---

faculty | home | people | work | events | hyperlinks | help

THE PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC (CYBER)SPACE
PART I

Presented at Shouts from the Street Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University
15:30, 8 September 1995

Version 1.2

Email: d.p.hill@mmu.ac.uk

Abstract

Digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) are entering the domain of popular culture. ICTs are consequently the subject of much 'hype' both as a potential democratising force in politics and cultural production and consumption, and now as a cornerstone of attempts at the social, cultural, and economic regeneration of several post-industrial cities. The perceived potential for ICTs to capitalise on the forthcoming 'information society' is being grasped by cities worldwide. It seems that the likely success of these attempts at regenerating cities via ICTs may depend on the interpretation of the critical concept of universal public access to ICTs. Current readings of universal access focus on the simple notions of numbers of computers per head, training, and cheap access rates to the 'infobahn'. A fuller definition of the term is required when addressing the use of ICTs in city spaces, particularly public access sites such as cybercafés, electronic village halls, and public information terminals.

Public access sites are often the visible face of social development ICT projects in cities. A perceived benefit of these public access sites is the extension of the currently-limiting ICT culture from 'information-haves' to 'information have-nots'. However, there is a real danger that the desire to exploit the 'hype' for short-term profit may result in the implementation of an incomplete model of universal access. This may in turn result in a privatisation of public space being realised in cyberspace. This paper will therefore attempt to focus on less tangible aspects and issues frequently absent from current interpretations of universal access. These include the importance of the design of the interface between public space and cyberspace, stimulating the demand for information services, enabling a creative milieu in which to interact with ICT culture, effecting a cultural shift in the image of personal computers as they permeate public space, and ensuring that ICT culture is truly interactive and representative of potential users' desires and aspirations.

The paper will contain references to general terms and phrases such as 'cyberspace', 'the information society', 'the city' and so on. This paper cannot address their origin or implications, and it is hoped that readers are at least vaguely aware of the notions behind these terms. For more on 'cyberspace', see Benedikt (1992) and Jones (1995). For more on the ╘information society╒, see Webster (1995). For more on cities and information technology, see Mitchell (1995) and Castells (1989, 1994).

A key theme of the paper is access. Therefore this paper is written to be accessible to a wide audience, including cultural policymakers, practitioners, and academics.

What is the reality of the hype behind the hyperreality of the information revolution? It is clear that there is a substantial amount of hype in this area, which can make research frustrating on occasion. Most people now have an opinion about cyberspace, often wildly swinging between blind euphoria, dark mutterings about the end of physical interaction, or mocking sarcasm. In a sense, it's easy to see why people evolve these extreme opinions, when presented with the news of, say, Netscape Communications Corp's recent stock market flotation. Netscape's share prices rose from an original evaluation of $14 a share to $71 a share immediately. The Guardian reported that "In a trice it suddenly became worth more than the combined economies of Nicaragua, Guyana, Dominica and Samoa."[1] This was a company that made a loss of $4.3 million on the year and who's chief product - the Netscape Navigator world wide web browser software - is effectively free. This vast investment based purely on the expectation of future performance.

Similarly, many city governments are equally convinced that their future success lies in cyberspace. Fin-de-millennium hype, and perhaps insecurity, can be traced in the evocations of a new age dawning. For example, publicity material for Norwich City Council's telematics projects which leads with the stern statement:

"Norwich and Norfolk prospered when they were at the heart of trade routes. They were bypassed by the the industrial revolution. The new trade routes are electronic. We must not be bypassed again."[2]

The mass media's love:hate relationship with the subject was demonstrated perfectly in the weeks surrounding the launch of Microsoft's "Windows 95" operating system on August 24th. These ranged from being offered the Daily Telegraph free to it's readers (courtesy of Bill Gates) and the New Statesman and Society's euphoric comparisons to Roland Barthes' eulogy about the Citroên DS as contemporary cathedral[3], to disparaging diatribes in The Guardian.[4]

So, the level of hype is considerable, which is interesting in itself. As good postmodernists, the study of hype can be useful. But, analysing beyond the hype, it seems clear that there is a broad level of agreement that there are some fundamental cultural shifts sweeping through sections of our society, the effects of some of which we can see around us, in the changing shape of organisations, in industry, in politics, in new media, such as the World Wide Web, and in the traditional mass media, in academia, and in cities. Webster (1995) analyses these 'theories of the information society' perhaps more thoroughly than most, and is broadly sceptical about the notion of 'a new age dawning'. However, even if we are witnessing the informatisation of existing social and cultural relationships, as opposed to the creation of newly-evolved information society, this still seems an important development in contemporary culture. Castells (1995), for instance, defines the fundamental industrial and cultural shift thus:

"Because knowledge generation and information processing are at the roots of the new productivity, the ability of a society to accumulate knowledge and manipulate symbols translates into economic productivity and political-military might, anchoring the sources of wealth and power in the informational capacity of each society"[5]

For Castells and others (Daniel Bell, David Lyon, various postmodernists), this may be the essence of a new 'information society'. A new basis for economic and cultural production and consumption - a new framework for 'society' and 'culture' to be expressed within. Castells' work is based principally on the construct of the informational city. He sees the city as not only surviving these shifts, but as the primary social and cultural unit expressing these changes. He further argues that European cities in particular are well-placed to breach the gap caused by the withering nation-states, essentially by building international networks of cities, recapturing their history as semi-autonomous bodies through strong city governments.

