Becoming&
Being real
(Was: Re: Growing Up Digital)
Apart from Net People activities the living in Helsinki opened many other
new aspects to the world around the Internet in Finland.
L16
I was living in the legendary L16.fi, a real world net community in a nice
old building in the center of the capital. L16 had been there for
a couple of years already. I hadn't heard much of it, as I knew hardly
anything of Helsinki on the whole, but some of my friends from Oulu living
in the capital had been there a couple of times to some parties.
That is also how I went there, to an afterparty with some people I had
met earlier that night. I knew one guy living there before from irc
(henkka:#fi-rave) and luckily he happened to be there then. That
was early '96 and later during the spring and summer I spent some more
time half living there and finally getting my own room when I moved to
Helsinki in September.
Nice living (except for the (in)famous flys in the kitchen)
It's really a lovely building for an apartment building. Big walls
of stone, high rooms, nice wooden floors and some decorations. The
original community known as L16 is one big apartment of six but at my time
we had three separate apartments with the total of twelve rooms.
There was also a group of other young people living together upstairs and
the rest of the building was offices and normal apartments. People weren't
always too clean, quite the opposite in fact, but it was really nice to
live in the centre with so much going on in the house.
Good connectivity
The PiiPaa Oy (~SiliconHead Ltd.) that owns and developes <www.fi>
(a popular search engine for *.fi) was located in the cellar and the L16-community
had had their connection from the company. At the time when L16 had
been covered in the Helsingin Sanomat (most important newspaper in Finland)
the freaks living there had terminals and workstations connected to their
own server in most of the rooms .. and was there one even in the
toilet?
Media became (too?) close
I saw the article that the Helsingin Sanomat had published quite late when
I was already living there. Later I got to know also about the 24
Hours in Cyberspace -project where L16 had participated. Soon I heard
stories about articles that some people living there were writing for major
Finnish magazines. I also met people visiting the community, first
without knowing who they were, whose books I had read just a couple of
years before like they were from some other world.
In Oulu there's hardly any mass media present. There's one important
newspaper that's read in the whole of North Finland that's based in Oulu
and writes mostly about it but no TV channels, local radio programs almost
died after the boom in the 80's and on the whole there's very little content
producing. Always when something or someone from Oulu is in the national
news it's a sure topic in table discussions the next day. People
always speak about "getting into the TV" like it was a major achievement.
I always felt they were awfully distant, hardly existing.
Surrounded by pros
In Helsinki I was suddenly surrounded by media professionals, both on the
technical and content producing side. Besides the writers one guy
was working for <yle.fi> the Finnish Broadcasting Company and many were
Internet professionals working for a radio station <city.fi> and ISP's
like me. They could talk about what was going on _before_ it was,
if it ever was, covered in the media and knew the backgrounds and intentions
behind the stories. The life was more about avoiding publicity than
adoring it the way we sometimes did in the north.
I've always written a lot myself. Then it was mostly on some mailing
lists (tieli, fi-rave). Sometimes those new friends of mine, who
actually earned their living by writing, wondered why I didn't get any
of mine published. It was a weird thought for me. Untill then
I had always thought there was a huge difference in between bits and paper,
cable and book.
A year at the Kirjakaapeli - The Cable Book Library
http://www.lib.hel.fi/~antont/
From (current) homepage http://www.cs.vu.nl/~antont/:
"(...) I accomplished my alternative civil service at the Cable
Book Library and for the House
of Knowledge Project of the Ministry
of Education mainly developing net services for the public library
sector. (...)"
The [asepalvelus on yha pakollinen] in Finland. Instead of going to
the army we can [suorittaa] the alternative civil service of 13 months,
mine were from September 1996 till October 1997. I had found the place
myself beforehand from, naturally, from the net. I had been following the
national Internet-library discussion list and knew the people from there.
Once they came to Oulu to organize a House of Knowledge seminar to which
I attended as a representative of Net People. The seminar was over already
in the afternoon and those Cable Book / House of Knowledge people had time
still before their evening train was leaving. We got to know each other
better as I showed them the best (i.e. cheapest, it turned out to be) places
to drink in town.
First month, September that is, was the training in Vaasa before the
real service begun. It was true leasure time after the Swedish Royal Visit
in Oulu where I had been working like crazy in the end of August. With
the colourful group of young "alternative" men gathered to spend the comfortable
autumn's month (that's what September, "syyskuu", means in Finnish) I really
felt young after a long time. The others, who most had come there after
finishing high-school and the long summer holiday (several months) after
that were quite bored when nothing really happened there during the days
but I needed that rest.
