In the 21st century, there can be no doubt that cellular phones and personal computers became a necessary rather than a lavishness for most of the university students.

Those are the kinds of digital equipments that are always around us which in turn make us feel more fondness of it. Due to the fondness of the new trend, the demand on making their own machines are gaining more and more public favor. The process of making the worlds unique machine is called ‘tuning’. Tuning can be categorized into three types.

One of them is called ‘visual tuning’, since it mainly concentrates on the color or outlook of the machine. The second type of tuning is called ‘performance tuning’. Its main task is changing its inner parts with better ones and in the end upgrading the performance of the machine. The last type is ‘heavy’ tuning. It includes changing the main parts of the machine as well as adding a new function to it.

They are ‘tuners’ who do these various kinds of tunings. Nowadays the tuning skills are so varied that the level of tuners is of various kinds from amateurs, do tunings as hobby, to professional tuners, who do the tuning for living. Tuning cars probably the first field that the word tuning implied. It is common to see in these days the visual tunings of cars, for example, painting their cars with unique color or putting various marks on the car.

However, what you see is not what is all about this exciting skills. As it has the longest history in tuning industry, there are much more than you can do with cars. Changing the equipment like sub-lights, brighter than the headlight, muffler, or even the engine stronger than the orignal one which would make your car sounds like the ones in racing.

Yet, the materials of a car are too expensive to buy for the most of the university students, that’s why it gained little popularity on campus. Still it is everyone’s dream to have a well-tuned car. The only thing what makes different between now and 10 years ago may be the number of cellular phones that has been dramatically increased.

Truly, cellular phones became so common that even our children in elementary school are easily found carrying them around. As the cellular phones come to be more casual than cars, the demand for tuning their cellular phone is also arose up fast. Just like the other fields in tuning industry, it started as changing its outlook in a simple way; for instance, stickers. These days the tuners can put cubics into the cellular phones, enlarge its bell sound about 3times, put transportation card in it, and etc.

There are so many different skills and ways to make people’s own cellular phone that there’s no way to tell you all in words. The cellular phone tuning has been spread mostly through the Internet. Now, there are many cafes with members more than 70,000 and tons of websites relating to the subject. However, it seems that its popularity has started to come out to the off-line world, too.

More and more of, so called, tuning-shops open, started from Shincheon, Daehakro, and so on. One of the greatest merits in cellular phone tuning is that people carry it around all the time, which can attract others attention more than anything else. And because people carry it all the time, it can be more convenient if it added new functions such as a transportation card.

The last but not least good side of tunings is that it could be done in a fairly inexpensive way. Even though some of tunings can cost us really a lot of money, most of them can be done in no more than 100,000 won. It is of a noticeable point that this creation has been done by cellular phone users rather than its manufacturing companies.

Long before cellular phones have strengthened their popularity, for most university students, personal computers already have taken place of No.1 on their treasure entry. Since many of the students can’t live a day without computer, it would be this closeness that leads their computer to be ‘the one’. Because personal computers are something that can’t be carried around, it’s not as popular as tuning cars or cellular phones, but a variety of trials and demands have been met around Yongsan, the mecca of computer industry in Korea. Although failure can cost us some big money, many things have been done to PCs, some looks better, some processes better, and some takes both chances at the same time. For now, most of tuning works on PCs have mainly concentrated on visuals such as a PC with see-through covers with shining insides.

However, the PC tuning tends to improve more tech-integrated things that there are some people who run the latest Windows OS(Operating System) in 97 Pentium level PC. Another new culture seems to be started in our society.

Some may feel it’s just waste of time and money uselessly but it seems that the heat wouldn’t be easily cooled down for a quite time. Apart from all the negatives, tuning can be the way finding the only one when people and things become too similar ever since industrial revolution began.

Likewise, since doing the tuning requires deep understanding of the machine, the tuners and the users of digital equipments can keep an eye on the manufacturing enterprises’ tech-monopoly instead of blind following.
저작권자 © The UOS Times(서울시립대영자신문) 무단전재 및 재배포 금지