Paper short abstract:

MaaS is reshaping the transportation industry. It is a time of opportunity for ICT giants to redesign the system, but in the traditional taxi sector in Seoul, most stakeholders are suffering from unequal distribution of time value under the double torture of technological ignorance and exclusion.

Paper long abstract:

With the emergence of a set of new information and communications technologies promoted as Mobility as a Service(MaaS), the transportation industry all around the world is going through a period of great change. Various forms of public and private transport services, such as bus, taxi, bike, car rental and sharing, are becoming integrated into a single mobility service. Furthermore, a new level of technological design absorbs the digital features of provider, user, information, planning, booking and payment into a single interface with a mobile application at its heart.

It is a time of golden opportunity for leading national or global ICT giants to redesign the whole system. A few companies are virtually setting up innovation to expand the existing market, but in the real traditional taxi sector in Seoul, most stakeholders are suffering from unequal distribution of time value under the double torture of technological ignorance and exclusion. Although one of the oldest interest groups in the sector, Seoul Taxi Association, has organized a task force team to overcome the crisis and is trying to devise an alternative plan. It is somewhat late for the members of a group to not only be technologically smart for riding through a redesigned smart city but also be skillfully smart for picking up a new generation of passengers on newly designed smart interfaces.

To clarify what this timing issue of social inequality really is, I finally invent a new question as an urban anthropologist who majored in mechanical engineering. When is Seoul Taxi?