Markets and Hobbies

In Korea there is a very strong culture of early adoption and hobbyists for a number of market types. One in particular is that of photography and in certain areas of Seoul you can't go a few minutes without seeing a top end fully professional DSLR. In this market however there is also a lot of diversity and products like Lomo are quite well established. Similarly film photography is still strong.

It looks like I may do some work looking at this trend a bit later.

In Sinsa the other day, a father with a big camera and a daughter.

Living in Context

Recently while shopping at the local KAIST convenience store I noticed the clerk was getting exercise by power walking around the small store.

The KAIST Convenient Store with woman running too fast to be photographed

I think the prospect of making our living spaces and working spaces share strange unexpected values is pretty interesting. I should also add that recently in my Ubiquitous Hacking summer class we did a little thinking about combined multimode spaces for living and working. My prototype was based on the prospect of incorporating emptiness to reduce functional specificity. A little like the discussion of bathrooms I noted last time I was travelling in Korea, this concept is also highly motivated by the seeming emptiness and functional agnosticism of many traditional Korean destinations.

A simple room for work and living biased on the lack of objects to create flexibility