Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Institute for Planning

Course 3.314 Virtual Places                                                                             9.3.2004 revised 12.4.2004

 

Back to the start page of the course: http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_overview2004.htm

 

Bo Gršnlund:

Some introductory remarks on the information society, technology, virtual places, architecture, the city and the tasks of architects.

 

This text covers the topics of

- The third wave

- The meaning of 'virtual'

- The meaning of 'place'

- The question of 'resolution'

- High rates of change

- The bandwidth of feelings - 11 Mbps

- Long term tendencies - get wired

- Architects and 'virtual places'

- Goodby to the future as we know it?

 

- Links to slide shows

- Links to further reading

________________________________________________________________________

 

The year 2003 was maybe the year, when architecture came of age in relation to the digital world. This year 'The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture' in 688 pages was published in English - about the city, technology and society in the information age - and full of key words related to issues taken up in this course.

http://architettura.supereva.it/books/2003/200310006/index_en.htm

 

But let us start further back.....

 

The third wave

 

Almost 25 years ago the futurologist Alvin Toffler wrote a world best seller book called 'The third wave'. Although futurology (future research) cannot claim scientific validity, I think he was basically right in his claim, that the outline of human civilization can be looked upon as three waves. The first was a en elementary biological one focused on agriculture and slow technological development. The second began around 18th century and focused on mechanical industrialisation. The third, which has knowledge and information not only as a means of production but as its major content, began around 1950 and started to gain momentum around 1980 with the introduction of microcomputers. I myself, now at age 61, was born into the final years of the second wave, but have for long tried to be a part of the third. All - or most of you - students of architecture today, were born directly into the early third wave of human history.

 

The second wave was a new wealth creation system based on money and industrialisation. It led to a split of economics into production and consumption, a change in power, organisation and politics, an attempted homogeneity of products, people, time and space as well as modernisation in the form of urbanisation. It also led to new and split personalities.

 

According to Toffler, the third wave is a new wealth creation system based on knowledge. It will lead to a growing unification of production and consumption, another major change of power, organisation and politics as well as diversification and differentiation of people, products, time, and space. Toffler thinks it also will lead to de-urbanisation, though some others talk about re-urbanising as another possibility. The third wave will also lead to new and multiple personalities.

 

( See eg.: http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Lefebvreindlaeg_21_3_97v2.html - anchor1057658

and http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Nordplan_95_12stor.html - these were my interpretations in the 1990's - they are still reasonable but the informational city now increasingly integrates bits and atoms - you are increasingly 'on' in both 'worlds' at once through mobile phones, PDAs, laptops, WIFI hotspots, etc.)

 

This is the general framework into which this course on 'Virtual Places' is set, though the concept 'Virtual Places' can cover many things and many contradictions. Each of the terms 'virtual' and 'places' can be interpreted in several ways and the terms also undergo change through time.

 

 

The meaning of 'virtual'

 

Virtual can basically mean two things: 1) Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name. 2) Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination.

 

'Virtual' is often opposed to 'real', but in a slippery way as is indicated both in the term 'virtual reality' (a simulation as close to reality as possible through the experiences of as many of the human senses as possible) and the term 'real virtuality', which is Manual Castells' way of turning the whole question on its head in his famous trilogy on the Network Society in the mid 1990's. Information technologies contain a further possibility though, the one of construction of 'new realities' and not only of more advanced simulations - you can also say the possibility of the creation of new virtual worlds in their own rights. Enter the field of the arts......as well as new kinds of play and new kinds of games.

 

'Virtual' in a way often does not stay 'virtual' though. As new 'virtual' constructs become commonplace and 'normal' and part of established habitual frameworks, we tend to stop think of them as 'virtual' any more. Telephones made virtual meeting of voices possible. When it was introduced it was a strange technology that made it possible at a distance to speak to someone you could not see. It also included a weakening of the control of who speaks to who and when. Today we take this for granted and don't think of a telephone call as a virtual meeting - unless we set up a telephone conference with participants in more than two locations.

