Cloud Mrkt

CloudMrkt
The Digital Skyline Meets the Built-landscape


It has been over a decade now that Internet and Mobile have been integrated into our daily lives… we are now approaching the reality where information technology embeds itself into urban planning and architecture. Beyond laying fiber optics underground and building communication towers how will new media evolve with urbanism?

Internet and Mobile bring people and ideas together. Email, Twitter, social media and gaming celebrate the sharing of knowledge and experience. This share-care communication is a human quality that will be enhanced when digital media has a physical meeting point. In other words can there be a physical manifestation of the web like data dynamics associated with the web. How will crowd sourcing, open source software, social media, and desktop widgets look like as a physical extension of their digital interface? There is a structure that resembles this dynamic, airports.

Airports are nods in a network and manage flow digitally, on the ground and in the air. We walk into an airport and look up on the screens to see real time arrivals and departures. The waiting rooms have news broadcasts, refreshments and entertainment. Likewise, our urban landscape today is a juxtaposition of digital and telecommunication flows that are co-existing and interacting with the built environment. When these flows become visible in a value added way we are beginning to realize the concept of CloudMrkt.

Airports manage flows and connections. Global office networks like the Hub and Spaces create flexible working environments based on time sharing and like mindedness. Usually part of a global network, one's rent is valid in any building that is part of that network. Furthermore, there is a corresponding digital network that is a desktop widget facilitating resource sharing and job hunting. This can be seen as select form of crowd sourcing. Finally, the workspaces and digital networks come together in a branded and hosted place experience.

CloudMrkt takes the flow management of an airport and the spatial / network community element of the flexible work space and scales it up to a much larger urban district. The area being explored for such an intervention in Amsterdam is Westpoort-Oost; an industrial / business region with 350 companies and a logistical infrastructure for freight and commerce. What CloudMrkt proposes is a local area enhanced with a crowd sourcing toolkit that proliferates economies of scale and quality of life. This becomes evident the moment a company begins renting and turns on its computers and mobile devices to find software tool kit and a desktop messaging platform called Exchange. The software tool kit would have office / data management / and design tools supported by a private server. The idea is that the unit cost of licensing and purchasing software gets reduced by opportunities of scale. Think of what currently happens with collective insurance and savings plans, the same clubbing together is appropriated in CloudMrkt. Linking all the companies together requires an appreciation for transparency and an open source mentality. For those companies that can embody the network society will find that cutting costs will find it's way into other services like legal and accounting. And even more significant, finding the right people skills in the process of creating project teams will be made easier with Exchange.

Exchange is a real time supply and demand messaging board that lists the activities of all the companies in the CloudMrkt. You see it on your devices and in screens installed in each CloudMrkt building. By the entrance of the building or next to the coffee machine the screens posts business activities, news flashes, requests for help and job offers. The value here is that your company is not alone anymore and is just as applicable to freelancers as it is to small medium and large sized companies. Each CloudMrkt member can sea each other, like in gmail or Facebook you see a list of friends and people on line. It's the same idea, except for a fundamental difference that here there is a physical place where people can meet. Coming face to face with your client, partner and friend is a key ingredient to relationship building and trust. Considering that science has shown that words are only 7% of communication leaving the vocal variety at 38% and non-verbal communication at 55% shows that the majority of how we receive messages from each other is intuitive. The physical meeting place is also practical in terms proximity and credibility, promotes accountability and increases serendipity. It's convenient for conversations, deal making, a barter transaction or simply drop something off.

Each region will have a centrally located building hosting the Cloud Café and Cloud Conference Center. Interviews, brainstorms, barter transactions, lunches and networking activities can all find there place here. Just ask the crowd, this is your community. The Cloud Café his will include three digital walls: the Dream Wall, Data Wall and the Exchange. The Dream Wall is where members can share ideas they are passionate about like Google's 20% time policy or what traditionally happened on a bulletin board. The difference now is that everyone can share and build on it, this is where innovation can happen. The Data Wall measures energy use, carbon emission, heat loss and data analytics. This feature empowers residents and companies to see exactly where energy is being used and therefore enabling the possibility to make efficiency and sustainability amendments based on that real time data. In addition to eco tracking, analytic data provides CloudCafé with a real time digital ambiance reminiscent of the stock exchange trading floor.

