Il n'est que pure folie de vouloir que les choses survivent à leur raison d'avoir été
Voici la liste des billets du blog qui contienent "urbanisme".
TAVICA, SL, ANA, the vanishing (urban) public space
I want here to argue that use and presence of new medias - with new medias I mean Internet and mobile phone, video cameras, RFID and GPS, so as CAAD and free daily newspapers - do not create new social settings, but only permit new practices and behaviours which already are, consciously or unconsciously, expected by the society or initiated by the authorities. New medias do not create any change in social settings or spaces of the city, new medias are just correlating the forthcoming form of society: thus, a new Weltanschauung is nowadays emerging where the respective places of individual, civil society and authorities are fundamentally changing.
My argumentation follows this line:
1. New technologies have never created neither new devices nor new uses, but new expectations always incited to build new tools for new uses. Impulse for the creation of new tools is to be found in new social, political, philosophical and economical settings.
2. New media such as TAVICA, SL, and ANA permit uses and behaviours which were, whether consciously or unconsciously, already required for years, in order to fit the transformations of society.
3. A new type of society is arising, which needs new tools and new medias to express itself in a new form of public space and a in a new relation to public space.
Keeping in mind in our Information Age that the arising Knowledge Society is far from a utopian Wisdom Society, we cannot reckon on new medias to change cities or widely to change the world (isn't it the same?). Nevertheless, studying these new medias as the signs and landmarks of our new globalized society could help us understand the current transformations, in the aim to interact and making an other world possible.
www.lafabricadecosasbonitas.com
1. Technologies, tools, and uses
Technologies and tools, as everybody knows, are not responsible of their use and do not oblige anybody to use them. Let's begin with coarse examples:
The Zyklon B gas was not responsible of the death of several millions people, but a small group of 15 men who decided the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' at the Wannsee conference (20 January 1942), so as the many people who applied it.
French colonialism and its supporters, but not napalm itself (although developed in the aim to kill during the U.S. in World War II by a team of Harvard chemists led by Louis Fieser), were responsible for killing and hurting millions of people in Vietnam "thanks" to the French army (for the first time on 17 January 1951 in Vinh Yen). Later, many other governments used as well this product in their will of domination.
Neither this terrific liquid in Vietnam, or rough primitive machetes in Rwanda, nor other harmless tools are anymore responsible for their use. Furthermore, let us observe that there is mainly a long gap between invention of the technology itself and realization of the first tool using this technology. Finally, a tool is obviously created and used to hit a target, to achieve a result or obtain a product.
New technologies never created neither new tools nor new uses.
The first English patent under the category of Washing and Wringing Machines was issued in 1691. This new technology did not actually create new use: we had to wait over 250 years until we can use a washing machine at home.
In 1917, Albert Einstein in his paper "Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung" (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation) laid the foundation for the invention of the laser. Forty years later, the term "laser" was first introduced to the public in Gould's 1959 conference paper "The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories demonstrated the first working laser in May 1960. Half a century later, we do daily use laser technology for other purpose as just slicing James Bond .
Nineteenth-century feminists and suffragists recognized the bicycle as a "freedom machine" for women. American suffragist Susan B. Anthony said in a New York World interview on February 2, 1896:
"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood."
In fact, the bicycle was but a tool, which became to a symbol. We know to day that women were strong enough to emancipate without any bicycle.
Television, founded at the end of the 19th century, was finally patented as an electronic television by Wladimir Zworykin in 1923. We had to wait until the 50s in Great Britain and the 60s in France. Can we say that television media enabled new behaviours? Or don?t we must recognize that television producers are mainly following the simplest potential audience demand?
While France and Germany are controlling the same technologies in the realm of energy producing, why does France produce 78,5% nuclear electricity and Germany only 27,5%? Further, France and Germany have both winds and the know-how about propellers, but German wind turbines produce 18500 MW and France only 750 MW.
Must we be wicked minded to say (write) that the choice between nuclear energy and wind power doesn?t depend of technology but of a political decision? Can we assert anymore that a tool creates the use? New tools are just thought up, created, and used to serve our immediate ambitions and to respond our requirements.
About the reasons which launched the first newspaper
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1400 - February 3, 1468), a German goldsmith and printer, is credited with inventing movable type printing in Europe (c. 1439) and mechanical printing globally. His specific contributions are the design of metal movable type, the invention of a process for making such type in quantity (mass production), the use of oil-based ink, and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the screw olive and wine presses. In 1455 Gutenberg published his 42-line Bible, commonly known as the Gutenberg Bible. About 180 books were printed.
From this time up, the new technology was definitely available, and a large number of printers established and worked. Why did we have to wait over 150 years until the first true newspaper was printed?
Let remember that the first newspaper was born on 1605, in the workshop of Johann Carolus.
Until 1605, Carolus (1575-1634) earned his living by selling 15 till 20 hands written periodical news to some rich subscribers. At the end of 1604, he bought a printer workshop in Strasburg in the aim of increasing his production and decreasing his production costs. Johann Carolus became the publisher of the first newspaper, called "Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien" (Collection of all distinguished and commemorable news).
In a few years, suddenly, several newspapers are created and published in this special part of Europe where political and social tensions are highly increasing: in Wolfenbüttel (1609), in Basel (1610), in Frankfurt am Main (1615), in Berlin (1617), in Hamburg (1618).
Then, at this time, under the ostensibly pretext of a religious conflict (Catholics versus Lutherans), the rivalry between the Habsburg dynasty and other powers shakes the central part of Europe. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) is soon beginning. On the other hand, new theoretic visions of politics, such as Mercantilism, Colonialism and Imperialism, but also Nationalism, are spreading out, leading to observe the world under a new and larger scale. At the beginning of the 17th Century, political and economic leaders had to know, not only what happened in their own territory so as on the other end of Europe, but they had also to know what was imagined, thought, discussed, written everywhere.
New considerations upon the world and new political settings have caused a new requirement for information, and incited some ones, as Johann Carolus did, to invent that what we to-day call newspaper. A new media was born. The reason for this hatching out of newspapers is not to be found in the new application of a 150 years old technology, but in the rising of a new social and cultural demand.
At the beginning of the 17th century, paper and printing technologies were known as well in Germany as in France. Why did France have to wait until 1631 to print and read newspapers?
