ENABLING VISIONS FOR OUR FUTURE

I used to be one of the computer kids some 25 years ago. I built my first system on a board I took from my grandmother’s bed. I was sadly forced to return the board. I built the ruined telephone robot anew and tried to sell it to Ericsson. Nokia in those days was a brand for rubber boots – I still have Nokia’s boots. Ericsson kindly told me that such mass market things can only be developed and produced in Japan. Things have changed, I have become older and other people have become wiser.

We used to live in a hierarchical world where kings, queens, prime ministers and presidents ruled. And some of them still do in a manner of sorts. Many boarders have ceased to exist; time and place are no longer synchronized. Few presidents reach you over the internet. Single virus building individuals seem often more powerful.

The world has become chaotically complex. All the empowering new technologies increase dynamism and turbulences. This world cannot enjoy progress in chorus with a hierarchical or totalitarian rule. Efficient mechanisms follow the principles of self-organizing structures where no one person has a mandate to too much power.

Our world can be changed by ideas. Noteworthy ideas spread easily. People act on the ideas they want to believe in. Democracy, egalitarianism, and preservation of the nature are such ideas. Many of our current technologies have also spread because they support powerful ideas of easy interaction between all the worlds’ people. Governments should encourage new ideas, enabling platforms and new global rules. Governor King coined government the ultimate ISP, Infrastructure Service Provider. That was just one of the good ideas he has tried to spread out. President Clinton and many others here have also presented many such ideas that have the force to spread.

Many ideas are powerful only if they are shared globally. Openness and transparency are essential for building global trust. Openness and transparency naturally reveal our secrets to others, but it may be the only way to avoid strong hierarchical rule and empowered terrorism simultaneously.

I dream of a transparent world where we all could see and hear what the American presidents or Australian prime ministers have access to. Without accountability there is no justice and no democracy, no trust. I hate big brothers, but I would accept little brothers and gossip. Technology is available and we will lose our privacy. In the spirit of democracy, the Greeks called people idiots if they did not openly participate communal discussions. Even today their word private translates to “idiotiko”. Perhaps we should not keep so many secrets from our neighbours. And perhaps rulers should have no secrets. Last weeks here in Australia illustrate well my meaning.

I will give some Finnish examples where new enabling ideas are encouraged. Finland has lately scored number one in many areas including least corrupted, most competitive, most environment friendly and most advanced technologically. We do have our faults but we may be doing something right.

In 1995 Finnish government decided to invite few dozen influential and outspoken individuals to form a National Information Society Forum lead by two cabinet members. During the next four years the Forum met about twenty times. It formed committees, formulated proposals and publications and then participated intensively to supply background work for the current governments ICT program. This Forum supported and spread many ideas to propagate egalitarian, open and transparent information society. Many of the introduced ideas have now become common beliefs.

National Technology Fund, TEKES has fixed policies to support technological progress. TEKES favours visionary projects where universities, large and small companies co-operate. TEKES has funded many of the ICT-innovations that have spread out from Finland. One of the more exotic is e-gate, tested initially by reindeer.

Next I give two examples, actually my pet projects, and both digital city projects. Helsinki Arena 2000 was a catalyst project. It started in 1995 and the intention was to speed up broadband development especially in such a way as to create symmetric networks where threshold of local content provisioning would be as low as possible. The project was technology wise too ambitious. However it was a successful catalyst. Many of our visions are coming true now – everybody takes part in content supply.

One of those visions was a 3D duplicate of Helsinki, which could be used among others as a visual telephone catalogue or a mobile route guidance system. With the same tools, parts of Tokyo and Bremen and a whole northern province in Finland have been modelled in detail. The idea of a 3D world where you may visit any place either physically or virtually is much closer now than few years ago and many organizations are striving to connect the physical with the virtual.

Another pet project has been in the area of building automation. Our own home has hundreds of processors, sensors and actuators to directing temperature, ventilation, lights and other functions. COBA-project was initiated to create a standard between building automation, mobile phones and other handheld devices and building management services. The standard is based on Linux and Java as they are the most suitable for this type of middleware. A number of companies from ICT-, building management and construction area have joined to support the platform development.

I now return to the power of ideas and visions. In our self-organizing world nothing happens unless people get interested and decide to join in. Internet was such an idea. I remember my own feeling when seeing Mosaic for the first time. Web was open to everybody and resembled the visionary Xanadu; I joined in wholeheartedly.

Visions need not be this big to inspire some development. I used to talk about answering my doorbell with my mobile phone when travelling. I could open my door from here. Few years ago it was also nice to joke about looking inside my fridge with my mobile phone. Today those visions have used up their strength. It is quite common in Finland to pay your parking, tram, carwash or movie with your mobile phone. Devices are monitored with mobile phones and locating services are widely available. I am certain all this development has grown from large and small visions.

If you study the theory of memes, it explains how ideas spread; if you study the theory of complexity, you will understand that visions cannot really be created by hierarchical organizations of wise decision makers and then handed over to the citizens. Ideas need to spread on their own power. You cannot force development. But you certainly can create fruitful conditions to allow good ideas to flourish.

In conclusion I would like to make a proposition. If WITSA jointly with some other organizations would catalyse a global information society forum – that could help to align many IT visionaries and opinion leaders behind common ideas. I am not talking about any advisory body. Those are hierarchical concepts. I am talking about a group of influential individuals who would be nominated on a voluntary basis to for a discussion group to align their own visions. If these people are selected in a similar manner the Finnish group was selected, it would assist clarification of many aspect areas of the information society. A suitable number of participants should be around one thousand and anyone not participating actively should lose his or her status.

Many thanks for a great congress in a beautiful city.