Internet Changes Everything

How the Masses Will Innovate

How the Masses Will Innovate

The newly appointed head of MIT's Media Lab envisions a time soon when millions will play a stronger role in societal advances, thanks to technology. And MIT is helping to plant the seeds

Launched in 1985, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab has engaged in the innovations that helped drive the digital revolution of the late 20th century. Such breakthroughs as digital ink, wearable computers, and advanced prosthetics got their start there.

The Media Lab, with an annual budget that exceeds $30 million, also helped spawn such companies as Squid Labs, an innovation and design outfit that has developed technologies from printed electronics to high-performance kites.

Frank Moss, an entrepreneur and former CEO of Tivoli Systems, was named head of MIT's Media Lab in February. Moss, also the co-founder of Stellar Computer and Infinity Pharmaceuticals, has some big shoes to fill. He succeeds Nicholas Negroponte, who will focus on One Laptop per Child, the nonprofit organization that he helped launch while at Media Lab. One Laptop provides $100 computers to children in developing countries (see BW Online, 10/04/05, "Help for Info Age Have-Nots").

Moss, who earned a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online staff writer Stacy Perman about his vision for the Media Lab as it enters its third decade. He offers advice for would-be entrepreneurs and explains why more companies are likely to pursue what he calls a "societal business model." Edited excerpts follow:

How do you view your role as head of the Media Lab?
I think my role is to understand where the world is going to be 20 years from today. I call it living in the future. (Also,) to work with the team here to create the technology that will help shape that future.

How do you view the nexus between technology and entrepreneurialism?
It is hugely important. In fact, entrepreneurs are really the primary vehicle for innovation in our society. They've played an incredible role. Thirty years ago, the primary source for innovation was large corporate labs. That is where all of the money went. Then, 20 to 25 years ago, the source of ideas and creativity shifted to venture funds and startups.

Over the past 20 years, we've seen the economy and society change due to innovation from small independent efforts outside of corporate labs. Technology has enabled startups to have a big influence, and consequently they have had a tremendous effect in the technology scene today.

What role will startups play in the future?
I see tremendous economic growth from startups from 10 years ago. Entrepreneurs will go from the 1,000 startup ventures funded in the last 10 to 20 years to ideas coming from people working together in network-based environments, using computers to dream up innovations in a way they never did before. It could be people in developing countries with low-cost computers.

The Media Lab has given a start to many entrepreneurs. What would be your advice to would-be entrepreneurs in today's environment?
Resist the current temptation to make incremental changes to attract funding. It might get you off the ground, but I don't think it will get you very far. Today, the funding climate has changed. The successful (entrepreneurs) will look for fundamental disruptive change. I encourage them to take risks, rather than just polish the faucets. There will always be an appetite for game-changing technology.

Moving forward, what are the major areas in technology where academic institutions and venture capitalists will be channeling resources and investments?
The societal business model. Companies are now paying attention to some of the major socioeconomic problems in the First and the Third World. We have a billion people using computers in the First World. It is still limited to wealthier societies.

In the next 20 years we will see the adoption (increase) to 5 billion to 6 billion. And the kinds of killer apps that are important in that world are not those necessarily centered on communication and commerce.

I think as we experience the problem of aging populations we will need to supply different ways to educate, and traditional schools are not the way to go. We will see technology dramatically change the way kids learn. We will see health care without hospitals. That is where the action will be. Just another tweak to a telephone or a handheld device will happen, but it will not be a major source of growth. That is becoming a commodity.

What new directions will you pursue as head of the Media Lab?
The Media Lab has done a lot to shape the world of technology. We will continue to develop and find brand-new areas. One is between humans and computers, and how the computer relates to people and expresses itself in ways it never has before. For instance, (this means) giving computers common sense and reasoning like people, not just crunching numbers, but having an emotional intelligence as well.

We will (help) to break barriers between a much broader adoption of technology and solutions to the problems facing society today.

We talk about how to make life more pleasant and fulfilling for the aging. We have drugs now that can increase people's lives until their 90s and 100. This is an untapped resource –- the incredible wisdom and knowledge that resides in seniors' brains. We will develop ways to extend their capabilities with technology.

We will improve mental and cognitive abilities. It is esoteric, but think about the problem of aging. People tend to weaken physically as they age, but if we can expand their minds to contribute to society, it will greatly enhance the experience of aging.

You talk about education and the bottom-up effect that millions more people will play in societal advances. How do you see this unfolding?

We will undergo another revolution when we give 100 million kids a smart cell phone or a low-cost laptop, and bootstrap the way they learn outside of school. We think of games as a way to kill time, but in the future I think it will be a major vehicle for learning.

Creative expression (is another area). No longer will just a few write or create music. We will see 100 million people creating the content and art shared among them. Easy-to-use programs allow kids to compose everything form ringtones to full-fledged operas. It will change the meaning of creative art in our society.

We are already seeing early signs of it in blogs. The source of creative content is coming from the world. That revolution will go well outside of the written word to all forms of visual and performing arts.

March 11, 2006 at 11:01 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (458) | Top of page | Blog Home

Bye Bye BlackBerry?

Bye Bye BlackBerry? - New York Times

By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA, Dec. 2 - What if your BlackBerry screen went dark?

To executives like Douglas M. Steenland of Northwest Airlines, the idea of doing business without a BlackBerry is about as appealing as reverting to rotary dial phones and Telex machines.

"It's the proverbial blessing and curse," Mr. Steenland said of his BlackBerry, which sends e-mail messages wirelessly. "It's a blessing because it liberates you from the office. It's a curse because there's no escape."

"It's the proverbial blessing and curse," Mr. Steenland said of his BlackBerry, which sends e-mail messages wirelessly. "It's a blessing because it liberates you from the office. It's a curse because there's no escape."

That is why there was so much anxiety throughout corporate America over this week's news that a long-running patent infringement battle between the maker of BlackBerry, Research In Motion, and NTP, a tiny patent holding company, might cause a service shutdown, perhaps within a month.

Indeed, the prospect of life without BlackBerries is so frightening to Northwest - a heavy user if ever there was one - that the airline immediately demanded a conference call with R.I.M. executives and one is scheduled for Tuesday.

"Everybody here hopes that somebody else will fix the problem," said Andrea F. Newman, Northwest's senior vice president for government relations. "But no one really knows what the problem is or what it will take to fix it."

R.I.M., which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, promises it has a solution that will keep its beloved BlackBerries humming even in the face of an injunction. While most analysts view the prospects of a shutdown as unlikely, they have little faith in the proposed solution, which has potential legal pitfalls of its own. What's more, the history of the struggle between the companies means that no outcome is certain. (R.I.M. declined to comment.)

In an interview early this year and more recently at an investors' conference in New York, James L. Balsillie, the chairman and co-chief executive, said that the company had developed a new software technology that did not infringe on NTP's patents and would provide a way to escape any injunction.

R.I.M. has offered little additional information about its new system other than to say that switching over to it would not require subscribers to acquire new devices or to alter their current units.

"On this subject they seem to have an attitude that they wish that people would stop talking about it," said Kenneth E. Hyers, a wireless research analyst with ABI Research who is based in Raleigh, N.C. The company briefed Mr. Hyers this week, he said, and indicated only in broad terms that the software modifications would be made at a network level.

"That begs the question, If they've been sitting on this all this time why haven't they implemented it?" he said. "Their answer is that this is a major network upgrade and nobody wants to mess with the network if they don't have to."

That, Mr. Hyers added, suggests that installing the software will not be as easy as R.I.M. suggested.

While the change, if it is made, will not require any action by subscribers, it's not clear if it will alter how the BlackBerry e-mail service operates.

Mr. Balsillie has said that the new system has been tested with focus groups but he offered no details.

Any changes to the experience of users, said Avi Greengart, the principal mobile devices analyst at Current Analysis in Sterling, Va., could undermine a chief reason for BlackBerry's success. There are 3.65 million BlackBerry users worldwide.

"You now have a very nice, seamless e-mail experience with BlackBerry," Mr. Greengart said. "If you want to do just voice and e-mail, it's hard to beat a BlackBerry."

There is one party who says he knows the details of the change but who also has a vested interest in the case. Donald E. Stout, the patent lawyer who is a co-founder of NTP of Arlington, Va., said R.I.M. showed him its alternative system.

While he formally agreed not to disclose its details, Mr. Stout said that R.I.M.'s alterative is not invisible to users. "It would differentiate their e-mail in a manner that there is a risk from the end-user standpoint that it takes away some of the things I like about the BlackBerry service," Mr. Stout said on Friday.

He acknowledged that R.I.M. might have since altered its software in a way that avoids those problems.

Mr. Stout said that he doubted very much that R.I.M. had found a way around his company's patents.

"That's balderdash," he said. "They're just trying to keep the ball up in the air."

If NTP wins an injunction to end BlackBerry service and R.I.M. keeps BlackBerry service operating through the new software, Mr. Stout said his company would ask for an immediate judicial review of the changes.

If that hearing finds R.I.M. is still infringing on NTP's patents, Mr. Stout said NTP would ask that R.I.M. and every wireless carrier in the United States offering BlackBerry service be cited for contempt.

The dispute dates to the beginning of the decade when R.I.M. was still a relatively small company. Mr. Stout said NTP believed that R.I.M.'s system infringed on broad patents given to NTP's co-founder, Thomas J. Campana Jr., an engineer who is deceased, for a primitive wireless e-mail system he devised as a subcontractor during the 1980's at a company called Telefind.

In the lawsuit that followed R.I.M.'s initial rebuff of NTP, a jury in Richmond, Va., found in NTP's favor. That decision, largely upheld on appeal, required R.I.M. to pay a royalty that would have generated about $240 million to date.

In March, the two companies announced that R.I.M. would pay NTP $450 million to license its patents. But that deal collapsed over final terms.

