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Notes from Metropolis: The Metropolis Conference Highlights from three idea-packed days. Net@Work As the Internet works its way though our social, economic, and cultural institutions, how will those institutions change? That's what "Net@Work," the fourth annual Metropolis Conference at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, probed last May in New York City. In a nutshell, the Net is working its changes on* cities "Cities have made a remarkable comeback in the past five to ten years. Ten years ago people would say, "I don't want any of that falling-out-of-bed-into-the-barbershop-chair nonsense."--Richard E. Heapes, principal, Street Works. "We have to expand the definitions of 'architecture' and 'urban design' to encompass the production and disposition of physical spaces and their linkage to transportation, as well as to virtual and physical spaces, telecommunications, and transportation. We need to look at how all this works together. That's very difficult, very exciting, very challenging."--William J. Mitchell, author, E-topia: Urban Life Jim--But Not as We Know It. "We have this thousand-year-old broadband, this pipe we call 'the sidewalk.' I challenge the Internet to go one-on-one with a great sidewalk--this dynamic place that changes by the minute, by the hour, by the day, by the season* . Life is incredibly diverse. Main Street squeezes that down and puts it on a sidewalk for you to rub elbows with." *Richard Heapes community "If you want a viable and successful community and a competitive economy in the global system the most vital resource is a highly skilled, highly mobile, mostly young labor force. If you ask what will attract and retain this labor force, you end up with answers they describe as traditional urban qualities?the kinds of physical environments that encourage interactions within the community, basics like education and medical services. This requires a fine-grained urban structure (small scale, mixed-use, pedestrian- and neighborhood-oriented). There's a potential to reconstruct many of the attractive and humane qualities of traditional settlements."--William J. Mitchell "All the networks we've created?things like the highway system, the television networks, the phone networks?promised to bring us together but instead, they have spread us apart. The highway system means we can live further from where we work. In the old days they advertised the phone system as the next best thing to being there; now they're saying, "Reach out and touch someone," as if you really could. As a society we've always been a little starved for community, and we seek connections through networks but never quite achieve them."--Peter Katz, author, The New Urbanism. "My business is debunking. So I would like to debunk both the warm, mushy notion of the Internet and also the notion that the Internet is driving us further apart. What it really does is give us power and so it accentuates human tendencies. If you are a shy teenager, it allows you to stay in your room and send e-mail or just play games all night. If you're an outgoing teacher, it gives you instant messaging. "If you think human nature is fundamentally good, then you think the Internet is great. If you think fundamentally that human nature is bad and people are evil and antisocial, you think the Internet is bad because it allows them to fulfill those tendencies. For me, the Internet is an enabler*It's like when you're in college and discover beer parties. Some people go to them once a week and have a nice time. Some discover beer parties and say, 'Wow, it's great. I can sell insurance to other students there.' Some people go to beer parties and become alcoholics; and some don't go at all. It's more a reflection of human nature than something that's going to change human nature."--Esther Dyson, chairman, EDventures Holdings, Inc. "I had a meeting with Hillary Clinton, along with about 10 CEOs from Internet companies in New York. And she said, "I want to talk to you about your issues. What is your wish from me? What do I need to know about?" "Frankly," I said, "my biggest concern is you. In order for you to represent this community, you have to use this stuff. I know you don't use it: You're not on e-mail, you're not surfing the Web, and you don't have a PalmPilot. You need to get organized to use this technology to really represent us."--Jason Calacanis, founder and editor, Silicon Valley Reporter communication "Le Corbusier designed a monument shaped like an open hand for the center of what he conceived of as a magnificent pedestrian plaza in Chandigar, the monumental capital of the Punjab. So there it is, grasping for the sky. And the plaza is deserted. Now, if you go down to the southern end of Chandigar, the unplanned end, you see another monument. It's a satellite earth station and it's grasping at the sky as well, but this one is actually catching something. What it's doing is creating a digital oasis; it's connecting this very specific point on the surface of the earth with the global digital system and economy. The bits flow freely from this point, just as in the desert oasis the water flows freely from a well and creates a zone of greenery around it."--William J. Mitchell "Often, the best design you can do is not to screw up wonderful content. Maybe the grandest principle of all information design is, 'Do no harm.' All my work in books, in teaching, really has been an endless defense of content against those who would screw it over, from computer programmers and designers to liars and marketers?everyone who essentially narrows down the content window. This is particularly important in Web and interface design. Because that light bulb we stare at, that piece of hardware, is a pretty low-resolution display service. Very low resolution, compared to paper or film or the capacity of the human eye and mind. And yet by design we fill up our screens with banners, gold-plated scroll bars, cute home buttons, funny mailboxes, all that computer administrative debris. We have narrowed down the content window on the computer screen enormously."