Visions for a Future City

VISIONS FOR A FUTURE CITY

Risto Linturi

Mr Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen

We are living in an age of visions - more than ever great and small visions surround us and more than ever many of those visions are false and empty. Besides, many of those visions are abstractions and generalizations and we do not live amongst those - we live amongst our small everyday details.

Let me first share with you one of my own visions - one very small detail which seems to have an unbelievable strength to spread around. 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.

This vision was created because our forthcoming Virtual Helsinki was threatened - there was a committee for drafting a new legislation for freedom of speech in the internet age. Draft included that one should record and save all easily available video and audio material in internet for three months - this would have included all open discussions in electronic meetingplaces. This would have destroyed our virtual city project totally. I needed small and easily understood visions that would contradict what the committee had to say. My vision was powerful enough and did its thing but it also got printed in New York Times and Time Magazine and even CNN came to film it. Some things do really get out of proportion.

Visions can be used to lead or mislead even the strongest leaders. Visions can also be used to evaluate possible outcomes of our actions. Some people have even shown us that it is not so impossible after all to predict what is to come. Jules Verne was possibly the greatest and most accurate of the visionaires. His work and methodology requires attention especially for his vision of the future city.

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 the industrialized world 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. He saw that schools would stop teaching Latin and Greek because of a major change in values. It was no accident or miracle that enabled him to predict these things … he saw Lenoirs internal combustion engine and noticed that it smelled bad. He read new studies about making paper from wood and he studied the newly created share holder system. He created his vision based on what he knew could be done and on his understanding of the workings of the society.

Lots of things have happened since Jules Verne. Cars have caused cities to change by allowing 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 they do not any more stare at you when you take bread in your left hand. Many houses from the fifties lost their value in seventies because modern comforts couldn´t be easily fitted in. But let us leave the past behind.

Today in Finland almost everybody has a mobile phone. Data links are networking households at an accelerating pace. Internet backbone capacity doubles every three months. Sheep are being cloned, and the first genetic applications are spreading around. Research data is passed on hundreds of times more quickly than back in the 1950s. In 1977 my first home computer could move one pixel across the screen in real time. Now it thinks nothing of one million pixels.

In 2020 computer applications will be smart enough to teach themselves. Kids just entering schools today - they get professions in 2020. Satellite positioning systems, walking talking and flying robots and various media applications will fundamentally change our behaviour patterns way before.

Materials sciences will develop astounding new applications just as the biotech and information sciences. However, mindblowing changes will come when these start to mingle. And it is very important to understand that technology will influence everything. The structures of the economy and of the society - even of our individual values and behaviour patterns - will alter as a consequence of technological change.

Let us now return to cities - what are they and why.

A city can be viewed as an organization or even a living organism. A city consumes foodstuff, energy and raw materials from the countryside. It produces waste, manufactured goods and information.

Characteristics of a city include short distances between lots of people so that it is easy to exchange ideas and specialized information and logistic services. If a city loses this competitive edge it might as well lose itself.

A city is also part of some state which is also defined by geographical boarders. Both are organisations which use power over individual citizens by creating laws and collecting taxes to take care of common tasks. It is however not clear anymore if geographical borders are relevant definition for common interests. Tax collection might also become difficult when bits cross the boarders containing money, work and valuable immaterial components. Nobody can really know what the bits contain. Unless they can spy on us on international level or unless they have a monopoly on electronic money. That would naturally mean big brother or world state.

Let us now study what will happen to the competitive edge of cities.

In 2019 or earlier already we will have moving three dimensional holograms installed in robots. We will also have panoramic videocameras. This will make it possible for our virtual representatives to travel almost instantenously to any place in the world. Our image will travel and those there will almost think that we actually arrived. We will see everything and hear everything like we were there. Long before that we will have all service counters appearing right into our livingroom walls whenever we like and independent of the services physical whereabouts. Video conferences will become commonplace and their voice and picture quality will be thousanfold better and they will fill the whole transparent wall.