La Gazette, the most ancient french newspaper (with four pages, each Friday) has been founded 1631 by Louis XIIIth?s doctor Théophraste Renaudot. Why only in 1631? Let observe that France was not really involved in the Thirty Years War before the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631), actually a peripheral part of this War in a simple contest against the Habsburgs about the control of northern Italy. La Gazette was sponsored by King Louis XIIIth to spread out his political view in a time of many troubles between Catholics and Lutherans. France joined the war a few years later, from 1635 until 1648.
I do not want here to say that war is at the birth of newspapers, but that the social, economical and political troubles in the preparation of a soon coming war, built and shaped the situation, the humus, which caused a new demand and incited to realize these newspapers as a response .
About the reasons which launched CAAD (computer aided architectural design)
Nowadays, it is very common to hear or read that computer design had deeply modified architectural design so as the very job of the architect. Certainly, it did have in a certain way. Nevertheless, this conclusion is of very short view. Then, a long time before we could use a computer, we architects expected this change.
Some older architects or "senior architects", to use a politically correct language, remember their fascinated interest in the middle of the 60's for Those Magnificent Men with their Drawing Machines . I remember these men in white, toiling in air-conditioned laboratories in front of keyboards, and producing pitiful drawings with the help of huge drawing machines. Looking at these equipments and facilities, we had a dream of precise and fast drawing, of easier "copy and paste", of exact calculating and pricing. In the middle of the 70's we obtained our first washing-machines-looking computers and wasted plenty of time and a lot of money. Finally, the early 80's brought relevant computer aided facilities for architectural design. From these years up, our requirements to developers have regularly increased, and every year brought at least one new release corresponding to our expressed demand. We architects made the CAAD revolution with the help of developers who earned their living by working for us.
Once more, taking note that the demand for the creation and the development of new medias doesn't grow up in abstracto, from any spontaneous generation, we observe that the demand is arousing from potential users. For this reason, the relationship between new media and requirement is particularly interesting to clear up the settings of the requirements of persons or groups who formulated the requirements.
2. New medias
What for new medias or new tools do we use? Internet, WiFi, blogs, GPS, RFID (Radio frequency identification), free daily newspapers or mobile phone, are under our numerous new tools and new medias. In spite of their particularities, and because of these particularities, I like to introduce TAVICA, SL, and ANA are the most representative among our new medias.
TAVICA (TAlking VIdeo CAmera), a pure oppression gear to the Big Brother way, could let think that a media would be able to introduce new behaviours;
SL (Second Life), a kind of an Internet game, which is not really a game, emerges both as a representation of real public space, and as a new public space;
ANA (Autonomous Non-violent Agent) could become the new media for safer street protest. These three new medias match at once a new concept of public space, a new relation to public space, a new relation between the populations, and a new relation to authorities.
TAVICA: Talking Video Cameras
We all know for years the presence of video cameras in banks, metro, shopping centres, and more and more in our streets. Cameras are supposed to discourage aggressions or offences, and to aid the police in finding suspects. It was not enough for the middle-sized town (125000 inhabitants) of Middlesbrough (UK) where a new generation of video cameras is yet able to call out to anybody in the street and remember at "good manners":
"21 CCTV talking cameras, covering the town centre of Middlesbrough, were wired up for sound and action. In a radical move away from the traditional CCTV operator's role, the new speaker system enables CCTV operatives, who had previously undertaken a monitoring and reporting role, to interact with the public using the loudspeaker system, to immediately challenge the behaviour of those responsible for committing environmental crimes such as littering (including discarded cigarettes and chewing gum), fly tipping, graffiti and fly posting, with the aim of improving the cleanliness of the streets, quality of the local environment and reducing the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour."
According to the theme of this conference (new media enables different settings, practices and behaviours to occur in urban space), we must recognize that these TAVICAs prove certain application (in this case, a new "socially correct" behaviour) in the urban space: when the loud-speaker-cops are telling "the dame with the red hat" she had better go back and pick her cigarette end up, the dame does actually stop walking, get back, does pick her cigarette from the pavement, and finally drops it in the waste basket.
We're incited indeed to think that these wonderful TAVICAs introduce new behaviours.
But TAVICAs are only a kind of prosthesis, an extension of the police agents: in fact, the new practice of the police introduces a new behaviour, not the cameras. The next full automatic talking cameras are under development: they will not need anymore the assistance of policemen sitting in the HQ backroom. These future cameras are thought to be able to recognize "anti-social behaviour". That is to say that certain gestures will be identified as anti-social and introduced by software developers in the system. This is not new. New is the will of surveying all day long the whole public space.
SL (Second Life)
SL is not really a game, but a user-defined Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc. (commonly called Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007. SL could be yet the most popular ?simulation world? with over 11 millions subscribers at the end of 2007.
Second Life is the new place where we can toll free "walk around", fortuitous meet people or have a date, find a job, demonstrate, protest, and otherwise communicate. Using a specific currency, the Linden Dollar, the player, named "resident", can buy an island or rent a shop, advertise, sell or buy something.
SL seems to be the new place of freedom, where everybody can dress up as in the carnival of Venice, in this case creating an (or several) avatar of oneself, giving an other representation of oneself, perhaps much more like as one would like to appear.
In this definition, isn"t it a public space?
In fact, SL simply reflects real life: not only many companies are present with their own island and virtual HQ (Dell Island, Mercedes Benz Island, Yves Saint Laurent perfumes, Cisco, PiYOBO), but also several political parties (The Socialist Party HQ, CPSL HQ The Communist Party Headquarters , Hillary Clinton 2008 SL Campaign, John Edwards 2008 Campaign HQ, Front National HQ , Anti-Front National), without to forget official institutions and their virtual GHQ (Second House of Sweden , Estonian Embassy ), and, last but not least, high schools and universities (Insead, Institut Ingémédia, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications Bretagne, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley).
The real life plays along in SL, with music concerts (Suzanne Vega), art exhibitions and performances, a critical review and journal of the arts (SLarts), and even strikes and street contestations.
