Ladies and gentlemen,
I am happy to be here and specially happy to be asked to give a speech on teaching. But do not worry I will not try to teach you. Nobody likes to be taught we only want to learn.
And I do not want to fool you. Nobody has taught me to teach either. I have only practical experience from ten thousand lectures given and almost the same number received including lectures from my mom and dad. I have savoured these and ideas from books, from other people and I will share those. I will also tell you about the community network being built in Helsinki.
As this is a business meeting I will try to concentrate on issues that can be utilized. You do realize that in todays society it pays best to be different. When information flows fast you cannot make much money from common knowledge. You need to specialize. But to be different requires certain stubborness.
I read from the conference brochure the opening words from Mayor Gordon who said that Sudbury has a two year head start with fibre optics. You could also boast with over twenty years of head start from what I heard about the very visionary and stubborn engineer who insisted that the cabling must be put in tubes since 1974. This is tremendous advantage to Sudbury because computers become cheaper but the speed of digging does not follow Moores law and digging is what most other communities must do to switch to fibre optics.
Computers and communication change our environment. They will change how we teach and how we learn but they also change what we need to learn and who actually learns. Networked computers resemble more and more neurological networks. Organizations have to be taught as living organisms where part of teaching happens through programming and creating mailing lists and other automated routines. Just compare this to the way the braincells interlink and reinforce the links.
People in organizations behave much the same way strengthening communications routes with others they need to be in contact with. This is the way an organization learns and if you take the individual away, much of the communications should remain and ease the way of the newcomer in the same job. When you have structured the organization and it has learned the efficient ways of interlinking - the sum knowledge is greater than the combined knowledge of the individuals. Just like the case with our braincells and our brains. You can do the opposite also. Some organizations are more stupid than their single average employee.
We measure IQ:s to get a feeling for peoples brain capacity. The more connections and the faster pathways the higher IQ. Organizational intelligence can be increased by enabling better and more dynamic communications channels and information systems inside organizations and in our networked society also between interlinked organizations and their customers at home.
Ladies and gentlemen. We are entering a new world. Video telephony was earlier just a dream in science fiction books and then a laboratory toy. Now it is quickly growing from special equipment into a standard feature in every new home computer. Home computers have become fast enough so they can receive and create moving pictures without extra hardware. The International Telecommunications Union finally reached a standard which covers internet video telephony, corporate LAN ans ISDN video conferencing so that hobby level video telephones and professional ones can interconnect. The first company to start distributing free software for this standard was naturally Microsoft.
Let me now show you the todays best quality with regular ISDN-telephony lines, free software and a normal home computer.
VIDEO TELEPHONY DEMO
There is very much information in our facial expressions and very much time consumed with travelling to see those expressions. They are necessory to create trust when negotiating, when getting information and when just getting a feeling of the other person.
Let us now think for a while how we learn. My own basic method is that I experiment, gather data and then try to create a theory. Then I communicate that theory to others and try to fit it everywhere. Other people argue with me and then I slowly have to accept the limits and faults of my theory.
There are many others who learn by doing, by listening, by reading. Most people however learn best when they have questions and their questions are answered. Interaction is key element to learning and it can be real or it can be simulated - built into the things we study.
But what we learn is mostly not data, the important things are values, feelings and insights. We have entered an age of complexity. More and more of us live in abstract worlds with very small connection to other peoples realities. This leads to a difficulty when trying to communicate. We have to work more and more to get our messages into such form that communicates well. A good story is one such form and good examples equals it.
One of the first computer programs that I wrote in 1979 used a speech synthesisor. It was somewhat before the movie War Games if you remember. I was working as a research assistant for Helsinki Telephone. I created a computer system which called random numbers in Helsinki. When someone answered my machine started the conversation by saying - Do you want to play a game with me. Press one if you want to play. Ashtonishinly many people wanted to play but I stopped after couple of days because I was afraid of getting fired for telephony terrorism if I had ben caught by someone with no sense for humor. Next year my experiment would be illegal in Finland - things do not always move fast.
We have now built a new home - we should move in next week. The house has three hundred micro processors directing ventilation, heating, lights, locking and other systems. When designing the house I finally understood how home computers can be used in connection with refridgirators. I have been thinking about it for twenty years.
I will have a web camera in my fridge. It takes pictures from all shelves when the door is about to be closed and places the picture to my home page in the web. When I go to the milk shop and start wondering how much milk the kids have used and what I need - I can open my Nokia portable web phone and call my fridge to see for myself.
