Work concluded on February 23rd, 1998 and revised afterwards.
The abstract, many parts and the presentation itself missing still.
[email protected]
http://an.org/inet98/
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 explaining more about these aspects.
(formal:
city of Oulu: www.ouka.fi, english info
University: www.oulu.fi
Technopolis: www.otm.fi)
Oulu is below the reindeer-border but there were moose next to our house :)
The city is about 110,000 people now and gaining population! (was 90,000 or so)
(...)
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 :)
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, were going to graduate soon but in most of the schools new enthusiasts were already there learning their job.
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.)
I can't still use a fax but many people in the company had to learn it, uh.
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, a friend of mine. 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. Otherwise we would've been paying for the access and working somewhere else for it.
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 browsing 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 often 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-head 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 the digital cameras that the photographers were using from Canon and the hospital of Oulu. 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, however, and my dream is to earn my living by working for our own company in the future as most of my net activities are really dependent on Net People anyway.
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 at some level 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!
Or at least a good life.
(A view from a homepage, fall'97: )
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.
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.
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. (...)"
There is still an obligatory military civil service in Finland. Instead of going to the army we can do the alternative civil service of 13 months, mine was from September 1996 till October 1997. I had found the place myself beforehand, 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 brain damage..
Then in the beginning of October I started at the library. It describes itself in the following words:
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.
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.
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.
House of Knowledge
places are important. not everything, but important.
...
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!
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?
oh, in Helsinki there were still, among others:
inter- national cultural personal
- Net People T-shirt, design by Jori Nissinen (an understanding outsider?)
projects
an's expertice
is in bridge _ building,
connecting
separate and even distant
entities when needed.
examples:
.
.
.
---
the opposite is just
an-(other) aspect.
-t(-shirts)
be agents
to each other!
abstract to see,
live to be concrete
culture for nerds
nerds for culture
org.an?
@an.org
-
i have
always grown up with the
net.
we were born at the same time
took the first steps towards life
not yet aware of each other
when the net became communication
i started communicating
when it developed to be social
i was social
art
culture
and even politics
we made together
one day it'll become irrelevant
the day i've done it all.
---
an:
premisses:
1. the networks are not only information networks.
2. the information networks are not only technical issues.
conclusion:
the world consists of networks that consist of everything.
---
i am afraid of war
i've felt uneasy for some time now
i believe it's the conroversy on the net
i seem to take it personally
like it was me
yesterday i think heard the first shots
and felt terrible
today i'm settled
but it's just calm before storm
i'm afraid
hesitating
about to blow up
the first net war is coming.
---
(an / summer 1997)
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 years. 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?
Both.
pioneers are never the typical end users
70's programmers are programmers 90's communicators are communicators
what do people do?
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).
(...)
common knowledge, from the U.S.A.: "a PC without the net is like a car without a road"
an/amsterdam, Europe: "I need no car but prefer walking, cycling and public transport"
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?
Furthermore I'm afraid that our social relationships 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 if there was no Internet?
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.
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? (picture coming soon!)
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.
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.
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.
Some discussion about new netty social structures: (in Finnish only,
sorry)
http://an.org/tunnustelua/0049.html
http://an.org/tunnustelua/0056.html
http://an.org/tunnustelua/0059.html
But, sigh, even networks aren't everything. Wonder if I used to think so?
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/
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?
And get drown in paper and fascinated by
telephones? No thanks.
moved from background...
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.
..?
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.
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)
all the modern things have always existed they've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment
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.
Homepages are central but not covered well here at the moment.
All those boys with fascinating fingers, touching their tools
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?
Should the following make me think different?
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."
isn't it obvious that you can't be in one place at one time
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).
- roles:
art - work - study - LIFE
- projects, responsibilities, ...
back in Oulu I was mostly just there,
(+ naturally participating in global)
study, work, private etc. all integrated
first @tolsun, @otol and finally @netppl.fi <DIV ALIGN=right>
in Helsinki the situation was still clearly divided.
example: situations when living in Helsinki:
work - home
- visit
Currently:
cs.vu.nl
an.org
netppl.fi
lib.hel.fi
(...)
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)
while you're away my heart comes undone, slowly unravels..
so when you come back we'll have to make new love
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.
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.
I've felt comfortable with being textual.
That is, luckily, not always true.
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
?
(...)
I drop my anchor and this is where I'm staying, this is my Home
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.
(i draw a picture of this but the scanner room is closed, fill figure it out later)
(...)
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.
recycle and refine
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.
So how does net support re-use? How should it? What does it do?
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.
Also for smooth re-using we would need better database facilities!
do not think communicate!
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?
(...)
are we an/t or hum-an ?
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.
Cases
...
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.
[] = not on the net
... the marvelous web ...
and they will assist us 'cause we're asking for help
-Björk, All Neon Like
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.
This is what I think the net really is about.
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.
Music is an important source of inspritation and truth.
Friends are all in all.
Here, however, are some pieces of media I've been following while writing:
http://threads.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/interact/view_stitch?msg.56226
C'mon, folks, get real!
http://threads.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/interact/view_stitch?msg.56195
"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."
amazon reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/quicksearch-query/7786-2708781-440423
Some pieces that are my inspiration:
bjork)
hunter
home
travel
goods
(scandinavia)
... state of emergency ...
(DP: around the world)
sometimes
the most personal things
are the most common things
(but when?!?)
net: all neon like?
... marvelous web ...
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.
