Digital futures - why they matter

Digital futures: the context

‘ The Internet is more like a city than anything else. In cities there are slums, there are palaces of wisdom, libraries, museums, art galleries, theatres, places of entertainment and shops. And there are places where you would not want to go down dark alleys, let alone have your children do so, but slowly we let our children learn to use the cities and they do.’ Stephen Fry

Global, social, ubiquitous and cheap According to Clay Shirky, these are the characteristics of successful new media technologies…

In the first eight months, developers produced 25,000 applications for the iPhone Ten months later, the current total is at least 100,000 iPhone apps. In the last nine years, 20,000 Windows Mobile applications have been developed.

Your phone can be a spirit level… an ocarina… a recipe book…

Or you can just govern a nation… Photo: Statsministerens kontor/Flickr

Tough penalties for illegal filesharing, a city council banning staff from using Twitter… are we turning into the three wise monkeys?
‘ Creative and digital’ - which comes first? Photo: Leo Reynolds/Flickr

Digital Britain: the government’s vision

‘ Investing in areas such as broadband access for every home and business and the move from analogue to digital technology will bring benefits across the board, driving growth, enabling businesses to thrive, and providing new opportunities and choices for households right across the country. It is an essential part of building Britain’s future.’ Gordon Brown , June 2009

Three obstacles to digital inclusion: availability, affordability, capability The response: a national plan for digital participation - and a champion for digital inclusion

Improving the digital communications infrastructure • Better mobile coverage • Universal broadband access by 2012 • Digital radio by 2015

Creative industries in a digital age
• Emphasis on intellectual property
• New approach to illegal filesharing - stronger penalties for persistent offenders
Photo: PracticalOwl/Flickr

Public service content • New partnership between BBC Worldwide and C4 • Pilots of ‘independently funded news consortia’ Photo: Fred Smiff/Flickr

Research, education and skills • £120m Digital Economy Programme - research & training • Three new ‘research hubs’ with £12m each • Technology Strategy Board to put £30m into innovation • Estelle Morris Review of ICT user skills - recommends a ‘basic digital life skills entitlement scheme’

Digital security and safety • Addressing vulnerability to technological failure or attack • Emphasis on improving government procurement and management

Where we are now
- Digital Economy Bill received hasty second reading on 6 April, followed by third reading the next day
controversy over intellectual property protection
new duties for Ofcom to promote investment
new licensing framework for radio
new system of classifying video games

Recent developments
• Digital public services
• Social media
• ‘ Next generation’ broadband
Photo: Ed Yourdon//Flickr

Local spending reports go digital

Free access to OS data
Anyone can use (some) Ordnance Survey mapping to create and support ideas and applications.

Even the government is getting in on the act….

Information and influence: the rise of social media
‘ the power of individuals to spread messages is now significant enough that no company or government can ignore it. This is happening here and now, and there is nothing we can do to change it’
Local by Social report, NESTA/I&DeA

Information and influence: the rise of social media
• untold millions of blogs - from politics to hobbies
• more than 400m ‘active users’ of Facebook
• 75m people have Twitter accounts (though most don’t use them)
• Twitter has turned into an effective means of real-time reporting - or spreading rumours

Next Generation Access ‘the foundation for an entirely new way of life’
Unlimited broadband services
Available bandwidth irrespective of the distance between the subscriber and the network access point
Massive implications for public services

What about the ‘notspots’?

Recent developments - links
http://www.localspending.communities.gov.uk/
www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/
http://innovate.direct.gov.uk/
http://www.broadband-notspot.org.uk

What about Yorkshire?
• Yorkshire Forward working since 2002 to provide specialist managed workspace
Digital community in Yorkshire contributes £1.2bn to the economy
• 19.9% increase in employment in creative & digital industries between 1998 and 2006 - 17,000 extra jobs
• 14,000 SMEs and 20,000 freelancers/self-employed across the region in this sector

Key projects supported by Yorkshire Forward
Melt - content development project, leading to C4 partnership
Design Works - highlighting business benefits of good design
Business collaboration networks to support businesses in new media, music and design

The Digital Region project • £90m project to lay fibre optic cable across South Yorkshire capable of 25MB+ speeds ( UK average download speed is 4MB) • It makes South Yorkshire the first UK region to have superfast broadband • will serve 1.3m people in Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham - 546,000 homes and 40,000 businesses • Wholly owned by Yorkshire Forward and local authorities - funded by ERDF • First homes online in May 2010, starting in Doncaster

Find out more
Digital Britain: http://interactive. bis . gov . uk / digitalbritain /
Digital Yorkshire: http://www. digitalyorkshire .org. uk /
The Digital Region project: http://www. digitalregion .co. uk /
And for application developers: http://innovate.direct. gov . uk /

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Digital futures - why they matter

by Julian Dobson

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