Craig, J. & Wilsdon, J. (2004). Broadband Britain. Demos, London

broadbandbritainof asymmetry?

December 2004

John Craig andDr James Wilsdon

the end

executive summary

introduction

three phases of the internet’sdevelopment

music leads the way

the ‘new creatives’

from personal computers to social computers

public services in broadband britain

public value and social innovation

conclusion

appendix: summary of quantitative data findings

contents

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2broadbandbritainof asymmetry?the end

about Demos

Demos is a greenhouse for new ideas whichcan improve the quality of our lives. As anindependent think tank, it aims to create anopen resource of knowledge and learning thatoperates beyond traditional party politics.Demos connects researchers, thinkers andpractitioners to an international network ofpeople changing politics. Its ideas regularlyinfluence government policy, but it also workswith companies, NGOs, colleges andprofessional bodies.

For more information on Demos, go to:www.demos.co.uk

There was a time when using the internet wasseen as a niche, solitary pastime. Even today,there remains a stubborn image of the onlinemedium discouraging social interaction. Thisresearch demonstrates that this perception isnot only out of date but also diametricallyopposed to reality. Broadband is enablingfundamental behavioural change. In findingsthat many will find counter-intuitive, this studyshows that people are using the high-speedinternet to break down barriers and explore awider, deeper and more personalisedengagement with the outside world.

A catalyst for behavioural change

Whether in entertainment, communityschemes or through consumption of publicservices, broadband is encouragingparticipation in society and creating new levelsof cultural involvement.

This trend is revealed by new researchconducted by AOL in the UK, which showsthat in many broadband homes the computerhas broken out of the traditional confines ofthe study. Indeed, according to the research,nearly half of broadband households in the UK(46%) have moved the PC into their daily livingspace, with 28% saying they accessbroadband from their living room and 18%from their bedroom.

Broadband is becoming embedded in ourdaily lives. There are the first signs that throughbroadband, the PC can provide a focal point inthe home, switched on as a matter of coursein the same way as the television or radiomight be.

Furthermore, greater affordability and morepublic access points mean that broadband isno longer the sole preserve of the affluent. Itsimpact is being felt at all levels of society,although there is still some way to go beforethe digital divide is fully bridged.

The shift in behaviour flows principally from the‘always on’ and faster nature of broadband.As the technology becomes invisible, peopleare increasingly liberated to explore how it canhelp them pursue their own social and culturalneeds. AOL’s own data shows that broadbandusers spend significantly longer online thanthose on dial-up. And they are logging onwhen it suits them – polling for this researchshowed that some 59% of broadband usershave logged on before breakfast, and 21%have surfed in the middle of the night.

Every 12secondssomeoneconnects tobroadbandfor the first time inthe UK

†

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executive summary

Broadband is not creating numerous newactivities, rather it is enabling people totransform the way they pursue existinginterests and commitments. For example,40% of broadband users say they are morelikely to get involved in organising local eventsthrough the internet. This level of participationhas implications for clubs, interest groups,government and anyone committed to re-invigorating communities.

Broadband Britain: The end of asymmetry

The research identifies the beginning of theend of asymmetry in Internet use. In otherwords, broadband has enabled a level ofinteractivity that means uploading and sharinginformation is as important as receiving it.

Our polling showed some significant results forlevels of online participation:• 57% of broadband users have created

content to post online that they would nototherwise have created offline

• 59% of broadband users have postedcomments on message boards

• 28% have their own website• 56% post content more than once a month

and 18% post content every day

Having always on access to broadbandprovides a low risk way of engaging with theworld that we suggest is creating a culture ofexperimentation and empowerment.

Evidence of a social shift

Personal computers are becoming socialcomputers. Our polling suggests thatcommunities are increasingly facilitated bybroadband – with 81% emailing people theywould otherwise not stay in touch with and26% using the internet to organise informalevents.


† Based on Ofcom’s industry figures, October 2004

3 CommunityTaking Neighbourhood Watch as a case study,the research demonstrates how broadbandhas the potential to empower and invigoratecommunities. Groups are increasingly usingtext message alerts, streaming videosurveillance and online dialogue to deter crime.In this way, they help to reduce crime and thefear of crime together, building belief amongthem that they are safe and that they can fightback. In Gloucester, the Brunswick SquareCentral Lawn Association is using the Internetto target crime in the community through itsNeighbourhood Watch initiative.

Broadband could increasingly enablecommunities to feel empowered to fight crimeand tackle the fear of crime and become moreresilient as a result.

4 Citizen leadershipAs the recent US election showed,broadband is changing the way candidatescampaign. We saw how the rise ofbroadband video and blogging - postingpersonal content onto the internet - led to ashift from party political broadcasts to partypolitical networks and enabled a deeper kindof democratic conversation.

Could we be about to see a similar impact ofbroadband on the run-up to our own GeneralElection in Spring 2005? This is particularlycrucial with recent turnouts at such a lowlevel in the UK, compared to records set inthe US this year.

Some sectors in society have been slow torealise the implications of citizen leadership.Our research looks at the music industry asan example of how broadband encouragescreativity and personal empowerment. For toolong, the potential for sharing music onlinehas been seen only as a threat and has beenmissed as an enormous opportunity. Blurringthe boundaries between producers andconsumers could expand our cultural horizonsand reinvigorate British music. The researchargues that organisations across the UKwould do well to understand the lessons ofthe music industry and avoid repeatingmistakes of the past.