This raises questions… do I need privacy or is it actually good that my visitors see into my fridge. They could bring with them what they need. Perhaps even the shopkeeper could look inside and bring me automatically what is missing. This story has spread around in Finland - it teaches the society that perhaps all these cameras are not big brothers watching eyes they might be ours to see over long distaces.
Oh - if the shopkeeper rings my doorbell and nobody is home the door microphone connects automatically a telephone call to my mobile. I can then open the door for him and I get a warning message if he goes to other rooms besides the kitchen. But perhaps the fridge should have two doors, one outside. I have learned much when trying to explain this example. Teaching and learning mingle, everybody contributes and adds to the information.
Let us now go deeper into what we are building in Helsinki. We have a very similar fiber optic backbone there as exists here in Sudbury. We are creating high speed connections to it for everybody households included. Home connections we have started with ISDN-telephony lines but now we cover 15% of our operating area with faster options.
I will now show you the quality of picture over regular telephone line when the telephone exhanges have been modified to support todays fastest digital technology. For those of you who want to hear bits - I am using one point one megabit mpeg and a free software and standard IBM thinkpad with no add ons. To my home I have a 2 megabit line.
START NATURE VIDEO
Usual interpretation of this technology is Video On Demand. Movies and the news whenever. This is not very important. This technology can work both ways and it can chance the whole structure of advertizing and content from centralized back to distributed.
You can imagine that every home, every club, small company, every karaoke bar, every teacher and musician or any church could have their own TV-stations and channels. There are lots of people who claim that it is expensive to create good content. I think that if I put a camera in front of my aquarium and broadcast it to the network there would be at least ten people who think that it is better than anything coming from television and the operator could pay me for getting them ten customers.
I tried to do a 15 minutes documentary movie on my home automation and it took me one and half hours to do it. Seminar audience liked it better than my actual presentation. The difficult thing in creating content is to try and interest millions of people in something that they actually do not need so that the advertizers would be satisfied.
There are two ways how to build networks to the homes. Everyone needs to feel worthy and able to contribute. It is as important to tell a story to ones grandchild in good visual quality in the net over distancies as to act in some soap opera. We also have much richer and dynamic society if everyone can contribute their own findings to others interested in same specifics.
But you must understand that mass media and large part of those that benefit from current system tries to fight against the change and tries to drive the asymetrical communications models forward. In the most popular new technologies one can only send very lousy picture to others but receive much better quality from centrally distributed corporate media sources.
It is up to the operators to create media democracy. Technologically and economically it is now completely possible but there are very many people who would rather that we watch the bold and the beautiful and not so much spend time talking to each other or listen to some local singer when better quality is available in record stores. But quality of life value of information does not equal quality of content but rather its meaningfulness.
Let us now jump to another issue. In Helsinki we are building a local broadband island. We have noticed that we can build a quality high speed system from user to user with cheap rates locally but we cannot guarantee hundred times modem speeds to other networks and worldwide internet. But we found out that about 80% of peoples communications needs are local.
Our network can be considered as an intranet for our more than 500.000 telephone subscribers. We wanted to get them to understand that they belong to our network and we wanted them to find their way around both in the physical city and also the virtual contents in our network. We also wanted to create an user interface that does not need teaching and that really helps in everyday life. I will next show what we ended up with.
SHOW VIRTUAL HELSINKI
What you now see is Helsinki modelled in three dimensions. You can open your computer and start floating around the streets. If I call my mother and she would not answer I need not wander what has happened. I open my city, go to the neighrours door and push the doorbell. I only know the neighbours nickname but the model will connect my telephone call from the virtual doorbell.
If my younger kid would like to visit her aunt for the first time alone. I would ask her to open the city and go to the busstop and select the right bus and then leave at the correct busstop. When she has managed to do it couple of times in virtual Helsinki I could let her go in real life. There are thousands of different applications with this kind of living maps.
If you want to listen to the sermon you select the church you want to enter, or the ice hockey match. No need to check the chanel guide
How many of you remember more than one hundred telephone numbers? … But all of you remember one hundred thousand or one million places. It used to be so that if you did not remember where food could be found or where it was hidden, if you could not find the way back home or to shelter you were soon dead. We are built the way that we learn places easily. Why not build the user interface so that it helps us to use existing knowledge, existing capabilities and helps to keep us connected to the real world and informed about the real world and not just the imaginary virtual reality which was so well described in the movie Wag the dog.
The city was quite empty. This is not our intention but it is still under construction. Virtual environments can help us learn to interact with others. Let us now view a virtual youth club.
SHOW VIRTUAL YOUTH CLUB
Psycology has made big advaces when studying how we see or recognize things. All these people are at their homes and instead of watching the TV they are communicating with each other. They have sensors connected to their joints and what you see are their actual movements.
