NBC was here

Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 11:32:50 +0200 (EET)
Subject: media and communication

Here's a few thoughts that came to my mind this morning and I'd like you
to read.

Most people are not familiar with modern technology like we are. People
in Finland and especially our house you visited are an exeption.
Concerning the whole planet computer skills are quite rare and also the
earlier revolutions in information prosessing, such as watching the TV or
reading and writing, have left entire nations untouched. That makes this
planet a diverse place to live on.

Finland was and is one of the first countries to reach 100% percent
literacy and the same is happening with computer skills, as children start
to make acquaintance with them in the kindergarten and lower-grade schools
already. Me and the other guys you met here have done that already. We
have used computers before we went to school. In Mika you saw one result
-- a guy who uses computers 12 hours a day and is comfortable with having
his social life there etc. Is that kind of life something the rest are
going to follow, like you did with women's right to vote and traditional
literacy skills?

I don't think so. I personally hate these stupid computers. Well, they
indeed are often a lot better than the paper letters, newspapers,
notebooks and there are also great tools for many kinds of sound and image
processing. But all that has nothing to do with these small flickering
monitors, clumsy keyboards, noisy metallic boxes and even the bit more
advanced mouse. PC is dead. Most people aren't happy with sitting in one
place all day long staring at a screen and communicating with their
fingers. Even if they are, they'll die young, as they'll ruin their
physical wellness. Luckily the pioneers of new technologies never are the
typical end users.

The computers won't disappear but they will be hidden. People will be
using them even without knowing it. They can continue living their lifes
the way they like just having a couple of new nice tools, like automated
search agents and simultaneous language translators commanded by voice.
These little helpers will be computer based and use the Internet, but the
end users don't have to care about it. Newspapers, letters etc. Will
change, but they won't jump into the monitor like many seem to be thinking
right now, but the computers and the network will integrate into them and
change the concept of paper itself.

The most revolutionary changes are made in communications -- the network
that began it's developement in the early days of humankind as
storytelling, then took a literal form and generalized after gutenberg,
digitalized when the telegram was invented in the 19th century and
globalized during this century as several applications (telephone, radio,
tv) and has now taken it's current form as the Internet. It's about
communication, people and stories. That's a lot more than computers and
that's the interesting part in it.

The future will be somewhere in between the traditional culture of
Australian aboriginals and western cyberpunks. As an information scientist
my typical day at work will be more a like going to the forest to find
blueberries and mushrooms, no more sitting! We are trying to evolve our
lives as a mixture of several good ways of doing things. I use a lot of
computers, but I also love paper books and magazines, read and write
traditional letters, go to concerts, theatre and movies, play live role
playing games, walk in the forest, meet people in cafés, go out to dance
and sit home by a living lit candle. All that kind of activity can be
easily done in the virtual reality of the net, but I assure you: the real
thing is mostly worth the trouble.

A couple of words about the session you shot yesterday:

People *never* use technology like the Internet Relay Chat or telephones
to communicate with someone in the same room. These new ways of
communications are only used to fight agains the restrictions of time and
distance. You could easily use the material you got from this artificial
situation to show the Finns as ridiculous shy people, who had to develop
all this just to be able to talk to each other. That just is not the way
it is.

Hope I made at least some of my points clear. And thank you once again
for your interest and hope you enjoy your visit in Finland!