inet98: monday23 - refreshed

After spending some time and later living abroad I got to notice that what I once thought was normal living and environment appears to be quite exotic for many people. Besides nature, also social structures and the standards and use of technology in Finland are quite different compared to what I have experienced in for example in Central Europe. I believe that our special, arctic, living conditions play a role in the development of telecommunication in northern Finland.

It seems that the people that are sometimes mentioned being the most silent in the world start to babble when they get their mobile phones and the (in)famous IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was also born and is extremely widely used in my home town. Also other technology, like ATM bank machines and nowadays on-line banking services, seem to be easily adapted by people there. On top of all this the technology image has been also artificially emphasized by many campaigns to attract international attention to our projects. It is quite easy to understand as high technology is nowadays perhaps the only thing we can really use to participate in global markets in order to maintain our society in the Oulu-area where I come from.

There might be a poster session about the state of the Information Society in Finland based on the abstract I wrote.

Oulu and Northern Finland

                     (formal:
                     city of Oulu: www.ouka.fi, english info
                     University: www.oulu.fi
                     Technopolis: www.otm.fi)

Helsinki

Amsterdam

(Hi)Story

Internet / Computer background in Oulu

Computer kids:

Today the Internet is not about computers, at least not for me, but to get introduced to it in the beginning of 90's you had to be quite involved. We definitely were. The story is quite typical: first contact with computers was the Commodore family. First some games with my older cousin at the age of six and after a couple of years we, me and my brother that is, got our own. Besides games we did some simple programming at the age of ten, eleven or so.

Electronic messaging on the BBS age

Then when I was twelve, turning to thirteen, this one new boy moved to the neighborhood and came to our class. He was already familiar with, not only computers, but modems and the world of 'boxes' (BBS's, bulleting board systems) we had only heard about. After first reading 'messages' (that's how we called the Fidonet flow, comparable to Usenet News today) for hours and hours at their house above his shoulder I finally got to buy my own modem and dive into the world he'd introduced me to.

The daily routine changed: I stopped watching TV late night shows but started going to bed early(!) to get up about 6am. to poll new messages, have breakfast and read the newspaper meanwhile, then checking the messages that had come (polling, or downloading them took usually about 20 minutes with my 2400bps modem) and perhaps writing some before going to school. You probably wonder why I didn't stay up late then, like computer people usually do? The simple answer is that those BBS's hardly ever had more than one line which was usually free only at that time. I guess it was also nice to in a way combine the newly printed newspaper and the discussions we had often about the same topics -- but I don't think I really realized it that way back then being only about fourteen years old.

Many BBS's at the time were independent 'islands' and actually did they job pretty well that way. I guess we sometimes feel the need some kind of closed societies and SysOp's care-taking like the talk of Virtual Communities quite often suggests. Anyhow the networks started to get more interesting. The ones we school kids got to use back then were technically FidoNet based. One was the Fido itself, the we had the national Finnish SF. (Suomi-Fido) groups and a lot of locals (CL. for Circus Laplandia etc.). Later on we changed to UUCP and joined nullnet which used Internet type addresses and provided Usenet feed for those who could afford it. Most of us couldn't but we had the local pulp.nullnet groups instead (pulp as in pohjolan uljaat pojat, brave boys of the north :)

Local groups

I guess the local groups were often most interesting since those were people that we soon started to do things with. There was always a lot of meetings and parties so that the virtual community became real. Many of those groups of friends exist even today.

Internet

At the time I had already had my first contact with the global Internet. I was fourteen and at the university for one week from school to see what working there was like. Naturally I had chosen the computer center where I got to know some basics of that kind of networking. Of course I had heard what it was like but still having immediate access all over the world felt amazing. We were used to dialup systems that changed new information perhaps once or twice a day with the node above and international traffic was not only slow (took days) but also highly unreliable. My job back then was to use FTP to get up-to-date information about Internet connectivity, I still remember printing out the maps and showing them to some people there. After that week my account was valid for one month but for FTP only.

IRC

I have to admit that it was not before IRC got big in Oulu that I was really interested about the Internet. The access was a trouble and the (academic) newsgroups, yet they sure were interesting, felt quite remote for a fourteen year old. But when we, thanks to some friendly people at the university, started getting limited access to their systems. Actually the server we got to use was the very first IRC server there ever was, tolsun.oulu.fi, through a limited menu system called OuluBox with time restrictions.

Parties and drinking

Most of the people I knew from the local Fido- and UUCP systems already so basicly the only difference was that we now got to be on-line simultaneously hence more interactive. IRC is also a lot more concurrent by nature, quite common use was to log in around six or seven on a Friday night to discuss with the group where to party that night, meet there in few hours and gather again on-line after the night before going to sleep. Amazing amounts of alcohol was involved.

UNIX provided a solid base

Later on, I guess I was sixteen, we got unlimited UNIX shell access and went crazy about it. We learned how to use "screen" that allows using several programs on a single terminal and is actually still the way my net being is built. Screen enabled us to use e-mail, news and the early www more comfortably since /quitting IRC was quite often out of the question. Some sessions during Christmas holidays (freezing cold and constantly dark outside, nothing to do, cheap phone calls and lots of mandarins!) lasted days.

At first global

At the time we were perhaps more global than ever since. The IRC was not so crowded by Finns yet (even though we were a kind of minor majority :) and the lag to #Texas (my friend's favorite), #aussies or South Africa (where I got my best friend at the time) was a mere two seconds.

Then local

Until 1993 we were only computer geeks and yes, boys. I remember only one exception, one girl who started ircing at the age of 13/14(?) and kept on for some years. We were also totally dependent on university and other schools that luckily gave some people access even though they were not obliged to. But then everything changed. The OuluNet (www.oulu.net), the school network in Oulu, got started. It was initiated and run by Jukka Orajarvi who was and still is working for the (www.otol.fi).

Crackers to responsible administrators

Actually some guys of my age had cracked some passwords on his (the school's, that is) machines to gain access but got caught. The best thing Jukka could come up with was to give them access but also responsibility for maintaining some systems. He and some enthusiasts from some of the high schools also decided to try connecting schools with first slow (19.2kbps) modems with SLIP and putting up small Unix servers to the schools to provide Internet services for the kids. And, most surprisingly, the maintainers were us -- some 16/17 year old nerds.

Internet for non-tech kids, including girls!

So by 1993/94 Oulu became, I believe, one of the first places in Europe to give children from 12/13 to 18/19 (upper preliminary and high school) and occasionally even younger unlimited Internet access -- also from home! Soon a lot of non-computer people we're involved and in many schools especially girls we're enthusiastic about e-mail and chat as often is the case.

Finally teachers get along

At first the teachers didn't know much about it. The initiative came from outside and the system: the whole technical solutions, maintenance, teaching and support, ethical questions etc. were our trouble. Actually the first job for many of us was the courses lead by Jukka in summer '94 when we, by the time professionals, were teaching our own teachers the basics of the Internet on our holiday. The same summer we had a workshop that produced, for example, the first web pages of the City of Oulu with connections to a database with all ...

