Questions For FiberFête Breakout Session -- version 2

Note: The session will mostly focus on 1-5


1. How will places – and our sense of place – be affected by the technology and ubiquitous high quality visual multi-way communications of the future?
a. Dis-placement & Re-placement

• The established roles of institutional places are softening and starting to shape shift. Consider the dis-placement of “libraries”, “workplace”, “home”, “schools”, “hospitals”, “entertainment venues”, “stores”, etc.
• How will these places converge into less segmented spaces?
• How do we re-place these institutions?

b. How do we invent new institutions or evolve existing ones?

• Community Media Centers vs Libraries vs. Schools

2. Is cyberspace an extension of our intimate homes or a new street corner?
a. How does this affect our sense of privacy and permissible activities?
b. How can government use cyberspace everywhere as a sensory network to better manage its geography’s infrastructure (and not just its buildings)
c. Will the global cyber-village become as claustrophobic as some people used to find 19th century village life?

3. How can we plan for and design the hybrid Physical/Virtual Spaces that will be part of our future?
a. Collaboration-at-a-distance
b. Media-active Environments
c. How can we design this public right of way, this new cyberspace?

• MediaSpace – a place we choose to visit just like any other place?

4. What anachronistic regulations might inhibit the evolution of new and converged spaces, building types and settlement patterns
a. Blurring of single use zoning districts
b. What will differentiate a commercial use building in a broadband society? Do we have to differentiate such buildings?

5. How can the web really empower people to participate in urban planning?
a. How wise will the “Wisdom of the crowd” be when used in urban planning?

• Prediction markets to explore how people might react to various urban policy choices.
• Reinforcement of Mob-mentality, NIMBY

b. Community Mapping/GIS and visualization of alternative urban places/spaces
c. What qualities of our life & resultant environment can we trust our peers to know?

6. What would it take to realize the potential we all see?
a. What are your ideas?
b. Is there a cost/benefit that justifies the investment?

7. Who’s doing what out there now?
a. Connected Urban Development
b. MIT
c. Community planning efforts
d. Digital Media Cities; Mega-structures from the top down vs Silicon Valley