Technology in South Korea is an amazing and awesome thing. The internet is blisteringly fast and I could download a movie (though of course, as the upstanding citizen that I am, I would never do that) in about five minutes flat, depending, of course, on how recent the movie is and how many people have it. Plus it is uncapped, which means endless hours of skyping, facebooking, etc. without ever worrying about running out of my cap. I am sure that my future employers will curse the Koreans when I try to do this back home and end up capping myself within a day or two. Well, perhaps my employers won't mind too much, since it would be me paying for the extra gigs that I would need to get my work done.
Then there are the cellphones with their awesome capabilities - the standard MP3 players and cameras of course, very cheap messaging, calling and even video calling, cheap wireless internet and, in some cases, being able to watch TV from your phone. Mine is just a dead standard crappy cellphone of course - pretty, but without the extra features. My students on the other hand, have the top of the range cellphones. And this is where I start to hate the awesomeness that is convenient technology. It can be used anywhere, anytime. Including during my classes.
I just came out of a class where a girl had been sitting at the back for a good ten minutes watching TV on her cellphone. I couldn't see what it was that she was watching, but I could see the moving screen that she tried to hide when she realised, a little too late, that I was approaching her desk. I held out my hand for the device, but she didn't hand it over.
"No," she said defiantly.
"I saw it."
"You didn't see anything."
"Give it to me."
"No."
This kind of attitude does nothing but infuriate me. I caught you red-handed using your cellphone in class, which you know you aren't allowed to do. If you hand it over to me, you don't get into any trouble, because I am not allowed to give you detention or discipline you in any way. If you cause a scene, my co-teacher will notice and you will be in a lot more trouble than you are with me. So why fight it? You know you are in the wrong. Give it over. No. Eventually Cindy noticed and confiscated the offending device. I received glares from the girl for the rest of the class, which I merely shrugged off as bitterness for being caught. If you are going to do something that is against the rules, at least have the decency to hide it properly.
TV-watching via cellphones isn't my pet-peeve with technology in Korea though. No, no. That would be TV-watching via GPS, the favourite pastime of most of my taxi-drivers. 8 out of 10 taxis that you climb into will have a GPS fastened to the dashboard, a useful device when used properly. But 8 of 10 of those GPS devices will be tuned into some TV or other - be it sport, comedy or drama. It would seem that, though it is illegal to talk on a cellphone while driving here, it is not illegal to watch TV while driving, an activity that I would have thought to be far more dangerous, especially since most of the taxi-drivers I have had are terrible drivers - cutting into lanes without any warning and without looking where they are going, running through red lights, making the way to the front of long queues and cutting in right into the front of the queue. Then again, all of this is done without any protest from other drivers, so perhaps it is expected. And watching TV probably is illegal, but they do it anyway. It's not like the cellphone law really stops them from doing that either.
Technology here has its pros and cons, and I tend to ignore the cons when the technology is benefitting me in some way or another. I am sure that if I had a cellphone that picked up TV broadcasts, I would be taking full advantage of it, and I am sure that if I were a taxi driver, I would want something in the car to make the endless driving a little less boring. But I don't and I'm not. So instead I will indulge in the pros of the technologies that do benefit me and complain about the cons of those that don't.
Then there are the cellphones with their awesome capabilities - the standard MP3 players and cameras of course, very cheap messaging, calling and even video calling, cheap wireless internet and, in some cases, being able to watch TV from your phone. Mine is just a dead standard crappy cellphone of course - pretty, but without the extra features. My students on the other hand, have the top of the range cellphones. And this is where I start to hate the awesomeness that is convenient technology. It can be used anywhere, anytime. Including during my classes.
I just came out of a class where a girl had been sitting at the back for a good ten minutes watching TV on her cellphone. I couldn't see what it was that she was watching, but I could see the moving screen that she tried to hide when she realised, a little too late, that I was approaching her desk. I held out my hand for the device, but she didn't hand it over.
"No," she said defiantly.
"I saw it."
"You didn't see anything."
"Give it to me."
"No."
This kind of attitude does nothing but infuriate me. I caught you red-handed using your cellphone in class, which you know you aren't allowed to do. If you hand it over to me, you don't get into any trouble, because I am not allowed to give you detention or discipline you in any way. If you cause a scene, my co-teacher will notice and you will be in a lot more trouble than you are with me. So why fight it? You know you are in the wrong. Give it over. No. Eventually Cindy noticed and confiscated the offending device. I received glares from the girl for the rest of the class, which I merely shrugged off as bitterness for being caught. If you are going to do something that is against the rules, at least have the decency to hide it properly.
TV-watching via cellphones isn't my pet-peeve with technology in Korea though. No, no. That would be TV-watching via GPS, the favourite pastime of most of my taxi-drivers. 8 out of 10 taxis that you climb into will have a GPS fastened to the dashboard, a useful device when used properly. But 8 of 10 of those GPS devices will be tuned into some TV or other - be it sport, comedy or drama. It would seem that, though it is illegal to talk on a cellphone while driving here, it is not illegal to watch TV while driving, an activity that I would have thought to be far more dangerous, especially since most of the taxi-drivers I have had are terrible drivers - cutting into lanes without any warning and without looking where they are going, running through red lights, making the way to the front of long queues and cutting in right into the front of the queue. Then again, all of this is done without any protest from other drivers, so perhaps it is expected. And watching TV probably is illegal, but they do it anyway. It's not like the cellphone law really stops them from doing that either.
Technology here has its pros and cons, and I tend to ignore the cons when the technology is benefitting me in some way or another. I am sure that if I had a cellphone that picked up TV broadcasts, I would be taking full advantage of it, and I am sure that if I were a taxi driver, I would want something in the car to make the endless driving a little less boring. But I don't and I'm not. So instead I will indulge in the pros of the technologies that do benefit me and complain about the cons of those that don't.
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