Korea Institute of Information and Telecommunication Facilities Engineering (ITFE) chose 'technology trend of disaster communication and emergency broadcasting systems" for the fall seminar, which was held November 25th, at Seoul Education Culture Hall.
Experts from each relevant field gave a presentation on the country's disaster communication and emergency broadcasting policies as well as technology trends and response plans. At this Fall seminar, they reviewed the overall technological development, effective disaster prevention measures, and what is needed for further improvement of the system.
Kim Seongman, Chairman of ITFE, remarked that the subject of the seminar seems particularly fitting after what happened in Yeonpyeongdo recently, emphasizing that, for effective disaster communication and emergency broadcasting systems, we need to be able to secure communication and broadcasting tools in any circumstance, and to also respond flexibly in a state of crisis.
President of the National Information-Society Agency (NIA), Kim Seang-tae, was a special guest for the seminar, providing the audience with a lecture on smart society.
"As a futurist," Mr. Kim explained, "I have met with a lot of global experts. The current change in our society is not just a matter of daily life, but it is actually marking a change of social paradigm into a new civilization." He said that the emergence of smart society is following 700 years of the agrarian society, 250 years of the industrial society, and 50 years of the information society; and the rapid acceleration of such a trend led to the transformation of a contemporary social paradigm, thus, emergence of smart society."
Smart technology and smart values that form a smart society
Smart society changed knowledge and information-based technology into the one based on networking and cooperation, i.e., smart technology, by which hard work turned into smart work and brought a change in management strategies in the form of convergence and mobile innovation, etc. What this means is that the society is looking for a more creative and open mind where central values of our society are shifting toward human dignity based on flexibility and originality.
The major arguments of futurists can be largely classified into two categories: one that stress technology and another that focuses more on values. Rolf Jensen's Dream Society places emphasis on human values, whereas William Halal and Alvin Toffler predicted that the new human society will revolve around human-oriented technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality. This is one of the examples where smart technology meets smart value, therefore, creating a smart society.
Global issues are also prompting the need for a smart society, which could well provide solutions to challenge such as the global economic and financial crisis, unusually high unemployment rates, climate change, and terrorist threats, etc.
Korea is no exception. As the country enters an aging society with a low birth rate, we need to prepare for a super-aged society by adopting a smart economy and a social safety net. A smart society can be an answer to Korea's current problems. For that reason, the government has been making efforts by building a wide range of information and communication infrastructure, and those efforts are recognized worldwide as South Korea ranks in the top spots of the UN's e-government survey.
However, despite the top-level infrastructure, there is still plenty of room for improvement in terms of utilization of societal values created by information technology.
At the moment, Korea is finding itself in a crucial transition from information society to smart society. Then, the question arises: how are we going to apply this change to solving real problems as ICT expands its influence on the society as a whole After all, it is a very appropriate time for us to push towards a smart society through a topnotch electronic government and ICT.
The structure of smart society
Smart society is constructed in a way where smart work, which is comprised of smart life, government and business, is based on a smart infrastructure, and smart citizens, who play a pivotal role in actualizing the core values in creating a smart culture.
The future-oriented smart infrastructure is built by converging conventional social overhead capital (SOC) with improved digital SOC, which then develops into a safety infrastructure that provides quick and convenient services in case unpredictable disaster takes place, by linking the network of various forms with relevant social sectors.
Social infrastructure is vital in establishing such smart infrastructure, based on which precise laws and proper government policies mitigate the infinite competition and promote constructive cooperation of a smart society.
However, smart work is the most important factor in achieving a smart society. In July, the President had already received reports on strategies to promote a smart working system. Smart work leads to a smart government with two-way communication, enabling individual-based services and real-time record management regardless of the location and time.
Also, the social infrastructure will help to build a work environment where people can cooperate irrespective of place and time, and use creative capital to establish diverse and innovative ventures. All of these depend on what smart citizens accomplish within smart culture.
We should now move towards a smart society, the global mega trend, from the current technology-based paradigm. Smart Korea will lead the global current of social change into a whole new future.