 

In general, the 'virtual' often include ways of overcoming of distances in time and space. To say this is also to say that richness in information, complexity and speed have to be taken into account, as well as permanence and recoverability.

 

Virtuality is not a new phenomenon of the information age, or the third wave. Virtuality has been with us since man started to paint animals on the walls of caves some 20.00 years ago. It increased with the development of religious buildings and the invention of writing, money and the theatre. Much later we got perspective drawings, panoramas, photography, gramophones, movies, radio, TV, etc. as well as modern art that broke away from depicting 'reality'.

 

What is new with virtuality in our times is the speed and reach of digital information, its accessibility and low cost, its large bandwidth (the amount of data that can be transferred in one unit of time), its multisensory possibilities (for now mostly called multimedia, but developing into immersive technologies), and the convergence of technologies into generalised packet-based bit-streams.

 

What is new is also an immense increase in the not so agreeable aspects of virtuality, such as information 'noise', exponential growth of data, increasing difficulty to find efficient ways through the information jungle. New is also the easy destruction of data, and data that get lost because it is not archived for the future or archived in media formats that quickly deteriorates and/or quickly become technically obsolete and inaccessible.

 

Let's now we leave the concept of 'virtual' for a moment, and think about 'place'.....

 

 

The meaning of 'place'

 

Sometimes the words place and space are used almost as synonyms, but there is a growing tendency in academia, especially in phenomenology, to consider place and space as opposites. Space then denotes locations, planes and volumes as abstractions, coordinates, areas, voids and metric distance.

 

A place on the other hand, as a phenomenon, is unique in character and a concrete locality that includes human actions through time and possibilities of meeting and encounter. A place also has meanings and memories - normally both collective and individual. Its physical expression is often possible to visualise, and recognise, although its 'image' only tells part of the story. It normally also have a name. A further characteristic of a place is that it has other neighbouring, but different places around them. Places can be strong or weak, both objectively and/or subjectively. Traditionally 'strong' places often have special features of the natural landscape as a starting point, but they can also be completely manmade, especially at the smaller scale. On this background, a 'virtual' place has a lot to live up to, if it is going to be a 'strong' place.

 

Some books on 'places': http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/books_places.jpg

 

The question of 'resolution'

 

Places preferably also involve as many senses as possible and the possibilities of using the senses at their full 'resolution'. New technologies of 'virtuality' with advantages of overcoming distances in space and time often do so at the 'price' of reducing resolution. Written language is less expressive than 'real' speak. The first movies were flickering, grainy, black-and-white and without sound. Digital electronic media in the beginning was very low resolution too, extremely low. But that is changing quickly and with great potential, as this media not only reaches towards the speed of light, but also contains the possibilities of individuation and immediate change. More and more of the information for the human senses is possible to store and transfer in a digital format - today sight and sound and to some extent bodily movement. Experiments are being done with smell and skin sensations as well.

 

I bought my first computer 20 years ago, about the time when many of you were born. My first computer was very reductive, but it could do things that I had not been able to do before, e.g. to write text that could be edited later without rewriting everything. My first computer had the brand name 'NewBrain'. Let's see what has happened since then and compare it to my new Mac G4 state of the art laptop bought in December 2002 at about half the price of my first computer. By the way, the PowerBook G4 is my 7th computer, as you have to upgrade every three years or so to stay in touch with the new possibilities.

 

 

NewBrain 1983

PowerBook G4 2003

Increase

Processor

4 MHz, 8 bit

1 GHz, 32 bit

1000 x (actually more)

RAM memory

64 KB

1 GB

16000 x

Disk

800 Kb

60 GB

80000 x

Screen

480x640x2 bit

850x1280x24bit

85 x

Sound

no

2 channel, 20MHz +

-

modem, local net, internet

no, no, no

54 Kb / 100 Mb / yes

-

 

These development figures in 20 years tend to underestimate the change, as there are more factors involved that have undergone great development as well (pipelining, cache memory, etc.).