Like Castells, the architect Richard Rogers sees cities as expressing the character of the age, this transformation towards a post-industrial, information-based society. In his recent Reith Lectures on cities he proclaims:

"The industrial age is giving way, at least in the developed countries, to the post-industrial: telecommunications, cheap computer power, the information superhighway ... All this is transforming our cities ...The raw material of this new economy is citizens and their knowledge, creativity and initiative. Art and science will be the lifeblood of these knowledge-based cities, and the key to further wealth."[6]

This paper will discuss the issues for deindustrialised cities as they move into this essentially postindustrial culture (whether information society or informatised society), particularly how their city space will react to the new dimension of cyberspace. In William Mitchell's (1995) study City of Bits, he describes how a virtual representation of the city's information order is changing the physical space of the city, and how interfaces between the physical space of the city and the city's representation in cyberspace are becoming increasingly important. Mitchell's examples will be considered within the context of contemporary cultural and urban theory. The paper aims to begin to indicate how the flexibility of information and communications technologies may enable some of these cities to ride these changes, and perhaps find a new postindustrial raison d'être.

My method for doing this is to develop two possible futures for cities. I am aware that these could be seen as simplistic versions of utopia and dystopia (or thesis and antithesis), and am very conscious that policy shouldn't be couched in such terms, in order to avoid falling into the trap of simplification, overhyping or moral panic. However, it seems reasonable to imagine a little, in order to aim for the benefits, uncovering the traps, as long as we are aware that the reality is likely to be complex, unpredictable and somewhere between these polar opposites.

1. Pitfalls for city centre cultures

A possible negative consequence of this 'information revolution' is alluded to in the title of this paper: "the privatisation of public (cyber)space". This refers to privatisation in two senses: the privatisation of cyberspace itself into representing the information-rich and marginalising an information underclass, and the privatisation of public life and public space that might occur if cyberspace causes a retreat from physical interaction within physical public space. What particular pitfalls are presented to postindustrial cities by the effects of an information society? What specific problems may occur as a result of denying widespread access to the city's information infrastructure?

1.1 Retreat from Physical Public Space

The industrial and economic shifts underpinning the 20th century meant that certain cities grew rapidly in size and importance during the industrial, modern era. For David Lyon (1995), "... the city came to be seen as the crucible of modernity." So, one of the principal functions of these cities was to locate a large working population in a centre of industrial capital at salient locations for trade connectivity. In the postindustrial era, the older industrial cities of Northern Europe declined rapidly both in terms of population and in 'stature' as de-industrialisation faded essential functions of the city (Landry & Bianchini 1995; Lovatt & O'Connor 1995). Added to this loss of function, a key feature of advanced information and communications technology is that it can enable a fragmentation of centralised organisation into networked micro-organisations, and effect a radical dislocation of space and time. This features are both expressed in teleworking. Although there is no official definition of teleworking, a teleworker can essentially be defined as using information technology to remain in contact with their employer, when working away from the office or remotely of an employer for at least half their working time (Shearman 1994).

Teleworking presents a number of positive and negative implications. In a marginalised information culture, it could lead to a privatisation of public space, as public services are replaced by teleservices. William Mitchell (1995) writes of how teleworking could help 'problem neighbourhoods' (he describes the South Side of Chicago, but here in Manchester the equivalent would, perhaps, be Hulme, Moss Side or Cheetham Hill). He describes how telemedicine could enable a family practitioner to conduct virtual surgeries where people can consult a doctor via video-conferencing technology. He also mentions other support workers/services resorting to virtually 'visiting' people and locations via cyberspace. For instance, social workers overseeing their 'customers' via telecomms links, and dislocated police monitoring via closed-circuit television and electronic tagging of offenders. Whilst these may be more cost-effective methods of teleworking, they may essentially mean the end of house-calls and the much-vaunted 'bobby on the beat'. This could result in reducing the number of people on the streets in a real physical sense. The sense of physical community and safety is not enforced by actually having a critical mass of people on the streets, but by the panoptic glare of surveillance video, tracking 'suspicious' activity. We must avoid the situation where the only "shouts from the street" are cries for help falling on deaf electronic ears. Mitchell's unblinking, and perhaps unthinking, descriptions of teleworking applications could inexorably lead to the dystopia of William Gibson's Virtual Light, or Mike Davis' (1990, 1995) evocation of fortress mentality in Los Angeles. Here cyberspace represents a retreat from the 'real' world, to sweep reality under the carpet. A rejection of the physical world in favour of the virtual. Teleshopping is likely to further a trend already established by TV shopping channels. Here Mitchell realises the one of the important functions of actually physically going to the shops:

"Traditionally, it suggested a trip to the market - contact with the historic urban center, a a chance to mingle with fellow citizens. Market squares and market days were important spatial and temporal markers."[7]

