The Amsterdam Digital City gets established

by Geert Lovink

The new media are being talked and written about a lot. And a lot of this

is sell-talk. Users are consumers, and they are being promised the moon.

A kind of sanctified, mythical aura is being drawn around

'on-line-mankind', and if we may believe the cyber-ideologists, its

representatives are some kind of half-gods. The Amsterdam Digital City

(DDS, 'De Digitale Stad'), was hyped into metaphysical proportions by the

media within days of its launching, in January 1994.

Yet it is unquestionable that the DDS functioned as a catalysator in the

Netherlands. For many it represented their first contact with the

Internet, whether direct or not. But the Digital City also grew rapidly

into the symbol of the 'public domain' in Cyberspace. Even though the DDS

did not bridge the gap between politicians and their constituency - which

had been one of its prime stated objectives, and the reason why the

government put money in it - it did have an exemplary function in the

ongoing debate about the 'information society'. The DDS-system grew in no

time into Europe's largest and most famous public computer-network, or

'freenet' as Americans would call it. In practice, this means scores of

phone-lines, a free e-mail address for every user, disc-space for a

home-page, lots of opportunity to make contact and gather and/or

disseminate information, and above all, the freedom not to be bothered by

censorship and surveillance.

By May 1998 DDS has over 70.000 'inhabitants', i.e. registered users,

and many more visitors, or 'tourists'. There would be even more, but the

limits of the current system's capacity have already been reached one year

ago. It is a sad truth that most European community Internet- and

web-projects remain fairly empty and virtual indeed, and are devoid of a

significant number of users (for example, the Berlin former Internationale

Stadt initiative, the DDS's most direct clone, which increasingly

developed in the direction of a content provider and software developer).

Meanwhile the Amsterdam Digital City has managed to spawn a diverse and

lively net-culture. The system is so big by now, and so intricate, that

hardly anybody - least of it its management - has an overview of it. This

is exactly what makes it interesting to push all exaggerated stories and

expectations aside, and to look at what makes such a complex net-project

tick as the years go by.

In our opinion, the prime cause of the Digital City's success is the

freedom that has been granted to its users from the very beginning. This

sounds trivial, but it is not, surely if you take the increasing control

over net-use in universities and corporations, and this especially outside

the Netherlands, into account. The Digital City has never turned into a

propaganda-mouthpiece for the City Hall, under the guise of 'bringing

politics closer to the common people thanks to information technology'.

The DDS-system is not the property of the Municipal corporation, even

though many people assume this to be the case. In fact, the DDS has not

received any subsidy from the municipality over the past two-and-half

years (The Corporation remains one its biggest customers, though). The

simple fact that politics constitutes only a (small) fragment of our daily

lives has worked out on the Net too. Besides, it appeared rather quickly

that politicians were neither able nor willing to familiarise themselves

with the new medium, as efforts made in the beginning of the DDS to bring

them on-line and start a dialogue with their constituents proved a waste

of time. And the citizens were far more interested in dialoguing among

themselves than to engage in arcane discussions with close-minded

politicos.

Nina Meilof, who has a background in local television (another flourishing

sector in the Amsterdam culture), has been hired by DDS to organise

discussions about local political issues, such as the - failed - attempt

to restructure the municipality into a 'urban province', the controversial

house-building drive into the Y-lake at IJburg, the even more

controversial North-South underground railway project, or the extension of

Schiphol Airport, which has the whole environmental community up in arms.

At the moment, experiments are running on the Beurs-TV network, with a

hook-up on the Internet. The techno-savyness aspect aside, the main goal

is to look how to transcend the immobilism of the current political

rituals. To achieve this, the limits and limitations of the political

game as we know it must be well understood. Nina: 'A major advantage of

DDS remains its anarchic character. There are a lot of secret nooks and

crannies, such as cafes in out of the way places. Then you may look into

home-pages and find the history of that particular cafe, replete with the

club-jargon, a birthday-list and a group-snapshot. There is a

Harley-Davidson meeting point for instance, that coalesce around one

particular cafe, and it brings a newsletter out. This kind of subcultures

is of course far more thrilling than the mainstream sites maintained by

big corporate or institutionnal players. No way those sites ever swing.'

Therefore DDS is looking for a kind of balance, whereby this type of

subcultures may grow optimally, without the politic being discarded

altogether.

Precondition for this is the System's independence. But that costs money,

and quite a lot to boot. DDS has increasingly grown into a business while

wishing to retain its not-for-profit character at the same time. The

management is pursuing a policy of courting a handful of major customers

who bring some serious money in. The catch is to attract projects that

fit into the DDS set-up, but that is not a totally friction-less process.

In practice, the DDS has divided into three components: there is a

commercial department that hunts for the hard cash, there is an innovation

wing which develops new technologies for corporate customers, and there is

the community aspect, where DDS wants to be a social laboratory of sorts.