They can also talk to each other or view sceneries from other youth clubs in the electronic windows in the walls. This is better than conference telephone and better that tv-channel selector. It supports the way our brain works. It is not better than going there yourself but we must compare these things to the way people actually do behave and not to some nonexistent ideal.
Let us now go back to computers and learning. I just recently saw Sibelius Academy master class students being taught with video conferencing system by an american maestro. We arranged the demonstration to the finnish minister of education as part of a joint program for remote teaching with the music academy. It was very interesting to follow the teaching and the students learned much that their own teachers had not been able to teach. Travelling would not have been an option due to the distances.
My older daughter learned to play the piano with no teacher. She had tried to study the karelian instrument Kantele with a teacher but teachers always have too little time and she was not motivated to practice alone. I got her a teaching program and a keyboard to the computer and she got very well motivated into that. The computer showed which keys to press, showed al mistakes and did not let you forward before perfection. It was endlessly patient and my daughter could not argue with it. It was also rewarding and the program was funny in many places.
After finishing the teaching program she managed among others the easy version of FurElise and played it exactly as a machine. I have very seldom heard so completely lifeless music. After this I disconnected her from the computer and got her better instrument and the much more difficult original notes. She learned them alone practicing very hard and slowly the feelings entered the music as the background metronome was left off.
My kids have also played many computer games. Especially my younger daughter. She has learned to understand english from playing the games. One game was especially good from my viewpoint. It is called Jones. When you play it you have to devide your time between eating, studying, working, applying for jobs and so on. The game teaches very efficiently that you cannot start from the top. You have to keep yourself in condition, you have to study to achieve something and sometimes you also have to have fun. Computers are very good teachers in many specific issues.
Let us now think for a while what will happen in the future. I have recently written a book consisting of over one hundred news from the years 2000 to 2020.
When mobile phones have larger memories they can store everything they hear. When speech recognition is used we can search as easily from spoken information as we now can search from written information in the web. I can ask my phone what was spoken about milk in the morning or I can ask if I really promised something last year to the guy that just called to remind me. The governments right to listen to telephone calls comes to a very different light when every phone is always on and listens to everything. I asked my daughters if we could install similar microphones to the walls that Bill Gates has in his house. The older explained to me that they just got rid of microphones in the walls in Russia. They would not trust a home where walls have ears. Then I got the idea that you can always call your home if you want to talk with it. I work for the telephone company. Loyality.
But onwards - Think about the home computer when it has a camera. Then the camera can see you. American pilots have a system where they look at the other plane coming nearer and when they sneeze the missile is sent on its way. I heard that Mocrosoft is designing similar system for their wordprocessing. You just look at the word and it disappears or changes if you dont look satisfied.
You know from movies that computers can create very good human images. Consider that commercial mailings in the future contain programming. The advertisement you are reading studies your facial expressions and your eye movements. It changes the music (oh do you know that big foodstores nowadays change music to the lighter if they have too much fish left) But this advertisement suddenly changes into a face so intriguing that you must smile to it and it faces you directly, looks you at your eyes and smiles back. It says: You do like this dont you, but you liked yellow colour more - lets change it to yellow - now it is much better. Then you might enjoy this little game for the kids as a side present -- yes you are interested I can see. Now if I reduce the price by ten percent - for you only - would you now accept the offer, please nod now, please nod now - yes. I taped your order and the equipment is coming via courier service. I took money from your electronic wallet already. Very pleasant to meet You. Goodbye.
We must be aware that computers with eyes can do much better manipulation following all behavioristic theories by skinner than todays soap operas or advertisements can do.
Virtual reality can be very addictive also. I told my first stories about virtual reality and addiction in late 1979. The last story in our book is not very far from today when one third of american population or actually one third of everyones wake up life is spent looking at the television and when brain studies show that mostly nothing happens in our brain when watching the tv. Not learning, not relaxing. It is very often just a socially acceptable way of turning yourself off for the time that you are not necessary. There are exeptions of course but basic target of a tv-program is to make you addicted to it and passive enough that you stay sitting through the commercials. But now to the news from 2020.
The number of living dead has exeeded the number of physically dead for the first time. According to the europe union officials the number permanently connected to virtual reality exeeded 9 million last year. The story follows with interviews from institutions specialized in terminal care.
I do not enjoy these visions. I encourage you all to support the creation of media democracy and networks where people can contribute and take part actively. We still have a choice and we can affect the outcome by influencing the media, the regulatory network and the operators and equipment manufacturers so that they would appreciate empowerment of the citizens. Life is not just for viewing, it is also for sharing and caring.
Thank You.