But beyond this, our research suggests thatthe end of asymmetry in Internet use isempowering people and increasing socialparticipation. The report explores a number ofexamples – entertainment (using the specificexample of the music industry), communityand public service provision – to cite evidenceof where UK life is being altered by broadband.We have outlined four principles to helpnavigate these changes:

1 FlexibilityOne area in which flexibility may be particularlyimportant is that of education. Atnotschool.org, academics are experimentingwith provision for ‘school refusers’ in order thatthey may still learn, but from home within asafe and social environment. Mainstreamdevelopments such as the AOL Learningchannel, where there is online access toteachers available to help with homework andgive advice, also create an alternative space inwhich people can learn.

The government’s current education prioritiesare to encourage more flexible school days forpupils, parents and teachers. The flexibilityenabled through broadband is helping toreinforce a creative ‘learn-anywhere’ culture.

2 Personal support and engagement Our polling found that 57% of broadbandusers had researched their own health or thatof a friend or relative online. A pilot inBirmingham recently sought to extend theprovision made by NHS Direct. Using digitaltelevision, callers to the service could see thenurse to whom they were talking on theirtelevision screen, together with diagrams andvideo clips to aid their own self-care ordiagnosis. Not only was the service well-usedand satisfaction high, NHS Direct found thatthe quality of communication possible meantthat calls became shorter, allowing them toreach more people.

The possibilities presented by broadband –from video streaming to online support groups– have the potential to reduce the distancebetween citizens and public services.Broadband also has the potential to createconfident and engaged patients, at a timewhen the Department of Health seesencouraging self-care as critical to the future of public health.

ConclusionWe argue that to understand fully the powerof broadband it is incumbent on policymakers, businesses, and community groupsto ensure that broadband is at the heart ofdebate about the way public services aredelivered, the way we engage in ourcommunities and the interests we pursue.Our research and the examples we providesuggest that broadband is the catalyst for asocial shift - exciting opportunities should notbe missed by viewing this shift as a threat, or by failing to recognise its true value.

Broadband’s greatest potential lies in the factthat it enables individuals to design and tailortheir interface with society. The once insularand isolated activity of going online is nowblossoming into external engagement and adeeper and more personalised relationshipbetween individuals and society that must not be ignored.


With this announcement at the Labour PartyConference, the Prime Minister madebroadband technology an election issue. Butwhile Labour has identified itself with theprogressive potential of broadband, manyquestions remain about how suchcommitments will be taken forward.

Political priorities for broadband are worryinglysimple – as many people as possible musthave access to it at ever-faster speeds. Butwhile broadband use and bandwidth risessteadily, changes in its social impact may befar from linear. Broadband may herald atipping point in the internet’s importance, as itshifts almost unnoticed from the periphery ofpeople’s lives to their centre. As it does so, itwill disrupt the crude ‘build it and they willcome’ attitude of public policy, raisingquestions about how broadband can be usedto meet the disparate needs of Britain’scitizens and communities.

Broadband is increasingly deeply embedded inour everyday lives. In a YouGov poll conductedfor this project, we found that 59% ofbroadband users in the UK regularly log onbefore breakfast and 21% sometimes get upin the middle of the night to do so, just as theymight to get a glass of milk. While the hypesurrounding broadband has focussed on itsspeed, this means its users can be unhurried.Equally, while the technology allowsbroadband to be ‘always-on’, this does notmean always in use – it is the ease andflexibility of broadband that people appreciate,and which is increasingly allowing its users totake control.

As broadband becomes embedded in ourlives, its social character is gradually emerging.The best way to understand this character is interms of the end of asymmetry between theconsumers and producers of broadbandcontent, as the distinctions between them fadeand as their levels of influence becomeincreasingly equal. The notion of an end toasymmetry began as a technical one; thesimple idea that as internet use matured,people might need as much bandwidth forsending information back up a pipe as theydid for receiving it. However, this idea hastoday taken on a richer cultural significance,representing the notion that throughbroadband, people might become moreengaged and more empowered.

In this paper, we trace this idea from itsleading edge within the music industry, throughto the future of public services and democracyitself. While music may seem far removed

‘Our countryand its peopleprospering inthe knowledgeeconomy…Increasing by£1 billion theinvestment inscience…andending thedigital divide bybringingbroadbandtechnology toevery home inBritain thatwants it by2008.’Tony Blair, 28 September 2004

introduction

from the political cut and thrust, we argue itmay contain important lessons for othercreatives and public servants alike. Wesuggest that broadband will rapidly grow inpolitical significance, making it possible forcitizens to express their creativity and tocommunicate with one another independentlyof institutions. We suggest four principles thatwill emerge from the interactions betweenbroadband and society, and to which publicinstitutions and authorities will increasinglyneed to aspire:

• Flexibility• Personal support and engagement• Community• Citizen leadership

From parents able to work at home toteachers able to draw on video-linkedexpertise and learning resources from acrossthe world, the flexibility that broadband bringsto both work and family erodes many of theparameters of collective provision that in thepast we have taken for granted.

As ‘always-on’ becomes the norm, newstandards of personal support may alsoemerge. Embedded wireless heart monitorsand virtual PAs may see connectivity transformthe way we tackle life’s challenges, both largeand small.

From groups of independent journalists, tothose of new parents, to NeighbourhoodWatch groups, broadband can help tostrengthen new communities of all kinds.While politicians of every stripe are nowseeking to make the individual the unit of focusfor every public service, broadband may helpto shift the focus back to the communities thatthey build.

