BPN 1687: Heritage of the digital ice age

On August 17, 1982 the first audio compact disc was pressed, presenting the music album Visitors by Abba. The success of the audio CD would set the development of various data CDs in motion such as the CD-ROM, CD-I electronic book, DVD and Blu-ray. By 2004 CD media were not en vogue any longer as internet had taken over thanks to the growing capacity of broadband.

In 1984 CD-ROM started to battle Pre-internet online on storage capacity, defeating the slow telecom speed and small storage capacity of the PC’s hard disc. But by 2004 this battle was over as internet, broadband capacity and storage capacity were on the rise. The era between 1982 and 2004 had proven to be an ice age in online.

Looking back at this ice age, the question can be asked whether there are still left any worthwhile digital heritage gems of that period. Of course it's not so long ago, so there must be some digital artifacts around. And the next question is whether they are representative for that digital ice age and worthwhile to be saved?

In order to talk about artefacts an inventory will have to be produced. In the ninenties the TFPL CD-ROM and multimedia CD-ROM Directory was published by MacMillan. It gave an international overview of CD Media titles. The directory has not been  available after 1996. Of course a national library and National Archive might have done some inventory work or even collected some artefacts. In the Netherlands the Royal Library has an e-Depot and the National Archive has a small collection, it seems. The question is of course what did they actively collect. In the Netherlands Electronic Media Reporting compiled the List Optical Media  in the beginning of the nineties and published a quarterly report for two years in cooperation with the Dutch Association of Information Service Providers (NVI). These lists are currently being processed for the database of Collection Jak Boumans. In short, there will be a few snapshots available, but not a systematic index to optical media.

Which artifacts are worthwhile of collecting as pieces of heritage? There are four criteria to explain:

a Technology: videodisc, CD-ROM, CD-I, electronic book, DVD and Blu-ray;.

b. Environment: scientific / business, consumer, cultural;

c. Language: native, foreign, multilingual;

d. Type of heritage: born digital, digitized heritage.

Ad a. Technology. In technology, all artifacts from videodisc to DVD-ROM interesting. CD-i Video, DVD Video and Blu-ray are not interesting since these media usually optical carriers for film. Most interesting are the productions which can be played out on different machines. Elsevier Science produced Interactive Anatomy as CD-I and CD-ROM versions on one disc.

Ad b. Environment. Would be a minimum in each of the three sectors, a minimum of production need to be in order to show how the media were like in various environments. With a few examples preserved Interestingly, with this criterion, the discs produced for the cultural sector by publishers and museums.

Ad c. Language. Important in the selection is language. In a national language the native languaue will have preference over a foreign language. In some cases combination of the native language with a foreign language can be made. But a CD production can also be classified as national heritage, even when a foreign language has been used on the disc. In the Netherlands for example the discs published by Elsevier Science could be classified as national heritage. 

Ad d. Type heritage. Digitisation started out from copying text productions. For example, the first mini-discs with electronic books produced were mostly directories and dictionaries. Instead of searching through the alphabet, search engines had been built in these productions. This is digitized heritage. Later these text productions were embellished with photographs, drawings, videos and sound clips. Although DVD Video is not so interesting, the 1995 trial production of ODME DVD with the film The Netherlands by Bert Haanstra remains unique as a precursor of DVD and Blu-ray.

(l above) Spectrum Encyclopedia, published by Spectrum Publishers in 1995; (r above) Interactive Encyclopedia, published by Philips Interactive, 1996; (l under) Encarta Encyclopedia, published by Elsevier Winkler Prins in 1998; (© photos Jak Boumans Collection; CDs owned Jak Boumans Collection)

When multimedia came en vogue the number of born-digital heritage artefacts increased. In science multimedia was by Elsevier Science for an interactive approach to anatomy. Moreover, some CD-ROM productions have become precursors of  internet sites like Escher Interactive. Even combinations of online and CD-ROM were made. For the exhibition of Hieronymus Bosch in Museum Boijmans Van Beunigen in Rotterdam in 2001 an online website (www.boschuniverse.com) was developed by ZappWork and on a CD-ROM for schools a game by V2.

(l above) Interactive Anatomy, published by Elsevier Science; (r above) Escher Interactive, published by A. W. Bruna; (l under) Hieronymus Bosch, a school edition issued as part of the exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2001; (© photos Jak Boumans Collection; CDs owned Jak Boumans Collection)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The examples above are CD productions which could qualify according to the criteria above for Dutch heritage artefacts of the digital ice age.

4 Dutch submissions made the shortlist: see http://www.wsa-mobile.org/news/202-shortlisted-apps-468220140820

BPN 1686: Packaged bandwidth

Presentation of the audio CD by Mr Sinjou holding up a vinyl record and a CD (© J. Sinjou)
On August 17, 1982 the first audio CD, Visitors by Abba, was pressed at the Philips factory in Langenhagen (Germany). The invention of the CD marked a step for the music industry, but a larger step for the information industry. For the music industry, the introduction of the audio CD was a switch from analogue to digital and a quality step with superior sound quality, scratch-free durability and portability of the product. But the audio CD also meant innovation in the digital entertainment industry, which ultimately led to the launch of the DVD and Blu-ray successor. And along the way, people were  taught multimedia skills.

