Metropolises of the Information Society
Helmut Volkmann, München
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1. Developing the visual, learning and imaginative faculties
Children can look at a picture without saying anything, just contemplating it in silence. Suddenly they take another look and only then do they ask a question, before lapsing into silent contemplation again. And when the (im)patient adult wants to turn to the next picture in the picture book, there is silent protest, body language insists on lingering, and the process repeats itself. Children can discover a lot of new things in a picture.
To look at a good dozen pictures patiently and in silence before developing a line of argument after the lapse of a few minutes is unusual. It is hard to capture in words the tension and mood generated by looking in silence. The content of pictures can only be expressed in words to a limited extent. For a picture says more than a thousand words. And this is perhaps a good thing. Awareness of what is missing can make one realize the potential lacking from a discourse in which pictures and words are not used simultaneously and on equal terms. In the old days things used to be quite different. A virtue had to be made out of necessity and interest aroused even without the pictures themselves, with just a bare commentary on their selection. What there was to see was:
1. Cover of Spiegel, issue no. 36, 6 September 1993: What can save the economy? Welfare cuts, tax cuts, streamlining. A freighter loaded with the benefits of affluence in rough seas; view of the stern jutting from the waves at an alarming angle.
2. Heiner Altmeppen: North German Landscape 1980/81: acrylic on wood, from the Henri Nannen Collection, Kunsthalle Emden: in the background a view of a city with its industrial complexes.
3. Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Tower of Babel, 1563; also a symbol of the of today's Babel of Information.
4. Robert Fludd (1574-1637): The Musical Temple; an illustration of the theory of harmony.
5. Setting off for the Continent of Solutions, in the style of an illustration to a children's picture book: representation of what is required to shape the future.
6. Models of architectural ensembles from a computer simulation that visitors can walk through: building complexes, suspension building; Tower of Visions; path to Prospects for the Future, and surrealistic montage.
7. Pictures from XENIA, the City of Knowledge on the road to the information society (Volkmann 1994a); model of the characteristic architectural ensemble of the center; the downtown area; center and surrounding districts (scheme of the terraced city); schematized view of the District for Leadership with the Tower of Wanting; at the intersection of the Avenue of Inspiration and the Avenue of Consequences.
Pictures say more than words. This "more than" consists in grasping complex states of affairs and interacting effects at a glance. The visible provides contextual knowledge about the objects of observation, which can only be partly expressed by extending the commentary. A picture is inexact and allows of varying interpretations and emphases. It activates - to some extent unconsciously - mental capacities in the observer. This releases the imagination and mobilizes creativity. Associations are generated and analogies prompted, which in turn leads to further, expanded insights.
The visual representation of complex states of affairs and interconnected effects provides additional information for the mastery of complexity. A visual representation is easier for real things that can be looked at in nature and technology. In the case of abstract, intangible states of affairs a pictorial representation is more difficult. It must make use of the symbolical, the schematic and/or analogies with familiar images.
In view of the increasing complexity of social phenomena, it is worth risking more ambitious experiments. Galileo's message can serve as a model: "Measure what can be measured, and reduce what cannot be measured to measurability." By analogy, this means: make visualizable what is visualizable, and make what cannot be visualized visualizable.
Before the majority of people were able to read and write, all cultures made use of pictures to communicate extremely complex states of affairs. Knowledge was staged, as in a theater. The three-dimensional world of natural reality was not just captured in pictures by means of perspective, but also used to transmit complex social concerns by means of symbols and metaphors, fairy tales and myths, allegories, sketchy indications of body language and topologies. Knowledge was obtained and transmitted by contemplation and commentary.
As language and text assumed ever more complex forms of abstraction, with all its advantages, without the pictorial element in language being lost, it ceased to be necessary to transmit intangible states of affairs by visual means to the same extent. Language and text are dominant, at least in the humanities and social sciences as well as in the political structure of society.