And the Exchange Wall is the real time supply and demand messaging board that everybody has on their desktops and mobile devices. Companies who are open will find that they will share talents, barter goods and services, do collaborative projects, grow faster and realize that resources are much closer. The ability to professionally crowd source promotes efficiency in terms of finding talent but also in terms of reducing transportation costs and licensing fees. The way the city is set up now, one doesn't know their neighbor let alone the staff, resources and business visions of the company across the street. CloudMrkt is proposing that it's possible to build in networking and resource sharing capabilities.

The Cloud Conference Center is a flexible meeting / conference space that is self organized by the business community. Their is a host and a system manager but ultimately this space is there for when a company needs to make presentations, hold conferences and form larger teams that expand beyond their walls at home. When connectivity is increased in a business region specialities will emerge. Diverse CloudMrkt regions will develop their own specialities that are industry specific like a creative hub full of marketing and media companies versus a logistical region with freight and global commerce and or an engineering market that has a speciality in design and software. Over time, multiple CloudMrkts in a city will form the way districts have organized themselves in the past like a China Town, Banking District or Art Quarter. The difference now being that new media facilitates this self organizing dynamic. It will even be possible that a CloudMrkt, which is a collection of companies and professionals, will receive project opportunities that are offered to the area as a whole. It's scaling up the dynamic that appears at a company level into a multiple company districts.

Lets get real. This ambition isn't a far fetched scenario for Star Trek, it's a bottom line consideration that any property developer has had since the invention of stones. How does a developer make an area interesting to move into too, hence increasing it's attraction power and ultimately it's property value. Simply put, why should I move here and will my property gain value overtime. Today, like never before, it's fundamentally possible to view planning from a combined perspective that includes digital media and physical space. What's on offer is instant networking, a digital tool kit and a place to meet and make it all happen. It's up to the people to create there dreams and organize themselves, New Urban Media provides the infrastructure to that more efficiently.



Written and concept by Carl William Kerchmar, www.portaltoyourdreams.com
Visualization and concept by Jesse Lavalaye, noolio+ www.noolioplus.com
Special thanks to Placemakers

Cyborg

CYBORG
Ask yourself, on average how far is your mobile phone from your body?


It's difficult to talk about society nowadays and not mention Information Communication Technology and social media. Even Queen Beatrix during her Kerstrede 2009 remarked on how she perceived technology was individualizing society. Her statement expresses a perspective that technology can actually influence behavior and culture. Such a perspective could imply that society is malleable by technological intervention. Then again, was a society ever a fixed state of being? Since emergence is a natural state of being, lets explore how the proliferation of social media networks and the ever increasing computer power of mobile devices will influence society.

What kinds of changes are in store for us thanks to social media networks and mobile phones:


Agelessness

A phenomenon that throws demographics out [of] the window. It means exactly what it says, age doesn't matter. Rather, it puts emphasis on your lifestyle choices and 'tribal' behavior. There are quite a few factors involved to be able to suggest we might be moving into an ageless society. They include health, wealth and access to information. For one, humans are living longer, healthier and wealthier. Lets not forget vergrijzing majorly affects North America, Europe, Japan and China. So when the wealthiest populations are also the oldest they don't want to be seen as old, hence avoiding the demographic stereotypes. They rather categorize themselves in terms of consumption habits and lifestyle choices. At the same time the youth today is growing up in a time of prosperity with access to worlds of information at their finger tips. We all have access to information and the fact that information doesn't discriminate on age means that 8 year olds and 80 year olds might find themselves having common reference points. Especially if we consider that human contact is increasingly mediated by a digital layer either by email, sms, chat, video conference or augmented reality. Have a look at Linkedin and Facebook statistics, and you'll find that the average person is logged in about an hour a day to social media networks. Facebook alone has 350 million users plus another 55 million on linkedIn, and yes they are going mobile.

