Glasgow, 19.10. 1999 Risto Linturi
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me start by giving my sincere thanks for this opportunity to visit Scotland. I have read many stories and seen many films about Scotland. So many legends you have brought to world fame that I have since my early childhood wanted to visit here. This is now my first time and I will tell you something of my own country.
We are stubborn as you are. It may be for the harsh climate, but it may also be the long centuries we have been under other peoples rule. We have a great disrespect against hierarchical authorities and a strong belief that we know better than our bosses. This might explain why we have always tried to invent better ways to cope with our environment and better ways to get our work done.
Helsinki Telephone was founded in 1882. In 1930 there were circa 800 private telephone companies in Finland. We seem to have had a great need to communicate with each other. We were not so efficient and fast with building factories. They seem to require more hierarchical obedience and not so much innovative individualism. With the network and mobile revolution we have again started to prosper. We have now almost 65% mobile phones, 35% internet users and 25% home bank users. Many pay their bills already with a mobile phone. I can open my front door with mine.
We want to receive calls. We print our mobile numbers in our visiting cards. This is opposite to what people in US or Germany are willing to do. In Finland if you are a boss and your subordinate gives you a call which you do not answer - then he will make the decision for you. It is this simple - if you want to decide, you must answer your phone. If you force your subordinates to wait for your call - you will lose customers.
Yes, we can be stubborn and we can create ideas but for us it is culturally very difficult to be proud of our achievements. It would be totally impossible for most Finns to proudly walk in kilts or even in Finnish national dresses while playing bagpipes. We are basically insecure and very dependant on other peoples acceptance. We would continuously wonder what everybody else was thinking about us.
I promised Ian that I would tell you something about how our government helps companies and universities to collaborate. There is a government Technology Center called TEKES which distributes most of the project oriented govenment research and development money. Some 350 million ECUs yearly.
They support both corporate and university r&d. Usually they require that several companies collaborate and also universities are required to collaborate with companies. 30-50% of the project costs are usually covered by Tekes. This approach has been very successfull in creating networks and clusters. I have been involved in few such projects and also board of some larger research programs.
The government has an official information society policy. The official policy is the coalition governments mutual agreement which they must adhere to. We will get a citizens electronic identity - the government starts issuing them still this year. Tax forms, various official applications and declarations can be filed remotely. This citizens id is also available for commercial usage and there are plans to integrate it to cellural phone SIM-modules. I believe that this will speed up all electronic services in Finland.
The the government is also quite active in remote education experiments and there is even large project to start remote university departments and virtual schools which you can attend remotely. In Helsinki alone there are almost one hundred public libraries. They have public internet terminals and they educate users. Various other development projects are taking place to increase the usage of internet in administration and in businesses. Our president made his email address public in 1994 and I noticed that he still browses all email he receives and may answer citizens requests personally within the same day. Examples are very important and leaders should really lead the way.
But let us now return to the past and then to the future - I will try and give you a view on what I think has happened and what this information revolution will bring us in the next decades.
During prehistoric and historic times man has not changed biologically. Basically we are still the same cavemen and women. Main difference might be that our mothers have taught us to be more polite and verbal. Human society has however changed and continues to change in a quickening pace. Most changes have been temporary but a continous development has been caused by information and knowledge. Mankind has harnessed them in the form of various layered technologies.
These technologies starting from hunting knives and fire to farming and from storytelling or cave wall paintings to modern information systems have affected our value systems, power structures, everyday routines and our environment. Within the next one hundred years we will most probably leap as much forward as we have done since we started storing information on cave walls. It may be that then we will no longer resemble cavemen even genetically.
It is important to try and understand what drives this development. There are various rules that seem to apply. There also seems to be random chance and even individual people may have been able to affect major parts of the outcome. Georg Orwell is one example whose “Big Brother”-vision has still today a tremendous impact on European information system development. Jules Verne has also inspired several generations and driven them to technological leaps in directions he has pointed. We can avoid mistakes if we understand where we are going. We can also many times succeed in affecting the outcome when we understand the optional futures and the driving forces.
It is important to notice that development is mostly based on basic human needs. Maslow defined these needs from the individual viewpoint. From another viewpoint it seems that hunger for power and the need to aquire wealth are very important factors driving technological development even though they would seem to stand very low on Maslows hierarchy. Development very often requires that someone uses lots of resources to achieve goals which most often are very selfish. The invention of zero and the decimal system seems to prove that this is not always the case. This invention and its acceptance all over the world did not require investments. Decimal system made all calculations much easier than earlier methods. Even laymen could perform calculus and this lead to widespread utilization of rational explanations instead of witchcraft. Earlier belief systems were replaced by scientific beliefs.
