This is a work in progress. It's lodging here before I talk about it in public. It was what I was working on in Perugia

1. this is just a very rough outline of some thoughts that I am
trying 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 other
people 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 the
design of cities, policy making and broader questions about
self-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 make
it go full-screen

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

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

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

7. 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...

9. 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.

10. 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.

13. 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.

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

16. wikipedia button.
a button for Eggs.
One for a TV license.
saucy mag button
chocolate biscuits

17. Then I thought, well maybe that already exists.

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

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

21. 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.

24. Electric People

25. 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

26. 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.

27. Everything has gone electric now.

28. 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.

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

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

31. Electric Communities

32. 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.

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

34. Four things about electric communities.

35. 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.

37. 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.

39. 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.

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. An Anatomy of
Electric Communities

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

47. 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.

49. 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.

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

52. I didn’t know there were people like me!

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

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

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

57. 1
A movement towards niche communities.
2
Greater levels of artistry in bringing different
people together.
3
Communities using places, rather than
communities from places. More communities
that you can choose, rather than communities
that choose you.

58. The Politics
of Electric Communities

59. 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.

60. Some anxieties about us

61. 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?

62. 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?

63. 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.

64. Demos Electrified

65. 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.

66. 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!

69. 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.

70. 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.

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

73. so

74. Defend Shared Places
Football Clubs, Libraries, Sports Centres, Arts
Centres, Cultural Spaces, Lidos, Allotments,
Spaces that can be accessed by different
interest groups.

77. Design Sharing
Social design art of bringing people
together - festivals, interventions, the
design of sharing, the construction of
people. Look into the whites of other
peopleʼs eyes

81. Shared Decisions
big 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?

84. Shared Places Designed Sharing Shared Decisions

86. itʼs all about libraries

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