Although NTP is now asking a federal court in Virginia to block BlackBerry service to everyone in the United States except government and aid agency account holders, most analysts say that the Canadian company can, and should, still settle out of court. The estimated price tag for that, however, is now pegged at $700 million to $1.5 billion. While such a settlement is large for a patent case, R.I.M. is estimated to have at least $1.8 billion in cash.

When an injunction would arrive is not clear. But Mr. Stout, in a view shared by others, expects that a ruling could come as soon as the end of this month or by mid-January at the latest. It is possible that R.I.M. may then be given a period, perhaps of several weeks, to shut down.

R.I.M. still has other legal options. The United States Patent and Trademark Office is reviewing eight of NTP's patents and has issued preliminary rulings against the company in several cases. But final rulings are unlikely to come for months and a two-part appeal process could extend the review for years. In any case, NTP needs only a single patent upheld to gain an injunction.

In addition, R.I.M. is preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court, although even it acknowledges that the court rarely hears patent appeals.

Even if the court accepts R.I.M.'s appeal, which hinges on the fact that its software resides on servers based in Canada where NTP does not hold patents, any Supreme Court decision is unlikely to come swiftly.

So far there has been little apparent impact on BlackBerry sales. Mr. Greengart at Current Analysis said that most BlackBerry purchases in the United States are made by corporate information technology departments that would be reluctant to change to alternative hand-held units from Palm, Nokia and Samsung, or move to wireless e-mail software from Good Technology and SEVEN because of the cost and the bother.

As well, he added, many corporations prefer BlackBerry because its software offers a high level of security and its devices cannot be used by employees for non-work-related tasks like listening to downloaded music.

As for Mr. Stout, he has no apologies for BlackBerry owners who may be cut off by his company's request for a shutdown or R.I.M. investors who will probably see their shares sink if the company loses a market that provides about 70 percent of its revenue.

Shares of R.I.M. closed at $64.50, down 52 cents.

"If this goes as far as an injunction, I won't feel sorry for them," Mr. Stout said. "No BlackBerry customer can say that NTP didn't offer a license. If R.I.M. turns that down, they have no one to blame but themselves for the consequences. BlackBerry users should tell R.I.M. to stop fooling around with their service and take the license."

December 3, 2005 at 06:25 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (50) | Top of page | Blog Home

The Corporate Weblog CounterManifesto

The Corporate Weblog CounterManifesto - RG News

Here is my counterpoint to the corporate blogger manifesto Robert Scoble has just published through the ChangeThis initiative. He has gotten some really good points.

But the view of the emerging grassroots, semantic Web should reflect some universal laws that seem not yet to find way in its credo. For one, on the Web diversity is sacred, and because of this, Scoble's guidelines may apply to only a restricted and not particularly forward-looking group of future pro bloggers.

Robert's manifesto carries too much of the old-way of seeing and doing things.

Robert's manifesto carries too much of the old-way of seeing and doing things.

It shows he has read and understood some of the key principles of the new grassroots journalism he seems to be heralding but it smears them with old-fashioned ways of thinking about business and communications.

I would be certainly hesitant at recommending this manifesto as is, especially to those who seriously want to embrace this new medium with the goal of augmenting their authority and credibility.

For the goal Robert Scoble sets out to support with his mainstream manifesto, "wanting to create a blog for your company or product", there seems to be no indication of what kind of company/product this may apply to if not for the categories Mr Scoble maybe most familiar with (e.g. Microsoft-like products and tools).

The Scoble Bloggers Manifesto translates to me as "how to make a site that looks like a blog and how to sneak rapidly more traffic, attention and authority without having understood the new rules grassroots journalism fully requires".

I imagine Robert didn't want to be this serious, but I find the opportunity he offers me absolutely unique to let it go without using it as a catapult.

Here is the Scoble Manifesto (his original points in italic) followed by my counter ones. In full bold, with hardly any comment, the points where we fully agree (6 out of 21)

1. Tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

Say what you believe in, feel good and right. Remain aware that truth has multiple faces and that multiple point of views can be right at the same time.

2. Post fast on good news or bad.

Don't rush to press. Thin always what your mission is, and follow speed only when it can make a true difference in your readers life, not in your traffic stats.

3. Use a human voice.

4. Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards.

Support "open standards" and stay away from those who preach "standards" without ever making it very clear which standards they are referring to. (see Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer as a good examples of fake, dangerous "standards").

5. Have a thick skin.

Yes, be prepared for criticism and don't despair because of it. The more you have, the more you may actually be on something relevant and to which people resist seeing through. Stay on it like a Doberman and don't ever try to answer all of the questions that come up to you before having answered the ones that are in your headspace first.

6. Don't ignore Slashdot.

Get yourself updated with the best independent, grassroots news resources out there. It doesn't have to be Slashdot at all. It clearly depends on the topic and industry you follow. Rather, as a general rule, follow those who outside the mainstream newsmakers, make most sense to you, while continually stretching your view on things.

7. Talk to the grassroots first.

Talk to those you think know better. They can be at the bottom or at the top of the ladder and believe me, they all increasingly count. Don't slot yourself with the grassrooters nor with the corporate suits. Stay open and listen closely to all.

8. If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast.

9. Underpromise and overdeliver.

10. If Doc Searls says it or writes it, believe it.

Question the Doc too. He gets most everything right when he looks ahead, but he is not alone. Extend your resources and don't herd after anyone.

11. Know the information gatekeepers.

Know your mavens, salesmen and connectors. You are not at war with other companies. If you think are you are stuck in the past and need to re-read again the Cluetrain for some enlightenment (as if the Web in front of you wasn't enough of an evidence).

12. Never change the URL of your weblog.

Irrelevant. Do not fell prey to these marketing commandments. It is evident that no-one enjoys changing home or URL, but if the return provides much greater benefit, believe me, this is not going to kill your reputation, authority or reach in any significant way.

13. If your life is in turmoil and you are unhappy, don't write.

Don't let your physical or psychological condition influence your ability to report and scout for good information. Since you don't have to share the inner layers of your soul to be a valued "blog reporter" it is OK to have personal problems and at the same time produce great pro work. Great artists, actors included, leverage these energies to perform and prepare at even higher standards than when their personal lives are fine. Learn from that. Stand up to it!

14. If you don't have the answers say so.

If you don't have the answers, the questions, or the issues clear in your mind, just don't write. Nobody is expecting this from you.

15. Never lie.

16. Never hide information.

Provide as much information as you can from all the different sides complementing a thorny issue, and provide multiple and diverse opinions to your hottest discussions. Everyone, consciously or unconsciously hides information from view in the goal of bringing other information to the foreground. Be honest about your goals upfront and you won't have this ghost following you.

17. If you have information that may get you into a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting it, but do it fast.

If you have information that is hot about a company make sure you are transparent, rich in references and that you provide tangible verifiable facts in your blog reports. Don't accuse, report facts. When possible, inform the company involved before doing your number and then take your decisions from there.

18. Link to your competitors and say nice things about them.

Link to valuable resources and credible people. Get it over with this corporate chicanery. Any other move will be seen as what it really is. Playing the traditional power game where transparency, honesty and credibility never make to the Top40.

19. BOGU. This means "Bend Over and Grease Up."
See above. Forget about it. Wrong road. Dead end street. Better go back to work for TV, newspapers and old-fashioned network radio. Get hired by a record company.

20. Be the authority on your product company.

21. Know who is talking about you.

Here is the original Robert Scoble Corporate Blogger Manifesto

September 6, 2004 at 09:10 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (58) | Top of page | Blog Home

Organization in the Way: How decentralization hobbles the user experience

adaptive path » organization in the way: how decentralization hobbles the user experience

by Peter Merholz
September 5, 2004
Contrary to all the books, articles, Web sites, and workshops that suggest otherwise, the biggest problem in user experience design today is not one of practice. Any competent practitioner can dip into the current toolbox of methods and create a satisfactory product.

Right now, the biggest obstacle to good design is poor organizational structure. The fundamental makeup of most organizations runs contrary to producing quality designs, and as organizations get larger, this becomes increasingly apparent.

Centralize and Conquer
Once upon a time, massive organizations drove design innovation. In their centralized, command-and-control structures, the desires of savvy executives were pushed through an entire corporation. AT&T could hire Henry Dreyfuss to evolve the telephone, Thomas Watson, Jr. could proclaim that “good design is good business” and get IBM to work with such luminaries as Paul Rand, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen.

Such organizations, if they were ever prevalent, are now almost nonexistent. Companies have grown impossibly large, and decentralization — a boon to operational efficiency and customer awareness — has divided the modern enterprise into a collection of departmental silos.

As long as the objects of design are simple, effort remains largely within a single silo — marketing manages print and media design, while engineering oversees product design. But not all design products are so straightforward.

Find a Common Goal
Most of today’s design products are complex enough to require input across silos. That means, instead of having a team of collaborating individuals, we have scattered departments whose efforts are stitched together by a product manager.

A single electronic consumer product tumbles through a dizzying process: business owners assemble requirements, designers specify the system, another group engineers the hardware (distinct from the group writing the onboard software), outside manufacturers produce the product, and a team of marketers figure out promotional details. This lack of cohesion leads to confounding products that perpetually blink “12:00.”

What’s worse, each department has different measures of success. Marketing works to increase leads and brand perception; product managers strive to be on time and on budget; engineers want to meet requirements; manufacturers focus on minimizing defects; designers aim for useful, usable, and desirable products.

Ideally, these measures would balance to create a superior product. Realistically, all of those disparate objectives often conflict, leading to one of three results: 1) “design by committee,” where, in an effort to achieve consensus, innovative impulses are dampened, 2) “design by accretion,” where products are cobbled together in a serial fashion, each department contributing without regard to what the other groups are doing, or 3) “design by gauntlet,” where projects are subject to so many approval processes that they can be stalled at any point along the way.