At the close of the twentieth century the increasing integration of media, computer and communications technology is again giving us the capacity to communicate again to an increased extent on a "multimedia" basis. At the same time, however, society must resist the temptations of a one-sided use of electronics. In addition to electronic communication via networks, communication in the form of personal encounters must also be adequately cultivated.
The problems and tasks involved in shaping the future require us to deal with highly complex tasks. To find the right solutions to these problems a broad contextual knowledge will be required. We must therefore strive to represent intangible states of affairs, to stage knowledge as in a theater, and above all to promote encounters between people as participating and affected individuals. Extended forms of communication must be created and used. Why?
2. Venturing something entirely new
2.1 On the road to the problem-solving society
The rich, developed industrial societies must dare to do something completely new. They must "reinvent their future." This also involves an opportunity for the global community (Volkmann 1993a). A brief, programmatic sketch will suffice to make the requirements clear: Today's problems are tomorrow's business opportunities. The increased complexity of these businesses requires higher qualifications. As members of the work force and members of society, citizens must never stop learning. Large organizations must learn faster. Information must be controlled more efficiently in order to handle its complexity. We need a "mental" new awakening that allows us to accept even inconvenient truths, combined with long-term vision.
Promoting the "productivity of the mind" needs to be the primary goal. Society must "want change!" Then it can ensure its comparative advantages in international competition and safeguard its economic affluence.
2.2 The problem-solving business
More must be done to develop the various kinds of problem-solving business. The requirement, application and innovation areas are well-known:
Resource-friendly products and recycling, energy conservation, environmentally friendly transport, socially compatible work and automation, safe housing and living, health care, security for citizens, convenient communication, streamlined organization and reliable information, meaningful education and culture, recreational leisure.
The opening up of new markets demands enlightenment and information transfer, in which a large number of persons in authority and participants as well as the population must be involved. People will have to be made to realize that, in the current economic and social constellation, solutions will have to be worked out in expanded and new contexts for the innovative challenges of the future.
3. Learn from the past: put experience to good use!
On the other hand, society can and must learn from the past if it is to make a projection of the future. The following analysis is not concerned with a forecast based on extrapolation, but (only) with transpositions of experience.
The Russian economist Kondratiev attempted to obtain information for an improved, planned economy from a statistical analysis of the development of industrial society. He became a victim of the Great Purge. The Austrian economist Schumpeter (1952) suggested that the results of his work be called "Kondratiev cycles," and it is under that name that they are known to day.
On the basis of an analysis of indicators for various economic factors Kondratiev concluded that economic development takes place in long waves of about fifty years each. A phase of burgeoning growth and upswing is followed by a phase of maturity and settling down at a higher level. This process can be interpreted as an innovative dynamic.
Whereas in the upswing phase the development is driven by the basic innovations, the mature phase is dominated by the incremental innovations. In comparison to the incremental innovations - better, faster, smaller and cheaper - basic innovations are characterized by the fact that ideas as to their application are still vague, markets still have to be opened up, and new combinations of technologies based on existing inventions still have to be tried out. Basic innovations require entrepreneurial "nose" and the readiness to risk large amounts of capital, so as to create a new kind of network, so that the essential applications of the Kondratiev cycle can be used with broad effect.
Four cycles have been identified for the past. The fifth Kondratiev cycle, which experts assume will be driven by applications based on "knowledge and information" as well as "ecology", may more or less determine the next forty to fifty years. The upswing launched by basic innovations is, however, far from automatic. It is not assured, but determined by entrepreneurial behavior. With perhaps twenty to twenty-five years of professional experience in a position of responsibility, today's managers have hardly any experience of a phase involving a long wave of upswing. They can only learn from an analysis of the past.
The author's analysis of the four Kondratiev cycles reveals that all cycles show a comparatively characteristic constellation of which all those involved and affected were aware and which contributed to the sense of a new departure (see Figure 1):
. In each case there were just a few new applications which, by comparison to the preceding cycle, satisfied widespread needs and shaped social progress (steam engine, railroad, artificial lighting, cinema, telephone, cars, television, computers, rockets).
