Let me start by telling you a story that my friend shared with me on the way here.
Several days ago his friends with their kids came to his house for a weekend
And he sent his 9-year-old son to play with the kids.
They were suspiciously quiet and some time later he went upstairs
And found them sitting separately playing their PSPs.
When he suggested they play
The kids answered “Go away don’t you see we ARE playing”
This is a situation where children play without interacting with each other
But we have something to do with this problem too.
Tell me please since the beginning of this conference
how many of you have already used a computer or another communicator
to visit your facebook profile, send a twit or text somebody?
Don’t be shy! Raise your hands. Before the break I was sitting behind and saw everything.
Look at each other.
We have become people for whom information is necessary as much as the air we breathe.
Once it would be called internet dependence.
But that’s not so.
Nowadays information is a vital need of every one of us.
In modern or information society information and knowledge are key notions that form the space we live in.
It is information flow and knowledge that set the structure of our city.
It’s over a century since one of the founders of sociology Georg Simmel asserted in one of his works
that when a person strives to get to big cities but at the same time is lost there and wants to stand out
his soul I defined by the individual and transindividual.
The way our cities look like depends on what we are like
because it is we who build them.
Cities answer people’s purpose.
Traditional city had the following look.
It had a special location and it was identical to itself. We knew where it was.
Each city had its own local position and history known to the citizens.
They identified themselves with that place that existed for a certain period of time.
City structure was either concentric or eccentric.
We already saw concentric-type cities they are fortress cities that were enclosed from every quarter.
And eccentric cities are such as Venice, Odessa, Vladivoctok.
As if they are at the ends of the earth they are of different nature.
It is different type of cities.
There were traditional social institutions there for example Education, Religion or Power Institutions
all that we know from the books.
There was social differentiation on the class and estate principle.
Cities’ structure corresponded to that kind of society.
There were quarters for well-to-do people and for the clergy there were sacral objects and objects of politics.
They had their own mythology connected with the place where a city situated and the time of its beginnings.
But a modern city, city 2.0 differs from the cities we know of.
First of all space is doubled.
Virtual space is turning into real.
It is virtual not because it is illusive but because information is the basis of it.
It is Information and not three-dimensional space.
Simultaneously we live in two worlds physical and digitized.
A modern citizen spends about 9 hours in front of monitors.
Besides it is two hours for TV and the rest is spent on computers, mobile phones and communicators.
We live in these two worlds. That is why the concept of time is changing.
Time has stopped to be succession of facts it is shrinking.
The system strives to eliminate time because regardless of space in one unit of time a huge amount of information can be transmitted.
Institutional changes are taking place.
We already heard today about Duma 2.0 and we talk about Government 2.0.
Certain traditional institutions move to the information sphere or to the parallel space.
I’m not slighting when I say “parallel”. This space is not illusive it is real.
Since the system can’t stand emptiness new institutions appear to replace those that move to the network.
For example, sociologist indicate rise of originality institutions that are going to appear in real physical world
while certain traditional institutions will be vanishing thereby creating institutional gaps.
Let’s take family institution.
There are certain websites that become flirting ground instead of performing their actual function
and bringing together people who haven’t seen each other for a long time.
As one acquaintance of mine told me “going out on a date make sure you don’t confuse it with a meeting with your own wife”.
Because such muddle is possible.
And here is the birth of a new mythology.
It is not connected with either time or place.
It is mythology of new man that lives in this double-world space.
Note that according to linguists internet users’ language combines scientific, poetic and religious languages.
A new language is being created it is a new synthesis similar to the language of the ancient world
when there was no differentiation between science and poetry when everything was in some symbiosis.
This is how the mythology of a city 2.0 starts up.
What problems will we, people of a new city 2.0, have to face?
As we already said this city may not match with a real one.
This city comes into being.
Right now thanks to digital technologies people in other cities can watch us as we are gathered at this conference in Moscow.
They take part in this Moscow event as much as we do.
Digital technologies generate certain network systems, information junctions that attract people.
This is a different way of space arrangement.
Let me draw your attention to a widely-discussed fact that people of a city 2.0 are those who seek their identity.
Who strive to know what we are.
Because digital technologies and virtual communities create an illusion of freedom, creativity, total accessibility and openness.
At the same time we have to understand that people holding the power in such communities
control the whole life cycle of units formed owing to new technologies.
Citizens 2.0 are ostensibly individual but in fact they live in an atomized world
and this is one of the problems of the information network society.
It seems like we live in a global world but actually there is only atomization.
We don’t always use those benefits and opportunities network society gives us.
It is widely believed that in the network people are free to do whatever they want
and information society is getting the production of knowledge and meanings.
But there is the reverse of the medal.
As digital technologies made knowledge accessible to all it caused the reduction of citizens’ creative potential.
Nevertheless there is still a big need for creative work and generalization of new meanings people keep rejecting this.
The last important thing worth mentioning that was already defined in other words.
There is certain general discrepancy, disruptiveness.
This disruptiveness of meanings and communication is typical for all citizens 2.0, at least nowadays.
I can safely say that we are at the dawn of a new civilization.
This disruptiveness is between life in information networks space and our real world.
These two worlds are rarely interconnected.
My colleague has already mentioned that these worlds often don’t intersect.
Before I finish let me just share with you one my anxiety
which I wanted to keep to myself but I was provoked to voice it.
I’ll tell you a short story from my life.
Some time ago in my town there was a local election campaign.
And I took part in it with my friends who are advanced citizens 2.0.
The movement also had 2.0 in its title.
Some participants were exactly like people Larisa told us about.
They were active creative they had financial capital, their own business or had already fulfilled themselves in any other way.
We had lots of such supporters.
But when the election came only candidates over 55 years old were elected to the municipal administration
while our supporters didn’t even come.
They said we were good guys but they didn’t came.
I was surprised that those who create our reality and influence it,
who make money and create jobs, who produce new meanings
practically don’t have any actual influence on it.
Because all our energy we spend on information network space as if we already have everything done.
I think for citizens 2.0 who think about this problem and want to develop in a right way
their main task is to develop models of intersecting and integrity of life in both real and network worlds.
That will make them urge each other.
That will also help us avoid being social outcasts or strange tribe in old-type cities.
Help us become pioneers 2.0 that will move forward and found new towns comfortable for living in
just as in the old days people built new cities whose names are famous worldwide now.
Thank you.