Organize for Innovation
Web development, with its array of necessary competencies, is particularly sensitive to clashing departmental objectives.

Until now, user experience efforts have been focused on building teams that practice user-centered design (UCD). However, researchers at User Interface Engineering recently discovered that the size of an organization’s UCD practice is somewhat inversely proportional to the site’s usability. You read that right: Companies that invest in usability seem to be creating marginally worse products. If you consider the problem of design in modern organizations, there’s a clear explanation for this seeming oxymoron. The more a company invests in UCD, the more likely it is to create a separate UCD group or department. This group then plays the role of “interface cop,” reviewing everything before it goes out. Of course, this bottlenecks development processes; thus, the UCD department becomes a point of pain to route around.

Get it Together
What we have seen is that small, multidisciplinary teams create the best products.

These teams eschew departmental hand-offs and reviews. Instead, product managers, marketers, designers, engineers, and user advocates work closely on a single project. In order to succeed, it’s essential that, in this collaborative mold, the different parties are no longer bound to their departments’ distinct measures of success, but share a common goal.

UCD can’t work as a silo department — it must be a company-wide approach. Instead of hiring UCD specialists, develop multidisciplinary teams in which every member is familiar with UCD principles.

Right now, user experience designers don’t need any more design methods in their toolbox — they need management methods that enable them to spread those successful tools throughout the organization.

Peter Merholz is an Adaptive Path founder. Peter has written a report on a wholly different subject: “How Labels Affect Usability and Branding.” Full of real-world examples, this report provides set of best practices for ensuring clarity and utility of the words you use on your site.

Team structure is one of the many topics at our “Beyond Usability” workshop in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 28 and 29.

September 6, 2004 at 04:14 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (31) | Top of page | Blog Home

In the Classroom, Web Blogs Are the New Bulletin Boards

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > In the Classroom, Web Blogs Are the New Bulletin Boards

By JEFFREY SELINGO
Published: August 19, 2004
LAST spring, when Marisa L. Dudiak's second-grade class in Frederick County, Md., returned from a field trip to a Native American farm, all the students wanted to do was talk about what they saw. But instead of leading a discussion about the trip, Mrs. Dudiak had the students sign on to their classroom Web log.

There they wrote about learning to use a bow and arrow, sitting inside a tepee and petting a buffalo. The short entries were typical of second-grade writing, with misspelled words and simple sentences. Still, for Mrs. Dudiak, the exercise proved more fruitful than a group discussion or a handwritten entry in a personal journal.

"It allowed them to interact with their peers more quickly than a journal," she said, "and it evened the playing field." Mrs. Dudiak said she found that those who were quiet in class usually came alive online.

Classroom Web logs, or blogs, many of which got their start in the last school year, are becoming increasingly popular with teachers like Mrs. Dudiak as a forum for expression for students as young as the second-grade level and in almost any subject. In the blogs, students write about how they attacked a tough math problem, post observations about their science experiments or display their latest art projects.

For teachers, blogs are attractive because they require little effort to maintain, unlike more elaborate classroom Web sites, which were once heralded as a boon for teaching. Helped by templates found at sites like tblog.com and movabletype.org, teachers can build a blog or start a new topic in an existing blog by simply typing text into a box and clicking a button.

Such ease of use is the primary reason that Peter Grunwald, an education consultant, predicts that blogs will eventually become a more successful teaching tool than Web sites.

"School Web sites are labor-intensive and are left up to administrators and teachers," said Mr. Grunwald, whose consulting firm in Washington focuses on the technology link between home and school. "With blogging intended to be a vehicle for students, the labor is built in. The work that is required to refresh and maintain an interesting blog is being provided by students."

One way teachers say they use blogs is to continue spirited discussions that were cut short or to prolong question-and-answer periods with guest speakers.

"With blogs, class doesn't have to end when the bell rings," said Will Richardson, supervisor of instructional technology and communications at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, N.J., who maintained blogs for two journalism classes he taught last year.

Teachers say that the interactivity of blogs allowed them to give students feedback much more quickly than before.

"I used to have this stack of hard-copy journals on my desk waiting to be read," said Catherine Poling, an assistant principal at Kemptown Elementary School, also in Frederick County, Md., who ran a blog last year when she taught third grade at a nearby school. "Now I can react to what they say immediately, and students can respond to each other."

In one blog entry, for instance, Ms. Poling asked her students what qualities they looked for when rating books for a statewide award. When several students responded that a book has to be creative and grab their attention, she posted a follow-up question asking them if they used the same criteria for both fiction and nonfiction books.

While such a question could have just as easily been posed during a classroom conversation, teachers who use blogs say that students put a lot more thought and effort into their blog writing, knowing that parents and others may read their work on the Web.

"They want to make sure that it's good enough to be read by more than just their teacher," said Christopher S. Wright, a third grade teacher at Wyman Elementary School in Rolla, Mo.

Sometimes, the long reach of the Web has turned bloggers into modern-day pen pals, allowing students to collaborate easily with their peers in other classes or even other countries. Some social studies classes at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, for instance, are using a blog to study the Holocaust with high school students in Krakow, Poland.

August 19, 2004 at 08:32 AM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (30) | Top of page | Blog Home

Six Types Of Business Blogs - A Classification

This useful classification from corporateblogging.info

CorporateBloggingBlog: Six Types Of Business Blogs - A Classification

Corporate (or Business, Organizational) blogs can be classified into six different categories. Each category shares common characteristics and the blog content can be expected to differ between the categories. Furthermore, there's differences in terms of target groups and purposes.
Even if we also see hybrid forms where blogs are examples of more than one category, an organization that professionally incorporates blogging into its communications strategy will likely prioritize one purpose (for each blog).

At least, that's what I think and suggests. A recent post and discussion got me going on this.
Why do we need a classification at all, you might ask. One situation I have in mind is when a corporate communications manager seriously wants to investigate the potential benefits of blogging. Doing that, she could stumble upon so hugely different blogs that nothing would make any sense. But with the help of a filter of some kind - a classification - research and discussion would be much easier. It would also make it less confusing to talk about "blogs" on a general level.

So, this is my idea. Opinions appreciated!

Sales blogs - external

Purpose: To market or sell products/services, make citizens aware of public services, get donations for charities or political parties etc.

Blogger: The organization itself, or more specifically individuals within it writing on behalf of the organization.

Target groups: (Potential) clients/customers and citizens, that is persons and/or other organizations that are directly involved with the publishing organization, or those it wants to reach with the purpose above.

Relationship blogs - external

Purpose: To create, uphold or strengthen relationships.

Blogger: The organization itself, or more specifically individuals within it writing on behalf of the organization.

Target groups: Often smaller and more specified than with sales blogs. Examples are support blogs aimed at customers of a certain product, finance blogs for IR purposes, PR blogs for media, blogs trying to reach students, future employees, politicians/officials etc.

Branding blogs - external

Purpose: To strenghten the brand, the profile, of the publishing organization or individuals within it.

Blogger: Not necessarily the organization itself. Individual employees' or executives' blogging ("insider blogs"), if supported by the organization, can be viewed as a branding blog. The same goes for adverblogs and blogs that are not apparantly connected to the organization.

Target groups: See Relationship and Sales blogs.

Knowledge blogs - internal

Purpose: To give employees information and insights relating to their work assignments; news, business intelligence, reports about ongoing projects etc.

Blogger: The organization itself through one or more designated bloggers, or potentially all employees through a entirely open blog publishing model.

Target groups: All employees with a certain interest.

Collaboration blogs - internal

Purpose: To provide a working team with a tool for research, collaboration and discussion.

Blogger: The team.

Target group: The team.
(There's only a fine line - if any - between this blog category and business wiki's. You could also see for example Relationship Blogs change into more wiki-like publications.)

Culture blogs - internal

Purpose: To strengthen organizational culture. Typically through informal content of social or non-work related character.

Blogger: The organization itself through one or more designated bloggers, or potentially all employees through a entirely open blog publishing model.

Target groups: All employees as employees, and not as professionals (developers, managers, assistants and so on).

For the record: I haven't gone crazy. I don't believe we ever will find a classification that all bloggers feel comfortable with. Thankfully there's too many opinions and views for that. Still, the potential corporate blogger would rather have many classifications to lean on than none at all, I think.
Posted by Fredrik at 3:21 PM

August 10, 2004 at 08:28 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (34) | Top of page | Blog Home

Blogging and Business Moving Mainstream

Yahoo! News - Blogging and Business Moving Mainstream

Sat Jul 31, 8:47 AM
By Spencer Swartz
BERKELEY, Calif. (Reuters) - "My life, My thoughts, My world," writes Shanee from Newport News, Virginia, about her life tales. Welcome to the world of blogging.

For a few years now, blogs have given tech-savvy individuals a platform to publish directly to the Internet their personal opinions on everything from relationships to politics. Thousands of blogs, characterized by some as the height of self-importance, are posted daily.

"This blog gives you the daily activities of me since my girlfriend left..." wrote one blogger.

Another began: "Egypt isn't what it appears to be in the media ... but that's no real surprise, since not much is."

But blogs, short for Web logs, are fast gaining corporate recognition and soon may be acknowledged simply as important.

In a sign blogs are moving mainstream, major technology companies, including Microsoft Corp.(Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and International Business Machines Corp.(NYSE:IBM - news), came together at a recent conference to discuss the profit potential of the Web publishing format.

The growth in the number of blogs, and those who read them, continues to attract attention from business leaders, including Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites), as a means of enhancing companies' communication more directly with employees, partners and customers.

Venture capitalists, start-ups, and technology titans gathered at the University of California Berkeley's Haas Business School to consider the commercial use of blogs and issues, such as privacy concerns, that surround blogging.