I wasn't totally free of the earlier business life, though, since I
was a board member of Net People and there was a lot of going on right
then as we were introducing the new CEO and other reformations.Quite often
I had to spend all the breaks on the telephone and sometimes hours in the
evening too. I sincerily hope that the GSM microwaves don't cause any permanent
damage..
Then in the beginning of October I started at the library. It describes
itself in the following words:
"The First Public Library on the Internet in the World
The Cable Book Library and
the Knot at the Cable were opened
in 1994 at the Cable
Factory in Helsinki. The Library moved to the Lasipalatsi
center of Helsinki to find new challenges in April
1996. Cable Book has moved temporarily to Iso Roobertinkatu because
Lasipalatsi will be rebuilt by the end of the year 1998. The Library continues
to develop the information society in co-operation with several cultural
and commercial entities.
At the Cable Book Library you can, in an comfortable environment, surf
and look for information on the internet, use CD-ROMs, read magazines and
comics. The Cable Book is also a traditional library with all the
services of the Helsinki City Public Library. You can e.g. browse our online
bibliographic catalogs. The Cable Book is also a great meeting
point in the center of Helsinki."
The library is really recognized as the first public library to provide
Internet services in the world. I asked on the international library forums
myself to be sure. My work there, or so I thought in the beginning, was
pretty much the same what I had always done. That is Internet Service Development
and practically everything related to the Internet like consulting and
participating in different projects, helping others to cope with the technology
and teaching.
Trouble with time and place ...
The surprise was - just like for the other boys there before me - the demands
and difficulties in facing the real world. First problem was the work hours:
in the beginning I was like always, didn't really care about what time
of the day (or night) it was and was coming to the library and going back
home or out to town when I felt like it. Sometimes I staid at home half
the day, as we had a better connection there (2M) than at the library (256k),
and went to work later if it seemed necessary based on the mails and chat
we had during the day.
Soon it became clear that it didn't really work that way: there were
a lot of activities at the library that never appeared on the net, like
phone calls, table discussions and of course the customers that came there
to use the net, read magazines and borrow books. The others had the habit
of being present fixed hours and absent only on special occasions and I
had to learn to do the same.
... and with real paper and metal ...
Besides time and place the Cable Book taught me also the importance of
materia. A lot of our activities were not only concerned about the electronical
information networks but also the traditional ones that work on paper.
I love the touch and feel of those marvelous items! I had to learn to put
books on shelves and search them from there, pack them in bags for transportation,
keeping places (relatively) clean and turning the alarm on when leaving
the place at night.
There were also all the computers, I mean the physical machines, which
I had to fix quite often. It was really a long time since I had used a
screwdriver before. Back home in Oulu there was always someone else taking
care of the mechanics.
.. but Joy of People!
During the year many of the customers became familiar and I'll never forget
some of them, but the people who have created this special library are
just great. It was quite an experience to intensively together with this
group of so different people of all ages. There was so much more than work
to it: we spent time together outside work both during the weeks and weekends
and even travelled together. I can't tell how important those moments were
for me.
In (between) all worlds
...
it's all the same! (yet so diffent that the books, meeting people
etc. taught a lot!) ..
House of Knowledge
places are important.
...
TIVEKE - developing networks at the Ministry
Again from the homepage:
"(...) I also participated in The
National Information Network Development Programme of the Ministry
of Transport and Communications where we worked on a Definition
for public communication on information networks.(...)"
Participated in the work as, once again, a representative of Net People.
The other's were older people from big Telco's (two (three) in Finland)
and other organizations and from the state (ministries etc).
Was interesting, taught also them some basics of the IRC :)
Results: the report, contacts, possible future work
.. also the interest in ISOC!
TIVOLI - Funfair! (a totally different thing :)
A group of friends often gathers to eat together a the university restaurant
in the center of Helsinki. I joined the often when living in Helsinki.
One girl (24 years or so, studies theology and has always been hyper-over-social)
got enthusiastic about IRC and the net in general in spring '97. She started
this thing called Tivoli (funfair) which is (was) a mailing list and an
irc channel for that group. A lot of people were international exchange
students, like many of my friends in Helsinki back then, so it was quite
interesting although I was a bit bored since it felt like going through
all the same we had done in Oulu several years ago already.
The mailing list is still alive and quite funny. Homepage might be
coming <http://www.helsinki.fi/cafe/tivoli/>
..
hmm.
what else.
still wanna hear something?
might be time to get to an.