this is just a very rough outline of some thoughts that I amtrying to string together for a few talks i need to give in the next few weeks. i want to talk about the impact of the web on how groups of people come together in cities and the questions this raises for politics and policymakers. I also want to say the word electric, alot.

there are a few unresolved things that i need help with.

1. Donʼt feel like I have really ʻlocatedʼ it in anything - as in otherpeople who have thought and written all this already. What should I locate it in? What should I be reading?

2. Is the schema for categorizing electric communities helpful?Are there other types of community I should put on here?

3. I want to connect the impact of electric communities to thedesign of cities, policy making and broader questions aboutself-government in cities. I think I have something to say about the first two but nothing really to say about the last.

if you havenʼt already, this will be alot easier to read if you makeit go full-screen

We Are Electric. CHARLIE TIMS / MARCH 2011 / URBAN APPS

I like to work in my local library. I sit here.

I often get distracted by the ʻinternet for beginnersʼ class that happens through the glass window.

A teacher, following a sheet of instructions, prompts the class through a series of exercises. She explains what a search engine is, what google is, what wikipedia is, what directgov is...

The people taking the class sit at their computer terminals, fingers hovering over their keyboards, staring at the prompt-sheet, squinting at the screen. Everything is so alien to them.

Itʼs hard to imagine quite what it must be like to do these things that, for most of us, are so part and parcel of everyday life for the first time.

And somehow that doesnʼt seem fair. Mostly theyʼre just learning a new way of doing way of doing what they already do.

A new way to pick up yellow pages, make a phone call and order a book. A new version of buying a magazine, looking at an advert in a newspaper, picking up the telephone and calling a shop. A new way to telephone the grocers and ask them to make a home delivery.

Itʼs the interface thatʼs alienating. Not what they are doing.

So, when I was watching this a few weeks ago, I was thinking - why not just give them an interface thatʼs a bit more familiar.

Have a button for Eggs. One for a TV license. chocolate biscuits. saucy magazines. wikipedia button.

a button for Eggs.

One for a TV license.

chocolate biscuits

wikipedia button.

saucy mag button

Then I thought, well maybe that already exists.

Internet looks like a phone. Phone that looks like the internet.

Actually, theyʼre not different.Itʼs just that my internet phone is shit.

The point being. All this stuff with computers, and mice and browsers - it created an idea that there was a different digital world, when actually what has been happening is the gradual electrification of our relationships.

Electric People

Itʼs increasingly ridiculous to think about the ʻonlineʼ and the ʻofflineʼ worlds. The web canʼt be divided from real-life. There is no distinction. Itʼs like talking about the ʻcar worldʼ and the ʻpedestrian worldʼ. The ʻstreet lit worldʼ and the ʻnon-street lit world.ʼ

Itʼs also a bit odd to think of ʻtechnology expertsʼ - these days any expert has to think about technology to be able to think. Everyoneʼs world is mangled with technology.

Everything has gone electric now.

At the end of the last century we electrified cities - now we have electrified the people in them. Weʼve electrified our relationships. Electrified friendship. Electrified hatred. Electric news. Electric sex. Electrification. We are all electric.

We havenʼt created something different, something ʻdigitalʼ, or a new ʻrepublicʼ - we have electrified what we have.

So lets just talk about the electric world, with electric people. Not an online and an offline world.

Electric Communities

Electric people form electric communities (I think thatʼs what we mean by urban aps today) so Iʼm going to talk about what electric communities mean for cities and society.

So what is an electric community? Itʼs a community that needs electricity to come together.

Four things about electric communities.

1

Electric communities are not ʻnew communitiesʼ. They are just communities that tend to be easier to bring together, because they are powered by electricity.

2

That said all communities are going electric. Some communities that used to be very hard to bring together, are now much easier to bring together because of electricity - e.g. a learning group. We could call these ʻelectric richʼ. Some communities and group activity that was possible without electricity (meeting a group of people at a specific time in the pub) now need electricity.