The event builds on comments Gates made at Microsoft's annual CEO Summit in May touting blogging as a new business tool, and features added by Google Inc., the No. 1 Web search company, to its Blogger.com service to allow users to publish content from e-mail-enabled devices such as cell phones.

IBM sees blogs as a way to revolutionize employee communication, one executive said on the sidelines at the July 23 conference, which attracted about 300 attendees.

"It's about decreasing social space between employees, and increasing the amount of knowledge shared between people," said James Spohrer, director of IBM's Almaden Research Center.

An example of an employee blog, he said, might contain elements of a resume, some of an individual's educational background and work experience, along with information on product development strategies colleagues and customers can view on a round-the-clock basis.

BLOGGING, CHALLENGES

The sharing of such information between company employees and customers promises to speed feedback on efforts to produce new products and improve business processes, Spohrer said.

This was part of the rationale at the April launch of Microsoft's Channel 9, a service that uses various communication tools, like video blogs, to connect software developers around the world.

A recent employee blog, before going on to give advice about recruiters and online resumes, said: "After a HOT weekend, I'm back to searching for excellent marketing professionals (no, I don't do that on the weekend) and focusing on sourcing resumes off the Internet (did I tell you how much I love Google?)"

Informal and personal, blogs also pack a lot of marketing potential, analysts said.

"Blogs are a way to put a human face on the company" because of the continuous interaction and relationships employees can develop with blog-readers, said Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Blogs can be viewed on home pages and Web sites like http://www.blogger.com, which allows users to open accounts and "blog" their thoughts for free.

New technology such as Real Simple Syndication allows individuals to subscribe to feeds on blogs that can be read on desktops as they are "published," rather than having to browse home pages.

Blogs have also spawned business opportunities and start-up companies like LinkedIn, an "electronic Rolodex" that has grown to a user-base of about 880,000 professionals who social network, look for jobs, and pitch business deals.

The Mountain View, California-based company, which marketed its service at the conference, currently has no revenues and is being funded by $4.7 million in venture capital money provided by Sequoia Capital, a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said Konstantin Guericke, a LinkedIn co-founder.

The Berkeley conference also featured discussion on blogging concerns of privacy, intellectual property rights and protecting corporate information -- all issues that have trailed other forms of Internet use, like e-mail.

While blogging has allowed unedited self-expression by individuals, companies, however, may face the risk of lawsuits over employee postings that contain sensitive company information, analysts said.

August 2, 2004 at 12:55 AM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (151) | Top of page | Blog Home

Blogs Bubble Into Business

Blogs Bubble Into Business - Computerworld

Story by Linda Rosencrance

JANUARY 26, 2004 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - Jacob Crossman, a software engineer at Soar Technology Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich., uses blogging tools from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Socialtext Inc. to keep an up-to-date engineering notebook on his ideas about a particular project that can be accessed by other project participants.
"One of the disadvantages of a paper-based engineering notebook is that it's hard to find things unless you want to go through it manually," Crossman says. "So I decided to use the blog feature of Socialtext's software to keep track of my ideas. I would type them in, and then they're immediately searchable using another feature of the software." He is also able to link to other documents about the project using the blog entry.

Crossman is not alone. Recently, weblogs, or blogs, which let anyone with a Web browser and some easy-to-use software publish a personalized diary online, have started to emerge as valuable knowledge management and communication tools in companies.

But blogs aren't entering through the CIO's office. They often first appear in companies as the convenient records of engineering or design projects. They're taking the same bottom-up adoption path followed by instant messaging, another collaboration tool originally used for personal communication.

Weblog software, whether free, inexpensive or not so cheap, aggregates and publishes unstructured content on the Web by time and topic. XML can be used to embed links in the blog from a variety of resources, but no knowledge of that language or HTML is necessary.

The details and features of the technology vary by vendor, but blogging software is basically a simple content management system that's designed to take content written by the blogger and post it at the top of a page.

That content is either stored in a database or a flat file, depending on the software. Usually the presentation layer is separate from the content, so that the blogger can design the look and feel of the blog and simply fit the content elements within whatever format the user wants to read. Many blogging systems provide templates to make that easier.

Using blogs, companies can easily and quickly communicate information such as project updates, research, and product and industry news both inside and outside the business. Security issues are the same as with any Internet-based application.

Even though blogging technology has the potential to become important to their companies, most CIOs haven't paid much attention to blogging, and it's not one of the tools they're considering to solve their myriad IT problems, according to John Patrick, president of Attitude LLC in Ridgefield, Conn., and former vice president of Internet technology at IBM.

"I believe it is important to the CIO and the enterprise, because blogging introduces a new way to create, share and leverage knowledge in the enterprise," Patrick says.

But Jamie Lewis, an analyst at Burton Group in Midvale, Utah, says he isn't sure all companies should immediately jump on the blogging bandwagon. "Whether companies should look into using it depends on corporate culture and the kind of culture they're trying to develop," Lewis says.

Blogging is like a lot of other collaborative tools -- if the company is good about trying to encourage and generate cross-functional and interpersonal collaboration and communication, then it's a good idea, Lewis says.

Internally, some corporations are using Web tools like Six Apart Ltd.'s Movable Type to create project management blogs, says Anil Dash, vice president of business development at Six Apart, a weblog software vendor in San Mateo, Calif.

"You can do things like start one weblog for each project and have it run its course," Dash says. "As the project continues along, everybody can do status updates and be able to link to every other relevant resource, whether it's on the Web or in a Word document or in a proprietary company database. So for internal use, you have a lot of flexibility, and it respects the firewalls and the other boundaries you've already put in place."

Michael Masnick, president of Techdirt Inc. in Foster City, Calif., says that while most corporations have knowledge management tools and corporate portals to organize internal data, they don't have an effective way to deal with external information. A blog allows users to integrate internal and external information.

Enterprise blogs provide companies with easy-to-use tools to manage external information, which is extremely critical because it affects relationships with customers, partners and investors, as well as internal decision-makers.

"Having an enterprise blog provides a strategic advantage over the competition and helps companies gain market share and respond faster to their rapidly changing business environments," Masnick says.

The U.S. Department of Defense's Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport, R.I., is using TeamPage enterprise blogging software from Providence, R.I.-based Traction Software Inc. to create a secure communications hub for a project to evaluate night-vision technology.

The blog is part of a pilot project to speed up communications within the DOD's test and evaluation programs. NUWC will use it to ensure that information about its testing of the night-vision technology will be available in real time to its partners, including Ford Motor Co. and the U.S. Army's night-vision lab, according to Tammi McVay, program analyst project lead at NUWC.

"[Some of our partners] will test this night-vision technology under various circumstances and log their test results and any observations that they have on our weblog, and all our other partners will have immediate access to it," McVay says. "We're working with all unclassified data for this go-round, but we'd need to look at this further to see how it would work in the world of classified information."

After the four-month pilot is over, the DOD will analyze NUWC's results and determine whether blogging has a future in the agency, says McVay.

Traction President Greg Lloyd says enterprises can use weblogs in a number of ways.

"We focus on groups within the company where communication either within the company or with channel parties or customers, or both, is part of their main business activity," he says. "What the weblog provides is a very simple way to collect, organize and disseminate information that works and acts like a Web newspaper."

Keeping Up to Date

Weblogs give people a self-service way to find out what's happening within the company, Lloyd says.

"With our software, you can add comments or questions on any paragraph you see," he says. "So if someone in the sales organization sees something that a competitor has just announced, that salesperson can add a note under the paragraph that talks about the new product announcement and make it visible to members in the sales team or only visible to the people in the competitive intelligence group, who would then correlate it and send it throughout the organization."

Many corporations aren't aware of the substantial business potential of enterprise blogs, says Toronto-based author Jim Carroll, who has written about business weblogs.

"If I'm a customer and I'm dealing with a product that has some type of well-known problem, to be able to access a blog and track that blog and to be able to track historic postings on that blog -- I think that would be useful," Carroll says. "The example I use is Harley-Davidson building a blog for its customers to keep up to date on all the cool stuff that's happening with Harley, because people are religious about their Harleys. But I don't think the marketing world has figured it out yet."

One of the reasons the upper management at most corporations hasn't really warmed up to the enterprise blog as a marketing tool is the end of the '90s high-tech boom, Carroll says.

"I think people got excited about the Net. They got excited about it as a marketing tool and a customer-support tool -- as a tool by which they could innovate their business processes. And then everything went wrong, and everyone out there is too darned terrified to try anything new right now," he says.

But at lower levels of business, the convenience and usefulness of blogs is more powerful for users than techno-skittishness.

"The trend that's happening now is that users are seeing the need for blogging like they have with other disruptive technologies, and they're bringing them into the enterprise at the workgroup or departmental level," says Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext.

Mayfield says the adoption scenario begins when a single worker sets up a work space for his workgroup. The group then goes on to build a business case for how blogging is adding value just on that small scale.

"Then that person creates a work space with somebody who's in a different workgroup, and gradually what ends up happening is you gain this critical mass of building business case after business case within an organization," he says. "And by the time the CIO is really looking at the technology to make a top-down buying decision for the enterprise, they already have an existing class of business cases and proven techniques of how users are adopting it."

Mayfield says because these blogging tools are inexpensive -- approximately $30 per user per month -- easy to use and accessible, there's the potential for growth within the enterprise similar to the growth of instant messaging.

"I would expect it to be the same way, where users are just going to have it first, and then managers are going to realize increasingly the value of it as a management tool," Mayfield says.

