University of California at Irvine doctoral candidate, Stephen C. Rea, supervised by Dr. Keith M. Murphy, will investigate the relationship between somatic skill and everyday computer use in two seemingly distinct realms: the information technology (IT) sector and computer gaming culture. The research will be conducted in South Korea among IT workers and computer gamers, two groups who utilize similar physical, technical, and social skills in the operation of computers, but who have radically different social statuses. Whereas IT workers are praised for the contributions that they make to the growth of the South Korean economy, computer gamers are often regarded as lazy and unproductive, garnering the label of "pye-in," a slang term meaning "garbage people." South Korea is an ideal location for this research because of the intensity with which computer technology dominates both work and leisure activities.
The study will address these issues through the use of traditional and innovative social scientific research methods, including: participant observation with South Korean IT workers and computer gamers in their everyday lives; ethnographic interviews; archival research in South Korean media technology archives; and analytical videography of IT workers and gamers using computers. These methods will help answer questions about how the cultivation or eradication of specific physical, technical, and social skill sets, as well as the discourses about such practices, impacts cultural concepts of productivity and of the appropriate relationship between individuals and computers.
This study is important because it will further scientific understanding of the technological socialization of workers in post-industrial economies; the roles of computer technology in everyday life; and the effects of discourses and practices around cultural concepts of productivity on human physical development. Supporting the research also supports the education of a graduate student.
The goal of this project was to investigate the people, practices, and places that constitute South Korean online computer gaming culture and how they are related to sociocultural concepts of productivity and labor in the country's information technology (IT)-based economy. This research makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how skill sets are developed in conjunction with IT, how online interactions affect offline social relations and vice versa, and how computing practices influence the pace of everyday life in so-called "information societies." The co-PI spent twelve months in Seoul, South Korea between April 2012 and March 2013 conducting ethnographic fieldwork, which entailed: 1) participant observation at PC bang (public Internet and online computer gaming cafés), in a popular Korean online game, and at professional electronic sports (e-sports) events; 2) ethnographic interviews with medical professionals, Internet/online game addiction counselors, online gamers, and e-sports fans and officials; 3) video recordings of amateur online gamers playing computer games; and 4) collection of archival materials. The co-PI found that South Korean online computer gaming culture is caught between two sets of conflicting institutional objectives: one that celebrates gaming for the integral role that it played in the development of Korea's information infrastructure, and for the contributions it continues to make in promoting Korea's image as a global leader in IT; and one that represents gaming as part and parcel of problematic patterns of behavior that are in need of political and medical intervention. A predominant narrative in contemporary Korea about Internet and online game "addiction" has made many doctors, politicians, and child advocacy groups worried about the negative impact that gaming may be having on the nation's health and welfare, especially for children. These concerns have been the focus of ever-expanding strategies to diagnose and treat a potential "addiction epidemic," including government subsidies for behavioral treatment facilities and new legislation aimed at restricting access to online games and reducing the amount of time that Koreans spend online. These strategies are methods of "de- and re-skilling," i.e. efforts to modify and control practices and behaviors associated with the using the Internet, especially online games. While these issues are embedded firmly in the historical context of Korean informatization, they are relevant for other advanced technological societies in which leisure and labor activities are becoming more difficult to distinguish. Moreover, they point to how the proliferation of IT and the practices that it engenders reorganize contemporary social relations in those societies. The characterization of certain socialities that develop in concert with IT as advantageous and others as pathological is a function of the transformative potential that technological innovation--including online games--has for when, where, and how people interact with one another. The co-PI also discovered that online gaming and IT in Korea are often framed in terms of speed, specifically in relation to the perceived acceleration of daily life following Korea's informatization process in the 1990s. In policy documents and everyday conversations alike, IT is understood to be the engine of a fast-paced "knowledge economy," one that is heavily reliant on the use of computers and the Internet. Online games--which depend upon high-speed Internet connections in order to function--have not only played a fundamental role in Korea's recent economic success, but also have helped to socialize an entire generation of Koreans who are accustomed to the rapid implementation of tasks and a reliable infrastructure that supports their execution. As a result, "quickness" has become a social and cultural virtue that affects everything from work, to interpersonal relations, to the perception and management of time itself. The corollary to this is that "slowness" is felt more acutely whenever infrastructure breaks down or individuals fail to conform their behavior to the appropriate pace of activity, thereby "falling out of sync" with the mainstream of society. The effective management of tasks and social interactions in the context of acceleration are skills in and of themselves that are vital to life in an advanced information society like Korea's. These skills make possible new subject positions vis-à-vis information technology, and entail new forms of governance that define and discipline the self in different ways.