1.2 Unbalanced City Economy

In an economy based on the production, distribution and consumption of digital information, a deindustrialised city without a skilled workforce suited to this industrial change is likely to become based entirely on consumption of digital information. The production is likely to be done elsewhere, and piped-in to the city. Therefore, the digital equivalent of that city's balance of payments will reflect an information-importer, leading to the city becoming an economically-marginalised sink for information. Bearing in mind Castells' position that the informational capacity of a city will be the key to its wealth and power, it is clear that this is an unbalanced city economy. These city economies will have difficulty maneuvering into positions of power in a world where nation-states are perceived as becoming less relevant. Moving beyond economics, theorists note that many postindustrial cities centres are now fixed around consumption rather than production (Featherstone 1991, Lovatt and O'Connor 1995). This has a number of cultural effects, such as the loss of collective and individual identity which was originally 'fixed' by the manufacturing industries of the initial industrial era, and in particular the loss of a local identity due to the global nature of the consumer economy. There may be little point in trying to recapture these long-lost industries, however there should be an alternative to becoming an idle consumer.

1.3 Decentring of the City

So, the lack of an information culture in the city centre is likely to leave the spatial distribution of a city's information infrastructure unbalanced, as the information-rich telework from suburban and exurban areas. This model will leave the city centre largely bereft of production, accelerating residential shifts out of the city centre, leaving it without a focus, and perhaps without a reason to exist. As much of the cultural action moves into cyberspace, the centre may become a disused postmodern wasteland. Unless these cultural shifts are widely understood, the effects of this technology could radically disrupt the spatial balance of a city.

1.4 Marginalised Information Underclass

Those left behind in an unproductive city centre may reside in information-poor ghettoes marginalised due to lack of access to empowering information, left without the tools for cultural production and only basic tools for cultural consumption. It has been suggested that there is a latent potential in cyberspace for social division, which could enable the realisation of a 'dual city' (Castells 1989, 1994). Claire Shearman (1995) argues that the unthinking application of information culture into cities may lead to further marginalisation of an increasing number of citizens.

"Yet the very nature of the vision of the 'informational city' being promoted by many urban policymakers militates against the development or sustenance of such social cohesion. Certain elites within cities are experiencing the cosmopolitanism (real and virtual) of informational society life. Meanwhile, the majority of those belonging to disadvantaged groups find themselves ever more socially, economically, electronically and technologically disenfranchised."[10]

1.5 Gentrification of Cyberspace

Without an accessible and pluralistic information culture, cyberspace could become gentrified - it may reflect the tastes and desires of a privileged section of the population - those with the knowledge and tools to enjoy meaningful interaction with digital media, resulting in a vicious circle of undemocratic and privatised cultural production. Again, gentrified city-cyberspace will reflect the characteristics of the unrepresentative suburban space it evolves from, rather than the eroding ruins of the voiceless city centre's datatypes.

1.6 Consumption of the Global Popular

A digital popular culture based purely on consumption will essentially mean consumption of what Douglas Kellner (1995) has called the global popular, which will mean American culture. This may exacerbate the lack of local identity initiated by the loss of a production economy. It may also deny the heterogeneity and plurality of city-centre cultures in favour of homogenous and unrepresentative culture alien to particulars of local people, traditions, and ideologies.

These are some of the challenges for cities presented by the development of advanced information and communication technologies. This vision is perhaps a little bleak[12], and there may be a viable escape route facilitated by new technology. This quote from Mitchell (1995) reveals a possible strategy:

"Perhaps it is not too romantic to imagine that unique natural environments, culturally resonant urban settings, and local communities that hold special social meaning will increasingly assert their power. Perhaps we will find compelling advantages to putting together spaces - like living spaces and work space - that were once thought to belong in different buildings located in different zones of the city."

Footnotes to Part I

[1] "Bubbles in the Cyber Sea", The Guardian leader column, 12 August 1995.
[2] NORWICH CITY COUNCIL (1995) Telematics: Creating Jobs for the Next Millennium
[3] "Windows on the World", Peter Jukes, New Statesman and Society , 18 August 1995.
[4] "Windows a pane in farce of 95", Mark Tran, The Guardian , 29 August 1995.
[5] CASTELLS (1995), op cit., p.20.
[6] "Building cities to move the spirit", Richard Rogers, The Independent , 13 March 1995.
[7] MITCHELL (1995), op cit., p.88.
[8] LOVATT and O'CONNOR (1995), op cit., p.133.
[9] Ibid., p.132.
[10] Mediamatic is at http://www.mediamatic.nl/
[11] "Beyond Blade Runner", Mike Davis, downloaded from the Mediamatic website at http://www.mediamatic.nl/ on 20.07.1995
[12] Julian Stallabrass (1995) writing in the New Left Review, makes an interesting point about the construction of cyberspace: that the only real 'new' models we have for those working to construct cyberspace are the dystopian worlds found in cyberpunk fiction. That people out there are actually coding virtual buildings and public space based on the blueprints for a dystopia.
[13] LANDRY and BIANCHINI (1995), op cit., p.4.

FEEDBACK WELCOMED

Send email to: d.p.hill@mmu.ac.uk