The OuluNet project was an important experiment and is considered successful. Actually Jukka Orajarvi got awarded of it last year, i.e. three years later.

By the end of the year 1994 the structure was pretty much there and since then the Internet has established to be a part of school activities. We, the group of first pupil maintainers was, were going to graduate soon but in most of the schools new enthusiasts were already there learning their job.

Into Business

There was also growing demand for services outside of the school world so we, a group of ten from the schools, decided to found a company, Net People Oy, by the end of 1994. That's how we continued being (working) together for the following years. Net People's history is quite colourful like I'd guess most of the Internet startups to be. The people and the profile has changed dramatically a couple of times and the company today is quite different than where it got started from. For me the freedom and the ultimate challenges it offered was crucial.

Net People Oy

Net People Oy (Ltd.) was founded late 1994. The initiative came from originally from the same Jukka Orajarvi who had put the whole OuluNet on it's track two years earlier.

The ten founding members were three older (about twenty three years) students from <otol.fi> and seven of us high-school kids, sixteen to nineteen. I was seventeen, soon turning to be eighteen at the time.

All we seven had more than a year experience in administrating the schools' UNIX-servers, taking care of people's accounts, teaching other kids and teachers and a strong technical background from the earlier years. Some had been active in the demo scene, some also as hackers/crackers, most could program some and everyone was familiar with the Internet and spend a lot of time there.

The older three had been using the 'net a lot too but didn't have the same service oriented background. All of them had been working already either for their school (the polytechnic) or for Nokia (like everyone..). We young were proud to make a vow for not to work for Nokia ("the rubberboot factory") ever .. ;/

The business idea was simple: provide people and companies in the Oulu-area with Internet-services. Of course there were already many companies doing it in Finland. The first to provide access to the Internet is, as far is I know, <clinet.fi> that started it back in '86 already. Also <eunet.fi> had been around since early 80's and was marketing for private users in the 90's. So we bought a Twinhead Sun-clone running SunOS 4.1.3 and connected it first to the school's and after a couple of months to the commercial network of the local telephone company <opoy.fi>. The idea was that the telephone company would take care of the access, i.e. the modem pool part and we would handle the rest: user's e-mail accounts, home directories, web services, customer support, customizing and programming, installing intranets etc.

Problems started right in the beginning: the first server we got didn't work. The supplier's service was bad and we couldn't really cope with it. Somehow the boys managed finally to put things work and so we got the server running in the beginning 1995 and could start using it.

The telephone company had trouble as well, actually theirs were lot more severe than ours as they couldn't get the modems working until .. (how long did it actually take??). As our customers were supposed to be the ones using the telephone companies access, which didn't work, our business didn't really start up that well.

We did have some other projects already, our first CEO was excellent in finding them, so by the spring we were working on them and got our first income for the company. What we charged of our work didn't really even cover the costs but we didn't know it and it sounded like a lot of money so we were happy. We spent great, even though troubleful time together and partied a lot.

Most of us, I believe five of us seven young experts which makes half of the whole group, were graduating from high-school that spring so work was more like a hobby anyway. The company was a nice way of getting together and gaining loads of server resources and fast access to ourselves as there were no customers yet.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that we didn't have any physical office, none at all. Why would've we needed one? All papers were on the net, decision making on different mailing lists and most of the discussion on irc. In practice there was no separate governing board but everybody could participate in all decision making as much as they would like to.

School class rooms and nice bars and cafes were quite comfortable for meetings and we had to travel a lot around the area installing servers etc. anyway so the net made a good office.

The CEO and other important people had mobile phones for customers to call but we <[email protected]> ourselves didn't really care about them in the beginning. Soon, however, the company bought for the people who needed to be reached one. I got mine next summer ('95) and that's when I learned really to use a telephone. Their turned out quickly to be the other important communication channel besides the Internet itself.

(Nowadays digital cellular mobile phones are more common in Finland than any other one telephones - their use exceeded the conventional copperwireds' in September 1997. I gave mine away fall '97 when I moved here to Amsterdam - no one has them here anyway and the net is much nicer .. I guess I need this peace for change. We're expecting the whole telephone network to converge to be a part of the Internet by the end of '98 as Nokia and others release new portable / wearable network devices that handle both sides. Too bad the change is always slower than we'd expect.)

Soon we were to confront other difficulties too: the customers were complaining that they had hard time contacting us. As business started growing the important people were busier and not reachable by their mobiles. (That was quite typical of us: we didn't advertise or really even look for customers but they had to find their way to us and still we sometimes neglected them totally if there was something more interesting going on on the net.) The customers were not yet used to e-mail or it didn't work so that was no option for them.

So we decided to rent an office, put the servers there and also the fax machine. The technology park <otm.fi> was a good place as most hitech companies in the area are based there, including Nokia. The park is also only a couple of hundred meters away from the university of Oulu where most of us young started studying fall '95. The technology park itself and the companies there started to be interested in the Internet too so there was a lot of work for us. The first task for us to do was to put up the server <otm.fi> for them and take care of the networking.

It turned out to be that I was the one tied up at the office that summer. I answered all the phone calls, most of the e-mails, looked after our own servers <friendly.netppl.fi> and took care of the services of the technology park <otm.fi> creating new accounts and helping people etc. Actually it was just the same I had done for a couple of years in the school before but this time it was in the middle of corporate business world. Besides the technology park itself and Nokia our customers included companies like Elektrobit, Wasala <pressi.com>, BusCom etc... of which some are doing quite well nowadays.

Besides taking care of the everyday business and answering the office phone I was also responsible for a new service we started that summer. It was a telephone support service for Finnish people who had trouble with the Internet called 9-NET-9 (the number was 0600-9-net-9). It cost about a dollar (5FIM) a minute and was open from 8am to 8pm, Monday to Saturday i.e. every day except Sunday's. When I was not at the office I put a .forward to the number so that it'd ring my mobile.

Quite often, after three-four months of that work, I had such a strong routine that people's problems were quite easy to solve even in the most awkward situations where the mobile use allowed me to go.

Once we climbed on the roof of the university to see the view with Heikki. It was a beautiful, bright spring-winter's day, strong wind though. Of course someone called the number just then and I had hard time finding shelter behind some constructions so that the wind wouldn't disturb the discussion. Some other time someone called early Saturday morning when we we're still partying the Friday night .. I couldn't even remember some of those calls afterwards (you know how we Finns drink) but friends always told they went ok.

The now legendary 9-NET-9 wasn't profitable like most of our services weren't. As I mentioned earlier the deal with the telephone company <opoy.fi> was that they'd take care of the access and we the rest of the business. We were supposed to share the profits that the access would bring in - after all we'd have to take care of all the support and service development - but as we didn't have any agreement of that on paper it didn't quite turn out to be that way. We did get a fixed payment, 30FIM which is about 6$, for every user who had a mailbox and access to usenet news and irc servers plus the room for homepage on our server. It seems, however, that during the past years of net business (94-97) only charging for access has been really profitable for ISP's.