Source: Computerworld

February 7, 2004 at 07:42 AM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | TrackBack (38) | Top of page | Blog Home

Why corporate blogs aren\'t

From the "dot communist". I think the reasons given against, are precisely the reason why corporate blogs will work. Admittedly it will require risk taking by company's prepared to permit unedited publishing direct to the consumer but thats where the conversations will begin.

the dot-communist

Here's something to chew on:
Can a publishing company ever really publish a weblog? Should it even try? Weblogging is *micropublishing*; it is to corporate media websites what 'zines are to paper publishing. So, when a publishing company posts content that has gone through an editorial vetting process using weblog software, is it (a) a weblog--or is it (b)just using weblog software as a content management system?
The answer is (b). Using weblog software to publish content in a weblog style does not a weblog make--weblogs are content filtered through an individual worldview, not a traditional editorial voice. Weblogs are write-and-post, typically, while almost no publishing company would give an individual the power to directly put content onto its website. Almost.
So, what's the point of a corporate weblog then? More to come...

January 22, 2004 at 09:59 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The Information Architecture of Cities

"The Information Architecture of  Cities", by L. Andrew Coward and Nikos A. Salingaros

Cities are systems of information architecture. Here, "architecture" is used in the sense of computer architecture -- it refers not to the design of buildings, but to how the components of a complex system interact. Information exchange includes the movement of people and goods, personal contact and interactions, telecommunications, as well as visual input from the environment. Information networks provide a basis for understanding living cities and for diagnosing urban problems. This paper argues that a city works less like an electronic computer, and more like the human brain. As a functionally complex system, it heuristically defines its own functionality by changing connections so as to optimize how components interact. An effective city will be one with a system architecture that can respond to changing conditions. This analysis shifts the focus of understanding cities from their physical structure to the flow of information.

L. Andrew Coward

School of Information Technology, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia 6150, AUSTRALIA.

E-mail: landrewcoward@shaw.ca

Nikos A. Salingaros

Department of Applied Mathematics, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas 78249, USA.

E-mail: salingar@sphere.math.utsa.edu
______________________________________________

Contents

Introduction
Understanding the city as a system
Cities should optimize information exchange
Different types of complexity
Systems and modular decomposition
Plug-and-play strategies are misleading
A city works like a brain, not a computer
The role of telecommunications
Networks and evolving city form
Conclusion

1. Introduction

Cities coordinate activities among a large number of human beings. To do this requires complex patterns of cooperation. Furthermore, this task must be accomplished under conditions in which the activities are changing continuously. There is a competition between opposing goals. One goal is to optimize the efficiency of exchange patterns best suited to the present situation, by making the infrastructure and information paths permanent. Another goal is to leave everything suboptimal but highly adaptive, so as to be able to change with unexpected variations in conditions. Still another is to impose hardware (i.e. buildings and roads) onto a city that achieves neither of the previous goals.

As an example that compares specialized versus adaptive cities in the long term, Jane Jacobs [1] contrasts a static city such as 19th century Manchester with a dynamic city such as Birmingham (England). Manchester was very successful in the cotton industry, but declined in the face of external competition. On the other hand, it has never been possible to point to one industry by which Birmingham earns its living; rather its capability has been the creation of new industries in response to changed conditions.

A specialized city that works well can be compared to a real-time electronic system, in that its functionality is decided beforehand and is specified in complete detail. Any functional change in an electronic system must be designed with all possible consequences in mind. This requires extensive testing before implementation in order to avoid undesirable side effects. For systems such as cities and biological brains, however, change is to a considerable degree heuristic (i.e. learned by the system itself in response to experience). Many other natural and artificial systems work by coordinating a complex combination of changing functions.

This paper talks about urban nodes and connections, and their interrelationship. It is a follow-up of an earlier paper [2]. Our work is part of recent attempts to understand cities as complex systems, including those by Peter Allen [3], Juval Portugali [4], and their collaborators. Jane Jacobs [1], Richard Meier [5], and Christopher Alexander [6] pioneered the understanding of complex city structure, studying and describing urban form in more realistic ways than the simplistic spatial geometry of the CIAM model [7]. We are looking for the processes whereby a living city develops, and a pathological city decays.

City form is dynamic, and it evolves heuristically. Planners need to implement a process of diagnosis and repair of the urban fabric, much as biological tissue calls upon mechanisms to repair itself. While our discussion here is going to be very general, a broad picture emerges of what a city is, and how to best help it do what it does. Some recommendations arise out of our conception of a city as a complex, organized system. We cannot deny that those proposals represent the opposite of the postwar CIAM approach to planning, which has prevented their implementation up until now. We hope that our conclusions will now give a needed boost to older insights we believe to be both correct and prescient.

2. Understanding the city as a system

Adaptivity, or the need to change functionality, forces a complex system to be modular at many levels of scale [8]. Following the example of electronic systems, "modules" are defined as clumps of activity that have larger information exchange within the module than with other modules [9, 10]. In a city, a functional module at the smallest level of scale could identify a person with the buildings and spaces in which most of his or her time is spent. At a somewhat higher level, modules could include small groups of people who interact strongly on a daily basis with various urban nodes. At a yet higher level, modules correspond approximately with institutions, individual businesses, educational and political organizations, etc.

Modularization is only approximate, because a city function may be partly in an identifiable module, but some elements of it will certainly reside within other modules. It is important to point out that our use of the term "module" is more akin to "network" than to a spatially compact object or region. This paper is liable to be misunderstood if the reader incorrectly envisions a functional module as a spatial module -- i.e. some physical built cube. Our modules enclose distributed patterns of interactivity, where actions occurring in different places communicate. They are really groups of structured links, so their visualization must avoid the misleading twentieth-century urban image of non-interacting spatial entities placed rigidly on some regular grid.

The networks of a city -- the paths, roads, telecommunications, etc. -- are the mechanisms that support information exchange. Nevertheless, a city processes information rather than merely moving it around. A complex pattern of information exchange coordinates city functions, drives a city's dynamics, and determines its evolving structure [5]. Information exchange at the smallest level of scale includes conversation, observation, and display by individuals. At a higher level, people or groups of people move from one function to another. Goods are moved, consumed, changed, combined, and created in a city. Exchanging information is much cheaper than moving people and goods, so a city has to efficiently coordinate different exchanges of different cost.

A system needs to minimize the overall cost of information exchange. Analyzing a city as a system therefore begins by identifying groups of people who exchange more information within the group than external to that group. Modules on any level cannot be identified cognitively in advance, and certainly not via any particular spatial distribution. City modules in general do not correspond with simple city functions. Urban structure needs to be assessed by abandoning strict visual ordering based on aerial views, and following the information flow. Concentrating on the evolving information and movement networks, intervention would then try to enhance city functionality by making information exchange more efficient (by means that include altering the physical structure). We are going to try and understand a city based on its networks of information exchange rather than its appearance on plan.

Before even defining urban modules, one method of improving city functionality is to make sure each of its channels carries multiple information exchanges. By that we mean that an information transfer or physical movement does more than a single thing -- more connections can then fit into the city because its paths help people carry out many different tasks simultaneously. People moving along such paths for the purpose of higher level information exchange can thus carry out lower level information exchange (e.g. observing). The time required for higher level exchange is therefore used more effectively.

Technically speaking, we are proposing fractal loading, which implies the coexistence of different but related things at different levels of scale. Fractal loading means that each high-level exchange also carries with it simultaneous exchanges on many smaller levels. This opposes maximizing the capacity of uniform communications channels dedicated to a single type of exchange. Thus, an ensemble of exchanges on different scales should be supported by a physical infrastructure that permits mixed information exchanges, and which does not let other competing exchanges squeeze out the weaker or lower-level exchanges. The opposite case of monofunctional planning forces many separate and competing exchanges of the same type into a single communications channel. An example of the latter is a choked highway, or the overloading of subway cars at rush hour. Not only is this inefficient, but it excludes other types of exchange.

We confirm one instance of fractal loading [11]. The use of urban space is linked to the information field generated by surrounding surfaces, and to how easily the information can be received by pedestrians. A primary information exchange is a pedestrian going from one point to another. He or she observes things that are unrelated to the primary reason for movement. This information is functional; it can recommend secondary behaviors to the observer who is executing a primary information exchange. A successful city is one in which even simple movements are a rich and rewarding experience. Urban space therefore works by violating the "functional" rule of twentieth-century planning. Successful urban geometry serves a multitude of needs on distinct scales; some strictly functional and others pleasurable.

Walking to an appointment in a European capital (indeed, in most of the world's cities) can be more pleasant than a drive to achieve the same end in a North American metropolitan area. In the former case, one sees other people, some of whom one might wish to talk to; observing others may provide clues on social currents and interactions; window displays provide information on available products and services, etc. Of course, we are discounting negative factors which would interfere with effective information exchange such as crime, inclement weather, or overcrowding. Drivers are subjected to unwanted information from billboards, while they choose aural information from music, news/talk radio, or chatting on their cellphone. Again, the primary exchange is loaded with secondary (wanted or unwanted) information.

Fractal loading has the crucial feature that removing the largest level of scale leaves all the other smaller levels of scale intact. Not having to execute a definite errand, undirected wandering in informationally-rich cities allows the visitor to accept recommendations offered by different visual environments, and to discover the results of such movement. It is thus possible to learn the rich and complex "visual language" of an unfamiliar city that has only changed gradually over hundreds of years. By contrast, in a non-fractal deterministic environment lacking all lower levels of scale, if you don't need to go somewhere, you will most certainly avoid doing so -- every movement is a chore, with nothing new to learn. This discussion re-affirms the importance of having a variety of information exchanges that can be achieved by physical movement.

3. Cities should optimize information exchange

Optimization makes possible the exchange of a maximum of information with a minimum of effort. The cost of information exchange in most urban activities is woefully underestimated. A half hour trip has a cost and a value. How much valuable information exchange occurs? Do you see a wide range of behaviors? Are you exposed to people you want to influence? Would a city be more effective if people saw more directly what was going on? True costs are frequently disguised, because they are computed only for the "useful" portion of the trip. Note the tradeoff with shopping malls -- while those minimize information exchange costs for shopping, they result in excessive costs for transportation.