 

Philips CD player  (© Philips)

Philips and Sony were voluntary partners in the CD project. After the videodisc was rejected in favour of the VHS videotape by the consumer, the two consumer electronics manufacturers sat together with their engineers to design and specify a new optical audio disc. The initial storage capacity of the disc targeted a hour of audio content and a disc diameter of 115 mm. Eventually a span of 74 minutes was set, enough to listen to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Regarding the size of the hole in the disk the engineers easily agreed: it would be as big as a Dutch dime coin. In 1980 the new standard of the CD was recorded in the Red Book.

Box cover (©  photograph Collection Jak Boumans, CD property of Collection Jak Boumans)

In the wake of the success of the optical audio disc Philips and Sony developed in 1984, a compact disk for data, the CD-ROM (Compact Disc - Read Only Memory). The disk had a storage capacity of 600Mb and became an attractive substitute for online. The CD-ROM was in fact packaged bandwidth on the one hand and a mega book on the other hand.

CD-ROM technology proved to be a temporary disruptive technology. In particular, the scientific online information viewed the phenomenon CD-ROM with the necessary suspicion. These services consisting of primarily textual information, especially ASCII databases, saw the optical disk as an attack on their services. Would online be for latest information and CD-ROM for less timely information?

Cover (©  photograph Collection Jak Boumans, CD property of Collection Jak Boumans)
But more happened between 1985 and 1997: multimedia was first introduced in 1988. Of course, there were already opportunities to bring graphic work, photographs and music online, but there were no standards and in many cases the capacity of the telephone line was very limited. The CD-ROM appeared to be the new carrier for a combined stream of text, image and sound. The CD-ROM just filled the lack of bandwidth. Thus, the CD-ROM played a key role in the introduction of multimedia and interactivity. Then in 1990, a multimedia standard for PCs (MPC) was adopted, making CD-ROM the carrier for a combined stream of text, image and sound.

This led to a technological format struggle within the data compact disc world. About the CD-ROM format the industry was quick to agree; in an unusually short time for standardization procedures an industry standard was created (High Sierra), followed by ISO standard 9660. But with the potential of multimedia consumer electronic manufacturers saw market opportunities for living room products. Most had little chance of survival.

Box cover (©  photograph Collection Jak Boumans, CD property of Collection Jak Boumans)

The greatest confusion in the multimedia formats was created by Philips. Philips started to develop the compact disc interactive (CD-I) as a format that was to bring living room entertainment such as movies, games and documentaries. Philips CD-i set up even a publishing company for consumer titles. At the same time Sony created the electronic book, consisting of an electronic reader and a mini-disc of 200Mb. But the interest worldwide was not great and by 1966 the product was off the market again, except for Japan.

 

A prototype DVD as movie carrier with The Netherlands, a movie by Bert Haanstra, 1996 (©  photograph Collection Jak Boumans, CD property of Collection Jak Boumans)

The CD-ROM, however, did not really disappear from view. The commercial CD-ROM products, text or multimedia did as the bandwidth did increase fast.  CD-ROM is still a carrier of software and personal archive material. The CD-i eventually became the forerunner of the Digital Video Disc (DVD). By 2000 CD media tapered off as online came back into full force with the introduction of the Internet for consumers. Interactive games, movies and music were distributed through internet.

 

 

 

BPN 1685: Cloud Chamber launched

Today the massive multiplayer story game Cloud Chamber will be released, after four years of hard work by a Danish team. The game is a innovative mix of story explanation and collaborative investigation.
In the game the investigations of a young scientist Kathleen Petersen are followed, who works in the Petersen Institute, one of Europe’s most prestigious centres. While investigating the suspicious circumstances of her mother’s death, Kathleen discovers a string of revelations about her father, the institute and the existence of communicative rhythms in the fabric of space. Soon she is faced with an impossible choice between loyalty to her family and a duty to pass on what seems to be a mysterious warning to mankind.
In Cloud Chamber players work together to unravel a mystery of murder, music and astrophysics. They navigate through a series of 3D datascapes and film fragments, starring Gethin Anthony (Games of Thrones) and Jesper Christensen (Quantum of Solace). Players collect nodes of information and discuss them with other players. As they progress, players piece together what actually happened from fragments of found film footage, science journals, video diary entries, actual space footage and astrophotography. Only by working together with other players the truth about Kathleen’s parents and the universe can be uncovered.