We also charged the technology park a fixed monthly sum for access to our servers and administrating their own server. Then we were active in many kinds of projects and really enthusiastic about them but most didn't profit as they were supposed to.

The monthly income kept us alive and travelling to install systems and teaching, organizing work-shops etc. was quite profitable. Still it took more than a year before any of us could really get paid for what we did. Even the three-four months year '95 I worked almost full-time didn't bring me any money but it was ok. No money, yes Honey! i used to say :)

By then end of '95 the Internet Boom started to reach Northern Finland more than before and our services got more popular. Unfortunately we didn't have real products to sell and were not so good workers either. Studying and other interests took a lot of time and thoughts and as the company couldn't really pay for work no one could concentrate on it full time.

There were also new people starting to work on the business. The technology park and some companies there were not always too satisfied with our service and hired some other students to work directly for them. We, for whom the net was almost like a religion and the company our own tribe or church, were a bit scared of that development. Fortunately also the other networkers in the area were our friends since there were not many, if any, Internet professionals in the area that would have not been on #oulu on irc and/or active with the OuluNet school network during the past years. So we approached those new people and asked them to join us, which they happily did, so we became a group of fourteen. Eventually those new people were to become the following two CEO's and the current core of the company but of course we didn't know it then.

Apart from new workers we needed also money and especially someone with business skills. I can't remember how consciouss I was of that need but succeeded in finding a solution in the beginning of year 1996 anyway. It was quite a coincidence:

I had been, actually for the first time, alone in Helsinki in october '95 for a party and went back there with some friends to spend the new-years eve 95-96. Then, after returning back to Oulu after a couple of weeks, I was spending my time at the university and working at the office next to it. One Tuesday afternoon I was browing through the national sfnet.(discussion).www.* newsgroups, a part of daily routine, and saw one message from some guy in Helsinki looking for "people who can write html" and a telephone number which to contact. I was tired and bored after working all day so I made a call, guess I was wondering about moving to Helsinki.

It was quite surprising to hear that the person who had put the short message had such big plans. He was looking for the best people in the country to form a group and start making real business developing Internet services for companies. From the message I'd thought that it was only some boring weak html-writing startup but he was a real capitalist with successful running businesses already. I told him about our company and we decided to meet in Helsinki next Saturday.

So I travelled back south again on Friday and was going to sleep overnight in an apartment of a friend of mine to be fresh in the meeting the next morning. The friend is actually one of seven of us young first OuluNet and netppl -people but he had moved to Helsinki that autumn to study law. He was (and is) still participating actively on the mailing lists and took/takes care of the law and other bureauchracy. Anyway, as I was arriving in Helsinki already he called me that there would be a party that Friday night. One other guy, actually an older brother of one other netppl-founder of my age from Oulu, was leaving to do his military service and had a farewell party before it. This friend I was going to stay with was there already when I was finally at the railway station in Helsinki so I had no other choice than to go there too. It was a great party but I didn't get much sleep .. and even those few hours were on the plain wooden floor because there was no furniture in the
aparment.

Next morning my phone rang. Luckily I woke up since it was the businessman I had the meeting with. He asked me to come to lunch in the center. The others were still deep asleep as I left.

The meeting was a success. We ate well and talked constantly for about three hours about where the net business was going and what we - his contacts and resources in the business world and our group of experts - could do together. His idea was to found a separate marketing company that would market our products in Helsinki, where all the money and business in Finland is, and we could work on them where ever we'd like to (Oulu, that is) and get actually paid for it. His condition was that he'd have to own 50% of the company as it would guarantee we would work in a reliable way. He assured, however, that he would not force us to change the way we work - he said he thought we were like artists who couldn't really be treated that way without killing all the creative drive.

I reported the results the same evening on the net for the other's to read. Of course the whole deal sounded promising as we were in financial trouble and didn't have any resources for anything. Only selling the majority share sounded problematic. Since the beginning all we ten had owned equal shares, 10% each, which was for us a natural and a democratic way to organize the company. One vote per person - that's how things work, we always thought. But we were facing a dead end and this man's promise of good global/international contacts and resourses was promising. He, being about 40 years old at the time, had been working internationally most of his life and also also got his education for international marketing on the other, the business side of the Atlantic ocean.

The CEO decided to meet him as soon as possible and so we went back to Helsinki again. Things worked well. We really felt good together and were surprised how well this man could understand our spirit and think of how we could work. Almost like he had always been one of us - perhaps he should have. After the long discussions we had at his house we felt like going for it. There was only one change in the original plan that our brilliant CEO came up with: he suggested that perhaps there was no need for a separate marketing company but the man could invest straight to our business and start working in tighter co-operation with us in the same company. This was a totally new thought for everybody but finally, after a good night sleep and consideration, we decided that it'd be the solution we would propose the others <[email protected]>.

After discussing the matter back home in Oulu we invited the man to meet us there, had sauna together and were planning the future together. He and the other new people we'd asked to join earlier would become shareholders so that he'd get the 50% he insisted and the rest would be shared among us. Everybody felt that it was a beginning of a new era. We had told him everything and he, as a hard-boiled business professional, could point out the mistakes we had make and describe several solutions we should consider. He also had some customers with projects and international partners ready waiting.

The spring 1996 and the following summer was the time when all those promises started to come true. Like the seeds had finally started to grow. I was spending half of my time in Helsinki and some of the others travelled there more too. We also started our first project there. It was actually really a good one:

The customer was the best known auction house in Finland that sells high quality antiques and fine art plus even valuable old car classics. They were about to modernize their information system and digitalize the whole process of making the auction catalogue.

The catalogue is central in their business: it has to made in time and well since most people make their buying decisions based on the pictures where the quality of the print plays a central role. Putting all the information together is also a hard process. Demanding customers make it even more difficult as they quite withdraw their items away or bring in new ones to sell at the very last moment. The traditional photography and print methods are so slow that the auction house can't adjust to customer's needs so they hoped that the digitalization would be an answer.

Another company was working on the database and digital imaging so that our task was to participate in that process to create the on-line version. Our goal was to do it so that the same database and same pictures that the new system would use to publish the paper catalogue could be used to automatically create an interactive the web-version of it. I was responsible for our part of the project (at the age of 20) and this time we were in no hurry since we had time the whole summer.

On the whole the project went well, or at least better than usually, since we had failed to keep the deadlines quite often before. One of the older guys back in Oulu built the database-interface for the web and it worked well. We could also get the system process the images that were created for print to be suitable for the web with little trouble. The interface and the search engine for the on-line catalogue we're also ok and finished in time - it was pretty neat to search for all silver rings you could buy with less than 5000FIM or check how many classic Ferraris the company had sold during the years.