3

Electric communities tend to be more precise. They only exist for as long as they have to - which means there is more space for different communities in the same place. Many more things that might not have been visible, or would have taken alot more work to organise, are now visible in the city.

4.

The economics of infinite shelf space probably applies to electric communities in cities in the same way as they apply to electric books on amazon. Think of the city as a shelf. And communities as books. Amazon can fit more books on their shelf. We can fit more electric communities into the city.

4.

The economics of infinite shelf space probably applies to electric communities in cities in the same way as they apply to electric books on amazon. Think of the city as a shelf. And communities as books. Amazon can fit more books on their shelf. We can fit more electric communities into the city.

An Anatomy of Electric Communities

Electric communities do different things. Here is a way to pick them apart.

So on the y axis thatʼs the type of sharing within the group - more intense forms of sharing at the top, less intense at the bottom.

And on the x axis thatʼs the diversity of the different groups of people within the group. Groups made up of people like me on the left, groups make of people very unlike me on the right.

Im going to map some ʻelectric richʼ groups I know on here. This is going to be not very scientific.

I didn’t know there were people like me!

That is what people said when they started to go electric. They donʼt say that anymore.

Now Iʼm going to add some less electric communities on here.

So, maybe here, we can see some tendencies of electric communities.

1A movement towards niche communities.

2Greater levels of artistry in bringing different

people together.

3Communities using places, rather than

communities from places. More communitiesthat you can choose, rather than communities

that choose you.

The Politics of Electric Communities

Electric communities disrupt the city.

This affects how we understand who we are as a whole. And how we relate to each other. This creates anxieties about the idea of ʻusʼ.

Some anxieties about us

Who are we?

Electric people are destabilize the way we recognise ourselves. When more things are visible - how do we know who we are? What is a trend? When is a trend a trend? If itʼs easier to mobilize 10,000 people - how do we know whether 10,000 people are significant or not. How do we know who to listen too?

What do we have in common?

Electric communities make it easier to transcend physical places and local districts. They also make it easier to live within the people and things we already know. Do electric communities drive the fragmentation and Balkanisation of society into different class and interest communities? Or do they help us to reach out beyond ourselves, to our neighbours and to our friends. Do they create or do they erode social solidarity?

What is sharing?

Electric communities enable more ways to share with other people. Some of these are more surgical, some of these are more instrumental, some of these are transactional, some of these are more random. Some of these are more tactical. We can share more, more deliberately? Wonder if this kind of sharing, is different to older types of sharing. And if it somehow erodes solidarity on the basis of where you live.

Demos Electrified

Electric communities are benign. They are not necessarily more intimate, more democratic, more shared, more generally wonderful than the communities we formed before electricity became such a big part of relationships.

They are no better than we are.

At their worst they concentrate knowledge within tight communities, reinforce social fragmentation, encourage ʻtransactionalʼ sharing - possible encouragement of tribalisation, paranoia, loss of confidence in people with whom you donʼt share a direct interest. AGH!

Essentially the question we are asking is: How can you square the efficiency and general coolness of free self-forming electric communities of interest, with the need for the national or urban community to be transformative - transforming of all the communities inside it.

The answer lies in the design and making of the public realm in cities - the extent to which the city is accessible, shared and governed by all.

Spaces that can be accessed, shared and governed by different groups of people.

so

Defend Shared PlacesFootball Clubs, Libraries, Sports Centres, Arts Centres, Cultural Spaces, Lidos, Allotments,

Spaces that can be accessed by different interest groups.

Design SharingSocial design art of bringing people

together - festivals, interventions, the design of sharing, the construction of people. Look into the whites of other

peopleʼs eyes

Shared Decisionsbig society is a vision of people running

their own stuff, themselves. Maybe it should be more explicitly about

involving more people in running stuff. i.e. democracy + sharing, not a free-for-

all?

Shared DecisionsDesigned SharingShared Places

itʼs all about libraries

We Are Electric. CHARLIE TIMS / MARCH 2011 / URBAN APPS