During autumn 2007, the employees of IBM Italy have demonstrated on SL to recover a cancelled bonus loan, getting world audience:
"Breakthrough at IBM Italy : One month after a virtual protest staged in Second Life with almost 2?000 avatars demonstrating on IBM islands, a new contract with IBM Italy has been signed. The new agreement, which still needs to be approved by the IBM Italy workforce, reinstates the performance bonus that was cut unilaterally by IBM Italy management. [?] The virtual demonstration organized on 27 September for a whole day has certainly had an impact on the positive development. Almost 2000 virtual protestors from 30 countries populating IBM premises in Second Life solicited an unprecedented media echo from all over the world, including TV and radio stations, daily news papers, computer and business magazines. The virtual protest had been supported by global unions such as the International and European Metalworkers Federations (IMF and EMF) and UNI Global Union."
A "virtual riot" erupted on January 2007 between members of the far right French political party of Jean-Marie Le Pen "Front National" who had established a virtual HQ on Second Life, and opponents, including Second Life Left Unity, a socialist and anti-capitalist user-group. Since then, several small Internet based organizations have claimed some responsibility for instigating the riots. A SL resident writes on his blog :
"The first night I arrived at the protest against the Second Life headquarters of Front National, the far right French political party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, it was ringed on all sides by protesters with signs to wave and statements to distribute. By the second night I came (this was late last week), the conflict had become more literal, for many Residents had armed themselves. Multi-colored explosions and constant gunfire shredded the air of Porcupine, a shopping island which FN had inexplicably picked for the site of their virtual world HQ, in December."
http://nwn.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/unneighborly.jpg
SL is also to be revealed as a good place for advertising and gathering funds for NGO (Non Governmental Organisations):
French humanitarian group Première Urgence sets up shop in Second Life: As part of their 15 year anniversary, Premiere Urgence is establishing a virtual headquarters in Second Life. They see their SL space as a means to spread the word about their work, raise funding support, provide opportunities for people to volunteer for one of their humanitarian missions, and keep up to date on their work through news updates, photos and video from their work around the world?.
Finally, SL emerges also both as a place of information and communication, and as a real new media. As a new media, does SL contribute to modify our uses and behaviours? Or don?t SL ?residents? use SL as a new kind of a real public space?
ANA: autonomous non-violent agent
A new project has recently been awarded money as an "incentive for further production" by Vida 8.0. The Spanish artists activists of LaFabricaDeCosasBonitas (The Factory of Pretty Things) planned to take 20 robot-demonstrators to the G8 summit, to be held in the summer of 2007 in Germany. They could finally realize and active one ANA in Rostock.
The first version of ANA supported CCD camera glasses, microphone earrings, appropriate demonstration attire, identification badge and a banner with slogans. The lower half of the robot was equipped with sonar and infrared enabling her to avoid obstacles as well as police.
Their ANA project was inspired by a news article published in early 2005 on the Pentagon?s intention to send "robot soldiers" to Iraq in March of that year:
"The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat."
ANA, the autonomous non-violent agent, satirizes about the terrible consequences of dehumanizing armed conflict and mechanically systematizing the solution of political disputes. Given the amount of cynicism we seem able to assume, robots can replace people in some of their tasks, including killing. They might even become the actors in the new millennium?s protest movements.
ANA is not only a humoristic provocation as an answer to police violence and to the proliferating street cameras. Claiming that ?an other world is possible?, ANA can approach the Police forces without frightening each other.
3. New medias for the new society
I wish I could convince you of the accuracy of my reasoning and my argument, which I resume here in few words: new medias never created new behaviours, and, at the opposite, new social and political settings let arise a new Weltanschauung which requires new medias for new behaviours.
At this point of development of our knowledge and communication civilization, that is to say with the experience of about 20 years using "new medias", we can turn round, and look at these new medias and at our behaviours which belong to our daily life in this beginning 21st century, in the aim to understand our new society with the help of a kind of archaeology study.
Then, studying tools and medias is at the heart of anthropology and archaeology: analysis and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, architecture, artefacts, features and landscapes, so that one can understand ancient societies and, widely, the whole humankind.
Such an observation has been already made over fifty years ago in the literary magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles. Roland BARTHES described with 53 texts between 1954 and 1956 the French society at the middle of the 20th century. By deciphering new medias, new tools and new behaviours of this old past time, BARTHES analyzed several ?myths? within that conservative France of the 50?s, struggling between the end of Indochina war (1946-1954) and the beginning of Algerian war (1954-1962). BARTHES observed the weekly magazine ?Elle? as a display, where landmarks of fame could be seen as signification loaded signs systems, which defined the cultural and social landscape of this period. Brigitte Bardot as a myth, the new DS19 car by Citroen as a myth, the washing powder Omo as a myth, or the black African soldier looking at the french flag as a myth too, were some themes of his semiotics analyzes.
Nowadays, in a similar way, one could understand the society, which shapes and transform our public spaces, by scanning the new public space and its new medias. The city is an object of knowledge because it is built by messages, forms and representations, and not only by experiment or practices like natural spaces (LAMIZET, 2002: 13).
Public space, on one hand, belongs par excellence to the public authorities realm: general organization of the city, urban interventions, symbolic realizations, equipment (bridges, streets, sewers, busses), police force, etc. The term urbanism is closely related to the transformation of public space. On the other hand, anyone has a right to come and circulate in a public space without exclusion because of economic or social conditions. Moreover, public space is not only a free space for walking or driving along; public space is the scene of freedom, freedom of speaking, of meeting, of trading, of expressing oneself (musical for example) and constitutes also the collective space of living for its residents (inhabitants, trades[wo]men, crafts[wo]men,..). This space of freedom, nevertheless defined by a corpus of laws and regulations, is the scene of opposition to authorities, the scene of political and social conflicts or manifestations (sit-in, free party or rave party).
When we to day use the term ?public space?, it doesn?t mean anymore the Greek agora, the Latin forum, and neither the market place of Camillo Sitte nor Baron Haussmann boulevards.
It is clear that public space has always evolved in the very direction dictated by the society.
In our 21st century, under the pressure of the transformation of society, a new concept of public spaces is going on (Blaise GALLAND 1995, Setha LOW, 2005), and widely, a new concept of the public sphere (Douglas KELLNER, 2000).
Public spaces of the 20th?s century are vanishing. As a reflect of the arising civilization, they are to be replaced by something new that I would like to characterize as the result of the interaction between privatization, social divide, and fear.
Privatization
The city as the place where different populations could meet, the place which make one?s free, is vanishing: urban spaces (streets, quarters) are more and more walled and gated, access to entire city districts are submitted to a toll tax (such as in London, Singapore or Stockholm), market places (malls and hypermarkets) with the appearance of being 'public space' are becoming private, most of our fun fairs are private (such as Disneyland resorts, parc Astérix).