Finally, broadband is increasingly helpingcitizen leadership, allowing networks of ‘expertpatients’ to ease doctors’ workloads andencouraging a culture in which the decisions ofpublic services must be negotiated with thosethey serve.

To make the most of broadband, we mustengage much more with the public and theuses they make of it. As much as thetechnology itself, it is social innovators who aredriving broadband’s impact. The web-basedcommunity musician and the student ebayentrepreneur have as much to teach us aboutthe role of broadband as do our engineers andtechnicians. The hook for politicians may bethat broadband also seems to make it easierto learn from just these people.


The Broadband Britain research project isbeing carried out in partnership with AOL andthe ethnography specialists Ideas Bazaar.

Phase 1 of the research has involved opinionpolling and desk-based research to assess thecurrent state of Broadband Britain and to buildsome hypotheses about its future direction.The polling by YouGov involved 4,000broadband and dial-up internet users.

Phase 2 of the project is about testing outthese hypotheses with those people who usebroadband. We have wired up a number ofhouseholds across Britain with high-speedinternet access, and over the coming fourmonths will observe the uses they make of itand the effects that it has on their lives.

Phase 3 of the project is to synthesise thesetwo elements of our research, learning thelessons of our ethnographic work and applyingthem to the landscape we aim to flesh out withthis paper. This will culminate in a final report,to be published in spring 2005.

As an introduction to this work, it is worthforegrounding some of the key findings fromour opinion polling:

• 59% of broadband users have logged onbefore breakfast

• 21% have got up in the middle of the nightto use their broadband

• 59% of users have posted comments oropinions on websites

• 54% had uploaded photographs onto theinternet

• 62% of users believe that it is not very safeto allow children to use chatrooms

• 81% of broadband users email people thatthey would not otherwise keep in touch with

• 94% believe that internet banking is safe orvery safe

• A quarter use broadband to organise get-togethers online. While most of these areinformal and social, a significant number arepolitical, community or sporting events.


For ISPs and telecommunications companies,the period saw a strong focus on the basicinfrastructure of the internet, and on technicalissues of access and regulation. In the policysphere, publicly at least, bad news meant nonews. Tony Blair, who made numerousspeeches about the internet in his first term,has barely mentioned it in his second. GeorgeW. Bush famously mocked Al Gore for a claimthat he had never made – that he had‘invented the internet’. The internet rapidlyturned from a political asset to a politicalliability.

Nowhere is this shift better demonstrated thanin the changing role of the UK’s e-Envoy. Thisbegan, under Alex Allan, as a wide-ranging,highly strategic post, buttressed by regularprime ministerial contact. Its remit was to leadthe digital transformation of government and ofsociety at large. Under Andrew Pinder, in theaftermath of the dot-com crash, the role wasdowngraded and its responsibilities werechipped away at, until it focused primarily onthe delivery of electronic government andpublic services. Then in May 2004, the e-Envoy role was scrapped altogether, andreplaced with the more managerial role ofHead of e-Government. Government targetsfor electronic public services, which began asa spur to further, more ambitious programmesof digital transformation, have become theouter limits of short-term governmentalambition.

For some users of the internet, this moresombre mood reflected their own experience.For many still using dial-up, the lack of speedand limited applications meant that it remainedmarginal or peripheral to many aspects of theirlives. However, for many others, the internetwas quietly bedding down in their lives, layingthe foundation for further development.

Phase 3: ‘The more virtual the more real’(2005 - )

Yet belying this story of boom and bust, theactual growth in internet use has beenremarkably steady. In the case of broadbandtake-up, it is following a natural technologicaldiffusion curve, but at a faster rate than mostconsumer technologies over the last 60 years,with the exception of black-and-whitetelevisions and DVDs.’1

Our research suggests that broadband isfinally helping to build an internet that works.But it is vital to understand where this storyhas come from, as part of the arc of theinternet’s trajectory.

Phase 1: Great expectations (1994-2000)

For business leaders and politicians, thepromise of relentless progress is irresistible.Back in 1994, the launch of Netscape’s webbrowser spawned a fervour of hope andexpectation about the internet, which wassustained for at least six years.

In the commercial sphere, this saw inflatedprofit forecasts and massive venture capitalinvestment. In the ‘new economy’,conventional models of production andvaluation were viewed as redundant andoutdated. A strong arc of technologicaldeterminism assured people that this was aboom that wouldn’t end.

This story of relentless progress travelled withequal ease into the public policy arena, wherethe growth of the internet was allied to politicalnarratives of modernisation and improvement.The internet was presented as a panacea forsocial ills and economic growth.

Most clearly, a rather deterministic sense thattechnology was driving social change shapedunderstandings of how the internet would beused. People’s lives were to be changedbeyond recognition. As a result, alongside thehope and optimism that surrounded theinternet, some fears were expressed aboutnegative impacts on community and socialcohesion.

Phase 2: Deflation and delivery (2000-2004)

In the spring of 2000, the optimism andspeculation of the boom was brought to anabrupt end by the crash of the NASDAQ. If the boom had been about the willingsuspension of disbelief – about notions ofvalue, profitability and the way people live theirlives – the crash was about the reassertion ofmore concrete and accepted norms. Acrosscommercial, public and domestic uses of theinternet, providers sought to focus on thebasics of access and delivery.

three phases of the internet’s development

1 Robert Pepper, Chief of the Office of Plans & Policy, US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), comment to Oxford Internet Institute

In 2005, three important milestones coincide:

• Due to progress in securing rollout ofbroadband infrastructure, the problems ofaccess will largely have been resolved. Ayear from now, BT aims to have over 99%of homes within the reach of a broadband-enabled local exchange;

• The government’s 2005 targets for accessand online public service are up for renewaland renegotiation;

• And the General Election represents anopportunity to rethink the place ofbroadband and digital technologies in athird-term Labour government.

