Information society scenarios 2005-2020
Risto Linturi
Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I am glad to see so many of you here physically - next millenium things might be different. Internet and the forthcoming virtual reality will have many consequences. Still there are some things that perhaps never change.
My late uncle once told me a story about a farmer and his son. Always when the farmer went to plow the fields he took his son with him. He wanted his son to sit on the bench of the plow to give it more weight and he explained his son how important task it was. It once happened that the son was ill and very worried for his father. How can you now manage - he asked. His father wanted to console his son and said. Do not mind - I will put a stone on the bench, that will work. My uncle was very moved by his own story and told how bad it feels to be replaced by a stone. I could not say anything - I knew that he was also thinking of my profession with computers. Now I see the story differently. The boy was not threatened by the stone. He felt bad because he had lived in a lie. He believed that he was doing something useful but all the time he had done a stones work.
But let me now share one of my own visions - one very small detail. Imagine … just imagine putting a small internet camera inside your fridge. If you do this and connect your fridge to the internet… Next time you come from work and stop by to go to the groceries you do not need to wonder how many liters of milk your kids have used up. You just open your GSM mobile communicator and call your fridge to see for yourself. Actually you could as well ask the shopkeeper to see for himself and to bring you what is missing and your friends could also have a peek inside before they come for a surprise visit so they could bring with them what they like if the fridge looks too empty for their tastes.
Jules Verne showed us that future visions can be very truthful. Looking back to his era we also realize that very much has changed and it is much easier to believe that very much can also change in the future.
In 1860, Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir had just designed the first working internal combustion engine - the motor. The fork and the chimney were still relatively rare items. Toilet paper did not yet exist. Jules Verne had just given up writing opera libretti, and had turned to fiction.
Verne wrote in 1863 about future Paris - some one hundred years in the future. He had forseen the rise of information industry and computers. He also saw the massive translation from handcraft to industrialization. He saw that it required immense amounts of paper, lightspeed communications, widespread shareholding system to gather capital and much larger cities. Verne wrote about cars filling up the streets of Paris and creating smoke - he wrote about gasoline stations - he wrote about people worshipping only money and forgetting the values of poetry.
Lots of things have happened since Jules Verne. Cars have suburbs to grow and services to be separate from where people sleep. Refridgirators have changed the way how we shop and feed ourselves, electric light changed when we live. Microwave ovens have even created a situation where families do not eat together any more. Today people also use toilet paper and do not any more stare at you even when you take bread in your left hand. But let us leave the past behind.
Internet capacity doubles every three months, 50% of peope in Finland have access to internet already. Sheep are being cloned, and the first applications of genetic engineering are spreading around the world. Research data is passed on hundreds of times more quickly than back in the 1950s. In 1977 a home computer could move a pixel across the screen in real time. Now it thinks nothing of one million pixels.
Organizations have become networked and many talk about virtual organizations. I personally have titles in five different companies and usually when people call me I am out, walking with my dog. But nobody knows - they just ask if I am in a good place. Sometimes they hear background noise and ask if I am still at home. Mobile phones and internet reach you everywhere and many feel there is no need to physically go to the office. Most of us work with bits - personally I hate paper. It is always in the wrong place and it does not come to me even if I say the correct keywords. Email obeys me much better.
Naturally it would be different if I would work with people in one office. But for me this is not true. Networking has enabled me to work with people around the world - sometimes with people from twenty different countries during the same day. Today remote work means electronic mail and voice telephone. This will soon change. Let me share a newsclipping from june 2000 in abc.com.
Merita-Nordbanken establishes virtual branches in old people’s homes
The Finnish-Swedish banking consortium Merita Nordbanken has launched virtual banking facilities in Helsinki old people’s homes.
The virtual bank resembles a traditional bank branch. When the customer steps up to the counter, the customer can fully interact with the clerc and exchange virtual documents.
We have heard much talk about Internet, how it creates a global village. Let me read a newsclipping from:
[Internet Weekly 2.4.2002]{.underline}
Matti Virtanen changes name - cites Internet as cause
Helsinki 1.4. The Finnish politician and former actor Matti Virtanen (a very common name here)-he has changed his name to Kaino Virtanen.