In the realm of new media, the same privatization is on the air: free open-source softwares of the 60?s have been supplanted by owners?softwares, we communicate through optical fibre cables owned by private companies (for example Verizon Business owns 717000 km fibre cables, Interoutes owns 8 millions km cables), we misuse the Internet (yet developed and used as a gigantic Minitel) and a few companies centralize our informations in many huge hard disk drives.
The public communication space is becoming private, and many companies and governments survey the contents of our communications and even filtrate a lot. The cyberspace as a free space of information and communication is little by little vanishing.
Our old west European cities undergo these changes idly by believing it is pure innocent modernity. We, in Europe, were used to foresee our next evolution about 20 years in advance by observing the USA. To-day, we have an astonishing example of the consequences of the silent neo-capitalism revolution with the fundamental rapid and rough transformations of Warsaw (FAYETON 2008) in the last 15 years: public spaces are privatized, public utilities are privatized, gated communities are spreading out, the gentrified city core is object of brutal speculation and the population divided and whirled out, the gap between rich and poor is strongly widening.
Social divide
Although "Connecting people" is the well-known Nokia?s slogan, our new medias are not connecting everybody, but only individualized and globalized people. School kids, with their in ear embedded mobile phone, remain in a steady relation to their family or to their ?tribe?, but, at the same time, the population is disconnected from its geographic neighbourhood and the income gap between rich and poor is growing (7 million poor people in France in 2007 and 100000 homeless). New medias are not able to connect those people who are strongly sorted in rich globalized and poor localized (Frank ECKARDT, 2001).
Social divide implicate social identification: anonymity in the city is to be replaced by automatic identification (video-cameras and RFID) . Some business establishments have even started to chip customers, such as the Baja Beach nightclub in Barcelona, and give them the remarkable status of VIP.
Public spaces are supposed to get rid of the presence of homeless and beggars, so that new tools (new medias) were created to discourage them: ?Redesigned to face contemporary urban realities this bench comes standard with a center arm to discourage overnight stays in its comfortable embrace?
A divided society produces class conflicts. In the last past years, France knew many suburbs riots so that fear could be useful manipulated as a major argument by the political right wings.
The reason for these riots is not to be found in some new medias, but in the increasing of fear.
Fear
Looking at the official website of Middlesbrough (Great Britain), you?ll learn that dropping your gum, or your cigarette end, on the pavement is a sin , and makes you guilty, while school kids are taught that refusing alms to beggars is a mark of correct social behaviour, and dropping homeless people out of the city is supposed to be of good governance.
The reader of this official website will immediately suppose that the installation of 21 TAVICAs was a response to a high offence and crime rate. In fact, the population in Middlesbrough feels safe but is just still frightened by seeing the young people in the streets:
"Middlesbrough Council recognise that crime, disorder, anti-social behaviour, drug misuse and environmental crime are high on the list of residents priorities for action. In fact the most recent crime and disorder consultation found that the majority of residents 81% identified anti-social behaviour as their number one priority for action. The good news is that the most recent town survey has indicated that 93% of residents believe that their neighbourhoods are safe, again residents main concerns were show to be young people hanging around the street (37%), anti-social behaviour (27%) and vandalism, graffiti and criminal damage (23%)."
First, remember that among these old frightened people, you'll find a lot of past Teddy Boys frightening people in the 50's. Then, compare anti-social behaviours rate and both the unemployment rate and the under-education rate. You'll get a strong correlation.
Finally, the TAVICAs are a short-view response to the old people fears, but are of no help for these young people hanging around the street because they find no correct employment.
In China, Africa, Asia, poor people are night and day crowding the streets and the richer part of the population is used to tub shoulders with the poor. Our 21st century west society doesn?t want anymore to see its poor; the streets, to be really clean, have to get rid of cigarettes ends as of homeless which both are considered as litter.
In the old past time, a generation before the new medias, Erwin A. GUTKIND (1962) alerted already about the dangerous trend of city embellishment:
"As long as a great number of individuals will have to live in slums [...] no civil servant in charge of the urban development has the right to think making of the center of his city an object of display window."
Public space is supposed to give a clean, wealthy, worthy, and politically correct image of the city. This trend remember us to the critics of the bourgeoisie settings by Roland BARTHES (1957) or Milan KUNDERA (1990) who defined the kitsch attitude:
"Kitsch, essentially, is the absolute negation of the shit; [?] kitsch excludes from its field of vision all that the human existence has of primarily unacceptable."
Looking at our next coming world
Finally, the question is neither about what are new medias, nor if they?re supposed to introduce new behaviours, new social settings and spaces of the city.
But the question is about the reasons of their use and about our way to use them: these new medias are the first signs of the next coming society, maybe the risk and globalized society Ulrich BECK (2001).
Public space as space of mixing people is becoming a private space of segregation.
Public space as space of liberty is becoming surveyed and controlled,
Urban public space as space of anonymity becomes a space where everybody can be identified.
This deep transformation is going on since the multinational companies emerged, supplanting the states governments in their political role. This change was first recognized at the end of the First World War:
"One believes to die for the fatherland: one dies for industrialists."
A new weltanschauung is emerging where the respective places, roles and values of individual, civil society and politic governance are fundamentally changing, and where neither the city nor the cyberspace are anymore the place of mixity, fortuitous encounter, and freedom, but a network of fear and survey.
It appears that new medias are settling in as the instrument of a hyper-liberal civilization where individual competition replaces solidarity.
That what we call " knowledge society" is obviously not a wisdom society, but in any case, a new arousing civilization where "sustainable" is to time what "global" is to space.
With our information and communication society, the target is not so much to renovate and embellish cities and suburbs (the hardware), but to reinvent urbanity (the software). A new urbanity implicate to propose a new dramaturgy for living together in a global scene, at the same time multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic, multireligious, such as agnostic.
And the new medias alone are of no help. New medias must be seen as the instrument of a new civilization and thus they have to be included in politics. Thus, new medias should be implemented as a public utility from the point of view of structuring an interdependent and responsible civilization of enlightenment, by setting the three basic terms of sustainable development: economic existence, social balance, democratic self-determination.