The only trouble was the overall graphic design of the site: the customer wanted to have all kinds of information, like their history etc., on the site and gave as the texts as we had agreed. We had asked them who would make the graphics and the design that would be needed to make the site look well and they had promised to deliver them. In the end they didn't - it turned out that they had misunderstood our question and gave us only the paper catalogues to show as what the style was supposed to be - so we had to do the design ourselves and they were not willing to pay for it. I can't do professional graphics myself and we had no money to pay anyone so it was a severe crisis. Finally, after two weeks of panic as the dead-line was coming close, the CEO made the graphics and the whole design himself in one night with my assistant.

The result was, especially at that time when a lot of web design was really poor, quite good and the customer was astonished because it was so much more than they had expected. The project was finally successfully over, except that the pages were not technically finished so that some other people had to go through them back in Oulu. The CEO and I had to travel elsewhere to teach already and so that we didn't have the time to finish them and that caused some quarrel.

No one of us got paid of the whole project. The database designer did the web engine as his masters to graduate from the polytechnic. We did our parts for fun and to learn and just because we had to. The company didn't charge enough so the income covered only the expenses - travels, telephone calls, secretary's salary and other running costs. Of course it was quite sad but at least we had managed to finish one real project and got good publicity from it.

Before the work in the spring we had been to Stockholm in Sweden (my first time there) to present the plan for the bigger auction house there that owns this Finnish one. They thought it was an interesting plan but didn't believe that we (Finns) we're needed for them to accomplish the same. Actually they said that they were already about to publish something "the next Thursday". Several months later in autumn when our work in Finland was published with a lot of interest from even the international press - I believe that the service was the first full on-line auction catalogue with database and search capabilities and nice pictures in the whole world! - the Swedes had still absolutely nothing. If you know Scandinavian history (or current ice-hockey) you might have a clue of what this meant to us ;)

The autumn after that auction house summer was to witness even a better project with even more work, publicity and no pay. The Swedish royal family was coming to visit Oulu and the town wanted to get everything out of it. Our CEO was involved in the planning and - being the amazingly creative propeller he is - came up with great ideas, found the partners and convinced the representatives of the city to go for it. So <[email protected]> worked like hell most of the August and when the royal came we had just finished everything - in fact just the same morning after a 28 hours day of work - to be ready for the show.

The result is still present at <URL:http://www.ouka.fi/victoria/> and was a good example (and one of the first in the world, I believe) of how modern Internet communication services combined with mobile digital technology can be used to share important events with people across the world as they happen. The site functioned as a press center for the international media and was also the fastest news channel for the public.

We had borrowed to digital cameras from Canon and the hospital in Oulu that the photographers were using. The pictures taken were transferred immediately from the field from the back seat of a taxi using a laptop with a GSM-datalink to our office. There they were photoshopped and published for the press to use and people to watch with short explanations of what was going on. Best quality pictures were 1200x800 or even larger so they were good enough for the print media to use. Some places the royal visited had video-cameras installed so that we could send their stream live on the net too. We had also a digital pocket camera and we <[email protected]> were using them ourselves, some pictures I took of the princess Victoria arriving to the technology park were published in real-time too :)

Of course today with all the media giants using the web extensively to report the Olympic games all that is nothing new. Back then, one and a half years ago in the far north of Scandinavia - in the middle of nowhere, if you prefer - it was quite an achievement for a bunch of youngsters. The one coordinating the work that day the royal visited was 23 years old at the time and later became the next CEO of Net People. I was nineteen myself like most of the technicians taking care of ISDN and videoconferencing systems, the CU-SEE-ME link, the outgoing MBONE-feed and the basic web services. The girl (there is one in the group! :) finishing the pictures for the press was eighteen. All world top professionals I'd say. The middle-aged man who had bought the half of the company was sitting in the office in Helsinki, 600km (400 miles or so) away and happy to follow everything on the net.

All that was '96 and before. By the end of that year and during '97 then the company has organized, established and gotten serious on the whole. Business has slowed down and is quite boring compared to the crazy early times but at least the ones working nine-to-five every day - instead of 30 hours a day and then disappearing - get paid and can live a normal life. The customers can trust on them. The current (third) CEO has a family with a child and the workers have to pay their rents so they can't do it just for fun anymore like I (we) always did. There's still much of the spirit left.

Most of the founding members of the society (it wasn't really a company in the beginning) are somewhere else: the first leader, creator and spirit maker CEO moved to countryside and is working there on his own projects, some of us young are busy studying other things (law, sociology, languages, cultural studies) in other parts of the country or abroad, some professionals have changed to different companies for better pay or different work etc. Many of the originals are, however, working full time now. I think that, combined with the newcomers, they together form the core of about eight active people at the office. And naturally also we who are away, only for a while I hope, still hang around on the net as always.

The main product is our own package called Net Access which is a basic service for people and companies to use Internet from home and/or office with a modem or an ISDN connection. We have our own modem pool now which brings in the basic income from about 1,500 customers. There are also some cable modem users. The server services are ok, for example the whole an.org is on netppl's systems in Oulu which I happily use from all over the world every day. Some people are working on projects, mainly building websites sometimes combined with more advanced database facilities.

The biggest challenges in the future is to find a new business model as the whole service-business is changing. Although the good local service is a strenght globalization seems to be necessary. A long-term strategy has been to form good partnerships and try to move out from the tiny markets in Northern Finland (only some hundreds of thousands inhabitants there and tightening competition) for the global markets. This is one reason I've been travelling and meeting ISOC people and why I came to live here in Amsterdam which is about the best place for international business on the continent.

I also hope that the soon-to-be-born Finnish chapter of the Internet Society will help us to take this step. Otherwise the fight is lost and we will die away as the old world (telcos, big media, IT corporations etc) is taking over the net as is establishes to be just a regular part of the society. Then those delightful memories of the past years will be nothing but an useless effort - but there's nothing I hope more than to show the world that it was only the beginning. Revolution!

From place to place, task to task

maintenance, business, services, projects, contacts, tougher knowledge, travelling - teaching, .. yet the community (homepages, irc etc)

95/96-> Helsinki .. international interests, business slowdown,
ministry of telecommunication, house of knowledge, ...
97 -> abroad
98 -> 5 years full

Becoming real in Helsinki

(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

The [asepalvelus on yha pakollinen] in Finland. Instead of going to the army we can 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.
...

it's all the same! (yet so diffent that the books, meeting people etc. taught a lot!) ..

TIVEKE - developing networks at the Ministry

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).

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/>

hug (helsinki underground), #fi-rave, #appelsiini, #psyke

Duuni.Net

In (between) all worlds

inter-     national
           cultural
           personal

- Net People T-shirt,
design by Jori Nissinen
(an understanding outsider?)

an's expertice
is in bridge _ building,
connecting
separate and even distant
entities when needed.
examples:

we were born at the same time
took the first steps towards life
not yet aware of each other

premisses:
1. the networks are not only information networks.
2. the information networks are not only technical issues.