. The broad application was linked to the creation of a far-flung network and required considerable entrepreneurial investment (railroad networks, power grids, highway networks, communication networks).
. The combination of technologies used was partly based on older inventions, i.e. such as were already known at the time of the upswing.
The assumption is that the applications satisfy needs which have to be sought in the context of "wanting change:" complex methods of processing knowledge in the service of such requirements as
lifelong learning, correct social calculation, sustainable development, enlightenment, "unvarnished truth," renunciation of consumption, comparative advantages, products with long life cycles, communication culture, social harmony.
The technology combination serves to furnish information for the mastering of complexity, what is needed is aesthetic visualization (one picture says more than a thousand words), and the effects on the user must promote the processing of the information. Trends in the media arts show interesting lines of approach. But only the combination of all three factors of the constellation will bring the breakthrough. The risk associated with ideas has to be taken.
4. Setting off for the Continent of Solutions
4.1 Opening of a dialog
"I remember," one participant said later to another who had had to leave earlier - perhaps he had been called away on urgent business or wanted to have a look round the city - "I remember," repeated the participant, "a fictitious report (Volkmann 1991):
On December 31, 1999, at 9 o'clock, exactly as scheduled and just in time for the turn of the millennium, the Knowledge City, constructed under the leadership of Alpha Consortium built in a Pacific Rim theme park, has been connected to the broad band communication network. It took three years to build and cost approximately $550 million. The operators are optimistic about reaching complete refinancing in three more years."
"Knowledge City? That is surely a utopian dream, if not sheer nonsense," opined the other. "Wait and see," replied the first. "It is a soft signal. One must only know how to interpret it. You might judge it otherwise if you had seen the illustration 'Setting off for the Continent of Solutions.' An illustration as from a children's picture book," he added.
"What, like a children's picture book?" asked the other skeptically. "Yes," replied the first simply, "as in a children's picture book." "But why then this childishness?" cried the other. "Well," said the first, "you should have been there at the beginning." He would have preferred to remain silent, but how could he make himself understood in silence without a picture? However the other's hesitant response seemed to indicate that he had understood something after all, because he asked: "What was shown in the illustration?"
4.2 Encounter with a strange world
The first continued with the following commentary: The illustration 'Setting off for a Continent of Solutions' tells the attentive observer a story. The story of the active shaping of the future and what those responsible can do to reach the continent of solutions. Whoever has seen the illustration will never forget it. Impressions are often scarcely expressible in words and hard to explain to other people. A few indications might, however, induce one to risk setting off on that journey, at least for a visit..." The other interrupted him. "Come on, tell me about it," he urged. "What does the picture show?"
And the first man continued: "In the sea of expanding knowledge, with its reef-like hazards and powerful currents of information, the captains of the problem-solution ships are steering a false course. When the inevitable accidents happen, some save themselves by means of the lifeboat marked "lean" and return to Babylon. And Babylon produces problems in all directions, and the problem clouds react with increasing thunder and lightning, storms, avalanches and all sorts of other menaces. A treacherous cycle that has to be broken. A balloon floats over the scene bearing the warning "a people without vision is doomed." Mercury calls the one sensible man.
After the next accident at the latest - ideally, even before it - the persons involved should make use of the lifeboat marked "keen", in order to reach the Islands of Hopes and Needs, located in the future. There they will find further rescue facilities: the scout, the satellite for receiving soft signals, all aids to discovering the Continent of Solutions, which lies hidden behind the island chain of True Needs. At least one man has to get there, so as to be able to transmit back to the present orientation signals and the latest findings from the future (Volkmann 1994b). An orientation must be found if the right course is to be steered.
The tentative approaches obtainable from the future, produced and transferred "above the clouds," can reach the City of Knowledge, where they can be developed into solutions and purveyed. The problem-solution ships must call at these knowledge cities, to unload a future-oriented cargo and, once provided with novel orientations, to steer a sure course. There are many soft signals to be heeded!"