 

High rates of change

 

High rates of change has been a general norm in the digital electronic world since the early 1960's. Digital chips has doubled their performance every 18 months since then and they will roughly continue to so for decades to come (Moore's law), as there are no more technical barriers ahead than can be overcome. Telecommunications have grown even faster, doubling in capacity every 9 months or so. In economic terms we have got used to growth rates of 2 to 4 percent a year in general in Western societies. In the digital world we are talking about growth rates of 65 to 130 percent a year - exponential sustained growth of an order that human societies has never seen before. This difference has to do with the difference between atoms and bits, as Nicholas Negroponte of MIT MediaLab puts it (Being Digital, 1995), or the difference between materia and energy on the one hand and information on the other.

 

These changes are not only quantitative. They make qualitative changes possible - from changes in how individuals use the new technologies to the ways societies function. 65 % of Danes today have internet at home, 80% at work. Lately, ADSL and cable connections about 10 times faster than modem is starting to become common in the homes too.

 

At this point in time, we are only about a factor of 10 away from the capacity of digitally transmitting the full bandwidth of our senses and the possibility to do so individually.

 

 

The bandwidth of feelings - 11 Mbps

 

The Danish science journalist Tor Nżrretranders has shown (Stedet som ikke er, 1997), that the maximum 'intake' of information for all of the humans senses together is about 11 Mbps (11 million bits per second), of which 10 Mbps, or about 90 percent, has to do with vision.

See: http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Senses and bandwidth.html

 

11 Mbps is an important level to focus on, as higher bandwidths is of no direct use for human experience because our bodies cannot handle more. You can also say, that 11 Mbps is the same as the bandwidth of feelings.

 

The possibility of a further increase with a factor of 10 to reach 11 Mbps individually is in principle possible in less than five years. In reality it will take a little longer, mainly because of 'the last mile problem' of extending the fibre optic connection from the telecommunications 'backbones' to each house. Anyhow, in many parts of the developed world we will soon be there.

 

 

Long term tendencies - get wired

 

To get an overview of the long term tendencies in technological development and related economic, social and cultural issues it is useful e.g. to follow the US magazine 'Wired'. Through the last 5-6 years articles have been presented here related to 'The long boom', 'The new economy', 'The Telecosm', 'Gigatrends' etc. These articles are, I think, basically right, although they underplay the uncertainties and ups and downs of economic development.

 

(See links to these articles at the end of this text)

 

The five major technologies of our time are nanotechnology (machines built atom by atom), alternative energy (of which hydrogen fuels cells are the most promising), biotechnology (mainly genetic technologies), telecommunications and computers. Information is central to all of them and maybe especially for the last three. All five contain enormous potentials for further development. Knowledge and investments increase at such a rate that development speeds will remain high.

 

For the question of 'virtual places' telecommunications development is a major key. Here George Gilder (Telecosm, 2000) says, that the capacity of the electromagnetic spectrum for practical purposes is infinite. This is absolutely true for fibre optics, but even radio transmitted signals can grow in capacity as you move up spectrum and as you develop more efficient technologies.

 

On the other hand, although a lot has been done to improve the human access to the digital world and vice versa, the questions of efficient, great, and creative interfaces leaves a lot of room for further improvement. One tendency is developing the interface into a cave were you are immersed, but there are many other possibilities.

 

Further, it is not only 'places' that undergo change. The human body will to some extent do it as well, creating new possibilities of experience. This is why we not only talk about Cyberspace (a term introduced by William Gibson in his novel 'Neuromancer' in 1984) but also about Cyborgs (see e.g. Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto' http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html).

 

If we leave futurist implementations for a moment, what 'Virtual Places' do we actually have today?

We are already having virtual shops, virtual auctions and virtual casinos, virtual chat rooms and virtual dating services, as well as interpersonal computer gaming places. We are starting to get virtual museums, virtual libraries, virtual schools and universities, virtual town halls, virtual companies, virtual laboratories, etc., not to talk about sites on the internet in general, domain names, file sharing services, virtual newspapers and e-zines, internet radio from the other side of the globe and (slowly) e-books and video on demand.