Informational networks do not possess a localized spatial geometry, hence do not fit neatly into a spatial module. They are and will always be at odds with a city that is forced into a simplistic visual plan. And yet, informational networks are what make up a living city. It is certainly impractical to design the informational networks of a major city in advance, and in any case, as the functions of the city evolve, it is vital that the city have the capability to evolve heuristically so as to optimize information exchange. No leadership will be able to anticipate and manage this at all levels of detail [7].

Consider, for example, the process by which decisions are made to invest in a new business. Such decisions require coordination between future technology directions, market needs, financial resources, and business resources. This knowledge will be distributed across many city networks. A city with efficient information exchange of the required type will be more effective in creating new business than one without. There is always a conflict, however, between the information exchange needs of different city functions. Ideally, the result will be a compromise that allows all functions to operate effectively. There must also exist mechanisms for adjusting this compromise as functional needs change. We propose a drastic change in the optimization processes used in planning: instead of optimizing single-channel connective links among monofunctional spatial nodes, we instead argue for optimizing the overall information exchange in a city.

The functions of an intermediate level module such as a restaurant include preparing meals from raw food; distributing prepared food for take-out; providing a node of social life where people go to see how others dress and behave; providing a center of social communication; hosting meetings between people to discuss business or politics, etc. This module is contained within the building that houses the restaurant, which is itself contained in a larger network module. Some restaurants become focal points for information exchange in a city -- often identified with a particular business in a large metropolitan area, or the restaurant is an important node in a small town's social and government networks. A larger module encompassing spatial patterns of activity in the neighborhood includes the restaurant as a submodule.

Nodes that do not form part of a larger module are often parasitic to the city, since they use its infrastructure without contributing to an overall functional coherence. Nevertheless, that is how most restaurants, stores, supermarkets, and office buildings are built nowadays. Entirely surrounded by an isolating parking lot, they are designed to be built in the middle of a wilderness, yet they are forced right into the urban fabric, tearing it in the process. Restaurants designed to work as highway truck stops are routinely erected inside the city, and of course they don't belong to it. People working in a nearby office building, which could provide clientele at lunchtime, have to drive their cars around a busy road to get to a restaurant that is literally next door.

Planners have in recent decades mostly adopted urban typologies that are essentially anti-urban. Every building ignores its local context and tries to be independent of ANY context. This is really an attempt to lower the complexity overhead due to local adaptation, a strategy that superficially appears to cut costs, but which in reality increases long-term costs. The cost-cutting corporate approach of "one size fits all" is prompted by the desire to connect a node to the entire city without giving preferential treatment to the adjoining urban fabric. Not only are local connections not given any consideration; they are explicitly excluded, making it impossible to connect to neighboring buildings. It is naively expected that a new building will connect instantly to the entire city, while totally ignoring the prohibitive transportation costs of doing so. This approach, however, merely reflects the modernist planning philosophy -- no concession to the surroundings, which means no local connectivity.

Naively separating housing areas from shopping areas creates serious problems. First, any information exchange between these functions will be at high cost. Second, there is little scope for network modules with necessary functions but no physical structure/location to contain them (in contrast to, say, a restaurant). We emphasize that the network has a separate importance for the city than spatial urban form. It is not sufficient to simply erect apartments next to office buildings. Functional modules must either be designed beforehand, or the connective geometry must be such as to allow their spontaneous emergence (impossible with today's modernist zoning laws). The footpaths, parking arrangements, and proximity to other locations all affect the effectiveness of information exchange within any emergent module. A particular urban unit must fit into the global whole; not only in spatial terms, but in terms of the information exchange with its neighbors and the rest of the city.

4. Different types of complexity

A wide range of systems are called complex, and it is important to recognize major differences between distinct types of complexity. We identify two broad categories of complexity, using the computer analogies of HARDWARE and SOFTWARE. A physically simple system in general contains a small number of component types, and all components of one type are identical. Physical simplicity results from the fact that components are interchangeable among themselves. Complexity arises only when those components interact. The interaction between any two components depends primarily on the types of the components and the distance between them. Complexity in this case derives from the very large number of latent connections of exactly the same type among many identical components. The combinatorics of having to connect every identical unit to each other generates an enormous number of connections. Since every system works according to its connections, using the above analogy labels this type of system as akin to complex software.

In a system where the hardware in complex, on the other hand, while there could still be a small number of different component types, different components of the same type are similar but not identical. The interaction between any pair of components is in general unique to that particular pair. We thus have a large number of connections, but each one is identifiable and distinct. Here, the components are encouraged to form markedly different connections among themselves. Since all components are unique, only those connections are necessary that are needed for the system to function. The total number of connections is drastically reduced from the previous system, which had to provide all theoretically possible connections among identical components, precisely because its components were neither unique nor identifiable.

The starting states in a physical or economic system are the initial conditions under which a dynamic process begins. In an urban context, a starting state is the state of a city at some given time in the past, and we are interested to see if the city remains healthy, or develops insoluble problems as it evolves in the future. The two different types of complexity imply drastically different system properties and behaviors. In a complex system that works in a manner more analogous to complex software, very slightly different starting states can give rise to radically different end points. This is called "chaotic" behavior. (Chaotic behavior is observed in a large number of systems in physics, biology, economics, etc., and is a key reason for the difficulty of weather prediction. Readers of popular science recognize the extremely sensitive dependence on initial conditions as the "Butterfly Effect", in which a butterfly in Brazil causes an infinitesimally small disturbance that can nevertheless affect weather patterns in Europe much later [12]).

In a complex system that is more analogous to complex hardware, slightly different starting points will tend to give rise to similar end points (i.e. similar input conditions should generate similar behaviors). Partial insensitivity to input variability guarantees stability -- called "homeostasis" in living systems, which are structurally complex by virtue of morphogenetic mechanisms that generate uniquely individual organisms within the same typology. Convergence on appropriate end points is achieved by controlling the variability at the system level.

Living cities combine both types of complex structure and functionality. A crucial realization is that a living city surpasses a certain "complexity threshold", below which it is dead and sterile. Incredibly, modernist planners deliberately created such dead cities, either on green sites, or out of previously living urban fabric. Analogies based on physical complexity that rely on identical components and interactions can be misleading. A stable complex system is characterized by uniquely individual components interacting in distinct ways. It does, however, give the misleading appearance of physical disorder as seen diagrammatically. Thinking of the traditional city as undesirably complex in its physical form mistakenly led planners to think that cleaning up visual complexity would solve urban problems. That idea is based on a serious misunderstanding of system architecture. The modernist city -- consisting of identical units interacting in the same way -- is problematic. Unmanageable complexity in the sense of software complexity is unavoidable for systemic reasons, despite the visual appearance of "order" imposed by the regular geometry.

Examples of this misunderstanding in action are described by Jane Jacobs [1]. City planners looking at aerial photos of living urban fabric found them to be visually complex, and decided to replace them with high-rise apartment blocks, which look neat on a plan. They thus killed the urban life in that region -- and never even acknowledged their mistake. The same misunderstanding led to such acts of violence to urban systems as cutting expressways through historical city cores. It seemed a visually simple and direct way to connect roads efficiently, but it totally ignored the fundamental complexity of the city. The automobile network must adapt itself into -- rather than disrupt or replace -- the network of information exchange that powers a compact, living city. We should expect that even a rudimentary understanding of system complexity be a prerequisite for any future urban planning decisions.

5. Systems and modular decomposition

Complex systems are coherent working wholes that cannot be completely separated into fully independent modules. A structure that can be easily separated into non-interacting constituents is not a complex system, but rather an aggregation of units (called a "heap" in systems theory). A conceptual separation into modules with some degree of interaction is widely used both for the design of artificial systems, and for the understanding of natural systems. Modules are defined as clumps of activity that interact more strongly within the module than external to it. Herbert Simon [13] has argued that there could be a small number of inequivalent separations of a system into components, all of which might make some sense because they identify different subsystems [7].

Systems driven by information exchange, whether natural or artificial, distribute their complexity between their hardware and software. Any functionally complex system is forced into a hierarchy of functional modules for two reasons [8, 14]. The first reason is that there are always advantages in minimizing the volume of information (design or genetic) required to build the system. As a result, such systems tend to contain a relatively small number of fundamentally different types of components. The system will be constructed from large numbers of a few basic types, with relatively slight variations within one type.

The second reason for a hierarchical structure is that any system needs to fix problems, and to make functional changes that do not disrupt existing functionality. Knowledge of a problem to be fixed, or a functional change to be made generally exists at a fairly high level in the system (e.g. a feature of the entire system does not work properly; an area of the city is declining). The necessary actions, however, must be taken on a much lower level in the hierarchy (e.g. replace a specific group of transistors; implement investment and regulatory actions). One has to find and follow logical paths that link high level conditions with detailed actions that are generating those symptoms. Connections linking the higher with the lower levels in a system help to define a hierarchy. These are the forces that lead to modularization; we now proceed to examine how modules are defined.

External information exchange among different modules must be minimized as far as possible, and activity largely (but not entirely) contained within the modules themselves. All modules on one level of scale must be roughly equal in terms of the number of primary component operations each module contains. If one module were much larger than the others, then most logical paths would pass through that one module, which would result in centralization instead of the distribution of functions. Most cities do have a central region, which is characterized by a peak in occupancy and traffic density, but larger cities are also polycentric.

An important lesson from computer systems is the hardware/software separation. Modular decomposition in software, such as occurs with "objects" and "patterns", works entirely in the abstract space where the program executes. This is entirely independent from the physical structure of the computer's hardware. In exactly the same way, a city works in two distinct spaces: the information exchange network, and the separate space of physical structures. We are applying modular decomposition to the former, not the latter.