4.3 Interpretations and consequences
"Hm," murmured the other significantly, when the first had finished. "A bold portrayal, but interesting. Portraying the state of affairs in society and ways of daring to do something completely new by means of an illustration of the kind to be found in a children's picture book." The first nodded in agreement and wanted to add that Mercury, the messenger of the gods, was trying on their behalf to find the one sensible man to deliver their message concerning the model "knowledge cities as meeting places," but before he could the other was speaking again.
"Unusual, very unusual," he began, after another period of reflection. "People will react to the message in very different ways. It depends a bit on their personal predisposition." "You are right," replied the first. "It is after all a very uncomfortable truth which touches each individual and those in authority." "What do you mean?" asked the other.
And the first continued: "It is possible that the first founders of the knowledge cities will be children, because they no longer understand the grown-ups who accumulate their knowledge and articulate it in meaningless contexts. Children create their own world. They still have the imagination which grown-ups, with the exception of artists, increasingly lack. Children will design whole landscapes of knowledge containing many cities, in which the visions necessary for the future can grow and flourish.
"To be sure, businessmen and politicians cry out for visions, but in the day-to-day cut and thrust of business and politics those in charge are unable - or at least don't take the time - to recognize and experience and give concrete shape to visions, let alone to develop their own. This has got to change (Volkmann 1993c), and with the aid of the knowledge cities it can be changed (Volkmann 1993d).
"For every human being is creative, even at an advanced age. The creative powers just have to be awakened. In view of the great global challenges facing the world, knowledge cities will have to arise, if we are to absorb the information necessary for the mastery of complexity. Society needs visions, not ideologies (Volkmann 1993a). And it is perfectly possible to mobilize the necessary imagination using systematic methods.
"Children are great discoverers of reality. They see in a drawing of a complex situation details and relationships that adults fail to perceive at first. Only when they hear the child's questions do they realize all the things that can be seen and internally experienced in a 'childish drawing' or a drawing for children.
"With the aid of such a children's picture-book illustration the visitor is to be led into the knowledge landscapes containing the knowledge cities - even, perhaps, if he has to be kidnapped first!" And he added: "Children will not hesitate to ask what is hidden behind the numbers on the illustration of the Continent of Solutions, and perhaps inquire if it is an advent calendar." "And what is behind them?" asked the other. "A hyper-system," replied the first, "with a series of further analyses facilitating understanding of the model 'knowledge cities as meeting places' and," he added, "an invitation to visit the first knowledge city. It is called, incidentally, XENIA, as I saw from the prospectus (Volkmann 1994a), knowledge city on the road to the information society."
"XENIA, the hospitable?" asked the other, his interest now aroused, "also 'gifts for the host', but whose root also contains the meaning of 'the strange one'?" And he added the comment: "A symbol of the precarious balance between fear of the strange and the expectation of hospitality when setting off for the Continent of Solutions? I would like to hear more about XENIA!" So much for the brief encounter between two congress participants in XENIA.
5. The model "Cities of knowledge as meeting places"
The project to which the silent contemplation of pictures served as a keynote, and the fictional dialog about the illustration as an introduction, is dedicated to explaining the sources of and giving concrete form to the model "Cities of knowledge as meeting places."
Perhaps the fictitious report should be taken seriously. The bold idea hidden in the news report requires venture capital (Volkmann 1991). It is not a utopian dream (anymore), but a vision taking shape, a vision that integrates a number of observable developments into a feasible model.
Knowledge cities are based on real cities that have developed and grown over the course of history. Their layout and design reflect the intentions and demands of their builders. Their appearance demonstrates power and representation, is an expression of culture and milieu, reflects urban life and the atmosphere of busyness and leisure. They live from and with their inhabitants. They invite visitors. In short: cities reflect the sentiments of their inhabitants - they present themselves as context (Glaser 1993). This can be seen in paintings by local artists, e.g. the various views of Venice by Canaletto.
