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Here's Taejin Davies's personal room



Taejin suggests the followings for 10 rules for team 5, but it's just draft as you see. Let me have your idea and opinion.

(Domestic Rules) 1. Team decision should be democracy that is majority rule. 2. Participate in team activities. 3. Respect other member's opinion. 4. Be cooperative to other member when he got assignment. 5.

(Foreign Policies) 6. Be negotiable and fair to other teams when we have problem with it. 7. In team competition, team members should be competent. 8. For team competition, Some information should be confidential. 9. 10.

-- (It's very cautious to write about other cultures in individual view especially in this kind of open space.)

1. Introduction to other cultures in personal communication Approaching cultural issue and topic in personal communication needs accompanying several factors and conditions which may interrupt clear understanding of culture itself, which are personality, communication language proficiency, background and experience and so forth. We should keep in mind that superficial expression is not always showing what the culture has virtually, and need to figure out the base and historical facts from which those kind of cultural surfaces and expression, custom have been derived. Otherwise we can't help but hang on valueless prejudice and biased opinion that might be manipulated for some reasons.

1.1 Interaction with team members in other cultures Actually there's not enough communication with other members in Second Life and Wikispace to write about other cultures that I collect personal experiences and knowledge as I had in those countries and from books and media.

1.2 Some constraints need to be considered in identifying cultural features in individual view Being about to think over other cultures individuals face undesirable traps he/she has made for several years, which have been formed from personal emotion that may be influenced by the mass he/she belongs, and political issues in the countries which culture he/she want to write about, and foreign policy between two countries, and statue and reputation in international society, and many other factors that individuals can not exclude from his/her cognitive mechanism.

1.3 Different view points between home and foreign cultures Natives have tendency to give credits to home cultures but are easily defensive to foreign cultures, which can be found on news often relating with ethnic and religious issues. There seem a phenomenon that dominant countries over international competition would provide undesirable prejudice that current civilization is a representative of its culture, which contributes to the country in short term if it's purposely or not. This sort of concept might be causing some problems and issues in cross-cultural communication also.

1.4 Appropriate standpoint to culture Culture should not be in court. Toward culture right and wrong, correct or incorrect, and any other evaluating points should be extracted from the view. All the cultures are equal because human being is same and not discriminated. Human being is culture. Probably we can have a certain statement that there are some strengths and weakness in it.

2. Some pieces of cultural reflection in Second Life and personal experiences 2.1 Americans 1) Americans are very practical in time management. ex) when they find nothing to achieve they don't spend time in social relation. 2) Americans try to keep relationship in safe while they think it's worth. ex) they tend to show kindness to everyone including foreigners.

2.2 Japanese 1) Japanese individuals are very kind to everyone. ex) they seem positive to personal relationship. 2) Japanese are easy to open their privacy for friendship. ex) when I approach to their personal life they are not hesitant to respond them. 3) Japanese behaviors have lots of patterns based on oriental culture. ex) In communication they don't care time spent but concern relationship.

2.3 Canadians (French) 1) The French has a strong cultural identity. ex) they don't want to expose their weakness. 2) The French seems thoughtful and their behaviors are careful. ex) they are polite and keep a distance to foreigners.

Some writings about other culture are just my personal findings, which are not considered as representatives of each cultures. I hope anyone not to get emotional offense from them. Actually I verify that I don't have any intention to evaluate any culture in my view.

Thanks for reading, Taejin Davies Nov. 16th 2007


 * Current Status of the Project “Cross-Cultural Communication in Second Life”**

1. Organizational methods Team 5 doesn’t have any form of organization except horizontal relationship among team members as it was formed. There are two reasons for it. In terms of team membership vitality the level is low. Only 30~40% of team membership is active which doesn’t show team’s energy and motivation are enough, but indicates just sustainable condition. And to have a few meetings with a few team members might be a great opportunity and very lucky at current point. In this situation the concept to select a team leader for driving force I had in mind at initial stage might be useless. The second view point is more fundamental issue. As Omar a colleague of the class said one day, team members are concerned only with their objectives and interest, which seems very natural phenomenon. The problematic issue is almost all the team members have different objectives and interest. If someone asks team members for strong unity it may seem burdensome to them. It has some similar looks of United Nations. Any member should not be a leader of team at this condition or, even though there’s a certain type of turn system for leadership of team we need to wait for some years until it is stabilized.