Status-less

At the moment I'm quite statusless. Hanging around Central Europe, based in Amsterdam and net-based in all of the cities (Oulu, Helsinki, Amsterdam) where I exist.

My role at the Net People is mainly just consulting and taking care of some international matters but I do participate actively in both technical reasearch and development and strategic decision making.

I'm also active in many other national and global forums and follow some local (Dutch, that is) mainly Internet and New Media issues. I try to maintain a broad view over the things I'm interested in from all different aspects like technology, economy, social issues, lawmaking, art, ordinary life, science, philosophy, dance etc.

The studies include Networks, Multi-Agent Systems, Conceptual Modelling, User Interface Design, Hypermedia, Evolution Programming and still hoping to take up some Social Studies and perhaps some others still. I'm in no hurry but hope to get some degrees during, say,the fifteen. I don't need academic certificates to work where I want to but I do value them high.

Most of my time goes in communication and thinking but fortunately there's much more to life too. From a productive point of view I produce, besides these texts and other communication, quite a lot of poems, drawings, paintings and nowadays (thanks to the birthday/christmas present my Sis (sanna-imagined-sister) gave me!) even small statues.

I have no money and no income except from the public money that I get from the state of Finland and from (the university of?) Oulu. That is about 400$ a month which is enough for rent and living. If I need more money I can usually sell some writings that I've webbed on my site but since I'm not really a marketing person most of the stuff remains unpublished, except for the site itself, of course. Usually selling is more trouble than the money would solve so I'm pretty happy the way things are. Being statusless, unestablished and in peace. Just an-ything I fell like - just like the net itself. Inter-, in between, almost a-nothing, nowhere.

Probably, as the net establishes like I often seem to state, I need to establish aswell to justify my existence (in other words: to get money). Obviously this is a step on that path. Or the opposite?

Perspective

pioneers are never the typical end users

70's programmers are programmers
90's communicators are communicators

what do people do?

Who are we?

From programmers to communicators?

Pioneers are not usually the typical end users. The Internet pioneers did the founding work on the '70s, soon almost thirty years ago. I don't know much about them even though I once had the joy to share the same dance floor with the famous Vint Cerf and have been hanging around ISOC a while. I wonder, how do they use the net? Have they ever studied it? Do they think of it?

Those creators were/are engineers and programmers. I quitted programming five years ago, mostly because of the Internet. Suddenly there were people behind the screen and the computer itself vanished, I hardly ever think of them anymore. The net was there ready for us with all these wonderful services and programs evolving.

I think of communication, or interaction in a broader sense, a lot and that's what the net most of all is about. That is also what I do for work - communication and communication systems for other people to use. Perhaps I could be called a communicator, like people sometimes are (the edge digerati).
(...)

Post-Computer?

I haven't really had a computer in ages. Why would I need one? The net is much nicer!

On or for and from (...) the net?

Sometimes I see a difference between people, who use the net, and net people who are on the net and perhaps grown up there, from the net. The net is same for all of us and we use pretty much the same tools but it seems, however, that we have some differences in our perspectives.

Is it that we are another generation of net pioneers and live not only on it but also for it? I mean that we use and promote the net perhaps more than it would deserve to push it forward. But why?

We are dependent

I guess we must admit that our lives are really dependent on the net. It is where we work, even so that it is perhaps the only thing that we know well enough to be able to make a living. Many have skipped school and don't progress in their studies being so busy learning the net and working there.

Furthermore I'm afraid that our social relationships are relay on it more than we realize. Like the people in Helsinki I used to live with at the L16 net community are now more spread all over and I don't even know where some of them live. Yet we spend a lot of time every day chatting on IRC and feel togetherness almost like then when we lived in the same building. What would happen to us if the net would collapse? I don't even have the money to travel there .. I couldn't be able to live in Amsterdam, the town I love, but still spend the days together with my friends in Helsinki and in tight contact with the company, people and family back in Oulu etc. Where would I locate in this triangle of cities without loosing too much?

So we are extremely dependent and pioneers and probably can't be used as an example when visioning what the typical future user will be like? I don't think I have a clue of that.

What is home, where's the surf and excitement?

As we were grown up with the net it's ways of doing often feel more familiar than those of the outer world. For most people, I mean just normal people, this is still quite the opposite as they are often even afraid of computers and can't often really understand what's going on the net behind them.

The adventurous are encouraged to buy a computer with a modem in search for excitement. Ads and campaigns in the old media (TV, radio, paper etc) keep hyping, talk about web surf emphasizing all the dangers. The Information Revolution comes up in table discussions and the New Economy buzzes economists. Gee.

The people (I know) on/from/for the net couldn't care less. Many of them work around it and do concern it important and follow what's going on but are fascinated about quite different things. The net was always there and doesn't really seem to change. Even the small improvements we've had during the last couple of years were known well before and the only surprise seems to be how slowly everything happens. But as the tools are pretty ok already it doesn't really matter that much 'cause we can happily use them.

"For us the net is not about surfing but a cozy place where we like to be.
Home. It is not at all exiting or fun but totally normal, just necessary.
The world outside is wild and exotic, perhaps scary, but full of
adventures!"

Is it the dealing with the real/old world: paper, snailmail, travelling, body .. is where we find the adventures? For some of us it definitely is but not always in a positive sense. My most terrifying experiences come from paper bureaucracy and many people simply hate telephones, not to mention TV. Joy is in dance. Importance in people, togetherness. Excitement in fishing?

Examples

Creating and putting the work on-line:

Everybody usually puts their stuff on-line after writing, presenting or by other means finishing it. Our work seems to have a different approach: it's born on-line, in discussions, grown with comments and formed on the net. The peak of it's presence might be some publication (speak, article in a newspaper) but even though those moments and delivering are important they are only short moments, dots in a lifeline. ... after which the creation itself continues to exist on the net (virtually) forever, accessible from anywhere.
--
information overload.. [the peaceful media column -stuff]
are we immune?
(...)

"Source critique" (lahdekritiikki in Finnish) and lack of context

A classical example about people from the old world is the way they emphasize the importance of (something that is called "lahdekritiikki") critical way of reading everything they find on the web.

They say: "you never know who's written it, some school kid or a respected researcher", "there is nothing to signify the context".

I would believe that people who are used to it know very well the different contexts and sources of information even on unfamiliar sites. URLs and other addressing tells often quite a lot, usually also the design style of a page (which can, of course, be faked) but most importantly it is easy to get the same information from different independent sources and to learn which ones you can trust and when. These are really the basic skills that evolve. Furthermore they are assumed naturally - of course you must be aware of who you're listening to!

On the net the possibility of disinformation and numerous contradictions are so obvious that it is accepted as a part of communication. People used to the polished safe old media who want to benefit from it need to get used to it.

And, most importantly, I'd say that people grown on the net realize that the whole world is like that and don't necessarily take the stories on TV and magazines so seriously either. It is always only one point of view after all. This is common knowledge but in some discussions some friends have been pointing out how natural it is for net people and I quite agree.