Virtanen wanted a new name because he claimed that internet search engines personal analysis programs gave him a bad reputation because of all other Matti Virtanens. He said that a politician needs a good and trustworthy reputation and now he can start from a completely new white page.
In internet we are all public figures once we take part in discussion groups there or when someone mentions our name there. One result from everyones publicity in internet will be that perhaps we start acting better - not spoiling our environment so much and not kicking every old lady in the park. They might have cameras hidden somewhere or they just might recognize us and write about us in internet for others to see and search for for the rest of eternity. Villages used to have no privacy - doors needed no locks. There are many who do not deserve privacy and all this networking will mean that rumors of bad behaviour spreads fast.
Let us now what future Helsinki looks like.
All of Helsinki is being modelled in 3D so that people can walk or fly there virtually. Modelling this demo took some manmonths. The two square kilometer model almost fits on one floppy.
By the year 2010 I think all the world has been modelled this accurately and modelling techniques have been automated. Physical reality and virtual reality are being connected with GPS-positioning devices, cameras and geographic information databases. Soon minds can travel and meet with others in lightspeed.
Within three years in Helsinki my kid can go virtually to her friends door and push the doorbell to connect a telephone call even though we did not have her telephone number or surname. If she wants to visit her aunt I can let her. But she has to find the correct bus and correct stop where to leave the bus first in virtual Helsinki.
If necessary I could even follow her route from my screen if she carried a GSM with a positioning device built in. If I would like to view the sermon in the church or parliamentary discussions or some karaoke I would just need to remember the correct buildings to click at them. Very few people remember more than one hundred telephone numbers but most of us remember from one hundred thousand to one million places.
Many logistic problems will also be solved much more efficiently than before. If you want a taxi you just open the virtual city and pick the closest free taxi with your mouse. The taxi gets your position and your order immediately and automatically.
Next piece of advertisement shows that soon we cannot rely on video communication anymore. The ad is from …
[Avatars Inc. 3/2008]{.underline}
With Avatar’s Jack-of-all-Faces you can bring to your videophone calls the gravity of a primetime newsreader or the elegance of a tuxedo-clad prince. You choose your style, Jack-of-all-Faces does the rest.
Shape your own virtual face
Jack-of-all Faces software makes you a new man - or woman, shaping your vidiphone image to suit the individual conversation. Select any of our more than 500 catalogued virtual faces and tailor it to your own specific requirements! Virtual faces help you to perform at your very best in all videotelephonic settings.
Lots of people used to ask me how it is possible to answer a video telephone on Monday mornings - it took me few months to get the right answer - you just put your virtual make up on by pushing right and left mouse buttons simultaneously.
Let us now see a demonstration from a virtual youth club.
Each of the persons is at his or her home and there are sensors at their limbs - so the movements you see are real. When this is compared to actual youth club it feels bad but when this is compared to kids most propably using the same time watching some soap opera like the bold and the beautiful from tv - this is an active and parttaking possibility.
Skinner created a brilliant theory about our behaviour. He talked about positive and negative reinforcement and how that conditioned us to behave in certain ways. Smile is the best conditioner and most used when teaching small babies and loved ones. Soon computers can create artificial persons - they will see from the computer camera how you react. We have just nine basic feelings and nine basic facial expressions. Our eyes reveal where our interest lies. When this happens your artificial pet can start manipulating you by rewarding you with a smile - always when you react in an expected way.
We might use these behavioural machines to shape us in suitable skills but these could as well be used to get us hooked into buying patterns that we did not originally wish or into political movements as well.
There exists already a cuddly talking dinosaur for children marketed by Microsoft. This dinosaur does not yet sense how you react but it does get input from the television. Just imagine this cuddly dino saying to your kid - " oh, I am bored now, could you please watch some tv with me. Oh yes, that was a nice pullower, You should have one also, could we ask daddy or mummy."
Very soon these and other virtual nightmares start spreading around the networks in the form of viruses listening to out Internet telephone discussions, reading our emails and smiling to us while making suggestions about what we should buy or how we should use our time. Let us hope our electronic purses are safe from these viruses. Our minds most certainly are not.