The visitor gains knowledge by experiencing the knowledge city on location, in a city where a particular theme is being shown in an exhibition area with specially constructed buildings. Or in virtual reality as computer animation whose appearance and experiential environment is city-based to present a specific theme. The two methods may be combined.
Knowledge is represented by the topology and layout of the knowledge city, the design of buildings (façades, floor plans and interior design of event and exhibition areas), the supply of intangible goods in multimedia form, the display of meta knowledge on signs in all parts of the city.
Such a knowledge city can be built as a miniature compound, comparable in size to a large exhibition, and/or in the office or living room as virtual reality using media and computer technologies. Knowledge cities need to be designed and actually implemented for a lifetime of learning and they need to provide a meeting place for both people who participate and people who are affected.
In any case, most of the technological means are already available, and other potential technologies, such as holography, can be integrated as needed in the foreseeable future. World expositions, trade fairs and company visitor areas are made technologically and aesthetically appealing and provide diverse access to new information. Computer networks offer forums for discussion. CD ROMs make it possible for the end-consumer to tour museums and cities. Even for the most ambitious applications technology leaves hardly any wishes unsatisfied, and is used impressively for presentations in "theme parks" and "cities of the future."(VDI 1993). Everything offered by nature and technology that can be materially experienced is graphically represented. The use all this is put to is entertainment. The data highway will even make telepresence possible. And what then?
What is missing is any information pointing to future changes in society. What is missing are methods of giving visual form to complex states of affairs and interconnected effects of an abstract and intangible nature. What is more, there is a lack of awareness that new paths will have to be followed for the transformation of industrial society! For there are extremely complex problems to be solved and highly complex interconnected effects to be mastered. The usual repertoire of methods for obtaining, processing and conveying information is not enough.
Knowledge cities are intended to represent knowledge in its context, also with regard to intangible states of affairs and interconnected effects. This goes far beyond the theme parks we have had so far - here the aim of knowldege cities is to stage knowledge.
The design of a knowledge city is initially a methodological and a didactic, and then primarily a thematic challenge, that provides a field of endeavor to new professions and institutions. Ultimately, one will always have to study the original document, but the journey to find it can be made very versatile and convenient. Users may find information that they were originally not even looking for but that proves very useful in the given context.
In the first phase, a visit can even take place in the mind, similar to preparing for a visit to a real city. For this purpose, brochures, city and travel guides, illustrated books and descriptions of simulated visits can be used.
6. On the layout and design of the knowledge city
6.1 Guidelines for the project
A knowledge city is dedicated to a definable topic, which has to be formulated in a way suitable to the purpose to be served and the intended target groups. The informational value-added to be generated in the knowledge city for certain problems and tasks differs in content, form and style according to topic, visitor group and purpose. This necessary differentiation can be reflected in the architectural design.
The essential guiding involved in the informational operations must be identified, so that its structures can be rendered appropriately. This guiding process drives and controls the value adding operations. Well-known examples of this are the process arrangements in engineering work on innovations, as are legislative and negotiating procedures, curricula in their pedagogical application, and the phases of encounters involving group dynamics. The guiding determines the design framework, what is to be represented in the knowledge city, and where and how. The knowledge city is designed as an experiential environment, and hence is not primarily arranged by topic.
Those involved in performing a task must be able to meet one another. It is not just a question of exchanging factual knowledge. What is needed, to a varying extent according to the complexity of the task, is mutual contextual understanding. Those involved require joint orientations. They must know how to make use of different arrangements of knowledge and, if necessary, to generate them. Methods of thinking and working must be suited to the aims they are intended to achieve. One way of attaining these aims is to make greater use of the visualization of complex states of affairs and interconnected effects of an intangible kind. The layout and design of a knowledge city are subject to the general aim of controlling information to master complexity.
Objects of knowledge are related via context. Objects of knowledge enable statements about facts from many points of view to be transformed into methodical and didactic forms as well as into a kind of media representation. The capacity of objects of knowledge to establish contextual linkage and transposition is - if it is consciously reflected - several times greater than that of the original subject matter.