Finally, the question is not about new medias, but what kind of society do we are going to build: freedom or "pensée unique", solidarity or charity, cooperation or competition.
And then, we'll fit the right new medias.
References
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FAYETON Philippe, 2000, Le rythme urbain, éléments pour intervenir sur la ville, Paris : l?Harmattan
FAYETON Philippe, 1999, « Espace public vs espace privé, le rythme de la ville » (pp.71-80) in « Habiter la ville méditerranéenne », Montpellier : l?Espérou
GALLAND Blaise, 1995, « De l?urbanisation à la « glocalisation » : l?impact des technologies de l?information et de la communication sur la vie et la forme urbaine. »
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My argumentation follows this line:
1. New technologies have never created neither new devices nor new uses, but new expectations always incited to build new tools for new uses. Impulse for the creation of new tools is to be found in new social, political, philosophical and economical settings.
2. New media such as TAVICA, SL, and ANA permit uses and behaviours which were, whether consciously or unconsciously, already required for years, in order to fit the transformations of society.
3. A new type of society is arising, which needs new tools and new medias to express itself in a new form of public space and a in a new relation to public space.
Keeping in mind in our Information Age that the arising Knowledge Society is far from a utopian Wisdom Society, we cannot reckon on new medias to change cities or widely to change the world (isn't it the same?). Nevertheless, studying these new medias as the signs and landmarks of our new globalized society could help us understand the current transformations, in the aim to interact and making an other world possible.
www.lafabricadecosasbonitas.com
1. Technologies, tools, and uses
Technologies and tools, as everybody knows, are not responsible of their use and do not oblige anybody to use them. Let's begin with coarse examples:
The Zyklon B gas was not responsible of the death of several millions people, but a small group of 15 men who decided the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' at the Wannsee conference (20 January 1942), so as the many people who applied it.
French colonialism and its supporters, but not napalm itself (although developed in the aim to kill during the U.S. in World War II by a team of Harvard chemists led by Louis Fieser), were responsible for killing and hurting millions of people in Vietnam "thanks" to the French army (for the first time on 17 January 1951 in Vinh Yen). Later, many other governments used as well this product in their will of domination.
Neither this terrific liquid in Vietnam, or rough primitive machetes in Rwanda, nor other harmless tools are anymore responsible for their use. Furthermore, let us observe that there is mainly a long gap between invention of the technology itself and realization of the first tool using this technology. Finally, a tool is obviously created and used to hit a target, to achieve a result or obtain a product.
New technologies never created neither new tools nor new uses.
The first English patent under the category of Washing and Wringing Machines was issued in 1691. This new technology did not actually create new use: we had to wait over 250 years until we can use a washing machine at home.
In 1917, Albert Einstein in his paper "Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung" (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation) laid the foundation for the invention of the laser. Forty years later, the term "laser" was first introduced to the public in Gould's 1959 conference paper "The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories demonstrated the first working laser in May 1960. Half a century later, we do daily use laser technology for other purpose as just slicing James Bond .
Nineteenth-century feminists and suffragists recognized the bicycle as a "freedom machine" for women. American suffragist Susan B. Anthony said in a New York World interview on February 2, 1896:
"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood."
In fact, the bicycle was but a tool, which became to a symbol. We know to day that women were strong enough to emancipate without any bicycle.
Television, founded at the end of the 19th century, was finally patented as an electronic television by Wladimir Zworykin in 1923. We had to wait until the 50s in Great Britain and the 60s in France. Can we say that television media enabled new behaviours? Or don?t we must recognize that television producers are mainly following the simplest potential audience demand?
While France and Germany are controlling the same technologies in the realm of energy producing, why does France produce 78,5% nuclear electricity and Germany only 27,5%? Further, France and Germany have both winds and the know-how about propellers, but German wind turbines produce 18500 MW and France only 750 MW.
Must we be wicked minded to say (write) that the choice between nuclear energy and wind power doesn?t depend of technology but of a political decision? Can we assert anymore that a tool creates the use? New tools are just thought up, created, and used to serve our immediate ambitions and to respond our requirements.
About the reasons which launched the first newspaper
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1400 - February 3, 1468), a German goldsmith and printer, is credited with inventing movable type printing in Europe (c. 1439) and mechanical printing globally. His specific contributions are the design of metal movable type, the invention of a process for making such type in quantity (mass production), the use of oil-based ink, and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the screw olive and wine presses. In 1455 Gutenberg published his 42-line Bible, commonly known as the Gutenberg Bible. About 180 books were printed.
From this time up, the new technology was definitely available, and a large number of printers established and worked. Why did we have to wait over 150 years until the first true newspaper was printed?
Let remember that the first newspaper was born on 1605, in the workshop of Johann Carolus.
Until 1605, Carolus (1575-1634) earned his living by selling 15 till 20 hands written periodical news to some rich subscribers. At the end of 1604, he bought a printer workshop in Strasburg in the aim of increasing his production and decreasing his production costs. Johann Carolus became the publisher of the first newspaper, called "Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien" (Collection of all distinguished and commemorable news).
In a few years, suddenly, several newspapers are created and published in this special part of Europe where political and social tensions are highly increasing: in Wolfenbüttel (1609), in Basel (1610), in Frankfurt am Main (1615), in Berlin (1617), in Hamburg (1618).
Then, at this time, under the ostensibly pretext of a religious conflict (Catholics versus Lutherans), the rivalry between the Habsburg dynasty and other powers shakes the central part of Europe. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) is soon beginning. On the other hand, new theoretic visions of politics, such as Mercantilism, Colonialism and Imperialism, but also Nationalism, are spreading out, leading to observe the world under a new and larger scale. At the beginning of the 17th Century, political and economic leaders had to know, not only what happened in their own territory so as on the other end of Europe, but they had also to know what was imagined, thought, discussed, written everywhere.
New considerations upon the world and new political settings have caused a new requirement for information, and incited some ones, as Johann Carolus did, to invent that what we to-day call newspaper. A new media was born. The reason for this hatching out of newspapers is not to be found in the new application of a 150 years old technology, but in the rising of a new social and cultural demand.
At the beginning of the 17th century, paper and printing technologies were known as well in Germany as in France. Why did France have to wait until 1631 to print and read newspapers?