So far the press release. Why do I draw attention to the game? So far, no one has been able to recognise a fanatic gamer in me. In the short description and the trailer, however, I see basic elements of suspense. And I am pretty sure that the game will be most interesting, given its creative director: Christian Fonnesbech. I met him in 2002 as a colleague on the Europrix jury in Salzburg. I remember him explaining the suspense graph in a movie: tell the story in summary in some five to ten minutes and then start to elaborate on the main story and the sub themes. Up to that point Christian Fonnesbech was a producer of interactive entertainment, advertising and educational content. He has directed and written for TV, created short films and worked as a script consultant for both TV and film companies. In Denmark he was one of the early cross media pioneers, combining internet with television and new papers ads for a bank. From 2000-2002, he co-founded and ran the interactive content studio Sjuzet and managed Congin from 2003 onwards. Since 2012 Christian Fonnesbech is creative director and partner in  Investigate North and worked on the development of the game Cloud Chamber for four years.

Convince yourself and have a look at the trailer and an earlier trailer.
The game will be available by Steam or digital distributors and cost 19,99 euro.

BPN: 1684: WWW code in the open 23 years ago

© 2003, Jak Boumans Collection

On August 6, 1991 Tim Berners-Lee brought the www code into the open. Here is the relevant document:

In article <1991Aug...@ardor.enet.dec.com> kan...@ardor.enet.dec.com (Nari  Kannan) writes:
>
>    Is anyone reading this newsgroup aware of research or development efforts in
> the
>    following areas:
>
>     1. Hypertext links enabling retrieval from multiple heterogeneous sources of
> information?
The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere. The address format includes an access method (=namespace), and for most name spaces a hostname and some sort of path.

We have a prototype hypertext editor for the NeXT, and a browser for line mode terminals which runs on almost anything. These can access files either locally, NFS mounted, or via anonymous FTP. They can also go out using a simple protocol (HTTP) to a server which interprets some other data and returns equivalent hypertext files. For example, we have a server running on our mainframe(http://cernvm.cern.ch/FIND in WWW syntax) which makes all the CERN computer center documentation available. The HTTP protocol allows for a keyword search on an index, which generates a list of matching documents as annother virtual hypertext document. If you're interested in using the code, mail me.  It's very prototype, but available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch. It's copyright CERN but free distribution and use is not normally a problem. The NeXTstep editor can also browse news. If you are using it to read this, then click on this: <http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html> to find out more about the project. We haven't put the news access into the line mode browser yet. We also have code for a hypertext server. You can use this to make files available (like anonymous FTP but faster because it only uses one connection). You can also hack it to take a hypertext address and generate a virtual hypertext document from any other data you have - database, live data etc. It's just a question of generating plain text or SGML (ugh! but standard) mark-up on the fly. The browsers then parse it on the fly.  The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data.  Collaborators welcome! I'll post a short summary as a separate article.  

Tim Berners-Lee                                ti...@info.cern.ch

World Wide Web project                        Tel: +41(22)767 3755     
CERN                                        Fax: +41(22)767 7155
1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland                 (usual disclaimer)

NL WSA-Mobile 2014 entries

m-Commerce: FietsFinder
m-Health: Beat the Microbead
m-Empowerment: SOS4US 
m-News: Blendle
m-Culture: Touch Van Gogh

We take you to a global stage in Brazil  – 10 more days to submit your social project World Summit Youth Award

Need promotion for you social initiative? –Winning the Youth Award will help! Don’t miss the chance to apply!
WSYA winners have the unique opportunity to be part of an international high-energy networking event. This year the winners’ celebration will take place in Brazil, Sao Paulo, Nov 28th – Dec 1st.
Meet and discuss with young social activists from all over the world about what happens after the UN MDGs. How will they work post 2015? To submit a project go to http://register.icnmdb.at/Youthaward/2014/

BPN 1683: The Finnish Prime Minister is wrong

Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb accused Apple's late founder Steve Jobs of crushing his Nordic country's job market by selling innovations that caught Finland's companies off guard. "We had two pillars we stood on: one was the IT industry, the other one was the paper industry," Stubb told Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri.

However, the Finnish Prime Minister is crying over spilled milk. There was nothing wrong with the innovations of the Finnish and in particular Nokia. The company had the brick, the Communicator phone and mobile internet since 1997. And in 2000 Nokia had a prototype of a tablet in its US laboratory (Which company did not have a prototype? HP was working on its PC/hybrid turnstile screen).

Problem with the Nordic countries and particularly Finland was that despite the famous glass and clothes design, the IT companies did not have the design ability, which Apple celebrated as part of its company policy. Nokia was technically well advanced with its Communicator and shelved in 2000 the beta-development of the tablet for another five years due to the economic downturn.

My observation

In 1999 I was in Finland at the first Scholars’ Network Conference in Tampere, hosted by the Hypermedialaboratory of Tampere University in Tampere, the home of my friends Jarmo, Cai and Sohvi. As I had been studying the second wave of electronic books with Rocket Books, I presented an overview to the audience of the history and the near future.

I divided the history in two waves. Sony hijacked the term Electronic Book in 1990 and introduced a adapted discman plus a minidisk. The first device weighted 450 grams, had a black and white screen, but it rendered text, drawings and photographs as well as music. E-Books were produced for it and in fact the American novel Sliver was first published on e-Book and later in print. The device was introduced in The Netherlands in 1993 and a consortium of publishers and producers bundled reference works like a dictionary and hotel guide. The e-book adventure of Sony did not catch on. In my opinion for the singular function of reading books (no games, no diary), only the electronic cover was too expensive.