What are the (data - information - knowledge?) networks

Background

In Finland there has been a lot of discussion and critics concerning the development of Information Society by driving the Internet and computers etc.

The Finnish word for information is "tieto" so the information society is called "tietoyhteiskunta". "Tieto" means (loosely) also knowledge and even, on the other opposite, raw data. A data file is called "tiedosto" (~ a piece of "tieto") and the Internet and other computer based networks are called "tietoverkko" (data/information(/knowledge) network).

It is often claimed that computer networks are only data networks that don't necessarily support information and more importantly knowledge networks at all -- even though the word "tietoverkko" would suggest so. The critics say that a lot of knowledge is still better presented in books and journals when Internet appears to be filled with disinformation and other meaningless data.

Opinion:

I'd say that the critics are right in their perceptions but think that it's more a benefit than a drawback. These network's capabilities of carrying all kinds of data is just what makes them so flexible!

There's a more to life than information or knowledge. What appears irrelevant to those big minded thinkers might be essential for someone else's life. (there's one new book titled "moral, beyond knowledge" that might say something?)

These I quite new thoughts for me. I've always been the one wondering why and how some people can spend their lives just taking care of bits' welfare. I've felt it more important to look at what's there, in the meanings, and what new services we could develop. I guess that is also important but ... (dunno)

So "data" and "bits" cover a lot more than "information". Perhaps they are even capable of carrying atmospheres and feelings at least in some way, (...)

But not even bits - being digital - is the key. I don't even want to be digital, analog is often great! It is not the issue at all. What then?

Networks!, I hear already. Ok, the distributed parallel amoebae like nature of these new structures is important. That is the technology and said to be the politics too. I've been wondering about social structures, so called networked (distributed?) social relations and got to even hear about this study about Network Families.

There's lots of them everywhere, though, economy and everything. One of my favorites is language, the new visual thesaurus by PlumbDesign <URL:http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus/ > demonstrates it in quite a nice way, as does also WebSom in Helsinki http://websom.hut.fi/

Still they are just .. networks. Some people don't care of them too much but concentrate on .. just some specific nodes on them? My node I mean for example a person or some other entity (family) on a social network or perhaps some special culture or style from some other aspect (music or whatever). ...

I can say I'm one of Net People, a person perhaps. I think I know what it stands for and am proud of it. It is not about computers, bits, data, information, knowledge or even networks although I guess I'll have to admit that they're related. Perhaps .. perhaps the essence is in attitude .. I'm quite satisfied with what it stands for as being (often) the a of an. Attitude meaning the way to relate to things, way of thinking and especially doing.

Tapscott's book seems to have a grip on this. I hate the name, though, and some of the approach. http://www.growingupdigital.com/

Support

Said aloud in a party Friday night:
"Internet is the Best Support
to get Real World Experiences."
(Which are what we're running after)

What makes me insists such things?
Is it true?

I guess I had arguments: "It's the best place to know what's going on and where and how to get there and who's doing what who to meet and what to say and do."

But if it means ending up spending half of your time on-line wouldn't it be just
better to (Mike Oldfield, Ommadawn, song three) go to people and live with them and whatever?

Filling the void

Doing the World Surf

Internet exploded and suddenly the world was a like a void that needed us desperately. So we got involved in all kinds of projects, met many people and started travelling around teaching, consulting and helping companies and other organizations to build new systems. Mostly we were around Finland, that was our world.

While staying in Helsinki I felt pretty much the same: I could do anything I wanted to, go wherever I felt like and meet and talk with whoever. That came up to mean people from important companies, politicians, artists, writers ...

Then I wanted to go to Malaysia to Inet'97 to check what ISOC and the world out there looked like. Some planning and e-mailing and that was it (well, ok, it was quite hard and troubleful but still). Arranging the stay in Amsterdam was, say, trivial. Some mailing, checking things on the web and then the flight.

What have we learned?

There was a tremendous free space for us to explore for the last five years. In the end life started to feel like world surf. Is that what we've learned? Change context in a flash? Understand aspects? Know what's needed and where? Learn fast and forget even faster?

Home on the net?

home, screen
home

We need something to attach to and the Internet seems to be perfect - it's always there. I'd guess that's the reason it seems like a good thing to live around and where to build a home. It makes me feel secure. No matter where I am I can always log on and my friends, family, work - basicly everything is there.

Is our time out?

Last five years have been crazy. Yet many say that the true boom is still ahead. Will the next five years need us?

Did I come to central Europe to win time? They are behind in the development so
it's even easier to be an evangelist here.

I've already been bored since the net has become so established. Money, world politics .. that's not us. Is our time already over before it really started?

Sometimes I dream of being a musician who can go anywhere, just any place, and
just take his guitar, play a nice song for the people there and make a nice
atmosphere for everyone to enjoy. Did this dream become true on those travels?
Is it braking now? Or have I become a storyteller .. can I learn music to fulfill
my stories? (bjork)

Use

Services

all the modern things have always existed
they've just been waiting in a mountain
for the right moment

From a technical service aspect the 'net is for me the same old four services it offers:
1. Chat (irc)
2. Mail (personal and groups)
3. Forums (mailing lists, news, web forums)
4. Sites ('pages', www services including ftp etc. file archives)

Being on the net means using them, usually all four, simultaneously.
What are they, then?

1. Chat: people you are (work, part, live) with, a.k.a. friends
2. Mail: organizing things, inquiries, letters
3. Forums: common interests, interest groups among strangers
4. Sites: services by people and organizations

I consider chat being most interactive and sites the least. Chat is about togetherness, often seemingly useless things. Mail is most practical for work and also for private things and is often very intimate too.

Forums, like UseNet news, public mailing list discussions and web-based forums are usually interest groups for me like usually.

Sites represent often the remotest and coldest parts of the net like company services, mass media, shopping malls etc. Sometimes we spend amazingly little time among them and often the most important are friend's sites.

Tools

All those boys with
fascinating fingers,
touching their tools

The applications (programs, software) we use are quite primitive. Sometimes I wonder if that's stupid, if it makes us old fashioned and inefficient. Then again, they are the tools we know and that work well, are reliable, fast, straightforward and flexible, for example in their location independency which we have always valued high.

A typical session is to open connections to suitable bases and reattach to screens on them:

Session: ssh current.base.server ; screen -r
    0: irc, possibly windowed
    1: pine or similar for e-mail and lists
    2: tin or similar for news type forums
    3: lynx, netscape, msie, ...: connections to other bases and sites

Besides applications used during sessions the systems, every net base, run processes that take care of users wellbeing while he or she is away. Most of I use are standard mail filtering facilities and IRC helpers but lot better agency should be coming.

System: (what is always running on background)
    0: irc helpers
    1: procmail for autofiltering & foldering
    ...

