only, and I would see my email indicator flashing, I would read my email as soon as I have the time, which is less intrusive than any IM existing currently.
Since there is a lot of SPAM out there, I cannot rely on that indicator anymore, which means I only check my mail every 2 to 5 hours; because every 10 minutes I have at least 2 to 10 spam messages waiting.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
News flash: not everyone can afford a cell phone. More people have at least dial up internet connections (or access to one) than have cell phones.
Cell phones are a luxury for the rich. I cannot afford one. I don't feel like I'm missing much anyway. It reminds me of people who absolutely must have a laptop even though they are usually either at work or at home. How often do most people really use their laptops outside or on a plane or whatever?
Why would you want to always be reachable anyway. It's a PITA. That's what answering machines and email were invented for. I don't like peck typing on a tiny keyboard anyway. How that could be considered efficient communication is beyond me. What's wrong with just calling them (hence the "phone" part in "cell phone") and leaving a message if they are not available.
I really don't understand the appeal. Maybe you really do have to be a teenager to "get it".
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
User has UID envy. Wants to sell his /. acct for $2 USD because that's all it's worth.
It's pretty funny too.
Last time I tried IM, it was because a bored 20 year-old girl wanted to chatter about nothing and waste time. Yes, she was cute. Although I quickly got fed up with typing mindless messages back and forth with no real capacity for interesting discussion. 20 year-old girls are nice when you're also 20. Add ten years and chances are you're going to have communication issues.
IM is neat because you can use it to move files directly. There is an immediacy to the medium which fits when it fits. I know another girl who uses IM with a webcam to stay in touch with her family who lives far away across the nation. Meaningless chatter is comforting. Seeing a busy kitchen in the background while she types to her sister makes her feel connected to the family. Email can't do this.
But for word-dense messages which require forethought and precision? Email is the better way.
For actual conversations? Telephone.
And if I really want to socialize, I leave the house. Web-socializing is a thin and irritating replacement. But if you're a kid, I'm sure it's exciting. Every new medium is there to be explored, and the people it best suits will do the exploring. Interestingly, the medium will also mold and change people in both subtle and gross ways for life. For the better or the worse? That's up to time, and that's half the fun. We live many lives exactly so that we may explore many different avenues of existence. Being carved into strange and wonderful/horrifying shapes isn't the end of the world. It's the price of admission.
-FL
Where you not the same man who in an article about your Vatan(homeland) sentencing a man to 10 months of possible imprisonment for editing links in the ODP?
Your exact words: "I'd love to participate in this discussion, ask about how come turkish media is cencored etc or replying to each clueless european which hates Turkey for some funny reason and jumping to this discussion about how disgusting thing Turkey did to poor(!) category editor etc." and then of course you proceeded to jump into the discussion and injecting in irrelevant subjects as your countrymen demonstrated in that story, they have a talent for, but a lack of criticism was noted on the part of Turkish slashdotters.
I hope some Koreans can educate the Turks about freedom of speech. It is better to be a spam haven than other things.
Jeez, guys, sometimes it's enough to RTFA! Otherwise /. will become a forum of spewers.
My boss knows my email address. Clients know my email address. Random companies and spammers know my e-mail address. Relatives know my e-mail address.
Luckily, I never check my e-mail address, so I don't have to think about these people.
North Korea is commonly referred to as such. "Korea," has inherited the connotation of referring to South Korea. This is true here in Asia, at least.. nobody calls it South Korea, even the Koreans I know. If you don't explicitly say North Korea, it's just assumed you're referring to South Korea.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I, for one, welcome our new elderly Korean overlords!
A lot of people aren't aware if this, but there is a superior instrument now available to communicate even more efficiently with others than E-mail or IM: it's called a TELEPHONE. I have to repsond to sales inquiries at times, and what could be accomplished in a two minute phone call can take two hours (with typical interruptions) to convey by E-mail... Now, I don't type at 100 WPM, but it kills me when people "hide" behind a keyboard all day. You can also get a lot of other important cues from listening to the other persons voice that you simply miss in IM or E-mail. Regards, Mike
As civilized as your countrymen who instead of being grownups are petulant children who are never wrong. It is scary how monolithic you Turks were in that thread.