The second wave came in 1997 when internet was there as a distribution mechanism for e-books to be downloaded on a small tablet. Again, it was experienced as an exciting proposition for distributing and storing a number of book. But in my opinion it failed again by the louzy design, black/white screen and the single functionality. So in 1999 I projected that smart phones and smart tablets would meet e-book functionality. There were not too many smart phones around at that time, while tablets were just around the corner.

Invitation by Nokia

After the presentation a manager of the Nokia Venture Company came up to me and invited me to Helsinki to speak to the people of Nokia Research and Business Development. They wanted to discover the world of e-books, the production and the copyright issues.

By April 2000 we had set a date and I travelled to Helsinki. I was told that I was going to be picked up by cab and that I would travel with a Nokia researcher in the States. So at 8.30h we were ready and waiting for the cab. In the meantime we had gotten into a discussion on e-book, smartphones and tablets. So in the cab he opened his attaché case and took a demonstration tablet out. It was clear to me that this tablet was for games and e-books. Later on it appeared that the tablet should not have been shown to me. But I had had a peep into the future of Nokia; little did I know that the tablet would be on the market some 4 or 5 years later.

It was not innovation, but design

 

Looking at the statement of the Finnish Prime Minister, I conclude that Nokia missed the design ability of Apple and not the innovation capability. If Nokia had been able to apply more design to the Communicator, they would have been a competitor or Apple. Nokia launched some designs of future Communicators, but did not carry out further laboratory work. And Nokia stopped developing the tablet due to the economic downturn. These days we know that during low economic tides innovative development should not get shelved, but should get priority in laboratories.  

I also conclude that the Nordic countries did not take the threat of e-book serious enough and thought that dead trees would be the basic material for newspapers, magazines and books for centuries to come. At a meeting in Stockholm in 2000 on e-books, many directors of the pulp industry were present. My advice to them was to invest in e-readers and e-books like their American colleague pulp company Mead Corp had done in the seventies with Mead Data Central, the originator of the Lexis-Nexis online information service, now a Reed-Elsevier company. The Nordic directors did not. So, the North American companies like Amazon and Kobe are now dominating the e-reader and e-book market.

Despite the misinterpretation of corporate history, the Finnish Prime Minister is looking at the bright side of the Nordic development. The Nordic pulp industry is now at least investing in bio-technology, bringing in its pulp knowledge. And the Finnish IT industry is putting money on the game industry with companies as Rovio with Angry Birds and many app developers.

Trending Finnish companies on Startup100

Trending companies on Startup100

Startup100 is a monthly chart of the Hottest Startups from Finland. Our proprietary ranking system tracks over 700 startups, and lists them based on the companies' online marketing activities and performance.

Want to see the movers and shakers? Go to www.startup100.net

 

BPN 1681: “My Data belongs to Me”

It is more than 10 years ago that the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Geneva (Switzerland). On June 10-13 the WSIS returned to Geneva as the ITU WSIS+10 Review High Level Event. The World Summit Award (WSA) has been part of WSIS and its goals since its first conference. Now at this time of WSIS+10 review and the UN agenda, it seems prudent to take a clear stand and start an initiative of great merit which also signals that WSA and its network has grown into more and addresses issues beyond e- and m-content excellence and the sustainable developement of content industry. In other words, WSA is going into a higher gear, moving from a Human Rights and Citizenship based approach to Personal Data and the Virtualisation Society.

Below you will find the text of the submitted document by Peter Bruck, the chairman of the Board of theWorld Summit Award.

 

 “My Data belongs to Me”

Given the explosion of data and the staggering amount of misuse, one must conclude that data protection is not enough. We need to switch paradigms. The issue is not protection, but rights, not safeguarding, but property ownership.

Today we live in societies with data everywhere, globally accessible, combined and analysed in entirely new ways. From the biggest metropolitan areas to the smallest villages, we are entering a new age.

The trend is clear. We are going to always be online, the things with which we work and live are going to always be connected and everything including nature will be continuously ICT assisted and monitored. Consequently, data is pervasively generated, collected and stored. Already now and more so in the future, data is being generated and stored automatically. It is part of the many applications of ICTs which facilitate our activities from the hospital visits to online shopping, from family chats to professional business exchanges, from TV viewing to birthday celebrations, from driving cars to jogging for fitness.

ICT systems and technologies create a virtual skin for us, a “data skin”. This skin will increasingly represent our total being. Outside of or disconnected from the data skin, a person ceases to exist at both the social and economic level. Without the data skin, we will not get credit at the bank, be able to book a holiday, cross borders or be admitted to an emergency ward.

Data is our virtual face and our factual administrative being. Through data, we find friends and mates, interact with authorities and institutions, do business, engage in politics or entertain ourselves.