The recent theory of memes - memory genes - ideas and concepts which have a strength to spread around by themselves, have much in common with this phenomenon. Memes are basically nonhierarchical and self organizing and they have been used to fight strong hierarchies.
Francis Fukuyama showed in his recent book “The Great Disruption” that we humans have an inbred tendency to self organize. We also seem to have positive and even unselfish need to create generalized rules for ourselves and others to follow. Any group of humans will in the long run create and sustain rules and laws which help them to collaborate relatively peacefully if left undisturbed.
When society stabilized enough to limit the use of violence, the best way to aquire great wealth was trade. Information flow was slow and erratic and trading empires actually controlled the information flow and also largest part of transport. Investments concentrated into these activities all through Ceasars time to Napoleons time. Only after public communication routes were opened and public transport became available the rules changed.
Manufacturing gained importance and became better means to make profit than trade. Humankind turned its attention to studying better manufacturing methods and products and power shifted to cultures whose customs and communications methods were better suited to investments in industrialization than trade.
Now again our communication system has evolved much beyond any expectations. Corporations are mainly valued by their expected future earnings and wealth is aquired by interpreting early warning signals and changes in those future expectations. Globalization, standardization, increasing co-oparation between networked companies and fierce competition have decreased profits in manufacturing.
Simultaneously this development has lead to increasing demand for efficient and open communication networks which operate across hierarchies. This again favours some human cultural patterns. Just think about many cultures where it is very difficult to call your boss because the organization and initiatives are supposed to work the other way. How can that sort of behaviour patterns survive in competitive networked society where exeptions are the most important information and where rumours spread information more efficiently than most marketing campaigns. Fukuyama spoke of “Homo Hierarchicus”. You must all know such people who love power more than profit. They are dinosaur.
After Berlin, walls are breaking everywhere - and without protective walls you have to be more efficient. Otherwise you lose your customers, citizens or employees and finally your investors and your job.
Let us concentrate briefly on a few spesific innovations. The future brings us a small mobile phone which is implanted in our head. The microphone can be replaced by a sensor in our vocal chords and loudspeaker connected to our ear. This would in all practical sense mean that we have invented telepathy and as you all must realize - there are numerous books that illustrate how telepathy would change the workings of our society. And if you think carefully, most of the changes are taking place just now in all those countries where mobile phones are kept always open and numbers made public. Soon these phones will tape everything your ears can hear and use speech recoognition to index all of it to allow perfect recollection just like searching the internet.
All these networks and information appliances have made it easy to aquire information and employ experts. More and more of the value of products has also turned out to be bits. Manufacturing cost and distribution cost of these bits approaches zero. This means that only the best one gets profit. Creativity will become one of the key success factors - creativity and sensitivity to the needs of others.
Change has already started. Just look at how the movie industry has restructured, look at Lucas who gave his movie distributor a lousy 15% - earlier he used to get only 15% himself. Look at the finnish Nokia - they are mostly only a design house and not an industrial giant. They buy much of their manufacturing and distribution very cheap from their subcontractors and they make huge profits themselves.
Power has shifted to those who create. Information has started to lose its competitive value alongside with ownership of the distribution channel and manufacturing. Organizational creativity and sensitivity seems to rule. Cultures with rigid symbol structures and communication hierarchies and hierarchical initiative patterns have to face this change and give way to more creative behaviour patterns. Otherwise they must wither and lose their competitive positions. Many of the changes will be social innovations and strong hierarchies will fight against change because change very seldom favours those individuals in power.
Nokia allows their customers to decide what ringing tone and what cover art and even what features they would prefer. You can even compose your own tunes. Nokia phones almost resemble the other famous Finnish originated phenomenon, Linux, which allows you to design your own operating system features to be included in the next global release for everyone to share. This is very different culture to the previous careful product designs where nobody was allowed to tamper with the grand designs. In this new culture everyones creativity and individual identity is appreciated.
It is almost tautological claim to say that information storage and retrieval tools combined with networks speed up all development. Networks naturally favour individual and community traits that take advantage from these new tools. Let us now study the concepts of trust, honour and openness in this sense. Toffler showed us how the industrial society required a change in values. People had to easily immerse in new communities. Previous concepts of responsibility and honour to your old community had to be transferred to concepts of privacy and lawful responsibility to the state who then would take care of your previous responsibilities like the elders and punishment for debts and crime.