In the background story I tell how I quitted programming because of the Internet. As like the tools were perfect already. Of course they aren't but is it that there are so many people making them anyway and we get to use them immediately that totally other things fascinate more?

Recent Wired-hype:
Freeman Dyson:"science is driven by innovation, creation of new tools"

Tropicalissimo:
(Pela Internet)
"the development of music corresponds to the popularizing new technologies. electronic keyboards and synthesizers have had great impact on music- interchanging through planetary networkswill only improve that process."

about tools and art on nettime:
http://www.factory.org/nettime/archive/1372.html

from a reply:
"Webstalker by I/O/D won Mr.net.art title some days ago. and I'm sure such experiments with brosers will be actual this year. They are very interesting and very technologically creative."

Methods

Situations

isn't it obvious that 
you can't be in 
one place at one time

A base is a server (typically one for domain/role) where I have a screen, usually an active one and homepage and e-mail activities.

The net presence is not independent from real world situation. Perhaps it can / could be, but to get the best support I've started to separate different roles and even
physical locations (cities).

study, work, private etc. all integrated
first @tolsun, @otol and finally @netppl.fi <DIV ALIGN=right>

How to organize net being so that it supports existing locations and roles (situations) best?

I've done it mainly by separating different situations on different bases so that when logging in I can choose which roles to have and how much.

Now in Amsterdam I'm still in a process:
There's only one irc for Finland now that covers both netppl and an -activities and the whole country.

cs.vu.nl has replaced lib.hel.fi as daily activities but the whole thing has not really taken form yet.. (as has not the rest of the life either .. which is probably the reason 'cause they're woven together)

Multi-presence?

Why and how?

while you're away
my heart comes undone,
slowly unravels..

Just by letting my net presence lay in those systems I can, every day, follow what is going on. I'd get official documents and other information otherwise too, but it seems that following everyday babble and participating in shared problem solving gives a lot more.

so when you come back
we'll have to make new love

When I return to Finland, go to Helsinki or Oulu, I know already what has happened almost every day while I was away and we can share our (rare) moments together without a terrible need to talk about some basic things - we do it almost every day anyway.

The company, Net People, is an extreme example as quite many of them work over the net and walk on IRC even inside the town (or office!) so I can see all that from everywhere else too.

Drawbacks?

Of course every moment I spend on the net with my old friends back in Finland is away from my intensity of being here in Holland. Sure I'd need to use the net anyway just to get general information and to keep contact with other people too, but hanging with friends tends to take quite a lot of time especially if I make the mistake trying to continue work when tired.

It seems, however, that many of my international friends spend quite a lot of time writing and reading letters, books, magazines etc. from their homes without using the Internet, too. I'd guess it distracts from the local culture just the same way.

Embodiment

The time I've been working on this presentation here in this computer class at the university I've been writing and thinking about quite a lot how happy I am with the IRC and other services we use with these ancient programs.

I value true physical embodiment with my full body priceless.
I enjoy nothing like dance.

One of my old ambitions is combining, bridging these two worlds in a way that allows to play in between. That's actually what I always do but worlds of the net and dance are quite a special case. Did you already take a look at one early experiment I always like to mention: http://www.netppl.fi/~antont/pics/montaasi94.jpg ?
(...)

Homebuilding

I drop my anchor
and this is where
I'm staying, this 
is my Home

I spend a lot of time constructing home sites for various reasons. Homepage freaks are often categorized to be some kind of self promoters but I think that some ways of use are developing that will be simply handy.

Traditionally homepages are just separate creations. I've been experimenting with direct sharing and collaboration supporting easy re-use of all kinds of material on my web home. Last autumn I put the not-confidental parts of most important mail-discussions straight on-line. My friends could read them there, I could refer to them easily anywhere etc. Perhaps something similar should be done with other services, like IRC and Usenet or other public forums too.

The user is an-network of all the different Internet Services ...

The four services I separated (chat, mail, forums, pages) are integrated together in the user. (S)he is the one who uses them all, like we usually do parallel in the same time, and draws conclusions of all input. Furthermore the use is typically active in all means so that most net people chat, write mails, participate in forums and make their own web pages so that they produce output in all those channels as well.

(i draw a picture of this but the scanner room is closed, fill figure it out later)

... and the world a-network of the users ...

The tools I've been working on support these methods we already have and use manually every day. They are far from ready but I've already been using them to share some e-mail discussions with friends flexibly on the web and now we're doing the same with the chat. I still have to work a lot manually to get the right texts from one place to another and for the right groups of people at the right time and in right order and form. We would definitely need some better database and automation facilities and I hope to work on them during this spring.

... but what is personal?

The idea that everything one person creates would be on his/her site is discussed quite a lot nowadays. The talk about OPS (open profiling system) which is often aiming at total control of own personal information and even making current databases that big media companies etc. comes close to this.

This would be more like farming than industrial living in a city. Everything you grow is on your own land and in your control yet often free and participating in the community but the way you decide. I think we have good reasons the share and even take risks being too open but also so that we have the right to .. hmm, what?

These thoughts about control are quite vague still but open for discussion. I know that many people for example in the hypermedia community have defined some of these issues since Ted Nelson in the 60's and even earlier.

Re-Use

recycle
and refine

Apart from control issues the homebuilding centered way of using the Internet supports all kinds of re-use of all kinds of material efficiently.

Most people store all the e-mails they have ever sent. I also have almost all of them since I was fourteen and from the last few years they are quite well organized. I think that the same practise should be used with the other ways of communicating, like articles posted to mail/news/web forums and the webpages that we create too. I started doing it last autumn myself.

By consciously storing all (relevant) data flows in out from net bases in use a valuable database can be build. At least now that I'm used to it I find it useful to have all material I've ever produced or received at hand and with the IRC also many discussions that I might sometimes need to recall.

Continuous re-use of all kinds of material is changing the way we communicate a lot. It is still quite unclear what the good practices will be as everyone knows how irritating forwards (fwd) are and how unreadable IRC-logs may often be.

One of the cases presented here is the solving of the robbery in Rotterdam. There the active re-use of material (audio, video, written explanations and discussions) play a central role.

Collaboration by sharing:

do not think
communicate!

(I was never
that smart but
have developed,
grown up to this
courage to ask,
tell, share ..
communicate
.. which makes
me efficient!
and highly
vulnerable?)

Collaboration is a central goal of the whole homebuilding and of course the Internet and (information) technology in general.

My intuition is that the more you share the better the collaboration gets. It seems quite obvious. The tradeoff is, of course, the loss in privacy.

What do we need privacy for? For (almost?) nothing with the family I'd say. But what about when the family is more like a fuzzy network? Of course just friends and not the whole Internet .. or what if?

Identity

are we an/t
or hum-an ?

Augmented sharing, especially when it reaches also traditionally private parts of life as the network replaces the family and many other social needs, effects the identity. Identity is basicly what privacy is about. What, then?

I think that networks are efficient on the whole. You can trust that most of it works. But what does it do for a person who's participating as a node? What should (s)he keep safe in his/her own privacy? I don't really always know. The same goes with groups with identities like companies etc.