Yet this skin does not belong to us, nor is it defined by us. Rather, the data skin belongs to those who operate the systems, who provide applications, who control the technologies, who trace what we do. The data of our phone calls belongs to telecom firms, the data of our social media chats to Facebook or Google, the data of our medical records to health insurance companies, the data of our vacation bookings to the hospitality portal operators. These players monetize our data and turn it into the biggest source of revenue and fastest growing profits of the future. They mine the data, analyse it, and model our behaviour. They shape our data skin.

The hype about big data is justified. The analytical exploitation of the global data deluge is driving new businesses and offers hitherto unknown commercial and political opportunities.

Edward Snowdon has shown us the astounding depth and shocking breadth of data collection by a national security agency and the recent US$ 19 billion purchase of the 150 employee text chat company WhatsApp by Facebook puts a clear price tag on the value of data. One might note that WhatsApp has achieved this company price tag without having any revenues from its users. WhatsApp does not need to collect money from its users. It garnered US$ 19 billion by gathering our data. Data delivers direct cash value.

 

With such big money at stake, data protection does not suffice. It is the wrong approach. It is too weak a concept to withstand the combined onslaught of technology and profit motives. We need to move to a much stronger concept, one that has cornerstone character and a foundational impact for open and democratic market societies. There is only one such concept: namely, ownership.

Considering the intensifying trends, data protection and privacy have to be replaced by property ownership as the basis and principle of order for all data which refer to an individual person.

 Since the English revolution in the 17th century, this approach became anchored in all democratic constitutions. The right to property ownership created the foundation for all modern societies and states through the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, article 17.

When the Internet was developed in the 1970s, few people considered the issue of who would own the data packets transmitted and switched through interoperable networks. Data and wire were thought of as legally one. As the internet grew and was adopted outside its original national defence context (ARPA) by academics, the basic philosophy regarding data was still naïve and even anarchistic. The founders sought to develop open and interoperable networks to unlock closed vendor based and proprietary technologies generating monopolies. They based their work largely on the basic idea of a commons. Data was thought to belong to no one or collectively to all. The right to use data was limited to those from whom it originated or to whom it was addressed.

On top of this, the philosophy and approach of data protection was developed. It is now enshrined in most developed countries by laws and acts of parliament and relates to issues of privacy or misuse. Special agencies enforce data protection, ombudspersons guard it.

This approach seemed reasonable and worked as long as data was relatively scarce, locked into distinctly separate systems and used for limited purposes. This is no longer the case.

The facts of technology today, of Big Data and a globally connected society, have annihilated the basic assumptions of the data protection paradigm. Today and in the future, data needs to be secured by property rights. This axiom provides that the person from whose behaviour the data originates is also and remains the owner. As an owner, the person has the power and right to decide on the data, including the right to alter, share, exchange, sell, give away or destroy it. More importantly, he or she has the right to exclude others from doing these things.

This regime would put the citizen as a person with rights back into the basic equation of globally operating social media platforms, voracious data collecting governments and all commercial exploitation. It would require these players to obtain explicit permission to use data referring to a person. They would need to be transparent about all usage and limited in the extent of usage.

If we as citizens are to be the owners, we must not only remain the subjects of data, but also the sovereign owners. We need to regain the rights set out by the Universal Declaration 65 years ago. We need to stop these rights from slipping away from us due to the virtualisation drive of ICTs in our societies.

The motto of today needs to be “My Data belongs to Me”.

About the author

Peter A. Bruck is the CEO and Chief Researcher of Research Studios Austria Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, the honorary President of the International Center for New Media and the Chairman of the Board of the World Summit Award on e-Content and creativity, the global best practice initiative in more than 170 UN member states as part of the United Nations Action on World Summit on Information Society (2003-2015).

URL: www.peterabruck.at | www.researchstudio.at | www.wsis-award.org

Contact: bruck [a] research.at

 

Tel: +43 662 834 602 | Fax: +43 662 834 602 222

BPN 1680: Disruption – so what is next?

Over the last decade we have seen that the internet, smartphones and tablets – as well as, for example, solar panels – have been very disruptive innovations. They have wiped out businesses and have created havoc in many industry sectors, such as retail, publishing, entertainment, telecommunications, music, photography and more.

So what is next? Emerging technologies such as wristband trackers, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Google Glass and smartwatches are certainly next on the list. The whole development of wearables is going to be very disruptive. A key sector that will be hit with this is healthcare. That sector has been far too slow to adjust to the situation where their customers (patients) at home have been excluded from most of the technological innovations. With increased health awareness, increasing costs and higher lifestyle expectations, the next wave of innovations in this sector will come from end-user services; and wearables are going to empower customers to take a far more leading role in healthcare activities.

As has become clear from the current changes in the market the new emerging technologies will continue to take on the role of game-changers, especially for companies who are looking to make meaningful and valuable connections with their customers. The importance of this is that companies who have already made the cultural change, and with the assistance of ICT tools have placed the customer at the centre of their business model, will be able to embrace these innovations. However many companies – and even whole sectors – are not yet in a position to benefit from these innovations, and before they can do so they will have to undergo a painful and costly business transformation. Those who fail to do so will end up – as has happened over the last few years in relation to the internet and smartphone innovations – as road-kill on the digital superhighway.

