| Chapter 1: | Digital Media Defined |
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Acer, Levono, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Samsung.11 The region is perhaps the most demanding and innovative market for consumer electronics; private users push the digital economy forward with remarkable speed. The manufacturing center of digital products has, in less than twenty years, shifted from North America, Japan, and Europe to Taiwan, South Korea, and China. Explosive growth in East Asian mobile phone use sparked a global revolution in the mobile Internet, whereas the rest of the world lagged well behind in speed, reliability of service, and availability of content (and, importantly, continues to do so). In scale, intensity, complexity, and reach, no part of the world has been digitally changed as much as East Asia over the past twenty years.
East Asia has embraced the digital revolution and has come to symbolize the economic and social transformative capacity of the new technologies.12 Ninety percent of all netbook computers are made in Taiwan, as are most of the world’s computer chips. Akihabara (Electric Town) in Tokyo is the most dynamic consumer electronics market anywhere on earth. South Korea’s two major digital media investments, Digital Media City and the ubiquitous computing community of Songdo (in development), are among the most impressive digital urban redesign projects around. Hong Kong’s impressive CyberPort foreshadows the future of digital education and commercial incubation. China is also deep in the digital fray, attracting hundreds of foreign companies to major research parks near Beijing and Shanghai, dominating the personal computer industry through companies such as Lenovo, and launching major initiatives in digital animation.
East Asia’s technological presence is impressive. Japan, followed by Korea and Taiwan, developed globally competitive industrial capacity in the production of semiconductors, routers, switches, printed circuit boards, liquid crystal displays, and other equipment associated with the computer revolution. East Asian countries performed well in this phase of the new economy, leading the sector through product and process innovations. By the first years of the twenty-first century, East Asian companies