Actually it looks like distance would completely loose its meaning. This is not true however. I will now show you two demonstrations. The first one shows ISDN-quality at its current best …

isdn-telephony demonstration

ISDN-calls are way much cheaper locally within a city than globally. This quality cannot yet be transmitted over the worldwide internet. But things will change - Internet is quickly catching up and low quality video telephony will be global opportunity at a very low cost and within a short time. Standards are ready and equipment manufacturers are gearing up to make video telephony a standard feature of every new home computer.

ISDN quality is however not satisfactory for most purposes. And when we go into faster speeds things begin to change and cities will have a big bonus waiting for them if they grab the possibility.

Let us now see what xDSL-technology makes possible.

xDSL - demonstration.

With xDSL one can send and receive near tv-quality moving picture over common copper lines. But xDSL-modems are required on both ends of the copper and rather expensive installations in each telephone exchange. This technology is very suitable for cities and currently inside Helsinki we sell these connections for local traffic at one percent of the price it would cost to have similar quality connection over the Atlantic.

This technology makes it possible for every citizen to receive or transmit tv-quality picture to other citizens. It allows for a very wide, cheap and fast information flow between people in a city. This will make a city where people interact with each other like nerve cells in our brains - where everything is always online. This will create a city where people will all be able to contribute and add to the wealth and knowledge and variety of the whole - decision making speed will increase and quality enhance.

It does seem that future technologies require the optical fibre to come closer and closer to the homes and this will benefit the cities even more. Satellite links and other cableless solutions do not seem to be able to compete in broadband two way solutions. They will not catch up. For this reason people inside one city will also in the future be able to communicate with each other in much cheaper and faster ways than with people living elsewhere.

But globalization will advance however and cities will not anymore be places where one can go and hide from ones past. Internet is quickly chenging the world into a global village where rumors spread and everyone is a public person.

In internet we are all public figures once we take part in discussion groups there or when someone mentions our name there. 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 the eternity. Perhaps this could mean that honor and good manners would come back to our cities - slowly but surely.

There will be lots of eyes around, not big brothers eyes but every small brothers - soon even every car will have a few to help to navigate but let us first look at what our new maps will look like.

Demonstration of 3D-city

There are lots of applications for a living map. I could try and phone my mother. If she did not answer I could open this other Helsinki and go to her neighbourghs door. When I push the doorbell their phone would ring and I could ask if they could go and look if something is wrong.

If my daughter would like to visit her aunt I could ask her first to open the 3D map and show me three times how to enter the right bus and to leave at the right bus stop and navigate to the aunts door. Then I could let her go for real. Naturally I could give her a GSM/GPS device so that I could see that she does not get lost - but I guess she would turn it off.

These satellite positioning devices could easily be installed in cars and other expensive items. Soon they will cost only 20 dollars and they cannot easily be found by thieves. There is lots of other stuff being developed against thievery such as genetic analysers, miniature cameras, electronic noses which tape smells and follow them like dogs. Physical thievery might very well be won within next ten or twenty years to be replaced by network thievery.

Virtual reality will help blind and otherwise handicapped. It will give us better maps and enable us to see and work in places that are physically remote and it will help us learn much faster than ever before. But it will also help us to create appearancies which are not real and it can make us wonder what is real and what is not and whether this really matters in the end. Next piece of advertisement shows that soon we cannot rely on video communication anymore. The ad is from …

[Avatars Inc. March 2008]{.underline}

Jack-of-all-Faces -

Ever get the sense nobody takes you seriously? Or have you sometimes wanted to appear incognito? 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. Virtual clothes are equally easy.

More and more of our life is consumed by television or other created imaginary worlds. These can be active participating things and a city should not be considered a physical place only - it can well be a collection of virtual places or a combination of physical and virtual places.

Let us now see a demonstration from a virtual youth club.

Each of these 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 probably using the same time watching some soap opera like the bold and the beautiful from tv - this is an active and social experience.

New technology does not only give us virtual experiences - it will give lots of new opportunities to cults and other very much city related phenomena. The new technologies will change life and people even physically - and physical appearancies need to be appreciated physically when all virtual appearancies have lost their credibility.