Very large information exchange between two modules precludes their effective separation for the purpose of tracing logical paths. Modules are separated so that information exchange is minimized, corresponding with Courtois' [9] point that the join between modules -- the interface -- will be successful only if it occurs along a region that is weaker than any individual module's internal connections. No preconception, such as neat spatial ordering, can ever determine the partition into functional modules [7]. Defining modules by this process of "finding a compromise among different paths of information exchange" implies that such modules may have a very complex geometry. Using the above general rules for module formation gives guidelines for generating healthy urban fabric.

The geographical separation of residences from workplaces (enforced by postwar monofunctional zoning) is a case in point. Because these two urban regions -- apartment blocks or groups of suburban houses on the one hand, and office towers on the other -- interact so strongly with each other as a whole, they do NOT define separate functional modules, despite the simplistic expectations due to spatial clustering. Instead, the geometry forces functional module formation of the most inconvenient kind, with information exchange that is very expensive to maintain because of long links [2, 7]. The modules that do form are too weak, and suffer from overextended transport connections and a lack of internal coherence.

Another problem with this example is that there is simply no way to form modules of intermediate size. A stable hierarchy of different modules that fit within larger modules can never evolve in a monofunctional urban region; yet we know this to be a crucial feature of any working complex system. The nuclear household and its immediate connections defines the smallest module containing work, school, office, and supermarket. In the majority of cases, there is no successively larger module that contains this elementary module -- one immediately jumps from the nuclear household to the entire city. This lack of hierarchy is pathological from a systems point of view. From a social point of view, the decline of contemporary urban geometry is reflected in the fact that today's individual does not belong to any particular neighborhood or region.

High-rise office buildings and horizontal "office parks" are not functional modules. Typically, there is very little to no interaction between different offices in the same building or "park", compared to the exchange between each individual office and its headquarters, branch locations, customers, suppliers, bankers, etc. This elementary analysis invalidates both the office building and the "office park" as useful urban typologies, despite their recent proliferation. For similar reasons a region of suburban houses is not a functional module [7]. Creating office blocks and suburban house groups makes all genuine functional exchange high cost (or imposes systemic isolation). This is the system force behind Jane Jacobs' [1] observation that successful city neighborhoods are always mixed usage.

6. Plug-and-play strategies are misleading

Module reusability gives planners a false understanding of systems. Plug-and-play strategies in modular design offer the possibility of replacing a module that fails, or is superseded by an improved module. This also allows a module to be added to a system without rearranging the entire system. Conversely, a module can be removed when not needed, without requiring a complete reorganization. Plug-in complex modules became popular during World War II in military hardware. Savings in time resulting from the ability to quickly service a complex mechanism overrode the higher cost of replacing a module instead of diagnosing and fixing one of the module's internal components. The same mentality has been inherited by the computer industry, with throwaway modules as today's hardware standard. All of this depends on an interface that permits modules to connect easily to the system.

A successful application of this strategy is the development of a standard interface for connecting computer components, such as external hard disks, keyboards, monitors, etc. These standard connectors permit the rapid transmission of a large amount of data between hardware modules. Standardization is achieved by placing restrictions on the permitted interfaces, which leads to the simplification of protocols for information exchange. This in turn permits the interchangeability of modules.

Such plug-and-play capabilities can be misleading, however. In many instances of the forced modularization of complex computer systems, the net gain has been minimal or zero, because the modularization has been achieved by shifting the system complexity from the hardware to the software. In contrast to the above successful example, which is made possible by a simplification of protocols for information exchange, oftentimes simplifying the hardware makes the software carry the burden of complexity. That is, functionally simplifying the hardware moves most of the functional complexity into software. In those cases, the interface between modules becomes more complex rather than less complex. The system therefore becomes more difficult to maintain, even though its physical design looks simpler. So far, we are discussing physical (hardware) modules. As noted earlier, we need to consider the separate question of the modular decomposition of software.

It is extremely difficult to achieve plug-and-play with software modules in a complex real time system, unless the functions performed by different modules have very little interaction [15]. Object-oriented programming uses standard, simplified interfaces to stick software modules together, so as to enable different components to communicate inside a large complex program. Some complex software has been designed for plug-and-play modularity; for example, many large commercial programs possess modular features that a user may turn on or off. Nevertheless, cases are known of complex evolved software, such as that used for the air traffic control system, where one module cannot be removed without crashing the system (even though it is not supposed to affect the other modules).

Buildings, spaces, and infrastructure provide a rubric in which people exchange information through communication and movement. Planners picked up the idea of a spatial module as a result of thinking about visual complexity, and missed the fact that cities instead form functional modules. This misunderstanding has led to major typological and planning errors. A new residential subdivision, office tower, or shopping center is approved, with the misguided expectation that it will neatly plug into the existing city. As soon as one of these (non)modules is plugged in, urban forces spontaneously generate functional modules that do not look like anything envisioned by planners. Those functional modules stretch across a city, adding to its traffic congestion and utility wastage. The genuine modules that evolve are usually forced to be extremely weak by the wrong infrastructure and zoning, which are geared to support the integrity of the urbanistically irrelevant spatial (non)modules.

In fact, contemporary planning is heavily reliant on generating new spatial (non)modules, and plugging them into the city. Ostensibly designed as perfectly independent of the city, they are nothing of the sort. A suburban house cluster, office tower, or office park plugs into the city transportation network via a single road. This method falsely appears to follow the computer industry practice of using a restricted interface that permits module interchangeability -- but it is based on a misconception. Since such (non)modules contain a large number of interchangeable components, the latent connections with the rest of the city are enormous, and all have to go through the single available channel. This overloading certainly doesn't comply with the criterion of a simplified interface suitable for limited inter-modular interactivity. Paradoxically, when the interface works as it ought to -- by restricting interchange -- then the module dies off.

We know that early twentieth century urbanists adopted mass-production techniques from manufacturing, and applied them to cities. One of these was the extreme visual simplification of a city's hardware components, in the misguided attempt to implement the idea that urban units ought to look like reusable spatial modules. We should not be surprised, therefore, at the system consequences of this action. Physical separation and segregation of functions removes functional complexity from the city's built structure, and overburdens people's daily movement. The simplistic visual ordering of modernist planning, therefore, has as its unintended consequence an extreme functional complication (hence overloading) of the transportation network.

Going back to the city/computer analogy, much of today's urban activity and costs are due to the shifting of data. This is not a useful activity in a computer, but something that occurs only when there is a bug. Shifting data around and around serves no useful function -- it is not a part of software, and does not compute or process anything. Useful computing time is spent in processing information. The urban analogy of useless information shuffling is forcing people to move around a city unnecessarily to accomplish their daily tasks, consequently wasting time and energy. Planners using plug-in spatial (non)modules maximize this wasteful shifting around by means of an inappropriate urban geometry.

7. A city works like a brain, not a computer

Different system architectures characterize complex systems that work in a different manner, as for example a digital computer versus a mammalian brain. The functionality of an electronic system is expressed as a series of commands in software. The use of unambiguous contexts results in the familiar memory/processing separation of the von Neumann system architecture upon which most computers are based [8]. Information exchanged between two modules must have an unambiguous meaning to the recipient module in terms of its own functionality. Modules can then use their input information to generate outputs that are commands for the system.

Maintaining unambiguous contexts is impractical in a complex system such as a city, however, which has to heuristically modify its own functionality, or learn. In a system that learns, modules must heuristically determine their own inputs and outputs (i.e. learn by trial and error). Nevertheless, if a module changes its outputs, it is difficult for other modules which have previously received inputs from that module to readjust. The receiving modules cannot assign an unambiguous meaning to the new output. Therefore, outputs from modules can only change gradually, in ways that minimize the loss of meaning to other modules. In a city, this means that healthy urban fabric is generated by a slow evolution, and also a city must be allowed to evolve over time. On the other hand, radical redevelopment of healthy urban fabric destroys meaningful information exchanged within the city. The result is city dysfunction until enough time has passed to rebuild information contexts.

There are two possible information architectures for a complex system. One is the von Neumann architecture with a memory/processing separation supporting unambiguous information exchange, in which functionality is explicitly controlled. The other is the recommendation architecture with a clustering/competition separation supporting meaningful yet slightly ambiguous information exchange, in which functionality is defined heuristically [8, 14]. A competition subsystem interprets the outputs of submodules as a range of alternative behaviors, and quickly selects one of the alternatives. This process depends critically on consequence feedback to determine appropriate system behavior.

When it is necessary for functionality to change heuristically, or without central direction, a system adopts the recommendation architecture. Biological brains have evolved a recommendation architecture [8, 14, 16]. In the mammalian brain the clustering/competition separation corresponds with the anatomical separation between cortex and subcortical structures [8]. Commercial electronic systems, on the other hand, invariably use the von Neumann architecture. In the most complex electronic systems it is extremely difficult to evolve functionality in a controlled fashion. When a change is made, extensive testing and error correction is required, with the testing covering not just the modified functionality, but examples of all different system functions.

A von Neumann system architecture is not scaleable. Thus, a city that is finely tuned to work at a certain size cannot handle changes in its size very effectively. Since the recommendation architecture uses more resources than the von Neumann architecture to perform the same functionality, if there is no need for functional change, operational forces push the system towards the von Neumann architecture. Information exchange then tends to become unambiguous because the action required in every condition is well understood. However, if conditions begin to change, such a system will find it very hard to adapt. The system can no longer find an effective compromise between module equality and information exchange, which reveals itself in a steadily decreasing ability to make changes. The failure of 19th century Manchester is one urban example. The city became extremely efficient for the cotton industry, but could not adapt when circumstances changed.

