Instead of writing about what I did for the last to days I'm going to take a break and write about something that I've been seeing ever seance I got here, but have been to lazy to talk about. That is the security culture.
I haven't seen any crime or indicators of crime in the city. Nevertheless I've seen barbed wire on some houses, and CCTV's in nearly every shop, and on a lot of streets prominently displayed. Your always being reminded that your being watched here. I thought Seoul was such a safe place, and yet this culture seems obsessed with watching and keeping safe. I don't know if this is a reaction to the number of people, the fact that even though Seoul is safe its also big, or some other factor that I don't notice. We even saw a store that sold CCTV equipment. Granted it was in a wholesale part of town, but it existed. Thats something I've never seen in Seattle. I Really don't like the entire situation. Anyhow thats one issue that I've noticed with Seoul's culture.
The one one that I've seen is the prevalence of RFID Cards. Here I actually think Seoul has a good implementation and should actually be observed. We use and RFID called T money to get on the Subway. It is a passive card, with a range of ~1cm, if that. This prevents unwanted tracking by other readers outside of government control. Every time you get on the Subway or a bus you scan your T money card. Every time you get off you have to scan as well. This creates a perfect tracking system to get exact info on the flow of people. I would love to get my hands on that data actually. The data on the cards is also private. You buy a card from a convince store with cash, and recharge your card with cash. This is much better than the Orca system what Seattle Metro is thinking about doing. There all travel info is tied to a distinct person instead of a distinct card. Granted I've seen special cards here, I don't quite know what else they do, but they defiantly are tied to an actual person. That system has a potential for abuse, as opposed to tying information to a card.
Anyhow its interesting to see that prevalence or an RFID culture in a foreign country, when Seattle is still trying to do research into its effects. Thats all from over here for a bit. I've got to meet with Jeff in 10 min to talk about my individual project tomorrow. It should go well I'm going to do a project on Subways and design patterns. Hopefully it will turn out well.
1 comment:
I was just in Boston for a few days, and I think they use a similar card. It's called a Charlie Card and you can get it for free from any info booth in a Subway station and can put money on using either cash or credit card and then use it for a cheaper fare on at least the buses and subway, maybe the commuter rail too, not sure. But yeah, I liked it a lot, and it would be nice if Seattle did something like that. If it was linked to a UPass or if you used your credit card it would be linked to you, but otherwise it would just be the card. They didn't have you scan it or whatever when leaving a station, but it would be helpful when trying to figure out how to update the public transport.
K, that's enough of that. Glad you're having fun in Seoul!
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