But the image of a 'virtual community', as Howard Rheingold has called it

in his same-named book, is not really appropriate here. DDS has rather

grown into a multi-faceted amalgam of small communities, who share among

themselves the intention to perpetuate the DDS system as an 'open city'.

It is there that the central interface of the DDS plays a key-role. It is

so designed as to provide an overview of the mass of information on offer.

In keeping with the name of the system, the DDS interface is build around

the notions of 'squares', 'buildings/homes', and '(side-) streets', but it

does not show pictures or simulations of the actual (Amsterdam)

city-scape, as many people would expect. There are, for instances,

'squares' devoted to the themes of: the environment, death, sport, books,

tourism, social activism, government, etc., but the interface is not able

to give a full representation of the underlying activities. News

features, and the DDS own newspaper, 'The Digital Citizen', attempt to

fill this lacuna. How does an insider keep abreast of current

developments? Nina Meilof (who is also editor of the 'Digital Citizen')

again: 'I am getting the stats of the most popular 'houses' (=

home-pages), so I go & look into them from time to time. Now we have a

network of male homosexual 'houses' springing up. They show pics of

attractive gentlemen. Those are popular sites. All this is fairly

down-to-earth in fact. Cars, drugs, how to grow your own weed, music

sites with extensive libraries. There is also a massive circuit where you

can obtain or exchange software, and some of these 'warez-houses' (!) will

be up for one or two days and vanish again. And of course, you've got

Internet-games, that's an evergreen. But it may also be a home-page on

some very rare bird, and then it turns out to be an internationally famous

site attracting ornithologists from all over the planet. Yet other people

freak out on design or Java-scripts. And you've got the links samplers.

And don't forget the jokes-sites...'

Thus there is in the DDS a gigantic alternative and 'underground' world,

but there is also an official city on the surface and in the open. The

subject matter there is of the 'democracy and the Internet' variety. For

6 month in 1996/97 there was an experiment with a 'digital square on

traffic and transport issues', sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Public

Works & Roads. Registered DDS 'inhabitants' with an e-mail address could

react to such propositions as: 'If we don't pull together to do something

about congestion, traffic jams will never subside.', or: 'Aggressive

driving pays: it gets you there faster ' or then: 'The automobile is the

most marvellous invention...of the previous century.' The experiment even

boasted the luxury of a professional moderator, journalist Kees van den

Bosch, who was inviting every month another hi-profile politician to stir

up the discussion. And the government was footing the bill. Van den

Bosch says he is satisfied about the degree of participation. Yet it

easy to fall prey to an overoptimistic estimate. Just a handful of

participants can generate an impressive amount of statements. Genuinely

new ideas and arguments have been few and far between. The evaluation

report also states that little use has been made of the opportunity to

obtain background data on the issues at stake. A large majority (say 75%)

of the participants make one contribution and disappear from view, whereas

the remainder soldiers on and bites itself into the discussion. The

report also mentions as remarkable the high occurrence of recounting of

very personal traffic experiences, whereby senior bureaucrats in the

ministry would be quick-started into direct action. The hierarchical

routine, with a minister at the top making decisions, would then be

temporarily pushed aside. After some time the ministry's officials would

simply join the fray, and would sometime come up with a reaction on that

very day.

Nonetheless Nina Meilof puts more faith in the indirect influence

exercised on the politics through the channelling of the new media. 'At

the moment, we witness the dressing-down of the referendum instrument by

the local body-politic'. (A few years ago, Amsterdam introduced the

hitherto politically tricky concept of 'corrective referendum' in matters

of local decisions by the municipal council. It has not really taken of,

while City Hall restricted it scope and upped its threshold at the same

time.) 'Politicians are constantly tinkering with the rules, in order to

give the impression that voters have a say, while in fact everything stays

the same. Every referendum gets comprehensive coverage in the DDS, but

its clear every time that politicians do not (want to) have any truck with

it.' Therefore she thinks that it is far more interesting and rewarding

to do your own things on the Net and leave it to the old media to eagerly

report about them. This way you do exert quite some influence, however

indirectly. 'You may even hope that some day the politicians will be

wanting to come closer to the horse's mouth.' The Internet's growth may

thus be exponential, it still takes some time before the institutions and

rituals get adapted to the new situation.

