As ‘mayor’ of ‘De Digitale Stad’ (the ‘Digital City’; DDS) in Amsterdam, Marleen Stikker developed the first free gateway and virtual community on the internet in 1994.

In the same year as the DDS opened, she founded Waag Society: aa medialab developing creative technological applications for societal innovation. Amongst others, Waag Society creates mobile citygames for the youth, develops storytables for the elderly and researches the possibilities for networked performances. Marleen was also at the basis of many organisation, including the Media Guild,PICNIC, and IT Innovation Platform Creative Industries.

Marleen Stikker studied Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Earlier she started the theatre magazine Alligator, the newspaper Daily Alligator, was director of media-performance festival Zomerfestijn, and chief editor of Live Magazine at De Balie.

On a sunny afternoon I got the chance to interview Marleen in her peaceful backyard in the heart of Amsterdam.

Second version of DDS, with visual interface

What’s your fascination with urban technology?

Amsterdam has been an important factor in my life. I was born here, moved out during nursery school, moved back during my teens, moved away again and returned. It felt like the city was taken from me and I had to recapture it again and again. The city changed each time I was absent and I had to reinvent what this city meant to me. In a way I was always interested in making the invisible layers of the city visible.

During the 80’s Generation X (in Dutch, more dramatically dubbed Generatie NIX) felt unwanted. The baby-boomers had pushed aside their fathers and claimed the important seats in our society. They were expecting us to do the same and fortified their positions, waiting for us to play our marginal roles while trying follow in their footsteps. My generation, especially in Amsterdam chose differently. We decided to take matters in our own hands and build our own lives.

Were you a part of the squatting movement?

I never actually squatted a building, but I was linked to a lot that was happening. As I said, we were denied the important positions in our city so we decided to create our own society, along with our own ideals. It felt like we were like a tribe, trying to convert the city to our ideals. We started theatres and cultural outlets (like Aorta and Tetterode, Veemtheater, Ostadetheater), free radio (radio 100) and live television. In order to do these kinds of things we needed to emancipate ourselves from the existing structures (like broadcasting stations) and do it ourselves. I remember endlessly trying to configure antenna’s on the roof of Paradiso [famous pop-temple, enabled and realised by the squatting-movement] to establish a connection for the broadcasts we needed to have a line of sight between two locations. It was a very interesting combination of High and Low Tech solutions. [these activities resonate in todays Freenet organizations, where grassroot groups link WiFi internet antenna’s together to create urban networks. For further reading see: Mark Dek – Graduation research, MD]

This idea of emancipating yourself from the existing structures by learning the tools and recreating your own structure has been the basis for many of my later achievements. When we started our own magazine (Theatre magazine Alligator) we got familiar with the craft of typesetting and embraced the first DTP programs on personal computers. This DIY mentality was embraced in everything we did, whether it was for free radio or TV, for printing press with our own printing office, during the BBS period (software for sharing data between different computers before the world wide web). By mastering the tools we achieved autonomy, in organisation and in distribution. This is akin to the ideas of the squatting and the hackers movements. We became the engineers of a new city by hacking the source-code of our old city.

Manuel Castells (a famous communication scholar, MD) observed in his ’The information age trilogy’  (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3) that in The Netherlandsthe Internet is part of the public domain instead of an extension of the commercial market. People like Rop Gongrijp and Felipe Rodriguez of XS4all, and earlier Hack-tic magazine played an important role in the public appropriation of the net. ‘De Digitale Stad’ (1993) essentially  did the same thing. We claimed our position in the new medium, the Internet, and created it according to our rules.

What do you consider to be the most influential trends and developments that we will be seeing in the coming years?

I see several. The first one is about transparency, mutual trust and reciprocity. I think for example the ‘Open Data’ (link 2, link 3) movement will have an enormous effect. It will be the new standard and it will be disruptive. In other countries, like the UK and the US governments are starting to open up their information, but in the Netherlands the movement is being neglected by the government, keeping the transparency of data under lock-down, although in civil services enthusiasts are working hard on opening up their data. However we should not confuse transparency with meaning. Opening up the data will not create meaning, opening up the data is merely a first step. (for a critical point of view check this link and my interview with Geert Lovink, which will be published here on www.archadia.nl later this month, MD)

Up until now our government is squandering the benefits Open Data thinking would have on large scale technological projects like the ‘OV-Chipkaart’ (public transport chip card), ‘Rekeningrijden’ (road pricing) and ‘Elektronisch Patientendossier’ (electronic health record). In essence, it is a design issue. The systems that are being designed should be based on trust, reciprocity and transparency. The internet protocol TCP/IP was designed to be just this. Standards like GSM, the mobile phone network protocol, are not, because the government intervenes through laws, regulations and in public tenders.

The basic idea is that you should be the one in control over your data. You should be the one that chooses to reveal your location, not your telephone company. The standard should be opt-in instead of opt-out. This should be designed into the core of the systems we surround ourselves with.