These milestones, set against the backdrop ofrapidly increasing broadband take-up and use,mean that we are now on the cusp of anexciting new phase, in which the potential ofbroadband can be more fully realised andembedded in public policy.

All of the infrastructure put in place during thepast five years of consolidation may now beabout to deliver on the internet’s promises.However, ‘the more virtual the more real’ is acrucial phrase. Like any tool, broadband isonly as good as the uses to which it is put.For the internet to deliver, social innovationmust accompany technical innovation, and thetwo must grow together.


collapse, but were merely altered’.2 Equally, aslimits on bandwidth fade, the real story is notabout music that is free but music that wevalue, and as consumers grow in power, ourability to create this value may be set to grow.

Change in how we listen to music is certainlyhappening at speed. In just one month during2003 in the United States, 49% of 12 to 22year-olds downloaded music. Half of thesedownloaders now say that they buy fewerCDs. In the UK, Tower Records Europe hasgone into receivership, Andy's Records hasclosed down and WH Smith has stoppedselling singles.3

However, while we have been quick to point tovictims of peer-to-peer file-sharing, the scare-stories have been over-done. While file-sharingcontinued to rise, last year over 150 millionsongs were downloaded from Apple’s iTunesstore. Meanwhile, research suggests that asoften as we substitute downloading for buying aCD we buy a CD because we downloaded it.4

In the way we listen to music, we have alwaystraded off between ease of access and theprice we are willing to pay. Covering eachextreme, for decades radio and records havenot only co-existed, they have supported eachother. In the past, radio provided free musicfor when we were busy, on the move orwanted the very latest songs. Today, asstreaming downloaded music becomesincreasingly easy, broadband-enabled‘podcasting’ is increasingly filling this niche.However, this doesn’t mean we can alwaysfind what we want when we want it. Given thetime people have to spend in order todownload tracks ‘for free’, as Apple’s SteveJobs put it, while you may save a little moneyon Kazaa, ‘you're working for under minimumwage’.5 In supporting consumers – fromsuggesting tracks they may like, to helpingthem re-mix them to introducing them to like-minded music fans – there is much value fororganisations to help to create. While forsome organisations, therefore, the message is‘adapt or die’, the rewards for doing so, bothfor them and those they serve, may be great.

Music’s end of asymmetry

While the imperative of 'adapt or die' isfamiliar across our institutional landscape, thisdegree of clarity about how the world ofmusic must change certainly is not. There ismuch that others can learn from the risingimportance of creativity and community withinthe world of music.

The earliest glimpse of the end of asymmetrybetween broadband’s producers andconsumers can be seen in the world of music.While it may seem peripheral to nationalpolitics, the story of music in 2004 is one fromwhich our creatives and public servants canlearn a great deal.

In 1770, when Mozart was twelve years old, heand his father visited Rome, and the SistineChapel at St Peter’s. There they listened to theMiserere, a famous piece that had only everbeen heard within the chapel. Its performerswere forbidden on pain of ex-communicationfrom sharing its secrets with outsiders. Onreturning home, Mozart sat and wrote out whathe had heard, bar by bar, part by part. A fewdays later Mozart returned, with his manuscriptrolled up in his hat, to make his corrections.

In the following months, Mozart met a notedhistorian of music, who subsequentlypublished the Miserere for the very first time.In the years following, it was published manytimes in England and across Europe, endingthe monopoly held by the Pope over the work.

Musical trailblazers have always createdcontroversy, temporarily obscuring theircreative contribution. In the time of Mozart,the loss of the Pope’s monopoly createdwidespread outrage but music continued togrow and develop. Today, some are fearful ofbroadband’s impact, but music’s long-termprospects look healthy. In particular, power isagain shifting from the institution to theindividual, unlocking opportunities for peopleto enjoy and create music. It is this that putsmusic at the leading edge of the end ofasymmetry between producers andconsumers. It is in broadband’s culturalimpact that we will see its lasting effects onmusic, and from this there is much for ourcultural sector and for our public services tolearn. In particular, the example of music is alesson for the rest of the UK in the risingimportance of creativity and community.

The new score

The public debate about music has focussedon the instruments we use to the exclusion ofthe radical change in the arrangement of theplayers. Clay Shirky makes a tellingobservation: ‘despite the fact that it is stillpossible to make gin in your bathtub, no onedoes it, anymore. After Prohibition ended,high-quality gin became legally available at aprice and with restrictions people could livewith. Legal and commercial controls did not

music leads the way

2 Clay Shirky in Oram, A. (2001) Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the power of disruptive technologies (O’Reilly)3 Music tank event (April, 2004) Music Retail: dying or diversifying (http://www.musictank.co.uk/events_retail.htm)4 Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf (2004) The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales http://www.p2pnet.net/zero/FileSharing_March2004.pdf5 Quoted in Anderson (2004)6 Chris Anderson (October 2004) ‘The Long Tail’, in Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

Firstly, when musicians and fans alike cancontact one another directly, sharing work,critique and enthusiasm, creativity grows inimportance. The new reciprocity to therelationship between artists and audiencesmakes it easier for them to cut commerce outof the loop. As a result, the entertainmentindustry will have to work harder to meet thediverse needs of both, demonstrating the waysin which they foster and enable creativity.