Internet is often referred to as a global village. It is easy to find new business aquintancies and start co-oparating with them. This fast paced networked business model seems to be extremely efficient but it requires a similar model of nonhierarchical trust that existed before the industrial revolution. If you are a bully I will easily find it out from others in internet. If you are a good guy I can trust you and do business with you without long contractual negotiations with international lawyers.
It seems that there was not enough positive feedback for trust and honour in the western industrial society and for that reason we shifted towards hedonistic values and selfish behaviour patterns. This suited the industrial society but it does not match the needs of the networked era. There was a clear connection to privacy also. It is questionable whether honour has any meaning if you cannot loose it in the eyes of your fellow beings. Not in the system theoretical sense anyway as the positive and negative feedback controls are not sustainable over generations.
Francis Fukuyama has collected statistics which show that crime has increased over tenfold during the last decades and in US even fiftyfold. Also other societal norms have been breaking in breath taking speed.
I claim like the author of “Transparent Society” David Brin that future technology might cure us. I do not believe Fukuyamas conclusion that we just get to practice more religion even though we would not actually believe in god and even though we would just want to be selfish. I think that we will not be saved with this typical US hypocricy. I believe instead that the forthcoming transparent society may bring us back to many of the values in earlier small villages. We will respect others and we will know how they behave and they will know how we behave if we just yield to change. Internet is a very fast channel for all sorts of rumours.
As Fukuyama pointed out rumors make it much easier for the society to self organize and for people to get in direct contact with others who have first hand experience on the same issues we need to evaluate. In this transparent society we might leave the doors unlocked and we might again trust people to keep their word. Various cultures will naturally try different paths but as the internet is global it will basically be a global change and a global challange. Some will actually cope better with this change and some will fail.
But I am afraid we will resist this change if corporations and the state will not open up and if they will collect our information and abuse it to maintain hierarchies. Luckily for us the current approach of EU is very much better than that of US and we might get onwards with this transparent society much faster than they. EU bureocracy is not nearly open enough but corporations in EU are not allowed to abuse our information opposed to what is possible in US.
But let us leave this subject for a while.
I will now show you Helsinki or rather a virtual model of Helsinki. We have corrently modelled few square kilometers of Helsinki. This is modelled with 20 centimeter accuracy.
I originated this idea in 1995 and since then we have been at work to finalise the tools so that the model would fit in regular home computers, that it would be alive with things that interest the user and that it could be used in computer networks.
In this model you can go to any door, push the doorbell and it will connect a regular telephone call to the phone in the respective physical location. I managed even to patent this feature. Point to a location to make a phonecall there. I was afraid that it could not be patented but it could. It may happen that the patent office will be the biggest single thing slowing progress in the future. If it is true that gasoline companies hold most of the patents to electrical cars then the slow development of them would make sense - at least from the gasoline companies viewpoint.
But I strayed from my virtual city. There are various technologies to get the co-ordinates of a bus or a pizza-taxi and even any package in real time to be displayed in this model. If I wanted a taxi, I would just jump higher, look for the closest free taxi and click with my mouse. Then I would see how it starts turning to my direction and just when it is about to reach my door I would step out to the rain - and if it got lost I could doubleclick it and get a direct call.
We will cover about 50 sq kilometers next year, 500 sq kilometers in 2001 and perhaps all of Finland between 2005 and 2010. Mobile phones with satellite positioning devices have been announced for next year delivery. Mobile operators have announced services for them which guarantees us that we get many things moving in our virtual reality and we can give very good service to users as they will easily supply us their position. It will be easier than ever to move around in the physical realm.
Physical surroundings have been very important to us and we have shared our environment with our community. Now this is only partially true any more. The physical world will in the future mean less and less to us due to mass media and virtual reality devices. Some people feel already that their daily soap opera characters are family members. Nowadays we live very much amongst imaginary concepts and most of our well being in the western world is not dependant any more from our physical surroundings. We may actually experience extremely different everyday surroundings from our next door neigbourgh.
Virtual reality technologies will enable us to see what we wish whether based on physical reality or not. This will give us better methods to control and be informed of our physical surroundings. We may install video cameras inside all our gadgets. With these extra eyes and communications links we may remotely see what is the situation in our summer cottage, in our fridge or our office.
We may get rid of all traffic signs because they can all be viewed virtually from future mobile phones and electronic windshields. A mechanician can see in his augmented reality glasses where he is supposed to put his hands next. All this information and computerized expertize in useful form makes many of us well equipped to handle our surroundings.