La Gazette, the most ancient french newspaper (with four pages, each Friday) has been founded 1631 by Louis XIIIth?s doctor Théophraste Renaudot. Why only in 1631? Let observe that France was not really involved in the Thirty Years War before the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631), actually a peripheral part of this War in a simple contest against the Habsburgs about the control of northern Italy. La Gazette was sponsored by King Louis XIIIth to spread out his political view in a time of many troubles between Catholics and Lutherans. France joined the war a few years later, from 1635 until 1648.
I do not want here to say that war is at the birth of newspapers, but that the social, economical and political troubles in the preparation of a soon coming war, built and shaped the situation, the humus, which caused a new demand and incited to realize these newspapers as a response .
About the reasons which launched CAAD (computer aided architectural design)
Nowadays, it is very common to hear or read that computer design had deeply modified architectural design so as the very job of the architect. Certainly, it did have in a certain way. Nevertheless, this conclusion is of very short view. Then, a long time before we could use a computer, we architects expected this change.
Some older architects or "senior architects", to use a politically correct language, remember their fascinated interest in the middle of the 60's for Those Magnificent Men with their Drawing Machines . I remember these men in white, toiling in air-conditioned laboratories in front of keyboards, and producing pitiful drawings with the help of huge drawing machines. Looking at these equipments and facilities, we had a dream of precise and fast drawing, of easier "copy and paste", of exact calculating and pricing. In the middle of the 70's we obtained our first washing-machines-looking computers and wasted plenty of time and a lot of money. Finally, the early 80's brought relevant computer aided facilities for architectural design. From these years up, our requirements to developers have regularly increased, and every year brought at least one new release corresponding to our expressed demand. We architects made the CAAD revolution with the help of developers who earned their living by working for us.
Once more, taking note that the demand for the creation and the development of new medias doesn't grow up in abstracto, from any spontaneous generation, we observe that the demand is arousing from potential users. For this reason, the relationship between new media and requirement is particularly interesting to clear up the settings of the requirements of persons or groups who formulated the requirements.
2. New medias
What for new medias or new tools do we use? Internet, WiFi, blogs, GPS, RFID (Radio frequency identification), free daily newspapers or mobile phone, are under our numerous new tools and new medias. In spite of their particularities, and because of these particularities, I like to introduce TAVICA, SL, and ANA are the most representative among our new medias.
TAVICA (TAlking VIdeo CAmera), a pure oppression gear to the Big Brother way, could let think that a media would be able to introduce new behaviours;
SL (Second Life), a kind of an Internet game, which is not really a game, emerges both as a representation of real public space, and as a new public space;
ANA (Autonomous Non-violent Agent) could become the new media for safer street protest. These three new medias match at once a new concept of public space, a new relation to public space, a new relation between the populations, and a new relation to authorities.
TAVICA: Talking Video Cameras
We all know for years the presence of video cameras in banks, metro, shopping centres, and more and more in our streets. Cameras are supposed to discourage aggressions or offences, and to aid the police in finding suspects. It was not enough for the middle-sized town (125000 inhabitants) of Middlesbrough (UK) where a new generation of video cameras is yet able to call out to anybody in the street and remember at "good manners":
"21 CCTV talking cameras, covering the town centre of Middlesbrough, were wired up for sound and action. In a radical move away from the traditional CCTV operator's role, the new speaker system enables CCTV operatives, who had previously undertaken a monitoring and reporting role, to interact with the public using the loudspeaker system, to immediately challenge the behaviour of those responsible for committing environmental crimes such as littering (including discarded cigarettes and chewing gum), fly tipping, graffiti and fly posting, with the aim of improving the cleanliness of the streets, quality of the local environment and reducing the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour."
According to the theme of this conference (new media enables different settings, practices and behaviours to occur in urban space), we must recognize that these TAVICAs prove certain application (in this case, a new "socially correct" behaviour) in the urban space: when the loud-speaker-cops are telling "the dame with the red hat" she had better go back and pick her cigarette end up, the dame does actually stop walking, get back, does pick her cigarette from the pavement, and finally drops it in the waste basket.
We're incited indeed to think that these wonderful TAVICAs introduce new behaviours.
But TAVICAs are only a kind of prosthesis, an extension of the police agents: in fact, the new practice of the police introduces a new behaviour, not the cameras. The next full automatic talking cameras are under development: they will not need anymore the assistance of policemen sitting in the HQ backroom. These future cameras are thought to be able to recognize "anti-social behaviour". That is to say that certain gestures will be identified as anti-social and introduced by software developers in the system. This is not new. New is the will of surveying all day long the whole public space.
SL (Second Life)
SL is not really a game, but a user-defined Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc. (commonly called Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007. SL could be yet the most popular ?simulation world? with over 11 millions subscribers at the end of 2007.
Second Life is the new place where we can toll free "walk around", fortuitous meet people or have a date, find a job, demonstrate, protest, and otherwise communicate. Using a specific currency, the Linden Dollar, the player, named "resident", can buy an island or rent a shop, advertise, sell or buy something.
SL seems to be the new place of freedom, where everybody can dress up as in the carnival of Venice, in this case creating an (or several) avatar of oneself, giving an other representation of oneself, perhaps much more like as one would like to appear.
In this definition, isn"t it a public space?
In fact, SL simply reflects real life: not only many companies are present with their own island and virtual HQ (Dell Island, Mercedes Benz Island, Yves Saint Laurent perfumes, Cisco, PiYOBO), but also several political parties (The Socialist Party HQ, CPSL HQ The Communist Party Headquarters , Hillary Clinton 2008 SL Campaign, John Edwards 2008 Campaign HQ, Front National HQ , Anti-Front National), without to forget official institutions and their virtual GHQ (Second House of Sweden , Estonian Embassy ), and, last but not least, high schools and universities (Insead, Institut Ingémédia, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications Bretagne, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley).
The real life plays along in SL, with music concerts (Suzanne Vega), art exhibitions and performances, a critical review and journal of the arts (SLarts), and even strikes and street contestations.
During autumn 2007, the employees of IBM Italy have demonstrated on SL to recover a cancelled bonus loan, getting world audience:
"Breakthrough at IBM Italy : One month after a virtual protest staged in Second Life with almost 2?000 avatars demonstrating on IBM islands, a new contract with IBM Italy has been signed. The new agreement, which still needs to be approved by the IBM Italy workforce, reinstates the performance bonus that was cut unilaterally by IBM Italy management. [?] The virtual demonstration organized on 27 September for a whole day has certainly had an impact on the positive development. Almost 2000 virtual protestors from 30 countries populating IBM premises in Second Life solicited an unprecedented media echo from all over the world, including TV and radio stations, daily news papers, computer and business magazines. The virtual protest had been supported by global unions such as the International and European Metalworkers Federations (IMF and EMF) and UNI Global Union."