The second major trend that I think will be of massive influence is ‘Bio-Hacking’. Waag Society already showed some examples of BioArt through artist in residence Adam Zaretsky. I think the influence of Bio-hacking will be huge, possibly bigger than the influence of the Internet has had on society. I think in 15 to 20 years everybody will know the genetic flaws of their bodies and live accordingly. This will change all of our perceptions, even our perception of time. When you know your body is capable of living only 40 years you will plan your professional future completely different. You won’t be saving for your pension, for example. Probably, you will choose your social partners according to their life expectancies, because your lifecycle expectancies will determine your actions. Society might see entirely new structures.

The current discussion about ethics will be incomprehensible to the people in 2030. “How could we have lived so recklessly?!”, they will ask themselves.

You seem to be a pretty firm believer in the ‘Maakbare Samenleving’. (the idea that we can fundamentally influence our society by government influence)

I believe in design thinking. All major trends and projects we addressed in the interview can be seen as a design issue. I am very interested in designing human behaviour. The OV chipkaart we talked about is a clear example of designing peoples behaviour. Thinking in terms of design should be more manifest in handling these issues.

I remember the Fluxus movement vividly. In Holland Willem de Ridder is a splendid example.

4 faces of Willem de Ridder pt.1

In the ‘60’s De Ridder broadcasted ‘n8rit’ (night drive) as a radio drama. During the show, people were instructed to go out by night in their cars on a quest. Instructions were given over the radio, and eventually people were guided to a final destination (where nothing much happened). De Ridder mobilized a fair crowd.  In a sense he changed their perspectives and manipulated their behaviour. He toyed with peoples realities.

I thought about this recently when I was testing ‘En route with Job Cohen’, a route in 7scenes along the points of interest of our former mayor. (7 scenes is software created by Waag Society that allows users to create games or scenes, in which the user adds media to locations on his or her mobile Phone, MD). I was using my phone to observe the information that was added to the location of the office of the Labour party (PvdA, MD). Suddenly I noticed the people inside, looking at me as if I was a paparazzi. The same thing happened later on, when I was near the office of Bram Moskovich (famous Dutch lawyer, MD) where the security camera’s had picked up my presence. By navigating the city in this specific way my presence had changed. In the same way peoples presence has changed when mobile phones were a novelty. Users invaded the public realm with their private lives when they made intimate calls in public spaces. Right now this has become the standard, which means our public space has changed.

It starts getting really interesting when these changes can be made on a greater scale and with a more disruptive nature. During Amsterdam Real-time we fantasised about giving people the instructions to move cladding pipes from one point in the city to another, and see what kind of influence this would have on the dynamics in the city. This is the reason why with 7scenes we chose to use theatrical terminology. How can we let people experience something during a period of about 1,5 hour? How can we make them experience catharsis, who are the protagonists and the antagonists, how can we catalyse? The same thing we see in applications like Foursquare and Nike+.

Final map of Amsterdam Real-time

Aggregated data like this can make associations we would never have expected. People like Euro Beinat are conducting interesting research by reading out real-time cell phone activity in certain locations. Here the opening up and combination of certain data generate meaning, but what to do with it? If we can see that at the headquarters of ABN Amro bank people are working late, this might be sensitive information for the stock exchanges. It would not surprise me if we see companies laying out regulation concerning social media and use of cell phone applications. Maybe they will even start building Faraday cages or ‘geo-fences’

What I am trying to say is that the technology we use shapes our behaviour and shapes our society. This has to be addressed in the very cores of the designs. Designers have to start seeing the importance of transparency, reciprocity and mutual trust. The commissioners of large scale IT project, most notably the governments, have to start understanding the design criteria that have to be incorporated in the tender of these project. I think that if we start understanding this, we will be able to shape human behaviour and our society in a better way.

What future scenario do you see for the ‘digital city’?

When we started ‘De Digitale Stad’ the virtual domain was a terra incognita, a realm that had to be discovered. The present reality is that the city itself is becoming increasingly digital, for example through smart-grids, sensor technology and urban screens. We see locative media with our phones, but the real-time reading of the city data might still be something like 15 years ahead of us. Different kinds of data are being monitored and aggregated and will constitute an invisible ‘Internet Of Things’. Right now our water systems can read out the hormones that are being dumped, which gives them information about the medical state of the inhabitants. Will this information be used?

I like the idea that the city will change because we don’t have to physically build the information layers that are brought to us through the digital word through, for example Augmented Reality (like all kinds of signals and advertising): the idea that the physical city adjusts to its virtual dimension,although this will take some time. Sure we can give you all the information about public transport on your cell phone, we can project all the traffic signs on your car window, but we can not get rid of the physical signs until 100% of the users use their virtual counterpart: we will  keep on building information panels at bus stops for now, so I think at first the physical city will become even more filled with digital media like screens before we can start clearing them away.

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