Cryptocats, Artificial Intelligence and K-Pop
In preparation for what journey do you think did I become a proud CryptoKittie mother? I’ll give you two more clues: I also installed KakaoTalk on my smartphone and created a very colorful K-Pop playlist.
Correct, I went to South Korea last week for three pretty exciting days, more precisely to Seoul.
I met tech giants like Samsung and LG, exciting startups and a whole lot of highly intelligent minds in the digital scene. The meetings were about Blockchain, Augmented Reality (AR), the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous driving, Smart Homes & Cities — and last but not least about eSports. What is still a very slow-growing niche phenomenon in Germany regularly fills gigantic halls in South Korea. There are even Korean stadiums that were built only for eSports. So you may say: What football is in Germany, in South Korea is eSports. I was lucky enough to see a Korean League of Legends match live. It was impressive.
My five most important learnings
Of course, I also knew before the trip that Korean culture is colorful and diverse. And that innovations do not only come from Silicon Valley. Since Alibaba, Xiaomi and Sensetime, the world’s most valuable AI startup, it has become clear that we should not only look to the west, but even more frequently to the east. For all those who could not (yet) do this with their own eyes, I summarize my most important impressions and learnings here:
- Smart Home & City are not a dream of the future in South Korea, but a status quo
Companies such as LG and Samsung prove that technologies, which we often still call the vision of the future in South Korea, are already a reality: The Internet of Things connects household items, making them smart and networked alongside households as well as entire cities. Songdo is regarded worldwide as a Smart City showcase. Intelligent, networked technologies are “ubiquitous” there — omnipresent. Today, around 100,000 people live in the Smart City, and one day it is expected to reach 600,000.
2. Compared to South Korea, Germany is a technological developing country
At least when it comes to network coverage and broadband expansion. Yes, it is easy to complain about the German IT infrastructure and actually I am not a fan of it — but during my trip I became all the more aware of the problems this backlog actually brings with it: Companies in South Korea have successfully completed 5G tests, while here not even 4G can be reached everywhere. This makes innovations in IoT and Smart Cities really difficult in Germany.
3. Games are much more than just pop culture
You have already heard my astonishment about the importance of eSports in Korean culture — but what I found even more exciting are the approaches that, for example, Exosystems pursues. The company uses society’s obvious play instinct to make rehabilitation more exciting through gamification and help motivate patients in the long term. This alone may not be quite as exciting, but in combination with artificial intelligence and a specially developed device that patients wear during rehabilitation, their solution becomes very powerful: It analyses whether the exercises are performed correctly and can also measure the success of the therapy.
4. The blockchain can do much more than just cryptocurrencies and cats
The startup Decentraland, which I met in South Korea, uses the Ethereum Blockchain to develop an open, decentralized 3D virtual reality world. There are no limits to users’ imagination: they can purchase land, add new elements, hold concerts or workshops — and monetize them for themselves. Control over what happens in Decentraland is entirely up to its creators, the community, not an organization. A digital world that is for free with digital citizens, so to speak.
5. Augmented Reality will revolutionize maintenance and production
AR is, similar to VR, a technology about which we have been reading a lot for several years. Unlike VR, it does not create a new world but expands the existing one. It can make us smarter and make everyday tasks easier. In South Korea, I got to know MAXST, who follow exactly this approach and help AR to finally grow out of its infancy. Their application scenarios, for example about the maintenance of machines or the production of cars, show how powerful and helpful the technology is in everyday work. I am sure that it will have a permanent place in the very near future — not only in production but also far beyond.
As a confessing nerd, I felt very comfortable in South Korea despite some overwhelming impressions — thanks not least to the great people I met there. I can only recommend such a trip to anyone working in the tech industry. Finally, a reading tip: my dear colleague Mahdi from the Porsche Digital Lab also visited Japan just a few weeks ago. For him, these impressions were as eye-opening as they were for me. You can find his contribution here.
If you have already been to Asia, I’m looking forward to hearing about your experiences and travel reports — below this article, on our medium blog, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter.
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