Resolution of conflicting recommendations must occur in an institutionally separate function which does not require complex coordination. Electoral and legal institutions perform this role in a city. There are interesting similarities between the competitive subsystem as defined here, and legal and political mechanisms. In a physiological brain the competitive function will in general choose one or another option rather than try to find a compromise, because it is impossible to know whether a compromise will not make things worse. Thus the legal and government regulation process for resolving conflict in general selects a winner from amongst existing alternatives rather than generating novel behavior.

8. The role of telecommunications

Information and communications technologies need to be incorporated into traditional city functions [17, 18]. The dynamics of the rapidly evolving electronic city are as yet little understood, while the twentieth-century model of a city based on simplistic spatial ordering is irrelevant for modeling a communications network. Blocks of functionally segregated buildings, strictly aligned to a rectangular grid, do not reveal the various overlapping networks that actually drive a city to function [19, 20]. As a complex system whose output is commercial wealth and culture, a city has a functional architecture based on information exchange [5]. Information and communications technologies should fit neatly into the hierarchy of information exchange functions at different levels of scale.

As has been well documented [21, 22], the advent of telecommunications ever since the introduction of the telephone dramatically altered urban systems. Information exchange intensified to a degree that was previously unimaginable. Telecommunications is low cost in the sense that it requires very little physical movement of people. One of the principal reasons for the initial aggregation of people into cities was in order to communicate with each other at a low cost, and this is still the driving force behind, say, the Diamond districts of New York City and Antwerp. It could be argued that the need for persons in the same trade to cluster is in part replaced by telecommunications. However, this is only true if the type of information exchanged by telecommunications is exactly the same as that exchanged by personal contact.

Some authors predicted that telecommunications would replace commuting. The reasons this prediction failed are not hard to see when analyzed from the perspective of information architecture. Information exchanged through personal contact and people movement has a much richer content, including information derived from a combination of voice tone, expression, and body language [23]. In addition, a visit allows the visitor to observe a quantity of otherwise unavailable information, and allows the visited person to observe the reaction of the visitor to this information. The multiplicity of sources of environmental information cannot be duplicated by a restricted number of communications channels.

The developing field of "Knowledge Management" addresses some of the crucial issues that have long been ignored by architects and urbanists [24]. For example, what is the optimal physical working environment that is conducive to creative output? Surely this is a trillion-dollar question, considering that our civilization is based on an economic engine driven by human creativity inside buildings, rather than by subsistence farming. Going beyond the strictly spatial aspects of the surrounding information field [11], researchers in knowledge management identify every informational aspect of the environment, including office decoration and artifacts, human interactions, and social dynamics, as crucial to either supporting or hindering creative work [24].

Large corporations have generally found that introducing new communications mechanisms such as e-mail or videoconferencing does not in fact reduce the amount of physical travel. The effect of the new communication capability is to increase the complexity of projects which can then be undertaken, rather than to replace existing communications (again, we see the optimization tendency towards fractal loading). The exception is that if a new communication mechanism results in the same information exchange at lower cost in resources or time, the new one will replace the old. Examples are the replacement of telegraph by fax, and the replacement in North America of interstate train travel by air travel.

Working from home via an electronic link is now feasible, and there are several instances of successful applications. First, individuals constrained to remain at home can now link to informational nodes that would otherwise be too costly (in terms of time and arrangements) to interact with physically. Second, powerful and wealthy individuals can set up residence in some fancy resort, and conduct their business via electronic links. This is made possible because their financial resources enable them to have all necessary information available, and any personal level of information exchange is taken care of by a quick trip. The module here is an informationally stimulating environment for those who can afford it.

Someone stuck in an informationally-starved environment may not be altogether happy to work exclusively from home, however. He or she normally prefers to fight rush-hour traffic because an outing at least gives some informational stimulation, and enables face-to-face information exchange with coworkers. Suburbanites feel informationally deprived, spending hours on the telephone and in front of the television or computer monitor in an effort to remedy this. The workplace has for many people replaced the home as the primary social node. People don't want just to eliminate the ordeal of a lengthy daily commute by car, bus, or train; they want to get their daily information exchange at a lesser cost. Today we pay an inordinately high price in automobile traffic for very little meaningful information.

The same remarks also hold true for teleshopping. Certainly, the ability to order a product from a computer screen at home has revolutionized commercial interactivity, and will probably lead to further major changes in consumer habits. Nevertheless, key components of the shopping experience are social, sensory, and public. These include the trip to the shop; interacting with other customers; touching and feeling the product before making a decision; combining a shopping trip with something else, etc. This social dimension drives "shopping for entertainment", a past-time for a large number of people, and an emotionally-satisfying method of information exchange for everyone, including the busiest individuals on this planet.

Jennifer Light has examined the interactions between the physical city and the electronic city [25]. She does not share the pessimism of other authors about the latter replacing the former. We agree with her when she says that: "The decline of cities, then, cannot be explained simply as a physical phenomenon attributed to the growth of electronic media" [25]. This coincides with our own observations of new urban activity patterns, which use electronic connectivity to reinforce and regenerate the pedestrian urban fabric. Light even defends the shopping mall, which expresses information exchange needs that have been suppressed elsewhere in the city [25]. In our opinion, the decline of cities is a consequence of misunderstanding urban forces and networks, and urban typologies such as the shopping mall are reactions to rather than the causes of this decline.

The last examples demonstrate the need for functional module formation in a connected hierarchy. A nuclear module of one person working from home requires that it be contained in a larger functional module. If that is impossible, then the smaller module breaks down. This is the reason for people not being motivated to work from home, and this lack of a hierarchy of modules has prevented the realization of the much-hyped "telecity". In contrast to this, the wealthy businessperson who can work with a laptop computer from a high-class coffee shop, or next to the swimming pool of a resort hotel, has become embedded in a very pleasant and stimulating environmental module.

9. Networks and evolving city form

Unless adequate meaning can be conveyed by telecommunications, information exchange will involve the movement of people. An effective transportation network will allow a high proportion of required information exchange to take place via short walks (say < 10 minutes each way) with secondary information exchange; an intermediate proportion to take place by moderate overhead mechanical transport (say < 30 minutes each way); and only a small proportion requiring high overhead mechanical transport (say from 30 minutes to 1 hour each way). Journeys that occupy in total much of a working day will in general be ruled out. The distribution of both pathlengths and journey times should follow an inverse-power scaling law favoring the small scale -- where the number of paths is inversely proportional to their length [7].

Creating an effective network depends on the functional partitioning of the city, and will always require a compromise. The decision to reduce the overhead for one type of trip may increase the overhead for another type of trip. For example, widening a road and increasing vehicular traffic may make many pedestrian trips across the new road much longer, or make them altogether impractical, thus destroying many working functional modules that depended on those paths. It is therefore essential to investigate whether an apparent demand for a new high level network connection such as a major road could be addressed by a different module partitioning, which might reduce the need for trips in the direction of the proposed road.

Change in a city is ubiquitous. The goal of urbanism is to help a city evolve and redefine its modules so they can modify their functionality. It is not easy to determine the appropriate module and network changes so as to respond to changes in the city's needs and environment. Urban change must be a natural built-in function of the system, driven by a complex pattern of information exchange. As discussed earlier, centrally-directed changes typically introduce large numbers of unanticipated and undesirable side effects. Any attempt at total central direction of modules and networks on every level will result in steadily increasing dysfunctionality. In spite of this, planning now focuses on large-scale interventions, and does not tolerate spontaneous evolution driven by input at different levels.

The different modules on every level of scale will need to generate alternative recommendations for module and network change. A simple competitive process must select the most appropriate change. Consequence feedback then has to adjust the competitive subsystem to evolve its selections towards those that optimize the network. Knowledge relevant to one change may exist on a number of levels. There must therefore be mechanisms by which modules at many different levels of scale recommend change, which can then be received, interpreted, and integrated into a decision that optimizes overall city effectiveness. Less successful cities can copy explicitly from more successful cities, provided that the functional relationships are copied, and not just physical structures and individual institutions.

Here is precisely where the electronic city can help the real city. There are many ideas being generated on how to involve people in their own environment; promote both education on urban issues and feedback from residents; simulate and coordinate urban interventions; many things that were extremely difficult to do before the internet and the World-Wide Web [25]. If we proceed about this task in an intelligent fashion, then a new understanding of urban systems can be applied to revitalize urban life in many regions, and also to prevent the extinction of existing life in regions threatened by blind "modernization".

10. Conclusion

We made steps towards identifying the system architecture of cities by comparing them to complex information systems such as digital computers, biological organisms, and the human brain. A city works according to an information architecture that recommends, but does not demand an action. Functionality on all levels of scale is driven by the need to optimize information exchange, from a face-to-face meeting between two persons, to the movement of individuals, up to the daily movement of many people between urban nodes.

Functional modules should develop in a way such that more information is exchanged within a module than between different modules. Cities, like human brains but unlike electronic systems, must modify their functionality without explicit intellectual control over every detail of the change. Our model allows us to help a living city repair itself much as a living organism does, and to guide its evolution under changing conditions. Rather than using models based on visually regular aerial geometries, this approach makes it possible to evaluate changes to city plans, zoning codes, transportation, and communication networks in terms of their impact on overall city effectiveness.

Acknowledgments. NAS is very grateful to Rajendra V. Boppana, José N. Iovino, Turgay Korkmaz, Josep Oliva i Casas, and Arthur van Bilsen for helpful comments and advice.

References

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January 20, 2004 at 02:17 PM in Corporate Blogging | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Blogging the Market; Part 4

Continued ... Bibliography

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Bibliography
Timothy Appnel, 2003. “Web Services, Weblogs and the Future”, O’Reilly Network, May 23, at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3229

Paul Bausch, Matthew Haughey, and Meg Hourihan, 2002. We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, John Wiley & Sons. Several Chapters of the book are available online at http://www.blogroots.com/

David Becker, 2003. “Blogs