Chris Anderson argues that the world beforebroadband was characterised by ‘hit-driveneconomics’, with choice constrained by shelfspace.6 His research found that ‘the marketfor books that are not even sold in the averagebookstore is larger than the market for thosethat are’. As limited shelf space is increasinglyreplaced by unlimited bandwidth, the way weexperience music will change. Whatever ourtaste, we will expect them to be catered for.This goes beyond what we listen to; fromcreating our own music to attending liveconcerts, we will expect the organisations withwhich we interact to provide comprehensivepersonal support. We will expect our creativityto be their priority.

The industry also has increasingly toacknowledge that it has a responsibility to itscommunity, as well as to individuals. Music,like broadband, is consumed socially – itspopularity grows through social networks andits value is determined by social networks. AsSky grew by placing access in pubs andhelping communities of interest to growaround football, for example, so this processwill be fundamental to the growth ofbroadband. Record companies mayincreasingly stand or fall on the communitiesthey help to develop and facilitate.

While the rise of peer-to-peer exchange hasbeen described in cataclysmic terms,therefore, the leading lights of the musicalworld are showing the potential of a responsegrounded in innovation and reform. However,while this may comfort those in other sectors,the speed of broadband’s impact has beenstriking. Business propositions that were thenorm three years ago are today laughable tomany consumers. While the direct effects ofbroadband have been important, on thetechnology through which products andservices are delivered, its indirect effects havebeen even more so, on the confidence ofindividuals and communities and thedemands they make. While we may flinch atthe idea of the doctor learning from thedrummer, there is much here for organisationsacross Britain to ponder.


There are now four million weblogs, with12,000 new ones being added every day. Asof 6th October 2004, there wereapproximately 400,000 posts created everyday in the ‘blogosphere’, which is an averageof around 4.6 posts per second, or over16,000 posts per hour.8 As this army ofonline journalists grows, our research foundthat in the UK 24% of broadband users hadposted reviews online. How might Britain’swriters or performers feel if they knew thatthe pool of would-be reviewers was growingby as much as 10,000 people per week?The research also suggested that this wasmuch more than people switching existingbehaviour online, with 57% saying that theywould not have published this content were it not for the internet.

Enabling Creativity

The rise of public banks created a wholerange of new occupations and professions,from fund managers to cashiers. As more ofthe components of our lives are self-createdand stored publicly, so we are seeing furtherchanges to our social and professionalworlds. In particular, this trend is helping toboost the work of those who use broadbandto express their creativity. Whether it isphotographs, CVs or music, once a criticalmass is stored publicly, new creativeopportunities are opened up.

New pro-activity on the part of citizens hashuge consequences, which are only justbeginning to become visible. For example,independent bloggers now wield an influencethat is beginning to rival long-establishednewspapers. John Batelle argues that onlinesubscription magazines and newspapersshould let authors of weblogs link directly totheir content, allowing their readers to seearticles for free.9 This extension of reach, heargues, would far outweigh the loss inrevenue, because people subscribe to contentrecommended by those they trust. Injournalism, broadband is helping to create aworld in which a ‘closed shop’ is no longer anoption – not only is it possible to blur theboundaries between readers and reporters, itis increasingly necessary.

The trend towards individual empowerment, of which music is at the leading edge, canincreasingly be seen across our society. New alliances between creatives andcommunicators are emerging. In the process,broadband is blurring the boundaries betweenproducers and consumers, and beneath thisblur lies a shift in power from the institutiontowards the individual.

Broadband makes many components of oureveryday lives easier to store and share. Asthese artefacts – from calendars and CVs toideas and opinions – become increasinglyconnected, they help people to make contactwith one another.

Soon, we may think of life before broadbandas we do life before currency. Withoutcurrency, personal wealth was insecure andbulky to store and exchange. With the arrivalof cash, personal wealth could work for itsowners, pooled in banks and invested on theirbehalf. Today, as a result, we take it forgranted that public institutions handle personaltransactions.

A pro-active public

Users of broadband are increasingly takingadvantage of this shift, growing in confidenceand voice. One recent study found that asmany as 44% of US internet users haveposted content online, of which 21% hadposted photos and 13% maintain their ownwebsites.7

Our research in the UK found that 59% ofbroadband users had posted comments oropinions on websites and 54% had uploadedphotographs. However, there was also a hugevariety in what people were using theirbroadband to publish, from poetry to footballmatch reports to video and goods for sale.Characteristics of internet experts also seemto be spreading to popular use, with 28% ofbroadband users maintaining their ownwebsites and a full 18% posting somethingonline everyday.

the ‘new creatives’

7 Pew Internet and American Life Project, Content creation online, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Content_Creation_Report.pdf8 Dave Sifry, Technorati, http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000387.html9 John Battelle’s blog, http://battelemedia.com/archives/000957.php, [via Doc Searls’ weblog]10 Dan Gilmor of the San Jose Mercury News, quoted in An Update From the Digital World: October 2004, Morgan Stanley,

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/dw_syndication1004.pdf

Equally, online photo albums are playing anincreasingly important role. Sites like Flickr(www.flickr.com) or Ploggle (www.ploggle.com)enable users to store photos online, and makethem public if they so choose. As a result,bloggers have access to an ever-growing bankof photographs. In the aftermath of thebombing of Jakarta in September 2004, blogshad pictures of the scene before major newsorganisations, providing authentic material forunaffiliated internet journalists.10

For those at the leading edge of these shifts,this is a story about the end of consumption –in cultural terms, the argument seems to run,we are all producers now. However, this cancreate interminable discussion about the timeand inclination that we all have for culturalcreation, which misses the really significantfactor. Most importantly, this is a shift inpower; communicators and creatives – likemusicians and their audiences – canincreasingly create value together,independently of intermediaries, shifting thebalance of power between individuals andorganisations.