Simultaneously all this virtual reality technology gives us pleasant virtual friends and environment which tries to lure us away from the reality. Tamagotchi and daily soap operas show how easily we can get addicted to imaginery reality. Drugs show the ill side effects of such addiction. Future society will be devided between those living in physical reality and those mainly concentrated in imaginary, perhaps addicted to individual computer created environments. Mick Farren described already in the 70´s how an actor might tape 24 hours per day of her luxorious life and all the sensory input would be replayed to millions of viewers permanently stored in cyber caskets or virtual coffins.
Microsoft recently started selling a cuddly dinosaur who gets new ideas from watching the television. Just imagine your kids teddy bear saying: “I am bored, could we watch some tv? …did you see that pullover, that would be so nice for you, lets ask mommy.” Microsoft is apparently again trying to create a whole new industry and value chain.
Our western civilization has many features that resemble old Roman circus where those who had power created entertainment for those who were followers. Perhaps we should put some limits on how the new technologies can be utilized. It cannot be majoritys wish to let corporations freely addict people in order to influence them to buy.
We are in crossroads and our future may lead to more and more mass entertainment where less and less people contribute in any meaningful way. Computers with all their cameras can be used to create interactive environments where viewers are rewarded always when they respond in a suitable way. These behavioral computers can easily train us in useful skills but as easily they can condition and addict us to follow the paths laid by their creators. But as I mentioned, we are in crossroads.
The other path leads to an open society where hierarchies are low and communication routes are symmetrical. In this open society everybody is expected to contribute and take part in creating content. In this other path content is created for smaller groups and financed by mutual interest and very seldom financed by advertizements. This path resembles current internet development. Mass market and advertizement syncronized production belongs to the dinosaur and we should study critically all regulations that still support this old but still powerful second wave.
Let me now show a demonstration on the quality that our new multimedia network in Helsinki can provide through regular telephone lines just by changing the modems and equipment in the telephone exchanges. We can now supply this quality city wide intranet to all telephone subscribers in all homes in the greater capital area.
I have at home a 1997 model regular home computer and without any add onns and with free software it shows much better quality picture than this laptop here using a commercial DSL-network connection.
The usual commercial concept for this type networks has been video on demand. I do not believe in video on demand. Very soon we will have black boxes which record everything on their hard disks. Then you can watch any program that came from any satellite channel any time you wish and you can even skip all commercials. In US the tv-companies are just now trying to get this type of devices declared illegal.
I believe that someone wants to put a camera in front of her goldfish bowl. There might be more than ten people who would like it much better than what comes from the tv. Someone else might send an email to all members of the MG club to say that he will change his carborator at six pm. Anyone who wants to see and learn can look through his garage camera linked to his home page and listen to his explanations.
There are so many who would say that producing good quality tv-programs is difficult. It is really difficult if you want to get enough people interested in something that actually does not interest them to really get the advetizers interested. It is not so difficult to get grandparents interested in kids birthday parties or fans of a spesific dog breed to get interested in their specific dog show. And finally - is it really more valuable to view a program than participate in creating it? I know that it is valuable to give people at least the opportunity to express themselves if they would have the need.
Many power structures may fall in spite of all regulations supporting them. It is easy to realize that there was a communist system in eastern Europe and it fell down. It is more difficult to realize that we also have a system and it is not called free market. A state is a power structure which is financed by collecting taxes from exhanges inside the state boarders. Future bit realm will be economically and politically very important but it will not know any physical state boarders. It is outside all current states in most practical aspects. Just imagine how easy it would be to search for remote work in internet.
If I found some job waiting for me in internet I could work for a few hours and then if everything was okay I would receive payment for what I managed to accomplish. I would not necessarily have any idea on where my employer is located and they would not know who I was or what was my nationality. If I spent the just earned bit-money in internet then no outsider knew that anything at all had happened.
There are strong signs indicating that states are losing their capability to independently finance their operation or enforce their desicions. Simultaneously as the boarders are becoming meaningless there have to be rules that are enforcable globally. This will lead to weakening of states and creation of a world bank, a world police and other international regulatory bodies getting more and more power.
It seems that we are drifting towards a world state. In the meantime bit realm will resemble a strange mixture of wild west and feodal age structures with virtual disney worlds in every corner. In this wild west criminals enjoy great freedom because the “big brother” metaphor requires that networks support complete anonymity for everybody. Similar requirements in the real world would mean “no licence plates”, “no numbers in money” and “no finger prints”. This non traceability leads to spy agencies requiring authority to listen in to everything. It seems that we get a big brother because we are so much afraid of one. This trend is especially strong again in US because the corporations abuse users information in such a way which is illegal in EU.