 

At the same time face to face contacts continue to be very important - and seemingly more important 'the higher' you are placed in the social strata. Highly educated people and advanced technical specialists also tend to concentrate in rather few large cities with a high degree of many kinds of choice.

 

 

Architects and 'virtual places'

 

For architects the concept of 'virtual places' is, I think, a great challenge in many ways.

 

- We have to rethink both buildings and cities as intelligence and digitally initiated change is possible build into them and new interface technologies become possible. The glass box might e.g. change into a box of computer screens, just to mention one thing.

 

- At a smaller scale, most objects that have to do with industrial design will also get digital information layers built in.

 

- Our methods of working with the design of things, buildings and cities will develop through digital technologies - not only through detailed 3D modelling, digital lighting and rendering of surfaces, but also through the development of better analytical tools, complex form generating algorithms and direct integration with fabrication processes. The tools of architects have always had implications for the resulting architecture - they are not just neutral.

 

- There are many important design tasks in the virtual worlds themselves, where architects might contribute, from the visual expressions of 'sites' to the development of new and better interfaces as well as better navigation tools. A growing number of architects will design for the digital world of bits rather than for the material world of atoms.

 

Most people in developed countries are already using a lot of time in 'virtual places'. We use at least 6 hours a day on different kinds of media (some of this media time is used in a passive way though). The competition for our attention will increase, and attention is the most scarce resource as we approach the digital bandwidth of feelings.

 

 

Goodby to the future as we know it?

 

- Computers will be 1.000.000 times more powerful in the next 30 years.

 

- 99 percent of the computing power will not be in computers but in almost everything else. There will be a digital information layer in most things - the digital and the physical will fuse.

 

- We will get a 1000 times more bandwidth in telecommunications. Most of the data traffic will be computers talking to computers without human involvement. In the end we will get wired almost for free.

 

- As a result the possibility of individualization will increase.

 

This development also has a price, as we have to say good-by to future as we know it: In 40-50 years from now, the acceleration of change will develop into a singularity (like a black hole of information, where the future will be completely unpredictable to us) - humans will not be able to comprehend the changes unless we ourselves fuse with the computers, says Ray Kurzweil (The age of spiritual machines, 1999). See http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/kurzweil.html

 

I will probably not live that long, but you, young students will, and full blown 'virtual places' will be part of your 'reality', more than it has been to anyone before.

 

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Links to slide shows from Bo's lecture March 9, 2004 - with some later added stuff as well:

 

'Wired' history - highlight from the more than 10 years of the magazine Wired:

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Wired_history_show/index.htm  (2,9 MB in all)

 

'The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture' - some selected pages scanned including the key words:

advanced architecture, advertising, architecture, attractors, avatar, chance, chaos, code, complex systems, complexity, cyberpunk, cyberspace, cyberspace architecture, cybertect, cyborg architechture, data, data driven forms, datascape, digital, entropy, fractal, informational, information structures, m.city (multicity), metapolis, net, network of cities, networks, pixels, places, (re)urbanism, software, space, telepolis, telework, virtual (6,9 MB in all):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/metapolis_dictionary_show/index.htm

 

Internet geography and coverage (2,3 MB):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Internet_show/index.htm

 

Digital Technologies (2,3 MB):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Digital_technologies_show/index.htm

 

New media (1,4 MB)

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/New_media_show/index.htm

 

Digital City (2,2 MB):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Digital_city_show/index.htm

 

Digtal architecture / Blob architecture (1,4 MB):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Digital_architecture_show/index.htm

 

Digtal art (1 MB):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Digital_art_show/index.htm

 

Digital Dwelling (1,8 MB):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Digital_dwelling_show/index.htm

 

--------------

Some further reading links:

 

On what is the 'meaning' of the term 'virtual' etc.:

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/VirtualPlacesAHDictionary.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Virtual Places Bookshelf.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Virtual Places Britannica.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Infotech dictionaries.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/FilosofileksikonVP.html

 

On some basic issues of communication, computing and the internet took the path trough the following documents (that are too optimistic about the economic development, but technologically basically correct):

