Connecting with Stanford in Seoul

Early last week I had the opportunity to attend #Stanfordconnects in Seoul.  There were about 250 alumni in attendance from a range of Stanford departments.   It was a very informative evening, including a talk by outgoing (as of September 1) Stanford President John Hennessy.  His presentation was the highlight of the evening for me, but most especially because of his remarks about the new Knight-Hennessy Scholars program.   That program's global scope and its focus on service, collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship promise to contribute greatly not only to Stanford but to solutions for some of the world's most pressing problems.  I am inspired by the commitment it represents and its close relationship to the vision and mission of SUNY Korea and the Incheon Global Campus here in Songdo.

Implications for Korea of Microsoft dropping support for IE browser

I was interviewed this past Thursday morning, March 10, on the topic of the implications for Korea of Microsoft's ending of support for older versions of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.  The topic of Korea's "Microsoft monoculture," heavy dependence on Microsoft and the perils of Active-X have been treated in a number of earlier posts, as a search of this blog will show.
If you're interested, the podcast of the ten minute interview can be heard at this link.  Enjoy and let me know if you have thoughts.

AlphaGo wins first two Go matches against Lee Se-dol

Just a few minutes ago, the news broke that Google's computer-based player of Paduk, as it is known in Korea, or the Asian-style chess game known as  Go around the world, won the second match of their series. This matchup between machine or "artificial" intelligence (AI) and a human player is drawing a lot of attention around the world because of its implications for the future role of AI in a highly digitally networked environment.  Arirang Television carried a report on AlphaGo's victory in the first match.  I encourage you to view it.  More to come on this topic.

Mobile communication, OSs, and Platform Thinking

This chart published recently by Statista with the very apt headline "Android and iOS are the last two standing" caught my eye.  It vividly illustrates how quickly the global market for operating systems can evolve and how important an industry platform or ecosystem is.  The "Others" represented by the grey shading included operating systems from Blackberry, Nokia and Windows phone.  The publication of this chart coincided with the announcement by WeChat that it would no longer support these OSs.   Clearly, platforms and ecosystems have assumed a major role in global communications. More on this topic in subsequent posts.