Next news from:

[SatWeb April 2009]{.underline}

Video tattoos eat into virtual jewellery market -

police investigate links with Cyberpunk radicals

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.

Genetic technology will do lots of good things for curing us, feeding us and perhaps even cleaning our homes but there are awful risks connected to it. The risks are more severe in cities with greater population density and faster interaction speeds.

[NetWeb Europe 22.9.2014]{.underline}

Rogue fungicide threatens European vineyards

The rogue anti-mildew bacteria developed by World Biochemicals is spreading like wildfire across Central Europe. It is currently threatening vineyards in the Alsace, Mosel, Rheingau and Rheinhessen regions, but EU oenology experts fear this is only the overture to destruction on a far greater scale.

The bacteria was developed initially by the huge Swiss-based consortium to remove the problem of damp-related mildew in old buildings. In laboratory the bacteria behaved as expected and results in Switzerland were impressive. However, this summer, the bacteria began to develop an appetite for other forms of fungus. It is currently spreading northward into French and German vineyards and eating the yeast genus known as Saccharomyces ellipsoideus which lives on the skin of the grape and is essential to the conversion of sugar to ethyl alcohol in the winemaking process. The first indications of similar destruction among indigenous grape varieties - Mavrud and Gamza - in the wine-growing regions of Bulgaria have also been reported.

All problems from genetic engineering will not be caused by accidents. There are lots of official and non official power groups capable of doing genetic research which might in the future be as easy as building ones own home computer or an atomic bomb with the exeption that there is plenty of raw material in everyones fingers - even under fingernails.

[Memo from NATO SOC/GENCOM/rtp *CLASSIFIED*2016/4/14]{.underline}

*CLASSIFIED: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY*

Gen. Ruggles T. Pynchon III, DSACEUR (GENCOM)

Brussels, 14.4.2016

To: Senior Operative Staff Officers (> Security Level 4) in Secondary Member States

The Gene Bomb

Negotiations on the global ban on GSM (Genetic Structural Manipulation) warheads do not appear to be bearing fruit. Thus far these devices have been deployed only among divisions belonging to NATO primary members, but given the current unsettled international climate, the NATO Defense Planning Committee has resolved that they should be distributed to other reliable units within the Organization. Field training is to be implemented immediately.

But let us go back to the more city related issues and more positive issues. Happily the waste problem will be solved. This will not happen without incidents however.

[Daily e-Mail, Christmas eve, 2017]{.underline}

Landfill biorobots go on rampage

In one of the most horrific examples of “science runs riot”, a large part of a São Paolo slum district has been literally eaten away. The damage was caused by thousands of biorobots from a nearby landfill site, where they have reproduced in uncontrolled fashion. The hungry biocomputer army broke out of the huge landfill compound, spreading to the makeshift shelters of the shanty town of Patriarca, devouring the buildings just as if they were their regular diet of garbage.

Every organization and system tries to remain stable. As technological developments create more and more options for us - when we can get spare parts, enhanced parts and our cells can be made to reproduce longer and live longer - scientists are already on the verge of growing nervecells and some speculans say that some of todays kids might still live in 2400.

- If we use these options we can no longer all be equal before our current systems. Just consider pension systems if one can buy more lifetime with ones pension. Consider how many people there would be if the average life bearing age would double. Think what kind of measures we have to take if some people can live for hundreds of years and most others cannot. This is also mostly a city problem because riots happen in cities.

[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 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 other 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 the 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 of privacy where even public crime is considered private.

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 as we are from Jules Vernes times. And the future will feel very normal to us when we have lived through the next twenty years. Many things will change for the worse and many for the better - and we will feel the pain of change and excitement of development. There will be catastrophes - they have followed us always but life will continue and adapt just like cities - some cities will die and other prosper. A good city will make it very easy for its citizens to lead productive and pleasant lives.

Excerpts from “Sata ilmiötä 2000 - 2020” (One hundred phenomena) written by Risto Linturi and Ilkka Hannula, published by Yritysmikrot 98.