 

http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Internet_och_OEP.html - a text in Swedish - just look at the pictures and diagrams - one table is translated though :

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Senses and bandwidth.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/gilder.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Gilder_Telecosm.html

more on 'Telecosm' can be found here: http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Gilder_intro.html

 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/ (on Giga-trends 2001)

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/BG_Technology_4_506.htm

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/LongBoom.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/New_Economy.html

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/kurzweil.html

 

On the geography of the internet:

http://www.MappingCyberspace.com/gallery/figure1_1.html

http://www.MappingCyberspace.com/gallery/figure4_3.html

http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500?p=Dest_W_t_40_L1

http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/geographic.html

http://www.telegeography.com/ (see wall maps)

http://www.zooknic.com/

http://www.zooknic.com/Users/global_2001_08.html

 

Some other generally interesting texts that Bo Gršnlund mentioned:

 

Willam Mitchell, dean at school of architecture at MIT, Cambridge, Mass.:

The City of Bits (from the mid 1990's - but still good and basic (whole book - 600 KB!):

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Mitchell_City of bits.html

 

Some concept 'pairs' in the City of Bits

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/City of Bits Dualisms list.html

 

E-topia

http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~y.yan/e_topia/about.htm

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/e-topia_quotes.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/e-topia_3_chapters.html

 

Me++:

At the moment I am reading William J. Mitchell's new book 'Me++' - the third in the row starting with 'City of Bits' and 'Etopia' - and I have found an interesting lecture by him at MIT on this book. If you have Real Player installed and a broadband connection outside the school you can access it here: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/170/ Please select the appropriate download speed both at the MIT page and in the internal preferences for the Real Player if you want a large and smoothly moving video image. (I talked to the IT-boss at our school here in Copenhagen yesterday, and he confirmed that our Firewall prevents you from looking at Real Player video from inside the school network connections. If any of you know about software that can capture a Real Player video stream to a hard disk, we can put it on the server though.)

My summary of Me++ is here: http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Mitchell_me_plusplus.htm

 

Manuell Castells, prof. of sociology, UC Berleley:

http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/3_314_Eng_v3_march2002.htm - Castells_1968_1

http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Castells.html

http://www.thechronicle.demon.co.uk/archive/castells.htm

 

Paul Virilio, architect of a philosophical and critical kind - quotes from 'The Information Bomb':

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Virilio_notes.html

 

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems, the most talked about and most scary article in the history of 'Wired'

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Bill_Joy_Qoutes.html

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/Bill_Joy_Whole.html

 

Some further links to Wired, Mitchell, Castells, etc:

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_Upload_05_03/More _links_Wired_etc.html

 

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Also see Bo's overview 2003 on Internet articles in 'The Economist' - the one on geography is especially interesting related to cities and architecture:

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Economist_digital_short.htm

 

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There was a new Internet speed record March 7, 2003 : 6,7 GB (= 2 full quality DVD-movies = four hours of movies in HDTV quality with surround sound) sent from California to Amsterdam in 58 seconds. This speed of about 1000Mbps is about 100 times larger than the bandwidth of the human senses (compare Nżrretranders on the bandwidth of senses, mentioned above):

 

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/03/07/speed.record/index.html

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Mar/gee20030310019018.htm

http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1046974975.html

 

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Latest from Wired:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/machines.html (on living machines and new facts of life, 2004)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/newworld.html (new space - Rem Kooolhaas guest editor, 2003 - also see 'Plus' at the right of the page!)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/play.html (Christopher Alexander 2004 on Architecture and order of nature - maybee something to think of in the virtual world as well?)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/unwired/ (WIFI revolution 2003)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.11/start.html?pg=11 (Six degrees....books 2002)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/view.html?pg=5 (Mass storage 2003)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/wiredhomeindex.html (Wired dwelling 2004)

 

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More readings on 'virtual places', etc. - a photo of some of Bo's books

http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/Books_VP.jpg

 

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Course 3.314                                                                                                               March / April 2004

Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen

 

Back to main page of the course: http://homepage.mac.com/bogronlund/3_314_overview2004.htm