A "virtual riot" erupted on January 2007 between members of the far right French political party of Jean-Marie Le Pen "Front National" who had established a virtual HQ on Second Life, and opponents, including Second Life Left Unity, a socialist and anti-capitalist user-group. Since then, several small Internet based organizations have claimed some responsibility for instigating the riots. A SL resident writes on his blog :
"The first night I arrived at the protest against the Second Life headquarters of Front National, the far right French political party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, it was ringed on all sides by protesters with signs to wave and statements to distribute. By the second night I came (this was late last week), the conflict had become more literal, for many Residents had armed themselves. Multi-colored explosions and constant gunfire shredded the air of Porcupine, a shopping island which FN had inexplicably picked for the site of their virtual world HQ, in December."
http://nwn.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/unneighborly.jpg
SL is also to be revealed as a good place for advertising and gathering funds for NGO (Non Governmental Organisations):
French humanitarian group Première Urgence sets up shop in Second Life: As part of their 15 year anniversary, Premiere Urgence is establishing a virtual headquarters in Second Life. They see their SL space as a means to spread the word about their work, raise funding support, provide opportunities for people to volunteer for one of their humanitarian missions, and keep up to date on their work through news updates, photos and video from their work around the world?.
Finally, SL emerges also both as a place of information and communication, and as a real new media. As a new media, does SL contribute to modify our uses and behaviours? Or don?t SL ?residents? use SL as a new kind of a real public space?
ANA: autonomous non-violent agent
A new project has recently been awarded money as an "incentive for further production" by Vida 8.0. The Spanish artists activists of LaFabricaDeCosasBonitas (The Factory of Pretty Things) planned to take 20 robot-demonstrators to the G8 summit, to be held in the summer of 2007 in Germany. They could finally realize and active one ANA in Rostock.
The first version of ANA supported CCD camera glasses, microphone earrings, appropriate demonstration attire, identification badge and a banner with slogans. The lower half of the robot was equipped with sonar and infrared enabling her to avoid obstacles as well as police.
Their ANA project was inspired by a news article published in early 2005 on the Pentagon?s intention to send "robot soldiers" to Iraq in March of that year:
"The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat."
ANA, the autonomous non-violent agent, satirizes about the terrible consequences of dehumanizing armed conflict and mechanically systematizing the solution of political disputes. Given the amount of cynicism we seem able to assume, robots can replace people in some of their tasks, including killing. They might even become the actors in the new millennium?s protest movements.
ANA is not only a humoristic provocation as an answer to police violence and to the proliferating street cameras. Claiming that ?an other world is possible?, ANA can approach the Police forces without frightening each other.
3. New medias for the new society
I wish I could convince you of the accuracy of my reasoning and my argument, which I resume here in few words: new medias never created new behaviours, and, at the opposite, new social and political settings let arise a new Weltanschauung which requires new medias for new behaviours.
At this point of development of our knowledge and communication civilization, that is to say with the experience of about 20 years using "new medias", we can turn round, and look at these new medias and at our behaviours which belong to our daily life in this beginning 21st century, in the aim to understand our new society with the help of a kind of archaeology study.
Then, studying tools and medias is at the heart of anthropology and archaeology: analysis and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, architecture, artefacts, features and landscapes, so that one can understand ancient societies and, widely, the whole humankind.
Such an observation has been already made over fifty years ago in the literary magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles. Roland BARTHES described with 53 texts between 1954 and 1956 the French society at the middle of the 20th century. By deciphering new medias, new tools and new behaviours of this old past time, BARTHES analyzed several ?myths? within that conservative France of the 50?s, struggling between the end of Indochina war (1946-1954) and the beginning of Algerian war (1954-1962). BARTHES observed the weekly magazine ?Elle? as a display, where landmarks of fame could be seen as signification loaded signs systems, which defined the cultural and social landscape of this period. Brigitte Bardot as a myth, the new DS19 car by Citroen as a myth, the washing powder Omo as a myth, or the black African soldier looking at the french flag as a myth too, were some themes of his semiotics analyzes.
Nowadays, in a similar way, one could understand the society, which shapes and transform our public spaces, by scanning the new public space and its new medias. The city is an object of knowledge because it is built by messages, forms and representations, and not only by experiment or practices like natural spaces (LAMIZET, 2002: 13).
Public space, on one hand, belongs par excellence to the public authorities realm: general organization of the city, urban interventions, symbolic realizations, equipment (bridges, streets, sewers, busses), police force, etc. The term urbanism is closely related to the transformation of public space. On the other hand, anyone has a right to come and circulate in a public space without exclusion because of economic or social conditions. Moreover, public space is not only a free space for walking or driving along; public space is the scene of freedom, freedom of speaking, of meeting, of trading, of expressing oneself (musical for example) and constitutes also the collective space of living for its residents (inhabitants, trades[wo]men, crafts[wo]men,..). This space of freedom, nevertheless defined by a corpus of laws and regulations, is the scene of opposition to authorities, the scene of political and social conflicts or manifestations (sit-in, free party or rave party).
When we to day use the term ?public space?, it doesn?t mean anymore the Greek agora, the Latin forum, and neither the market place of Camillo Sitte nor Baron Haussmann boulevards.
It is clear that public space has always evolved in the very direction dictated by the society.
In our 21st century, under the pressure of the transformation of society, a new concept of public spaces is going on (Blaise GALLAND 1995, Setha LOW, 2005), and widely, a new concept of the public sphere (Douglas KELLNER, 2000).
Public spaces of the 20th?s century are vanishing. As a reflect of the arising civilization, they are to be replaced by something new that I would like to characterize as the result of the interaction between privatization, social divide, and fear.
Privatization
The city as the place where different populations could meet, the place which make one?s free, is vanishing: urban spaces (streets, quarters) are more and more walled and gated, access to entire city districts are submitted to a toll tax (such as in London, Singapore or Stockholm), market places (malls and hypermarkets) with the appearance of being 'public space' are becoming private, most of our fun fairs are private (such as Disneyland resorts, parc Astérix).