Organisations will have to reinvent themselves and change their business models in order to remain relevant to their customers.

While all of the technological elements are critical in these disruptive developments even more important – or at least equally so – is affordability. The fact that within years these technologies reached mass markets indicates that customers can afford them; large-scale uptakes of previous innovations (radio, TV, telephone, cars, home electronics) often took many decades.

What makes these technologies so disruptive is that they can remove much as 80% of the costs from the old ‘analogue’ business models. This is very worrying for the developed economies, where for several years in a row many industry sectors have experienced a decrease in productivity. According to a report from the Productivity Commission, in Australia seven of the twelve key industry sectors show negative productivity. Unless these sectors transform themselves they will only slide further back. At the same time we see large productivity increases in developing economies. Here innovations can be developed from a greenfield position (no legacy), and in these cases innovations only add 10% to costs in their business models. In developed ‘brownfield’ economies retrofitting innovations (that is, transformation from existing models) costs at least ten times more.

This cost factor is a significant contributor to the delays in organisations transforming themselves. They face a significant upfront investment in order to make themselves smarter.

However, once implemented these innovations provide organisations with enormous efficiencies and real time data. This then assists them to speed up decision-making processes, while at the same time liberating consumers, providing great services and experiences, and tailoring communication to a location and a moment.

Paul Budde - See more at: http://www.buddeblog.com.au/frompaulsdesk/disruption-so-what-is-next/#sthash.n1Y4KrOV.dpuf
 

BPN 1679: Mobile and video game John Lennon

I just picked up this news by Ralph Simon from the Facebook wire.

Dateline: Strawberry Fields, New York City
l. to r. Ralph Simon, Mobilium Global CEO, Yoko Ono & Niall Austin, CEO of Butterfly Games celebrating their just signed partnership to produce the first-ever mobile and video game featuring the work, graphics and music of John Lennon. The signing took place at Yoko's Manhattan home in The Dakota Building - John Lennon's piano can be seen in the background. This will mark the first time that any of The Beatles have signed a mobile games deal. "Let's keep that eternal John Lennon flame alive ... by bringing it to the modern generation of mobile "screenagers" and video gamers", said multi-dimensional artist, Yoko.

This is exciting news: the production of a mobile and  a video game featuring the work, graphics and music of John Lennon. The production will be in the hands of a very creative man and his company the Irishman Niall Austin. In the last edition of the World Summit Award Mobile he and his other company Omnimotion Technology was awarded for showing how gesture recognition and motion control technology works. This technology is working on apps that get children interested in sport and help stroke victims recover. It is great to see him accompagnied by Ralph Simon, member of the board of the World Summit.

 

 

 

March 1, 2014: Future Day

an initiative of  

Association of Professional Futurists

Cindy Frewen, Chair cfw(at)frewenarchitects(dot)com

Club of Amsterdam

Felix B Bopp, Chairman – felix(at)clubofamsterdam(dot)com

Humanity+

Adam A. Ford, Secretary tech101(at)gmail(dot)com

The Millennium Project

Jerome Glenn, CEO, Jerome.Glenn(at)Millennium-Project(dot)org

World Future Society

Tim Mack, President tmack(at)wfs(dot)org

World Futures Studies Federation

Jennifer Gidley, President wfsf.president(at)jennifergidley(dot)com

Movie on Future Day

 

 

BPN 1678: Celebrating public internet in The Netherlands

In the past week, there were celebrations in Holland in the framework of the introduction of public internet in 1994. The launch of De Digitale Stad (Digital City) on 15 January 1994 was commemorated. The event sparked off public internet in The Netherlands, which in less than three years registered one million internet users. Both events were celebrated, The Digital City in Amsterdam and public internet in The Hague. I was invited to speak at The Hague event.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam announced two happenings in the framework of the launch of the Digital City. The Waag Society and the archaeological department of the Digital City announced two meetings addressing the question: How free and open is internet yet? On January 15 the international campaign "The Internet is broken . Let's fix the internet.",  was joined.  This meeting was dealing with subjects as  secure and reliable Internet technology, the development of secure protocols, hardware and software NSA proof , designing user-friendly cryptography, supporting data protection legislation and the development of alternative social media and search engines . On January 16 , the results of the meeting "The Internet is broken. Let's fix the internet" were presented in the meeting Silent rough roadmap”.

The Hague

At the Museum for Communication there was an evening meeting, organized around the new permanent exhibition Muscom needs internet. There were three presentations.

Consumer internet

The first presentation dealt with 1994, the year in which consumer Internet made a breakthrough of consumer Internet in the Netherlands. From 1980 Dutch consumers could retrieve information through the online service Viditel and use a rudimentary e - mail service. Until January 1, 1997, this videotext service and its successor Videotex Nederland attracted 325,000 users who irregularly used the service. When the Digital City opened its doors in the context of the municipal elections in Amsterdam in 1994, internet was not only available for users in Amsterdam, but also available for  users from around the country. On March 23, 1994,  De Groene, a weekly, reported, that already 12,000 users were registered. And on January 1 1997, there were  1 million registered users in the Netherlands, using the services of several ISPs (Digital City, Euronet*Internet, Planet Internet and World Online). In 17 years videotext services had totalled 325.000 users, while internet tripled its users to 1 million in three years thanks to the disruptive technology of the Internet.

