Articles

“Asia Institute Seminar on ‘Women in Science’ in Seoul”

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Asia-Pacific Business and Technology Report

“Asia Institute Seminar on ‘Women in Science’ in Seoul”

Friday, September 28th, 2012

The Asia Institute hosted a seminar bringing together experts from around the world to discuss the critical topic of the role of women in science and technology at the India Education Center in cooperation with the Center for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology on September 26. The participants were science attaches from the embassies of Canada, Japan, Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, India and Finland.

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“선비정신이 구닥다리? 세계가 탐내는 엘리트 전통이죠” 조선일보

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朝鮮日報

2012년 9월 20일

 

“선비정신이 구닥다리? 세계가 탐내는 엘리트 전통이죠”

정옥자•페스트라이쉬 교수 안동 군자마을서 토크 콘서트

“요즘 싸이의 ‘강남스타일’이 세계를 휩쓸고 있지요. 하지만 그것만으로는 한국의 대표로 삼기에는 부족해요. 썬비(선비) 정신이야말로 한국의 정체성을 대표하는 키워드가 될 수 있다고 생각해요.”(페스트라이쉬 교수)

“제가 대학생 시절일 때만 해도 선비 하면 구닥다리, 시대착오라고 했어요. 수십년이 지나 이런 선비 행사도 열리고 먼 데서 찾아오는 분들이 있는 걸 보면 격세지감을 느낍니다.”(정옥자 교수)

 

안동 군자마을 탁청정에서 열린 토크 콘서트에서 정옥자(오른쪽) 교수가“한때‘시대착오’로 여겼던 선비 정신에 대한 관심이 되살아나는 것이 반갑다”고 하자, 페스트라이쉬 교수는“선비야말로 세계를 향해 한국이 내놓을 만한 문화 브랜드가 될 수 있다”고 화답했다. /남강호 기자 kangho@chosun.com

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Asia Institute Interview with Mr. N R Narayana Murthy

August, 2012

Speaker

N R Narayana Murthy

Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Infosys Technologies Pvt Ltd., India

Mr. Murthy is a legendary Indian business known for building Infosys Technologies from a local company to a global leader in consulting and technology services. This Interview concerns the position of SMEs (small and medium-size enterprise) in Korea and in the world.

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Eureka Article “Cultivating a Strategic Perspective and Looking far into the Future”

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The July edition of Eureka Magazine 유레카논설, a journal aimed at middle and high school students in Korea featured this article of mine presenting suggestions for how students can make the most of their educations.
Entitled
“Cultivating a Strategic Perspective and Looking far into the Future”
“전략적 사고를 기워 멀리 내다보라” the article argues that students should study about the humanities because such studies better equips them for the challenges of the future.

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“The Rise of Consumption and the Demise of Causality” (essay)

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“The Rise of Consumption and the Demise of Causality”

 

Emanuel Pastreich

There are two enormous challenges today that seem unrelated and yet perhaps can be directly connected through a more profound consideration of the impact of technology on society: the rise of consumption culture and the demise of causality in our thinking, specifically with reference to the impact of our actions on the environment.

The first challenge is the challenge of greed and consumption. There is a deep need among people to consume that has assumed a crisis level in advanced industrial nations, reaching a level completely out of line with either the economic situation (which is dire) or human needs. That need to consume is spreading rapidly. It is common to attribute this situation to “greed” without much consideration for what it is that generates greed, how that act has its own social, historical and even physiological aspects.  

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“The Korean Dream” (article in the Hangyoreh, June, 24, 2012)

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The Hangyoreh

 

June 24, 2012

 

The Korean Dream

 

Emanuel Pastreich

 The United States became the major cultural force in the world during the 1950s and 1960s, putting forth through its media and its cultural institutions an image of a better life in a free society. The United States offered a powerful vision of a society wherein the individual could realize his or her dreams without the terrible institutional and cultural limits that hold back so many. That image of a good life in the United States was known as the “American Dream.” The American Dream was accompanied by significant intellectual and ethical content such as democratic process, social responsibility, the rule of law and excellence in scholarship and the arts that inspired the world to strive for something greater.

Not everything in the United States was as perfect as the vision given to the world. There were dark aspects of the United States such the hypocrisy of racial discrimination in a nation that spoke of equality and the ruthless pursuit of national interest in a nation that spoke of universal values. Nevertheless, the American Dream inspired people around the world to strive for something greater, to raise their standards for education, for fairness and for democracy to a new level. They stepped forward to demand changes in their countries, to innovate and to create a new society in every corner of the world.

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Asia Institute Seminar with Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, University of Illinois

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“The future of Voice Recognition”

KOREA IT TIMES

 

Asia Institute Seminar with Mark Hasegawa-Johnson
 
Tuesday, May 29th, 2012
 

Professor Mark Hasegawa-Johnson received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1996 and serves as associate professor in the University of Illinois department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a full-time faculty member in the Artificial Intelligence group at the Beckman Institute. His field of interest is speech production and recognition by humans and computers, including landmark-based speech recognition, integration of prosody in speech recognition and understanding, audiovisual speech recognition, computational auditory scene analysis, and biomedical imaging of the muscular and neurological correlates of speech production and perception. Professor Johnson is visiting Korea to meet with experts in academics and industry to discuss his research.

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Seoul goes Global (this time for real!)

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Seoul is stepping into a much accelerated rate of internationalization over the last six months, so much that I would argue that Seoul should no longer be considered as representative of Korea, but put in a new class of global cities that are competing for global domination in economics, culture, education and prestige. That is to say, Seoul is going head to head with Dubai, Singapore, New York, London and Shanghai in a race for the top seat. You can refer to my previous short post on the next Byzantium  for a few thoughts on this phenomenon.

For example Seoul is going through a wave of enormous building projects such as the Dongdaemun History and Culture Park that may well fundamentally alter the landscape of the city.

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