Augmented reality

Will be as common as writing an email in the near future. In short, AR is a mobile application that triangulates information on the web with GPS, the compass and the video camera. What this effectively can do is layer information posted on the web over your physical experience. Layar and Wikitude are free AR apps you can download to your smart phone right now. Having such an app on your phone means you can get tagged information from geo-locations like opening times and web pages. You can also follow twitter messages, just pluck them out of the air, see who sent it and from where. The Nederlandse Architecture Institute has an app that shows you a street view from the past, like 1890, and also street views that showcase architectural plans of buildings yet to come like the new Market Hall in Blaak, Rotterdam. AR also has massive implications for technique, take for example BMW's AR glasses that once on, lead you step by step with audio visual instructions on how to repair the engine. Literally the nuts and bolts are highlighted and voice guides you through the process, check it out on you tube. What happens to society when people can put on the right glasses and become proficient in a technique they never did before?

What does it mean for our society if the vast amounts of information online can be layered and filtered on demand with our mobile devices? In terms of social media, all those millions of Facebook and Linkedin users may choose to have their profiles and updates floating around them with an AR app on the smart phone. I don't believe that communication technology is a substitute for face to face interaction, but rather will stimulate it. It will create more opportunities to trade, barter and find like minded people. Ironically that may make life a bit boring if you're always guided by your preferences, but then who says you can't make another profile or two or three. With the touch of a button I could change from an ICT creative working in the WTC with AR links to sushi bars and the Mac store to a punker who has a star floating over all the buildings with illegal parties going on underground.

What may arise is a digital divide between those who are constantly logged in and those who are not. Or a divide between exclusive networks and filters keeping people in the know. But whoever thinks that society isn't going to increasingly intertwine with ICT needs only to look at Africa and their explosion of mobile use. Or even closer to home, when was the last time your mobile phone was more that 10 meters from your body? We may not all be using AR regularly this year but we will be online and there will be a device near us. These are the first steps towards a cybernetic organism; cyborg.


RFID Biometrics

It seems alien now, but I bet in the next decade people will be asking to be implanted with RFID tags. Medical records, passports, security access and even as banal as brand loyalty schemes. I mean if you're already implanted why not put all of your credit cards, bonus cards and membership cards on it. Radio Frequency Identification Technology has been around since the 1940's and is already integrated into supply chains by the U.S. Department of Defense and Wal-Mart. And yes, they are already being embedded into people. Already in 2004 Barcelona clubbers at the VIP Baja Beach Club voluntarily got themselves chipped. A tiny 1 mm glass capsule with their account information was injected just under the skin giving them access to the VIP and area and hands free payments on the bar.

Let's face it, it's not that bad being a cyborg if it increases my human condition with the stimulation of our senses, love, camaraderie and the host of emotions good and bad. The technology in itself is helpful and neutral. What we need to really watch out for is human intervention. Hackers, security issues, invasion of privacy and what ever mass controlling darkness our minds can come up with and so cleanly apply to technology. What's out there in our cybernetic society? Will legislation be for or against? If we consider the Netherlands we might say pro cyborg considering the pioneering role Schiphol Group has made in biometric passport controls that lead European and world standards. On the intrusive side of security the American Homeland Security Act has a plethora of programs that will fill your google search results in a hurry. Who will monitor the monitors?

In a scenario axis we can map out four future contexts for our increasingly cyborg like society. A noticeable issue will be visibility which is placed on the vertical axis. Visibility measures the appearance of the ICT gadgets themselves and the manifestation of people activity. Will we see the technology be on us and in the streets in the form of hand held devices and public infrastructure. Or will technology go under our skin, wireless, kinetic and in contact lenses. An in terms of social networks / media will there be reasons to remain hidden and exclusive; or will ICT bring a return of the Forum Romani?

The horizontal axis will measure the governments role or lack there of in the evolution of cyborg society. A weak role means that the commercial sector will be developing the legacy of the cyborg, thus consumer oriented. On the far right where government takes a leading role and perhaps monopolizes certain aspects of the technology because they simply own the satellites and rig the legislation we could see gross infringements on privacy and a deep consolidation of global systems like police records, immigration, banking and anything they might feel like calling a threat to national security. Terrorists, from their perspective, might become social media networks that oppose unbridled monitoring.