Both communities with roots online and offlineare increasingly open to combining virtual withface-to-face contact. On the one hand, offlinecommunities are increasingly being drawnonline, as groups of friends stay in touchthrough ‘suites’ of technologies to which theyhave access. For example, camera phones,digital cameras and the internet havecombined to make sharing photos one easyway of keeping in touch. The Flickr photowebsite, like a growing number of websites,has integrated its service with social software.So if you’re back from a party, but don’t havea photo of that priceless moment, search thephotos of your friends12. As social softwarebecomes embedded in the architecture ofcommunities, groups as diverse as expectantmothers and victims of bullying are looking tobroadband-enabled communities for sourcesof support.

On the other hand, while online communitieshave often been highly insular, protective of thevery separate roles that participants play, theyare increasingly opening up to offline activity.The phenomenon of the ‘flashmob’ began asa fairly obscure social practice, using mobilephones to convene quite anarchic gatheringsand parties in unexpected places at amoment’s notice. Today, BBC3 has used thistechnology to create renewed interest inclassical music through Flashmob the Opera.

New community architecture

Broadband, therefore, may have a role to playin helping to foster and maintain communities.This has important implications for all thosewho seek to build communities, and as theexample of the music industry shows us,perhaps for the vast majority of organisations.It also raises wider public policy questionsabout planning and service delivery.

Our research found that 81% of broadbandusers email people that they would nototherwise keep in touch with. Perhaps moresurprisingly, a full quarter use broadband toorganise get-togethers online. Most of theseare informal and social, but a significantnumber are political, community or sportingevents. In addition 27% have researchedjoining a club or getting involved in an offlineactivity (42% of 18-29 year olds).

While these new creative alliances areimportant, there is also a strong communitydimension to broadband’s likely impact. Asthese alliances develop, in some cases theyare moving far beyond the merely contractual,becoming relationships that are valued in andfor themselves. In doing so, not only canbroadband foster existing communities, but itcan help new ones to develop, creatingcultures of support or encouragement aroundparticular identities and activities. In so doing,broadband may make a small contribution tofinding social and organisational forms inwhich individual freedom and communitystrength can grow together, and for the politicsof today, this is truly significant.

Supporting communities

In the early years of the internet, the fear wasthat online communities would bring an end toface-to-face communication. In the secondphase of the internet, the failure of some earlyonline communities made it seem that onlinecommunication had nothing to offercommunity. Today, for many people,broadband use and social interaction arebecoming increasingly intertwined.

In 1997, a development in Toronto sought tofit broadband access into each new home.In fact, only 64 of the 109 family homes in thesuburb were ever connected up. Whilst thismay have disappointed some of the suburb’snewest residents, it offered anthropologistKeith Hampton an opportunity to comparethe social behaviour of wired and unwiredhouseholds. Hampton’s findings wereunambiguous; ‘wired residents knew threetimes as many neighbours, talked with twiceas many and visited 50% more of theirneighbours compared to non-wiredresidents.’11 As with other studies, it seemslikely that some of this interaction wastriggered by broadband novices asking otherlocals for help, but that many of theserelationships blossomed into broaderfriendships.

from personal computers to social computers

11 Will Davies (2004) Proxicommunication, iSociety12 Andy Ihnatko, (21st September, 2004) ‘Flickr photo tool has it all and more’, Chicago Sun-Times

Indeed, for 40% of broadband users, accessto broadband makes them at least a little morelikely to get involved in organising local events(only 4% felt that it would make them at allless likely). In this context, broadband is animportant community asset not only for theservices to which it gives them access but alsofor its contribution to their capacity tocommunicate and organise with one another.

It is important to set this against furtherfindings from our research. Broadband usersare increasingly integrating it into thearchitecture of their houses and of thetechnology within them. From being thepreserve of the study, today broadband ismoving into the sitting room. While for 24%broadband is still confined to the study, for28% broadband access is in their living room,and for 18% it is in their bedroom.Furthermore, 54% of broadband users have aTV in the same room when accessing theinternet.

In a world in which broadband is increasinglyembedded both in community life and in thearchitecture of our homes, it will quickly rise upthe priorities of planners and developers. With500,000 homes being built in the ThamesGateway alone, there are huge opportunities tohelp people to build these new developmentsinto supportive communities.


A similar shift at Greig Academy in Haringey isenabling science teachers to build up videolibraries of their demonstrations of experimentsin public. At home, the school’s scienceteachers can download and add to theircollection of footage, building it into lessonplanning and preparation.13 They have foundthat the key benefit is that demonstratinglessons using video is much quicker - it’s the‘here’s one I made earlier’ of the scienceclassroom. Their use of the technologyincreasingly allows learners to activelyparticipate, and play a stronger role in directingtheir own learning.