6.2 Design ideas and sample designs
The planning of the knowledge city is based in principle on contextual knowledge and is gradually focused on the knowledge object. The contextual knowledge should be conveyed in terms of the images and experiences associated with a city. It provides guidance and support in finding one's bearings among the knowledge on offer.
The design spectrum comprises the topology of the knowledge city, if necessary with an environment; defining the city limits and dividing the enclosed area into districts; laying out streets and squares, thus giving rise to construction complexes; the design of architectural ensembles; the interior furnishings up to and including the showcases for exhibits and/or the site for computerized applications. Finally, the knowledge object has to be given visual form by means of exhibits or applications.
The trick is to deploy these design possibilities and find the right blend of methods and media to get the thematic message across. The overall topology of the city is oriented toward the main guiding. Other processes can be given visual form through the layout of streets and squares. The construction complexes represent contextual clusters, while objectified knowledge is accumulated in the architectural ensembles.
In the design of the architectural ensembles various structural forms can be used to symbolize various methodical and didactic approaches. The designer must decide what the basic requirements are and represent the typical as a recognizable central idea. Specifications for the designer can be given in brief, exemplary form (see Figure 2).
The "Galleries" offer an invitation to meet with other people, to contemplate objectified knowledge, to move about reflectively, even meditatively, and finally recognize the requirements posed by a problem and the tasks it involves.
In a hexagonal building called the "Workshop of Change" the tackling of a problem is introduced with six simple questions: What has happened? Why will what happen? What do we want to achieve? What can we venture? What is supposed to happen? What must be done to make it happen?
The "Permanent Information Market" is regulated on a complementary basis. The information broker provides potential customers with information objects of interest to them, and is proud when the number of rejections remains within limits. Another agent supplements his activity by drawing information from the stocks of information users without protests on the part of the latter. This guarantees that knowledge is kept permanently up-to-date.
The "Tower of Visions" symbolizes the challenge represented by the words: "He who stands on a tower has a wide view." The idea of the "Scenarium" is to stage knowledge, as in a theater. The "Infotainment" signalizes how the use of learning can be a pleasure. Thus every building has a clearly defined function.
The design of the façades and the architectural ensembles can be used to give visual form to other things, including intangible things, depending on the didactic purpose and the extent to which this requires concretized statements.
Façades and entrances, halls and staircases, interiors with doors and windows - all these can be used to make statements about the context and content of knowledge in visualized form. Summaries and emphases, commentaries and messages concerning the matter in hand can be represented visually. A visitor can tell in advance what awaits him in a building of interest to him and can discover the details in the course of a tour of the interior. What is to be shown is gradually broken down into observable elements. The very aesthetics and multiplicity of forms of three-dimensional representations make it possible to convey a far greater wealth of information than is possible with conventional forms.
Ideas on how to give abstract statements visual form are to be found in advertising and design as well as in art. The world of culture is rich in examples of how complex, intangible issues can be given visual form. Even in the commemorative art of the ancients (Yates 1991) the structure of a building was used to mark the sequence of arguments in a speech. In the Renaissance, too, the structural arrangements and façades were used to make fundamental elements of knowledge clear. (e.g. Camillo's commemoration theater, Robert Fludd's Temple of Music). Giovanni Lomazzo (1538-1600) used the symbol of the temple - without drawing it - to represent the basic principles of painting. There are many sources to be explored in this connection (Assmann 1992). This information material must be methodically explored to serve the given didactic purpose (Volkmann 1992). Research work is necessary.
An obvious approach is to combine the modern forms of expression offered by "media art" and "media architecture" (Thomsen 1994) with the forms and visual languages of the old cultures. Confronted with a pictorial image, the beholder's thoughts follow new paths.
A knowledge city constitutes an extremely complex network of knowledge, which nevertheless remains under control thanks to the visual nature of the representation. Visitors are given guidance and support in getting their bearings among all this new knowledge by a whole series of contextual indications. These are offered via various communication channels as so-called guidance systems. The natural reality of a city acts as a model.