I also had an epilogue in my pocket, but I forgot to read it out in public. “Marshall McLuhan argued in his book Understanding Media (1974 ): A new medium is never an addition to the old media nor let the old media alone. The new medium does not stop with the pushing of older media until the new forms and positions have been found in the media landscape.

Online has started to conquer strategic positions in the media from 1970 onwards. Since the sixties online pioneers such Lickleder and Doug Engelbart saw a new world for themselves with electronic messaging services, video telephony, electronic ordering and shopping, electronic banking, electronic publishing and translation electronically. Almost all technical issues had been rudimentarily developed in the pre-Internet age.

But thanks to the internet a flywheel effect came into effect. There was a wide user base, and there was a great advancement in refining technology such as e-mail, icu, Skype, e-shopping, e-banking, digital publishing and translation. Now internet has already intervened in the technology and economics, but there  is still some teething to be done. Internet will dig deeper into everyday life, social customs and influencing lifestyle. Life as well as  the Museum for Communication needs internet.

Internet abstinence

The second speaker was Bram van Montfoort. This youngster has lived without internet for a year and has written a book about internet abstinence. He told about the trials and tribulations he has experienced in that year : no Internet and no Facebook. He noticed that he was struggling to enroll into college for a bachelor degree journalism. His responses to requests by letter were not immediate as with e-mail. And after a year in the monastery of analogue media thousands of emails awaited him. His experiences he shares via an analogue medium, the book Een jaar offline (A year offline).

It became clear that the pace of his life changed and that hand written letters became an art form again. I recognize the custom of writing letters. During my time in boarding school, but also during my studies, I wrote many a letter to my parents and friends, in which I told him what I had been through and what future ideals I was striving after. Those subject you will not see addressed in emails and FB postings.

The project Bram van Montfoort lasted for a year. There have been similar projects of internet abstinence previously, but they usually were shorter and of course in a different era and context. Jeroen van Loon, the third speaker, has spent two months without internet during his studies. He got RSI from internet and decided to ignore internet. In 2011, a college in Utrecht started a research project on internet abstinence for a week with sixteen people. They reported by video about their experiences and their " withdrawal symptoms". And in 1996, a number of Internet fanatics in Rotterdam had themselves locked up for a period of time. Public reports on the internet abstinence were published. Of course there are big differences between Internet users in 1996 and 2012. In 2012, Internet penetrated much more in the daily lives of people.

Muscom needs internet

Life on the needs internet project by Jeroen van Loon I wrote as once a posting, a project awarded in the European Youth Award (EYA). Meanwhile, the internet artist has collected more than 300 handwritten letters. This website of this collection now has a new design and is more accessible. Now users can look for letters by categories such as gender, age and region as well as categories such as leisure, online/offline and pre-internet. The letters tell the stories about their first experiences with internet by people worldwide. They cheer the ease of making social contacts, but also question big brother, while children indicate that they may sit behind the computer for a limited time. The Museum for Communication in The Hague has now made ​​a selection from this letter collection and putt eight letters on permanent display under the title Muscom needs internet. For the museum, this is a worthy entry into the world of Internet.

BPN 1677: Launch Digital City Amsterdam (1994)

 

Launch Digital City in Amsterdam

15 January 1994

  

 

BPN 1676: Sound of Colors

This is not a blog posting about synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon of a joining together of sensations that are normally experienced separately (hearing green grass), but the posting will deal with cyborg, the joining of organic and material parts. In fact it will concern the first cyborg ever.

The word cyborg was not in my encyclopaedia till I met Ann Westfelt, a Swedish jury member of the Europrix Awards. In a conversation about trade literature a Scandinavian book on cyborgs was mentioned. But it took till 2004 before I was confronted with a real example, not a concept, again during a Europrix jury.

Neil Harbisson at the Europrix party, talking to Chiara Boeri, an Italian artist.

 

The project from Britain was an entry by the out-of-the-box thinker Adam Montandon. He had met Neil Harbisson, who suffers from a rare disease, achromatopsia. This condition is caused by genes, so that the affected people get monochromatism or complete colour blindness. They really only see black and white and their colour blindness differs from the variety with which the red and green colours can be distinguished.

For a student arts complete colour blindness is an absolute disaster as the colour palette is not more than black and white, not even grey. This was not only annoying for his study, but also in everyday life. "I confused red jam with tomato and orange juice with apple juice" Neil said in an interview. He also used to wear clothes in one colour, black.

After a lecture on cybernetics at the Plymouth University, given by the 23 -year-old Englishman Adam Montandon, Neil got in touch with him and told him about his disability. Adam looked into the problem for his graduation assignment. It was clear that he needed a camera and computer to record colours. But Adam also realized that only then the problem starts. Because how do you convert colour? With words you cannot fully specify the colour shades. Eventually he chose for conversion of colours into sounds. Neil got a camera on his head, a PC in his backpack and an earpiece. The structure he called Eye-borg.