This is a telling example – given the time toexplore the potential of a technology together,teachers have discovered a benefit for theirpupils that they could never have predicted.Equally, having begun primarily as a resourcefor teachers, the East of England BroadbandNetwork (E2BN), is enabling schools to poolteaching resources, using video conferencingto provide a range of minority subjects acrossa locality.

In other words, as broadband helps teachersto be more creative, in turn it helps theirstudents to become more creative. Studentsin north London have taken this one stepfurther. On the Hands Up website forexample, created by two seventeen year-oldsfrom north London, teachers and studentsalike can download resources for citizenshipclasses, created by the girls and based ontheir own work and experiences.

This feature of working flexibly raises largerquestions about the future of public provision.At notschool.org, for example, academics areexperimenting with provision for ‘schoolrefusers’, in order that they may still learn fromhome within a safe and social environment.The E2BN model already raises questionsabout the provision that might be made fromwithin school for excluded pupils, or thoseaway from school through ill-health. Already,the AOL Learning channel includes onlineaccess to teachers able to help withhomework and give advice, again creating analternative space in which people can learn. Itmay be that the real benefit of a ‘learnanywhere’ culture, far from that of convenienceand mobility, may be the ease with which it ispossible to build provision in the placeslearners feel safest and happiest, whether asports centre or a dance studio.

The effect of broadband on the importance ofcreativity and community, most visible in theworld of popular music, has huge implicationsfor the ways in which we organise collectiveprovision. To this end, we suggest fourprinciples, which broadband will help topromote and to which public service mayincreasingly need to aspire; flexibility, personalsupport and engagement, community andcitizen leadership.

Polling for this project found that already, 73%of broadband users have visited national orlocal government websites. As e-commercebecomes part of our lives, growing numbers ofBritons may simply assume that they canfunction effectively as citizens online. Theseprinciples help to frame a broader question:while the government may be ready for theroll-out of broadband technology, is it ready forits social and cultural effects?

Flexibility

Many of the limits of our public realm arereceding, from cultural norms and moraltaboos to notions of the private.Communications technology is at the heart ofthis process, allowing connections to beweaved between disparate times and places.In this process, public discourse is primarilyfocused on the associated danger of asleepless, panopticon society. However, theopportunity is to craft public services far moreopen to and supportive of those that in thepast they have served least well.

One area in which this flexibility may beparticularly important is that of education.Firstly, broadband is changing the professionalexperience of teachers. For example, inWestminster Education Action Zone, teachersincreasingly use their broadband connectionsto store teaching resources and lesson plansonline, sharing and developing themcollaboratively. What was once a very privateprofession is increasingly being opened up,allowing teachers to learn from one another.

public services in broadband britain

13 From research for Craig, J, with Lownsbrough, H. and Huber, J. (2004) Schools Out: Can teachers, social workers and health staff learn to live together (Demos)14 Hobsbawm, A. (2003) 10 years on: the state of the internet after a decade (Agency.com)15 Ibid

Flexible working is a means not an end. Asever, the challenge here is to use the flexibilitybroadband affords not simply to do thingsbetter but to do better things. Work withpupils, patients and other service users,especially those served least well by the one-size-fits all models of today, to graduallytransform the ways in which services areprovided, is beginning to show the wayforward.

Personal support and engagement

Broadband brings the prospect of far greaterpersonal support and engagement withinpublic services. However, in building thiscapacity, broadband will add a new dimensionto questions of personal autonomy andresponsibility. Early engagement with thesequestions can help public services to build insupport where damaging gaps of skill andknowledge could quickly emerge.

The notion of personal contact has graduallyrisen up the political agenda. Most recently,the government announced that everycommunity would soon have access to itsown local policing team – that they will knowtheir names, their mobile numbers and theiremail addresses. However, while this‘reassurance policing’ may improve reportedlevels of satisfaction, the real challenge lies inproviding a better service.

The contribution that personal support andengagement can make to the quality ofservices lies in the level and quality ofinteraction between the public and publicservants. For example, in health care, ourpolling found that 57% of broadband usershad researched their own health or that of afriend or relative online in the last year. In theUS, this has grown to as much as 80%.14 Bydoctors’ own admissions, this is radicallychanging the way they relate to their patients,who routinely arrive with swathes ofdocumentation, accessed from home.15 Ifcommunity policing teams and the like are toimprove services, the challenge is not to‘reassure’ these newly-informed citizens intopassivity but to unlock the potential itrepresents, involving them in the servicesthey receive.


On the market already is a wi-fi pill, capable ofmonitoring the vital signs of those whoswallow it, and relay them to a local server.The pill was developed for the US army, but isnow being used by the likes of the CanadianOlympic triathlete team.18 Technologically,therefore, the limits to self-diagnosis arereceding far more quickly than we can imaginesystems for making use of them. But howimportant could self-diagnosis be to the futureof the NHS? Since its inception, the numberof NHS professions has grown from a handfulto well over sixty. As this distribution of labourcontinues, is it possible to imagine it starting toinclude patients, members of the public whohave become experts in their own and relatedconditions. What kinds of networks of serviceprovision will broadband be helping us tonavigate in the future?

As this embedded technology spreads,perhaps into our homes or our clothing, thiskind of deep involvement with our own healthhas the potential for lasting growth. Part of itspotential lies in boosting the faith and trustcitizens feel in their public servants. However,this is only part of the story. It also has thepotential to help people lead healthy, fulfilledand independent lives, and it is on this that wemust capitalise. Can we use this technologyto help people learn how to live and eathealthily? Can we use broadband to changethe quality of people’s relationships with publicservants, as well as the ease with which theyaccess them?

