Virtual City comes to reality?

Virtual City comes to reality?

Risto Linturi

Distinguished audience,

Few years ago I participated a digital city workshop in Kyoto with Dean Bill Mitchell. He is considered father of Digital Cities. He knows Hong Kong quite well. He told how the racetrack functioned as a place where decision makers met almost randomly and still advanced many more business deals there than in the office.

Last week I spoke at World IT Congress in Adelaide. Many speakers, Bill Clinton included, emphasized need for transparency to build trust in our networked society. Non-hierarchical self-organizing practices were also favoured. I guess Hong Kong racetrack covers it all. Hong Kong owes its much of its success to societal norms that allow people to discuss freely outside formal boundaries and specified topics.

In Adelaide the atmosphere was slightly tense as today’s Australia is not a perfect example of a transparent society and several major scandals were being uncovered during past two weeks. Networking increases openness everywhere inevitably and it is just a question of will, if it harms you or gives you opportunities for progress.

Mayor Ma received the first price for public achievement in Adelaide. He set up a goal for Taipei to become a cyber city as he was elected. Two years ago he visited us in Helsinki to learn from our experience. Taipei has since then made more progress than us. Mayor Ma’s original motivation was not transparency or lack of communications. He was seeking for a solution for the thousand cars per every kilometre in Taipei. Now in Taipei you can complete very many tasks in internet without crowding physical streets. Citizens, including Mayor Ma’s 80-year old mother use email – even to send messages to her son who lives next door – as a surprise to him to show his plan is working.

There are many aspects to digital cities or virtual cities. Some see them as digital city hall projects. Others view them as virtual Disney worlds. Telecom companies see them as a media and dream to capture all media business profits for themselves. Many have recently come to think about the mobile aspects of digital cities as well.

One of today’s leading sociologists, Manuel Castells has defined two spaces – the space of places is where people gather to the same pub every night to meet same friends before getting home. In Finland that would be the gas station bar. The race court clearly belongs to the space of places. Then there is the space of flows where people feel cosy as long as they see CNN and their GSM connects them to all their friends and business relations. I feel out of place in US as my mobile phone seldom works there. In our Sydney hotel there was no CNN. Internet I have in my pocket.

Castells claims that digital divide is becoming stronger as some people start living almost totally in the virtual space of flows and many others remain in the space of places – and they still might be neighbours but with no common experience.

I must agree with Professor Castells. The alienation of people and communities leads to disruption of the society. This problem can expand or whither through virtual cities. They may further alienate people from places or oppositely make it easier to cope with places. Today’s cyber cafes may be as important as the racetrack was.

Helsinki Arena 2000 –project, which I am here to describe, has acted as a catalyst for many projects and many companies. Originally we compared it to Kennedy’s vision to put a man on moon – a large idea to catalyse many small ones. Self-replicating ideas, stories that spread easily are called memes, originally described by a Dr. Dawkins in his book the Selfish Gene. It is also a combination of schemes to strengthen the city as a community.

In Helsinki Arena 2000 (www.arenanet.fi) I crafted basically three sets of memes. The most important first: With a good local multimedia network anyone can start broadcasting TV-quality programs to everybody else. Second: With virtual reality technologies and self-positioning mobile phones we can always be aware of our surroundings and we never again get lost. Third: With always-online connections to our homes and offices, we can remotely monitor and operate all our belongings.

Because of the advent of mass market, and mass media at least the western civilization resembles old Roman circus where those in power entertain masses. Our future may lead to even more mass entertainment where less and less people contribute in any productive way.

There is another path, which leads to an open society where hierarchies are low and communication routes symmetrical. (Here is my own home video) In this open society everybody is expected to contribute and take part in creating content. If we all participate, we will produce more. This is what information society is about; efficient and widespread production of information for both small and large needs.

I believe that someone wants to put a camera in front of her goldfish bowl. There might be more than ten people who like it better than what comes from the TV. Millions of people have things that they want to show each other over the net. And finally - is it really more valuable to view a program than participate in creating it?

There are ways to build multimedia networks, which support well central distribution schemes. I wanted to promote development of more symmetrical and open networks. They may be more difficult to build but the rewards are greater.

But let us return to basic human needs and Abraham Maslow. I have trouble remembering names and numbers and I occasionally get lost even in Helsinki. And it is always difficult to use a map. We needed a flagship user interface for the Helsinki Arena 2000 –project. It needed to be such that people could feel they belong there. It needed to combine spaces of place and flow. We ended up with several pilot applications including mobile route guidance systems.

What you will now see is Helsinki or rather a virtual replica of Helsinki, parts of Tokyo and Bremen and a whole northern province of Finland. In this model you can basically go to any door, push the doorbell and it will connect a regular telephone call to the phone in the respective physical location. 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 double-click it and get a direct call.

Virtual reality will enable us to see what we wish whether based on physical reality or not. We may get rid of road and traffic signs as they can all be viewed virtually from mobile phones and electronic windshields. A technician can see in his augmented reality glasses where he is supposed to put his hands next. And in the future – think about the sparsely populated Finland where everybody has mobile phones. The streetlights can be turned off when there are no mobile phones near by.

Let us get into the third issue: There is a rumour that I can answer my doorbell and open my front door with my mobile phone. Few years ago it was also fun to show the insides of my fridge from my mobile phone. These memes helped to spread many ideas. We need cheap fixed always-on Internet connections to homes and we need ideas that drive this development forward.

Last year we announced a new consortium project COBA to create a common standard for connecting mobile phones to building automation. Now as Bluetooth phones are becoming available, it will become practical to use mobile phones as general purpose remote controllers for all building related functions whether really remote or just few meters away. I can ask my phone to automatically switch on a certain radio station, put on the lights and open locks wherever I move and turn them off when I leave. But I also want to remotely ask my VCR to tape some program for me if I am unexpectedly late. Maintenance people get remotely all information they require and everything gets fixed much faster.

I boldly compared Helsinki Arena - project to Kennedy’s plan to put a man on the moon. Our project was not as expensive but it filled many people with joint new visions. Corporations, cities and countries need high profile missions to give their people a sense of identity and self esteem. A sense of belonging to a group that one can be proud of. Still in 1995 Finnish people had a low self-esteem. Helsinki Arena 2000 was among the first information technology projects to change this attitude.

What else has been accomplished so far? The project itself is dismantled but new projects such as COBA carry on the work and mindset has changed towards futuristic ways of using ICT to everybody benefit as participatory members.

We will become empowered as individuals; our world will become transparent – allowing those in powers very little room for misconduct.

This will spread to many currently underdeveloped countries also. After the first pioneering efforts, new information technology is cheaper than the old technologies. Besides, distances and boarders will finally become meaningless in the virtual realm. Geographical boarders are also forms of hierarchies separating people and restricting their possibilities.

But let us remember that we will always need a physical location as our home base. Let us work to make cities efficient and pleasant places where people feel that they belong to the same community – not separated, but united by virtual worlds.

I wish you a pleasant journey – sea is getting rough, but communications technologies can do miracles for the benefit of the whole society.