2. Problems in team activity As described above different assignment to each member has caused some degradation in teamwork performance since the start point of project. The time zone differences and some members’ access limits to Second Life are still weakness in performing project. For example, whenever I try to have time with them for team work I seem to be a position to get their favors, because everyone of my team is very busy except me.

3. Team’s successes Team 5 has some successes in making flag and introduction by a few meetings in SL and utilizing Wikispace. However, the team couldn’t finalize them because the majority of team Japanese group has participated in team works scarcely. In spite of several requests they involvement is very rare so far. The cause of this problem might be poor circumstances of Japanese group to access Second Life and Wikispace. During 7 weeks in project it has been very fortunate to me that I have met some of Japanese members once or twice, and French members many times, American member twice in Second Life, because some members of PUFS graduate classmates couldn’t meet their members until now.

4. Expected problems In my calculation the project is for about one month left. The problems the project has are being solved step by step, however the rate of progress is very low. In my opinion no one would be confident that the goal of project will be achieved in about one month without a springboard. Merging teams seems an immediate corrective action for current problems. But the reason that I am not much positive for it is everyone needs some time to associate with new team members. To identify and meet them in SL requires some time as much as time spent to acquaint with existing members. It is definite that communication for team work is a certain social activity.

5. Constraints As above I discussed many issues the project faces, which seem individual items. However they could be expected before initiating project. To say in terms of project management those problems identified are constraints. Technically project manager omitted verifying constraints and setting up response plans against them. And two other points missed in the project are that scope and stakeholders of the project are verified and, the other is each stakeholder should have its appropriate responsibilities and roles, and ownership from initial stage. Changes in scope and stakeholders of the project may lead participants into confused situation to loose their focuses and interests.

Thank you, Taejin Davies

Introduction of Korean Culture

1. Korean philosophy represented in its flag This paragraph is about Korean culture which is introduced by its flag named "Taegeukgi". Because the national flag is representing its culture as a symbolic meaning. The South Koreans may well have the most philosophical flag in the world. The white background represents both Confucian 'purity' and the Buddhist concept of 'emptiness'. In the centre lies a taegeuk, the Taoist symbol of balance or harmony between opposites, which was adapted from the Chinese. The Korean version is more colourful and divided horizontally, with the top red half representing 'Yang' which means heaven, day, male, heat, active etc, and blue lower half represents 'Eum' which means earth, night, female, cold, passive etc. These two cosmic forces are cycled perpetually, in perfectly balanced harmony as two sides of the same icon. The three lines at each corner, known as trigrams, were from the ancient book of Chinese thought, the Classic of Changes. The three unbroken bars symbolize heaven (creative), while the opposite three broken bars symbolize earth (receptive). The trigram in the upper right corner is water (treacherous danger), and in the opposite corner lies fire (loyal love). (referred to the book of Korea published by Lonely Planet) As you see above Korean philosophy might be summarized as featured as eternity, peace and universal harmony, which has been proved in Korean historical facts that Korea hasn't take any preemptive strike to the neighbors and sustain its existence for several thousand years between continental and maritime powers.

2. Characteristics of Korean culture As described above Korean culture is like 'melting pot' of great ideas, philosophies, religions and cultures from other countries for a long history, which was caused by its geographical location. However Korean thoughts and identity for themselves are very firm and unique. They believe that those cultural items are their own, not borrowed, which indicates that Korea developed its culture nurtured by other cultural bases. Almost all Koreans have very strong homogeneity in culture, not ethnical distinction, because Koreans look much different each other as genetic report shows its diversity. In my opinion Korean culture have strengths in learning and evolving continuously. "Why is that so ?" We might find the answer in Korean attitude toward history. Great goodness of Korea is that Korea is not manipulating and distorting its history for short sighted benefits. Ultimately to preserve the history as it was is really substantial resources to the next generation and to provide its people genuine power in developing their culture. In conclusion, although Korean culture sometimes looks exclusive to foreigners, it is found to really accomodate other cultures. However in order to be born again as a competitive global culture contemporary Korean should remove any kinds of prejudice on other cultures and ethnicity caused by biased ideas for Korean culture.

Thank for reading, Taejin Moon (Davies)

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