--Edward R. Tufte, author, Visual Explanation. "Internet search services are like address books. They can get you a hundred things, of which you may want one. The experience is like going through a neighborhood with a flashlight and trying to find the house numbers. What we need on the Internet are maps, diagrams, streams of visualizations?maps with context."--Esther Dyson technology "There's a computer at UC Berkeley, at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, where they simulate thermonuclear explosions. It has 3,600 central processing units in a massive parallel configuration?the largest single computer on the planet today, giving four trillion instructions per second. That computer will be on your child's desktop at the end of this decade."--Dr. Peter Sealey, professor of marketing, UC Berkeley. "All through my professional career I've worked on technology that essentially went away. I started out with hand-set typography and it became film typography and everybody railed about the loss of quality. Then there was alpha type, and then, of course, there was the computer. All forms of technology within maybe a 15-year span that I lived with and was told that the sky was falling and I would be going to hell if I did not adapt. And I didn't quite adapt the way you were supposed to adapt. I held onto things that I liked, I did not let go of things because I thought the technology can be technology and I'll be me. "I had grown up in the suburbs in Maryland and all the guys talked about cars and I wasn't particularly interested in them, either, yet I drove one and managed to get around. So it dawned on me that I might be able to actually use technology as it existed and get through life without being obsessed by it. In the Eighties and Nineties, I realized that what I wanted to do was to make big images and I wanted to find places where big images could exist. "I thought, well, if everything's going to exist on the screen and people are going to read books and communicate with each other on the screen, then where I wanted to be was on the street?because every now and then you have to go outside. [My posters for the Public Theatre] were designed to live on the street as part of the New York City landscape. They yelled and moved and mixed with Manhattan in a way that became an integral part of the city. I always felt they worked better with the crap around them, then they did isolated, by themselves."--Paula Scher, partner, Pentagram. "In the developing world, Internet cafes are enormously important these days because they bring people together. They function as a focus for the intelligentsia, places where foreigners can come get their own Web connections. These are very intense urban spaces. This almost never happens in the United States or Western Europe anymore because connections have become so prevalent. It's like when you introduce piped water, the village well can no longer function as a social place.--William J. Mitchell retail "Michael Dell comes on the scene and eliminates the retailer. If you order a Dell computer before 10:30 in the morning, he will fabricate it in the afternoon, burn it in later in the day, and ship it to you at night. You cannot compete with Dell selling computers if you're trying to ship boxes to a store."--Peter Sealey. "We are physical beings and the notion that a company exists in real space, that you can find it if you want to, has a big psychological impact. How you translate this varies according to what you're selling. Some Internet companies send around trucks with their name on them to create a feeling that they exist."--Esther Dyson "Retail America has set itself up for a huge hit from the Internet. How? They kept dumbing down the sales force to cut costs. Well, now you walk into most major retailers, and no one there knows anything about the brands they carry."--John Glitsos, CEO, First Wave Technology Innovations "When the Pottery Barn started selling furniture through catalogs people said, 'You'll never sell couches.' Several million dollars in couches later, we know that there are enough people who really enjoy that kind of virtual shopping."--Rob Forbes, CEO, Design Within Reach "People will spend a fortune on fixtures and lighting and video walls, and then you go into a whitewashed dressing room. Yet that's where the brand really comes to life."?Brian Collins, head of marketing, Oglivy and Mather Worldwide. branding "When I'm driving along the road, in a place I've never been before and don't know where to eat, what hotel to stay in, don't know anyone in town, I'm vulnerable to the national brands. Applebee's may be crap, but it's predictable crap?I know what I'm going to get when I go in. Net technologies can change this relationship. They can increase the information flow so that when you enter a new town, you can get real-time recommendations from locals through your car's navigation system. If it lists a wonderful home-cooking place that makes great fried catfish a half a block away, I'll go there instead of pulling into Wendy's or McDonald's. It's simply the imbalance of information that I have as a non-local that gives the franchises so much power over my decisions."--David Webster, Sigal & Gale. marketing "When I worked at the Coca-Cola company, a consumer who bought a two-liter bottle of Coke was worth $1.69; that's the wrong way to look at things. If you're loyal to Coke over time, you're worth $6,000 to the company, and I will address you differently then if you were $1.69 customer. Today we have to have a conversation with our customers, simplify their lives, reduce their stress. That's the key to marketing success.""Peter Sealey The next Metropolis Conference is coming to the San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, February 7 and 8, 2001. For more information visit www.metropolismag.com, e-mail sss@metropolismag.com, or call 1-800-715-2443. |
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