And then a tremendous lot has happened over the past three to four years

in the field of technological development. It has always been the custom

at DDS to give total free hand to the computer-people. And since DDS is a

big network on the fast-growth lane, crisis is a permanent feature at

System Operations. Technical problems and glitches are an everyday

occurrence as the system's hard- & software is constantly stretched to the

limits of its capacity. There is an overriding ambition to be on the

cutting edge in innovative technology also, take a pole-position on the

knowledge frontier, a game at which DDS has been remarkably successful up

to now. Nina: 'At the moment we are heavily into Real-Audio and -Video

into combinations of Internet with radio and TV. It would be great if

we'd be able to provide for home-page-TV for our users. In order to

achieve this, you must be well aware of the latest technical developments

and you must nurture a good relationship with the owners of bandwidth who

are going to carry all this fancywork. We want to prevent the situation

in which people have to go to big corporate players if they want to put

television on the net. We feel that these things too should be readily

available to the greatest number, so that any private person can start

web-TV at home.'

This technical innovation push does not always square well with a large

number of users' growing expectations regarding content, and the quality

of public discussions. In the beginning phase of DDS, there was that idea

that the (digital) city was some kind of empty shell that would be filled

up by users and customers, without very much intervention from the DDS

staff. But that formula turned out to result in a very static system.

Yet not very much has changed in the content- structure of DDS over the

past few years. Some people feel that users' creativity should be better

rewarded. After all that's what keep the whole social structure going

(DDS does 'reward' outstanding home-page developers- with extra bandwidth

& technical facilitation, but they must be pretty spectacular achievers).

And it is still not clear whether the Net is really a good place, let

alone the place, to conduct a meaningful, in depth discussion. The first

hurdle is of course the problem of moderation, yes or no? Or to put it

differently: is the DDS a medium like others with editors who organise and

edit (and hence, censor) the discussion, or is some kind of digital remake

of the Hyde Park Corner Soap box?

One format that attempts to put some more structure and coherence in the

system is the 'newspaper', with a line of 'supplements' which you can opt

to receive (or not). This makes for an interesting spot to which people

may address contributions, which are filtered by an editorial board. That

is already the case with the 'best house' contest for which one has to

register beforehand. This is a mixed format whereby the content is being

co-produced by the users. In addition, 'webring' technology is now at

hand, whereby sites are automatically beaded together and visitors are

taken on an organised tour of sorts by the editors. As usual two models

are competing here, one that might be called anarchistic, where things are

falling into place after some time, if ever, and a more organised one,

with editors surfing the place on the look-out for the really interesting

sites. A webring can be a nice compromise between the two.

Truth is that the exact outline of an open, public forum has not

crystallised out yet. Who is going to take care of that in the future?

Political parties seem to be prepared to put a lot of money in making

their viewpoints available on-line. But that does not make for a public,

independent platform. A successor to the public broadcasting system is

what is called for. For all practical purposes, the Digital City has been

saddled with that task, since SALTO, the local television and radio body,

is clueless as to what they should do with the Internet. A lot is going

to depend on the actual - and shifting - ownership of the cable, the

current and future legislation, and what people, whether they are

(directly) connected to the DDS or not, will be able to achieve with regard

to the design and maintenance of a (new) public domain in Cyberspace. One

thing is clear : no good is likely to come out from waiting for government

and corporations to provide the kind of 'on-line services' they have in

mind.

The last question pertains to the much-vaunted urban metaphor of the

Digital city: will it disappear sometime, and with it the DDS, its

emancipatory task having been achieved? And what about its strictly local

role, will that dwindle into insignificance also? Nowadays no more than a

quarter of the 'inhabitants' actually live in Amsterdam. DDS remains a

Dutch-language site, though. The management still maintains that

upholding our own (Dutch) language is a legitimate aim. Many people find

it difficult to express themselves in English. But it is not intrinsic to

the system itself whether it is local or not. That is something the users

decide. We have already seen that successful home-pages usually have an

international exposure. At the same time the Internet is increasingly

being used in a very local or regional context, one can now go on-line to

check out the programme of your culture-club next door. By the time

computers and access terminal will be readily available at the

neighbourhood level, the need for and appeal of a city-wide set-up will

decrease, with consequences for the DDS project.

More down to earth, how long will there be a role for 'houses' and for the

'post office', to take a few characteristic DDS features? Fortunately,

the DDS never did try to impose its own metaphor onto the users. So the

fact that new formulas are bound to appear in time is not problematic. It

turns out that it are mainly outsiders, non-DDS users, who take the name

all too literally in order to criticise it. DDS offers a lot of

information not directly (or not all) pertaining to Amsterdam, yet many

people think that is the case. To quote Nina Meilof a last time: 'The

city metaphor stands for diversity, not for a town in particular. What

we have in mind are all those different 'places' and localities that are

possible in a real as well as in a virtual city. The Internet is a very

cosmopolitan sort of place. And the world wide web is surely a kind of

environment where you can settle for a time, and go on the look out for

neighbours. These may be actually living in the USA, but it might also be

quite cool to be able to meet for real, and that happens all the time.

And so you could be getting of the train in Groningen (200 km to the north

of Amsterdam) one day, and the platform is crowded with people sporting

'DDS Metro Meeting' buttons...'