At many places in the knowledge city signs can be erected, announcing who is offering what. Neon advertisements, advertisement hoardings, billboards, notices, showcases, shop windows, electronic commissionaires, etc. The naming of streets and squares as well as of buildings provides further information on the objects of knowledge and their contexts. All kinds of signposting - analogously to traffic systems - lead visitors to the places that interest them: street signs, addresses with names of streets and squares and house numbers.
Those who know what they are looking for can go straight to the objects of their interest. Those who take a look round the knowledge city - regardless of whether it is presented in natural or virtual reality - will find knowledge that they were not looking for in the first place, but that proves very useful in the given context.
6.3 XENIA, the knowledge city on the road to the information society
XENIA is a knowledge city whose themes are dedicated to the challenges, problems and tasks that face the rich and developed industrial societies on the road to the information society. XENIA, which is Greek for "the hospitable one," invites those groups involved in solving problems to obtain more detailed information in the knowledge city that bears their name. They include people in authority and experts, innovators and designers, from all fields of politics and economics, science and culture. They also include private citizens in their capacity as members of organizations and persons affected by change.
This knowledge city offers not only the raw material knowledge, as can be retrieved from databases, but processed knowledge, knowledge in the form of semi-finished and finished products, so to speak. The knowledge is processed to give it objective form in accordance with methodological and didactic findings, making full use of available media. It is offered in the form of what are known as intangible goods in the knowledge city in markets and in shops, in exhibitions and at events, in libraries and archives. Visitors find exhibits and can make use of computerized applications. Methodological and didactic support for the use of the knowledge is provided.
Opportunities are offered to obtain information and deepen existing knowledge, to learn together with others, to take advantage of training courses, to absorb innovations, to conclude cooperation agreements - to do everything, in fact, to take an active part in shaping the necessary change. XENIA, knowledge city on the road to the information society, invites visitors on their first tour to familiarize themselves with the knowledge city in its various functions as info city, learning city, work city, and trade city. With its nine districts, laid out in a terraced arrangement, it offers a way of absorbing the fundamental innovations. Models (Assmann 1992) must be prepared. The process can be designed systematically as model management (Volkmann 1995).
In this way a broad spectrum of information on the context of the information society is offered in the individual urban districts, and various possible ways of using it are shown. One way is to use XENIA as a workshop town for designing, complementary to the opening up of fundamental innovations, the new knowledge cities needed for conveying knowledge. But XENIA has not yet been built. This knowledge city on the road to the information society is itself a fundamental innovation. In being used to serve its own purposes XENIA will be able to become its own object and design.
6.4 The network of knowledge cities
"Knowledge cities as meeting places" represent a model which combines existing approaches to find solutions and forms a network for the use of applications that are as yet unknown. The model is a suitable means of promoting self-organization. Founders and designers can become active, and knowledge development, processing and transfer can be furthered on the basis of this infrastructure. The quality of the offering, differentiated by target group, is the deciding factor in the development of a knowledge city.
For the founders, designers, operators and users of knowledge cities, we need to create a Code of Conduct that reflects this willingness to effect change. Monopolies and abuse must be prevented, possibly by law.
It is conceivable that an entire network of knowledge cities arises, with individual knowledge cities dedicated to certain societal and entrepreneurial requirements. These cities use their knowledge stores to do trade with each other. Those knowledge cities that attract most visitors and users will last, others that lack didactic sophistication or deal with topics that are not relevant to the future may become a victim of enlightenment.
Today, knowledge cities are still a bold idea, wishful thinking. But the wishes of today may become the facts of tomorrow. Building knowledge cities that are laid out and designed to be real and virtual meeting places is more than an interdisciplinary challenge. The endeavor is a step toward change and, in the long run, one of the largest job creation programs in the global community. Maybe we will succeed in forging a coalition of "mind, power, and money." A European initiative?
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(Volkmann 1996 d)