Digital Public Space

Neville Brody

The Digital Public Space and the Creative Exchange

: Visualising the Common Good

The Creative Exchange is a cross-discipline research hub between

academia, public institutions and industry as an exploration of new

methods and tools in Knowledge Exchange centred around the Digital

Public Space project. Exploring some of the high level thinking behind

the Digital Public Space will involve some leaps of faith, both feasible

and arguable. These ambitions will help outline some of the key areas and

questions we should be attending, as well as helping to identify and posit

the desired outcomes.

We stand at the threshold of an amazing time in human history, that of a

new Renaissance powered by the biggest leap in knowledge assembly

and distribution since the birth of printing and the Gutenberg Bible in

1454. The four key events in the development and distribution of human

knowledge are generally recognised as Cave-painting; Writing and the

birth of the alphabet; Gutenberg and the birth of printing; and the

invention of the Internet. The digital public space makes good on that

final promise. Just as the printing press led ultimately to the collapse of

Christian unity in Europe and the birth of nation-states, the internet will

herald an unprecedented enlightenment coupled with a social

empowerment as unpredictable as it is inevitable. This will come to be

seen as one of the most critical moments in our evolution.

Incidentally, the term Digital is a description of mechanism and

enablement – we do not refer to the Steam revolution, but instead to the

Industrial one. This could be called the Knowledge Revolution.

The Digital Public Space originally began life as a process of

thinking about how the entire BBC archive could be made available and

accessible to anyone. This was swiftly followed by the realisation that

surrounding this recognised content, which was far from complete, was a

huge seam of additional data. For every single piece of published or

broadcast content, exist associated soundtracks, contracts, locations,

unused footage, scripts – and, extending the net wider – concurrent news,

events and culture. Suddenly, the project was understood to be the core

for developing a unique and powerful project, a cultural and living

genome of the UK.

As the adventure grew, it became clear that other cultural institutions,

who were also looking at similar routes and with similar interests, should

come on board and collaborate on building this much broader project.

The BFI, British Museum, Tate, British Library, the National Office of

Statistics’ archive of births and deaths, and many others, could be drawn

together to form an active working group. The significance of this

venture, via the Space project ( www.thespace.org ), a joint online

publishing space created by the BBC in conjunction with the Arts

Council, has now been recognised by government, through the DCMS, as

the most important cultural event currently active in the UK.

This immense archive is not a closed space. It is not a

museum of dusty objects, but, through the premise that digital data is

fluid, is in fact an active and dynamic one, wherein every interaction

with any piece of content, plus the paths, journeys and connections

through the content space itself, will be stored as part of the growing pool

of knowledge. How a piece of data is used is as fundamentally significant

as the piece of data itself, and reveals dynamic, responsive and powerful

shifting patterns of knowledge that grow and evolve.

This is the difference. A book is an exempliary distribution model for

information and content, but cannot record the knowledge space

surrounding it through usage and reference, aside from a list of the

history of lendees at a public library, information which tells us little.

DVD's and CD's are also closed object models, as is today's Broadcast

media. This is significant. The ability to store how any piece of content is

interacted with, and information about any other pieces of content that the

piece is connected to, is the single catalyst that pushes this space into a

whole new level, that of dynamic information.

With the ability to store information about usage in a header that sits

within any piece of information, each item can be converted into the

equivalent of a living cell. The line of code monitoring the action of a

piece of data is active, always on, and can be designed to form responses

that change the nature of the cell. The extraordinary potential this

provides allows us to build a self-organising knowledge space, one that is

constantly responsive, and is capable of producing new ideas and

solutions.

The secret to the success of the DPS is an agreed common compression

algorithm and a universal metadata language. This means that any piece

of information can then be instantly cross-referenced and viewed from

the same point of access. This allows for new kinds of narrative to be

told and evolve. The artists of the future will be the ones who construct

living narratives through this interconnected space: the Dahl, or Adam

Curtis, or Orson Welles, Jane Cam[ion or Warhol will be creating

dramatic scenarios through this space, utilising text, moving image,

sound, information, design, interaction and synthetic sense to create their

dramas and art. Some may use social and crowd momentum, others

solitary journals.

What is on the table therefore is an extraordinary proposition, that of

building a knowledge space which enables anyone to access any

information anywhere at any time on any platform, and

anyone else accessing that space, 4A. This is revolutionary, akin

to the growth in the availability of information and the spread of

knowledge that immediately preceded the Renaissance. With the ability

to make this a live and responsive project, we have at our fingertips the

necessary keys to unlock an immense potential. You could imagine, for

instance, that one day you will be able to drop a problem into the DPS

and watch as it solves itself through a blend of crowdsourcing and

interconnected data clustering into appropriate and then applied

knowledge through a living process, an organic and reactive flow.

One of the most direct consequences of this space will be the dissolution

of disciplines. This isn’t anti-discipline, it is post-discipline. Da Vinci

is our prime example of the living potential of unified knowledge,

combining science with art, anatomy with poetry, engineering with

invention, architecture and design. No longer will we be limited by a

socio-industrial model that requires us to adhere to a particular restricted

skill or craft, as borne out of the industrial revolution, soviet serfdom and

then again with the mass assembly lines of the fifties. No, we will

become actively aware across disciplines, and, although we may

bring specialisms to the table, our ability to be conscious of and work

across adjacent skillsets and activities will melt our previous strictures.

Skillsets will be connected together to create greater potential, solutions

and art will be drawn from cross-pollination. Biotech and nanotech will

join painting, film, town planning, performance, archeology, electronics,

quantum physics and social planning.