Case: Important first times around the net

First time drinking ouzo:

humala.html (stands for "drunkenness") .. authentic!
written in a party at the time we were learning html for fun :)

First girlfriend:

in a party, around 5am, people leaving,
went on-line, <snowg> was there, told they
had strawberry cake, so i bicycled there
through the town and in a week/two started
dating.

First love:

she was sort of familiar from #Oulu on irc, we were
looking for people to join to go to travel to a party
in Tampere (500km away) and she had put her
telephone number on the net for us to finger and we
called and traveled together the next day and fell
completely in a disastrous love and got together.
we've been separated ages now but keep struggling
in this weird bigger-than-life brother/sister friendship
mostly on-line .. why? she kills me.

First contact with the ISOC and trip to the East, Malaysia Inet'97:

got interested when gtld-mou was published,
had taken a look before but forgotten,
tried to find out but really couldn't,
noticed inet'97, almost gave it up, finally
managed to get there, wrote about it,
kept contact, was driving chapterizierung
but also criticizing, saw isoc.nl born,
now isoc.fi is coming (and this)

First stay abroad:

announced interest fall '95, got e-mail
spring '97, replied "yes", some more mailing,
checking courses from the web etc.
and here I am.

First parachuting experience:

The decair, meaning the airspace freaks from Digital Equipment Corporation in Finland, sent mail
'cause they needed more people to their parachuting group to get some discount. I hadn't had any contact with them before but as the mail came during some (boring) day at work it was easy to reply "sure, why not" and so that happened.

Case: Return from Rotterdam Weekend

I was robbed violently in Rotterdam at the time of the International Film Festival, end of January1998. I wasn't hurt and lost only some money and it didn't really bother my stay over the weekend but made me think afterwards.

The returning back home to Amsterdam and the following week there became an interesting case showing some aspects about net oriented vs. ordinary life.

On the net I could share the accident, a description of what had happened, with friends and other people who were interested with a little trouble, basically writing it once, after which we could talk about the thoughts and feelings it really made us feel.

With the people I lived in Amsterdam it was quite the opposite. I had to explain the story, repeat the same tape for everyone, but had then very few real discussions about it. Several times there just wasn't really time for it after the story itself. Not to mention the police, who of course cared nothing about how I felt, just kept bothering me with the same questions (and travelling!) again and again.

Sunday:

Monday:

[some talk in the morning]
e-mail:
original for potential funder
(rotterdam.mail-original.txt)
plenty of forwards with customized introductions
(rotterdam.mail-netppl+.txt,
parallel, chat:
forwards:
more chat, log sent to brother, discussion
[talk in a party, again]

Tuesday:

e-mail: reply's

chat: new things

[Life goes on.]
a close friend comes, story once more
(rotterdam.irc-*.txt)

police

Wednesday & Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Case: Björk lost

     ... the marvelous web ...

        and they will assist us 
'cause we're asking for help

-Björk, All Neon Like

The Icelandic singer/musician and pop star Björk is really important for me. I was most delighted to notice that she was coming to perform in Amsterdam just when I'd moved (t)here. I had left all my albums back in Finland to try living without them I thought I'd like to go to the concert first even though I knew I loved the new album anyway.

Of course the gig was sold out before I got the ticket. I was terrified. So I went around and listened to the record at Virgin's .. it was the first time so I was really moved emotionally. After listening I went to a cafe to write about it for all the beppers on the list where we share these feelings.

I was already satisfied with the fact that I'd miss the concert. I'd have the music, anyway.

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, there is this guy from Belgium with a perfect solution: a ticket to the concert in Brussels the day before the one in Amsterdam - the first gig on the new tour! What am I to do? Of course I went and enjoyed it really and am really thankful for all the people who made it possible. I'll never forget the evening.

Still I was left with a bit mixed feelings: what was this leading to?
Like they say: be careful in what you wish 'cause that's what you'll get.

time: fall '97
place: a'dam
involved: bep (i.e. blue eyed pop, bjork etc. fan mailing list)

(the mail called "A round with Bjork" was part of "tunnustelua", an-project fall '97
and sent to bep)
background: the mail sent to bep
solution: reply from Belgium (the same day) and a ticket to the concert in Brussels
new mail: .. afterglow (after both gigs)
thoughts:
are we an/t or hum.an?
guess I was happy. lucky. but felt like I'd lost my .. individuality?
---
from the gig in A'dam came the (famous) homo t-shirt
which is also mentioned in "tunnustelua"
(off note, the name "tunnustelua" is translated in the last one of them:
"tunnustelua" .. 'tunne' is feeling, 'tunnustella' is more like to
touch something carefully to know what it is about, I guess there
would be a word in the dictionary. Furthermore, 'tunnustelua' is the
activity, to try to touch and feel what something is about. Perhaps
like coughing a bit before starting to talk or sing or the first
steps you take on ice before really walking on it to cross the river
(would be the Finnish example, I guess)
)

References The presentation is mostly based on own experiences of life and how I feel about it. Of course a lot of it comes from on all the books, articles, discussions etc. I have had about the net during the years but this is (unfortunately) not an academic text and provides no accuracy in the use of literacy not to mention methods and methodologies.

Literature

Esther Dyson and her book Release 2.0:

Hotwired threads:
http://threads.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/interact/view_stitch?msg.56187

Net, she suggests, is more than just a set of
      telecommunication lines and switches. It is a
      communication tool, a set of communities, and a
      "potential home for us all." Dyson is clearly a
      champion of Web culture. After all, her business
      and livelihood depend on it.

http://threads.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/interact/view_stitch?msg.56226
C'mon, folks, get real!

"1. The net, for inexpliccable reasons, delivers a level of diversity unparraleled in the "real" world. How can anyone pretend to make generalizations about the digital world in general? Its ridiculous, its irresponsible to feed the non-wired this crap."

Growing Up Digital : The Rise of the Net Generation by Don Tapscott

(dis)covered in HotWired / Katz http://www.hotwired.com/synapse/katz/98/05/index1a.html
who suggests Don to be the president of the Internet.
I also wrote him an e-mail and he send the book,
i've been browsing it but will read.

amazon reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/quicksearch-query/7786-2708781-440423

POP sounds & emotions

I used to hate pop music and culture but had to change my opinion as they seem to be so good in interpreting our current feelings. Even Oasis answers the difficult question about telepresense etc. simply: "Be Here, Now"

        home
        travel
        goods
        (scandinavia)

... state of emergency ...

        and they will assist us
        'cause we're asking for help
                                        (should we,
                                         do we need
                                         their help?)
dreams:
he believes in a beauty
he's a venus as a boy.

oldfield's a treasure!

S:     ehka minun kanssa on
        mahdotonta tehda mitaan.

        voit kuitenkin kommentoida,
        joskus ainakin ehka.

        niin kuin bell teki homogenicin.

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