Computers can create virtual reality and they can talk with us. But very soon we can not separate people from computers. They will become integral parts of us.
Next news from:
[SatWeb 30.4.2009]{.underline}
Tattoo parlours can hardly have been more fashionable than they are today. Since the launching on the market in 2004 of tattooing materials as a spin-off from new developments in nanotechnology, the popularity of video tattoos has spread to all sections of society. Most wearers carry a tattooed watch or pulsometer on their skin, but the latest applications have included such things as tele- and multivision screens, blood pressure gauges, and a host of different animations.
We already wear our mobile phones almost to bed with us. Soon mobile phones will replace our wallets and our calendars. Next they will be integrated into our head. Microphone will be connected to our nervous system and loudspeaker to our ear. Speech synthesisor will replace our voice with the voice of Elvis and we can speak with anyone anywhere silently so that no-one notices. Microphones will store everything that is spoken around us and computer indexes it and recalls everything like search engines find everything from the internet. Later our eyes will be replaced so that they will see in dark and zoom like new digital cameras and store everything. Our skin starts to produce electricity and our blood will be replaced by much more efficient nanoliquids. There is no limit to how long we can live if all of our parts can be changed. Next news is from:
[Satweb *URGENT* 30.4.2020]{.underline}
20% limit set on artificial organs
UN defines humans - arguments simmer in General Assembly
The UN has finally arrived at a Draft Resolution on the lines to be drawn between humans and the creatures that have come to be termed humanids. The definition provisionally adopted will solve numerous difficult grey areas of interpretation in statutes and legislation.
According to the definition adopted by the UN General Assembly, the term “human” will henceforth only be applicable to individuals having less than 20% artificial organs. Only a person adhering to these terms will come under the protection of all laws and regulations pertaining to humankind, and will possess all human rights under the UN Charter.
The total amount of artificial organs as specified does not take account of organs taken from living creatures or from organ bank torsos, nor does it include regenerates produced from the subject’s own genetic code.
We have to accept the fact that all people can not live forever or there will not be room for new babies. If however some people would voluntarily take up less space and energy this could postpone the inevitable catastrophy. Let us see what the really close living quarters will be like.
[Internet Now 21.11.2020]{.underline}
Numbers of living dead exceed natural mortality figures -
EU population register
In the course of last year, Europe’s virtual sanatoria and other hospices specialized in terminal patients connected up a total of around nine million persons to permanent VR ambient devices. The number was around 1.9 million more than those dying “naturally”. The figures, released yesterday, come from the EU’s Demographics Centre in Riga.
The popularity of the long-term use of VR continues to grow apace. In particular, the large section of “baby boomer” retirees in the population have been signing up for terminal agreements, in which the host establishments - often former private nursing homes - place their clients in a cybercasket. The casket monitors the occupant’s well-being, maintains muscle-tone, feeds in neural stimuli, and supplies essential nutrients in solution through an intravenous drip. The neural stimuli provide an extremely lifelike image of virtual reality.
There is a trend … more and more people are living in virtual reality already. I heard that there are japanese men who are in love with virtual girl friends. I am very happy that this tendency towards virtual solitaire will not be inherited to the next generation. But I do hope that governments, media and operators do their best to create good interaction possibilities so that everyone could be active part and useful part of the workings of society. This usefulnes need not be money … In Jules Vernes time people did things for honour. This can be true in the future also if there is incentive to place value in honor as there was before the overplayed role or privacy where even public crime is considered private.
I do not know how these things relate to secretarial work. I do know however that current computerization and networking has reduced need for pure routines. Instead the need for administrative, responsible and independent assistance has increased. When I was a department manager fifteen years ago - I asked my secretary to take care of everything that a department manager usually does - and that she did. I tried to create something new we were both very satisfied. More and more the old hierarchical structures are breaking down and networking means that everyone has to find independent areas of responsibility ands usefulness.
I conclude my speech and hope that you can combine these bits and pieces in your mind to picture a future which will be as much different from ours that we are from Jules Vernes times. And the future will feel very normal to us when we have lived through the next twenty years.