Adam Montandon developed colour-to- sound conversion software, that worked dynamically. Each level got a frequency; in this way, the pure intensity of the colour can be determined and displayed. With a noise value Neil had to learn the pitch of the sounds. Red is translated in low noise , while violet has a high sound. And he did learn fast. Soon he started to wear colourful clothes on his blue jeans.

 

Passport photograph of Neil Harbisson

Soon Adam and Neil saw that technology is one solution, but they also saw the social implication. The gear has become part of his body. It has become a medical prosthesis. So he received a certificate from the National Health regarding his camera. In the meantime he has received a passport with a portrait photograph showing the camera.

Now a group of creatives wants to produce a documentary movie with the title Sound of Colors. The title shows similarity to The Sound of Music, the movie which plays in Austria. That country supported the Europrix Awards and the selection of the sonochromatic cyborg. But then in 2011 Arnau Gifreu Castells of the Universitat Ramón Llull – Universitat de Vic in Spain reports in Graz (Austria) about an audiovisual and online interactive documentary about Neil Harbisson and the cyborg, produced as part of a degree project. And now this project gets a sequel in an official documentary.

 

The official documentary about the first cyborg Sound of Colors will be a crowdfunded project. And now the circle is round. The crowdfunding organiser is the Spanish organisation Verkami, which in 2013 in Sri Lanka received the World Summit Award, the successor to the Europrix Awards. The project group is requesting 3.200 euro to produce the documentary.


Update Febr. 1, 2014: The official documentary about the first cyborg Sound of Colors was a  crowdfunded project by the Spanish organiser Verkami. The requested 32.000 euro has been pledged for and even more, while there are still 18 days left. So the making of the movie can start.

BPN 1675: 2014: already a memorable year

The new year has only just begun. Yet, for me 2014 is already a year to remember. It is 20 years since the Internet for consumers made ​​her entry in the Netherlands. On January 15, 1994 the ISP launched The Digital City ( DDS ) in Amsterdam.

The Digital City ( DDS ) started on Saturday January 15, 1994 with an television interview in the eight o'clock news. DDS was an internet project, intended as a discussion forum in the run up to the municipal elections of March 1994. The project was designed by netactivisten (Hack -Tic), the municipality and partly inspired by Marleen Stikker, the virtual mayor of the city. The town was based on community networks ( free nets) in the U.S. and Canada. The model of the city was chosen as a metaphor.

First DDS interface text without graphics (DDS Archief)

DDS Interface 3.0 DDS Archief)

 

DDS was a great success. In six weeks, 10,000 people applied for access to the city. By visiting the virtual mayor of organizations, but also to institutions, the project received much local attention, as the mayor visited organisations and institutions. And it were not only people coming from Amsterdam, but also people from across the Netherlands. After the project DDS went on as an Internet service provider. DDS actually opened the doors for Internet consumers by January 1994 and by January 1, 1997 the Netherlands  had registered 1 million internet consumers.

The success of DDS was surprising. There used to be an online and multimedia industry in the Netherlands. Online databases such as Kluwer Legal Database were used for scientific, technical and business research. Electronic messaging services like Memocom were separate, mainly business services. For consumers, there was the information service Viditel, followed by Videotex Netherlands. And for amateurs, there were the Bulletin Board Systems ( BBS ). Furthermore, there was there a beginning of a multimedia industry with text CD-ROMs, multimedia CD- ROMs and CD -i titles as well as a few electronic books. But this industry was only 100 million guilders ( 45 million euros) great in revenues and the consumer share was very low.

Internet, however, developed separately from this industry, mainly through the academic network SURF. As of 1990 there were ISPs and by the end of 1993 there were approximately 295 companies connected to the Internet. In May 1993, XS4ALL opened an Internet service to consumers. Although in the first two days, 500 consumers were registered, the number of subscribers grew slowly. DDS, however, was the driver and was a resounding success.

In retrospect, a number of factors accounted for this consumer success.

a. The number of households with a PC in the Netherlands had increased from 7 percent in 1985 to 34 percent in 1994.
b. People wanted to do more with the PC than gaming, word processing, accounting and consult encyclopedias on CD - ROM.
c. Internet came as a disruptive technology. Existing online and multimedia technologies had to adapt or eventually disappeared, eg videotex and CD-i. Out of the concrete mixer containing different technologies, eventually only Internet and email survived. Teletext and CD - OM stayed on, but played no important part anymore.

 

 d. Consumer internet was cheap compared to online databases. Moreover, the Internet technology was user-friendly thanks to hypertext, had more graphic opportunity and had greater potency multimedia ( text, image, video and sound). Besides, Internet combined with email.

e. Internet did not developed within the existing online and multimedia industry, but within the bosom of universities and scientific institutions. Companies that had internet installed proved attractive to students after completion of their academic studies.

For those interested, Reinder Rustema wrote a doctoral thesis on the Digital City in 2001.