This is key. A new society will potentially emerge from this, far more

rapidly than we imagine. It will fundamentally affect our education

models, our industrial structures, our financial systems, and our

governing bodies.

What is now happening is that the massive benefits and consequences of

the DPS are beginning to reveal themselves, as are some of the ways the

process should be constructed and the tools needed. There are major

challenges ahead, and this is where the Creative Exchange comes in.

We need to work on new methods and tools. What and where are the

lines and models of production in this new multi-dimensional zone?

There are many parallel and intertwined layers at work, including

identifying, curating, capturing, compressing, storing, naming,

distributing and discovering. What should our reception hardware, our

DPS radios, do that they can't right now? What new software do we have

to build? And can it be built ultimately by the space itself, as with a 3D

printer? How can we test new models and ask the right questions? What

does the DPS behave like in a post-screen culture? What are the moral

implications and limitations?

The first task is to understand how to ask the right questions.

To date, the DPS process has been largely and necessarily occupied with

creating structures and agreements, identifying systems and mechanical

methods for compression, storage, distribution and cataloguing. It has

also concerned itself with, rightly, the question of DRM and protected

data, commercial and privacy issues, and economic scale. The role of the

CX is to meet the DPS at the gate of the field and start to pose key

questions with the offer of object modeling and testable solutions.

There are many key issues that the DPS raises, and there are many

opportunities that need unlocking. An example would be the one of

Visualisation.

How should we imagine and model this space, what should be

the visual and experiential metaphors? Should we build dynamic 3-

dimensional or even 4-dimensional models, or more? What does a map

look like in this space? How should we make sense of our possible

journey lines? Who will be the farmers and shepherds, and how can UGC

be added, connected and monitored? Should the language of organization

be that of words or pictures? Sounds or colours?

What is the physics model we should use? Should the dynamic

for this knowledge space be fixed and regulated, or self-regulating? We

could, for instance. allow built-in sentience to allow Swarm Dynamics,

leading to a degree of knowledge clustering through adjacency-awareness,

much in the same way that living cells and organisms do. Should we

utilise quantum principles of probability, or use more familiar,

recognisable and analogue structures? Are we building a new brain, albeit

at a global level, or do we just want a library or Blockbuster?

What are the models for building the necessary catalogue

and analytics? Yahoo started life as a cataloguing system of services,

with trees and branches. Google replaced this with a more fluid engine.

We need to evolve the next search and reference model now, one with

multiple dimensions with contextual criteria that includes time, relevance

and usage. How should a discovery engine work, and how do

create filters and controls?

How should we interact with this space? Should we be looking at

building avatars that represent and are connected to ourselves, or robots

that are housed within the DPS and are not personalised? Should we be

creating vessels that we occupy as we travel through the space, or should

the DPS be seen as an AI organism that is allowed to develop an apparent

level of sentience and act as a unique being?

In terms of Knowledge Exchange, how can we help create a new

industrial and academic culture wherein creative agencies, design

groups, engineers, sociologists and scientists work hand in hand with

academics to form new economic and socially relevant structures and

methods?

Commercially, we need to create a new economic model,

incorporating the thorny area of rights management. Should we be

looking for new solutions for, or even alternatives to, copyright? Can

we create new entertainment models? How should the arts engage

with the DPS, and what is the tremendous potential that can be

unlocked through the adoption of new channels of distribution and

audience participation? How can an Opera company think and act given

these tremendous new tools? How can we unlock the immersive

potential of this space, allowing constant response and remodeling?

There also exists major new opportunities for creatives – design lay at the

heart of this new space – combined with a renewed emphasis on

innovation and new business practice.

Some of the key opportunities include the development of new models

and opportunities for practice-led research and research-based practice,

plus new models for augmented experiences and multi-screen, multiplatform

delivery, a reshaped notion of broadcast media and spontaneous,

shared, cultural events. We can also imagine a new approach to

knowledge exchange and research, and the design of innovative

new systems for self-evolution, where teaching and learning itself leads

to the development of new learning systems - everything becoming agile

and self-evolving, rapid-prototyping and self-correcting, self-generative.

The Common Good. The DPS must be used ultimately for the social

good.

(Expand –>)

We can certainly create new teaching and learning methods.

Imagine a university course or a school curriculum which centres around

curated journeys through the DPS, incorporating multiple media and

response monitoring. Learning medicine could be transformed through

the adjunction of related stored information and live practice, albeit

remote or simulated, allowing for training in remote areas.

On a greater social level, a large number of key issues are raised which

will form a key part of the CX focus. Three areas will be of main interest.

One of the most important issues will be identity, with questions such as

ownership, protection and privacy to tackle.

Social application will be a significant area for us, exploring issues and

potential such as social inclusion, remote learning, age-aware support,

and welfare help.

In terms of the third key pillar, that of governance, we can study the

new potential for community cohesion within and beyond geographic

definition, new national governing models, localised information centres

– online villages – and self-governing communities.

And what of memory (and identity)? We will be able to build our own

personal journals and share them, creating a social identity and culture

that preserves and conserves life stories to be experienced by anyone we

choose.

This is an extraordinary time, one that is relative and not absolute, lateral

and not mechanical, leading to the unlocking of an immense joined-up

potential. I can hardly believe that we find ourselves right here, right now,

at the heart of it. We must grab the opportunity at hand and allow this

epoch-changing space to evolve fully and limitlessly. I cannot wait to see

the outcome.

Thank you