Internet task force has informed that forthcoming versions of Ipv6 would include mechanisms for tracing messages to individual machines. This would mean licence plates and this should mean full support for strong encryption and a worldwide legislation to ban corporations from collecting users information into their databases without their approval. This would create a balance where networks would be safe and everybody would equally get information on others - no big brother but small brothers peeking from every possible hole. Just as in small villages.
This would also give me the right to know if it was the American NSA who just supplied me with their spy-virus or some other government agency who sent me a blackmail letter. This would create a balance.
Another issue that fosters great expectations and great fear is genetic technology. Milton Friedman recently said that technology has always helped the poor. Emperors never had a need for running water, they had running slaves. Genetic technology will most propably help to produce cheaper food and medicine. Starvation would not kill so many.
Tecnology may also produce trees that emit light and electricity or eyes that let us see in the dark and skin that conducts electrical signals. Milton Friedman may well be right in almost every case but the most fundamental question may prove his assumption wrong.
If as it now seems even our nerve cells can be regrown and we could live practically forever this would pose grave problems to the concepts of equality. Lengthened life cannot be enjoyed by everybody because of scarceness of resources and population pressures. Inequality will follow.
Many of us will use it anyway. It is very difficult to believe that a global ban of these technologies would come about. There is so much in human nature that yearns to genetic modifications especially if the technology can be applied to ourselves and not only to the next generation. In Scandinavia we might use some retrovirus to change genes in our skin to produce more pigment to our skin if the ozone layer still gets thinner. We most certainly would use genetic readers to find out whether we should take a voluntary life insurance or a larger pension. And if you had the option to lengthen the healthy span of your life with money, would you decline? All these issues will greatly affect our everyday lifes, values and goals and it will not happen without various crisis and potential catastrophes.
During all this turmoil we will be immersed in information and ever increasing number of gadgets which talk pleasantly with us, which continuously listen and watch how we behave and react. These will not always differ very much from our old time helpers, the dogs and horses. Many new inventions will give us new possibilities to express ourselves and to establish ourselves as members of selected groups. These might include digital tattoos which move and change colour or they might be specially modified ear lobes. It is certain however that the new decorations will more fundamental and shocking than many todays decorations have been even when they first appeared. New tools will be applied to searching a suitable partners as well. Think about a telephone which automatically connects a telephone call if you are a walking distance away from your dream mate.
Many of the devices also help to clean our house, monitor our garbage to order new items when something has been used up. I have also seen a report of a flying car which carries four persons, uses 15 liters of gasoline per every 100 kilometers with speeds over 600 kilometers per hour and a requirement for ten meters of street to get airborne. The price is supposed to be 60 thousand dollars in mass production. You do not believe - I do not blame you. But this was reported by CNN, BBC, ABC and Reuters with references to Pentagon.
This reported innovation would fundamentally change all geography and further eliminate boarders and protective walls. And I see that you still do not believe - there are many stories about people who did not believe in technological advance. The chairman of the Royal Astronomical Union said in 1957 that space flight is impossible. Other unbelievers have caused greater catastrophes. But lets move on.
New sensors store the smell of our kids and follow them in the forest just like some dogs can follow smells. Mirrors can show our image with new clothes from someones web-page. Digital persons in web pages can sense our interest and dicker about the prices. Standard pricing used to be efficient but if dickering can be done by computers then the rules change again and we pay as the arabs do - based on our need and not on production cost.
It is certain that all this change from automation, virtual reality addiction, enhanced and altered humans and cyber terror will put a major part of humans in front of fundamental questions. Answers will be searched from religions, philosophies, group movements and personal relationships.
Many will loose themselves but increasingly many will find that we are here for each other - not just for ourselves and our machines. I feel this way because all systems search for a stable state. Human society is such that a joint effort gives better results than solitary efforts. Joint effort is more propable when people value each other. And I cannot avoid thinking a story about some Japanese young men who have fallen in love with virtual girl friends. The only positive thing here is that this tendency towards virtual love does not inherit. In the long run we will leave those generations behind where virtual delights were valued over the physical world but it may be that we have much suffering to do before we find a new equilibrium. We are heading to an unprecented turmoil.
It is important to remember that we can make a difference and that we really should try to see where we are heading and what are the real options and which things seem to be unavoidable. Hopefully there are at least some things where a large concensus could be reached to guarantee a positive impact. And we must not forget that individual deeds are sometimes also important not only to our dear ones but to the morale and development of humanity overall. Individuals create stories or memes, which affect our desicionmaking worldwide.
And lastly - history seems to show that we are making progress. We are cavemen no longer. We will proudly remember and cherish our historical and tribal heritige but we will also remember that we are united with the one world we all share. Many thanks for your patient attention.