In the realm of new media, the same privatization is on the air: free open-source softwares of the 60?s have been supplanted by owners?softwares, we communicate through optical fibre cables owned by private companies (for example Verizon Business owns 717000 km fibre cables, Interoutes owns 8 millions km cables), we misuse the Internet (yet developed and used as a gigantic Minitel) and a few companies centralize our informations in many huge hard disk drives.
The public communication space is becoming private, and many companies and governments survey the contents of our communications and even filtrate a lot. The cyberspace as a free space of information and communication is little by little vanishing.
Our old west European cities undergo these changes idly by believing it is pure innocent modernity. We, in Europe, were used to foresee our next evolution about 20 years in advance by observing the USA. To-day, we have an astonishing example of the consequences of the silent neo-capitalism revolution with the fundamental rapid and rough transformations of Warsaw (FAYETON 2008) in the last 15 years: public spaces are privatized, public utilities are privatized, gated communities are spreading out, the gentrified city core is object of brutal speculation and the population divided and whirled out, the gap between rich and poor is strongly widening.
Social divide
Although "Connecting people" is the well-known Nokia?s slogan, our new medias are not connecting everybody, but only individualized and globalized people. School kids, with their in ear embedded mobile phone, remain in a steady relation to their family or to their ?tribe?, but, at the same time, the population is disconnected from its geographic neighbourhood and the income gap between rich and poor is growing (7 million poor people in France in 2007 and 100000 homeless). New medias are not able to connect those people who are strongly sorted in rich globalized and poor localized (Frank ECKARDT, 2001).
Social divide implicate social identification: anonymity in the city is to be replaced by automatic identification (video-cameras and RFID) . Some business establishments have even started to chip customers, such as the Baja Beach nightclub in Barcelona, and give them the remarkable status of VIP.
Public spaces are supposed to get rid of the presence of homeless and beggars, so that new tools (new medias) were created to discourage them: ?Redesigned to face contemporary urban realities this bench comes standard with a center arm to discourage overnight stays in its comfortable embrace?
A divided society produces class conflicts. In the last past years, France knew many suburbs riots so that fear could be useful manipulated as a major argument by the political right wings.
The reason for these riots is not to be found in some new medias, but in the increasing of fear.
Fear
Looking at the official website of Middlesbrough (Great Britain), you?ll learn that dropping your gum, or your cigarette end, on the pavement is a sin , and makes you guilty, while school kids are taught that refusing alms to beggars is a mark of correct social behaviour, and dropping homeless people out of the city is supposed to be of good governance.
The reader of this official website will immediately suppose that the installation of 21 TAVICAs was a response to a high offence and crime rate. In fact, the population in Middlesbrough feels safe but is just still frightened by seeing the young people in the streets:
"Middlesbrough Council recognise that crime, disorder, anti-social behaviour, drug misuse and environmental crime are high on the list of residents priorities for action. In fact the most recent crime and disorder consultation found that the majority of residents 81% identified anti-social behaviour as their number one priority for action. The good news is that the most recent town survey has indicated that 93% of residents believe that their neighbourhoods are safe, again residents main concerns were show to be young people hanging around the street (37%), anti-social behaviour (27%) and vandalism, graffiti and criminal damage (23%)."
First, remember that among these old frightened people, you'll find a lot of past Teddy Boys frightening people in the 50's. Then, compare anti-social behaviours rate and both the unemployment rate and the under-education rate. You'll get a strong correlation.
Finally, the TAVICAs are a short-view response to the old people fears, but are of no help for these young people hanging around the street because they find no correct employment.
In China, Africa, Asia, poor people are night and day crowding the streets and the richer part of the population is used to tub shoulders with the poor. Our 21st century west society doesn?t want anymore to see its poor; the streets, to be really clean, have to get rid of cigarettes ends as of homeless which both are considered as litter.
In the old past time, a generation before the new medias, Erwin A. GUTKIND (1962) alerted already about the dangerous trend of city embellishment:
"As long as a great number of individuals will have to live in slums [...] no civil servant in charge of the urban development has the right to think making of the center of his city an object of display window."
Public space is supposed to give a clean, wealthy, worthy, and politically correct image of the city. This trend remember us to the critics of the bourgeoisie settings by Roland BARTHES (1957) or Milan KUNDERA (1990) who defined the kitsch attitude:
"Kitsch, essentially, is the absolute negation of the shit; [?] kitsch excludes from its field of vision all that the human existence has of primarily unacceptable."
Looking at our next coming world
Finally, the question is neither about what are new medias, nor if they?re supposed to introduce new behaviours, new social settings and spaces of the city.
But the question is about the reasons of their use and about our way to use them: these new medias are the first signs of the next coming society, maybe the risk and globalized society Ulrich BECK (2001).
Public space as space of mixing people is becoming a private space of segregation.
Public space as space of liberty is becoming surveyed and controlled,
Urban public space as space of anonymity becomes a space where everybody can be identified.
This deep transformation is going on since the multinational companies emerged, supplanting the states governments in their political role. This change was first recognized at the end of the First World War:
"One believes to die for the fatherland: one dies for industrialists."
A new weltanschauung is emerging where the respective places, roles and values of individual, civil society and politic governance are fundamentally changing, and where neither the city nor the cyberspace are anymore the place of mixity, fortuitous encounter, and freedom, but a network of fear and survey.
It appears that new medias are settling in as the instrument of a hyper-liberal civilization where individual competition replaces solidarity.
That what we call " knowledge society" is obviously not a wisdom society, but in any case, a new arousing civilization where "sustainable" is to time what "global" is to space.
With our information and communication society, the target is not so much to renovate and embellish cities and suburbs (the hardware), but to reinvent urbanity (the software). A new urbanity implicate to propose a new dramaturgy for living together in a global scene, at the same time multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic, multireligious, such as agnostic.
And the new medias alone are of no help. New medias must be seen as the instrument of a new civilization and thus they have to be included in politics. Thus, new medias should be implemented as a public utility from the point of view of structuring an interdependent and responsible civilization of enlightenment, by setting the three basic terms of sustainable development: economic existence, social balance, democratic self-determination.
Finally, the question is not about new medias, but what kind of society do we are going to build: freedom or "pensée unique", solidarity or charity, cooperation or competition.
And then, we'll fit the right new medias.
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