Community

While governments have long been strugglingwith declining trust and satisfaction, thisproblem now increasingly afflicts companies.While the reliability of products has risen, forexample, in many cases levels of satisfactionwith them have fallen. Just as the image ofthe police is damaged by the ever-increasingmedia attention on crime, so our growing armyof online reviewers will highlight flaws in anyproduct, from cameras to holidays.

However, whether in health, education or otherpublic services, this is a challenge toestablished doctrines and cultures. A study byDeloitte & Touche reported that 66% of USpatients did not receive any literature abouttheir or their child’s condition (and only onethird received information about theirmedication)16.

However, glimpses of this radical future arealready with us. In Birmingham in 2002, a pilotsought to extend the provision made by NHSDirect. Using digital television, callers to theservice could see the nurse to whom theywere talking on their television screen, togetherwith diagrams and video clips to aid their ownself-care or diagnosis. Not only was theservice well used and satisfaction high, NHSDirect found that the quality of communicationpossible meant that calls became shorter,allowing them to reach more people17. Withthe recognition in November’s White Paper onPublic Health of the importance of personalsupport and online guidance, it seems likelythat the national importance of this kind ofprovision will only grow.

The challenge for the government is to findforms of support that people can shape to fittheir own lives. For example, work is alreadybeing done to explore the potential of wirelesstechnology to create remote heart monitors forpost-operative patients. This ‘always-on’technology would ensure support was onhand when it was needed, without invadingpeople’s lives. In this context, we mightspeculate about how long will it be beforesufferers of obesity can use embeddedsensors to record and dramatise for them theirdaily lifestyle choices.

16 Quoted in 10 Years On, Source: Plunkett Research, Ltd., 200317 Case studies available online (http://www.wmas.nhs.uk/nhsd.htm, http://www.pjb.co.uk/t-learning/case16.htm)18 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/mmci-v-101104.php [via BoingBoingBlog]19 This point has been made most influentially by Moore, M. Creating Public Value20 ‘Social networks and the prediction of elderly people at risk’, G. C. Wenger in Aging and Mental Health 1 (no. 4) (1997),

quoted in ‘Your Friendship Networks’ by Perri 6 in McCarthy, H., Miller, P. and Skidmore P. (2004) Network Logic (London: Demos)

Just as software companies are learning toembrace their developer communities, so allkinds of organisations increasingly have to dothe same. As broadband spreads, the sameimplication seems to be holding for manypublic services. Just as Linux and ebay areonly as strong as the communities theydevelop and facilitate, so we may increasinglycome to feel this about our public services.19

As we saw earlier, social software is nowincluded in photo album websites, to makethem more searchable. This is just thebeginning. As this software is integrated withGPS systems, for example, sales reps may beable to tag their favourite B&Bs for oneanother, creating ever-evolving maps of Britainfrom which they can draw trusted information.In this world, success in the hotel tradebecomes about keeping a community happy.

Today, there is research that suggests that thisis already the case, for example, in elderlycare, where a supportive social network isvitally important.20 As social networks becomefar more visible, will we find that the same istrue of policing or education, for example?

Already, online communities for people withspecific health problems, new parents orvictims of bullying are helping to extend justthis kind of phenomena. For example, OCD-UK, a new national charity for people sufferingwith Obsessive Compulsive Disorders andthose who care for them has put online bulletinboards to good use. Capitalising on the trustand sense of community this has created, theyplan to run regular online therapy sessions,bringing in national experts as participants.


How far can this go? Perhaps a combinationof voice over IP and 3G location-basedtechnology will create a peer-to-peer 999service. This could help farmers in accidentsor who are victims of crime to contact thethree people closest to them, as well as amore distant emergency service. Assurveillance technology continues to fall inprice and Neighbourhood Watch schemescome to resemble do-it-yourself MI5s, soprivate security will become a challenge to thesovereignty of law enforcement agencieslocally just as it is nationally.

While these are for the future, the lesson isbeginning to be learned by public services.The NHS’s ‘expert patient programme’develops the expertise of those who have hada particular condition for a long time, andmanaged it successfully. Understanding thatpeople learn best from those closest to theirown situation, with whom empathy is easiest,the NHS partners these people with thosewho can benefit from their advice and support.In this context, broadband seems to offer apossible boost to this approach, offeringanonymity and instant access to the medicalknowledge base. With broadband andwebcams in every home, what is the limit ofthis kind of brokerage role? Could we useonline fora to distribute medical knowledgeand advice? What kinds of groups woulddevelop as a result?

Large cities are economically resilient places.When one industry declines, another growsup. Why is this? Two reasons stand out; citylife has intrinsic value for people, so that theywill adapt to stay and cities have a criticalmass of different talent, ideas and energy. Aspublic services come to rely on their ownvirtual developer communities, can even veryremote parts of Britain start to develop theseresilient characteristics?

Can we imagine a Linux developmentcommunity bidding for National Lotteryfunding? Two hundred years ago, onecommunity dispersed across the country hada second electoral vote – Oxford andCambridge Universities had members ofparliament of their own. As our membershipof multiple communities rises in politicalsignificance, how will our decision-makingstructures respond?

In contrast, many neighbourhoodorganisations look today as they might havedone 100 years ago. Increasingly, thequestion must be ‘why?’ Envision is asustainable development charity that workswith sixth-form school pupils. It helps them tocreate websites that connect them to localpeople, other young Envisionaries’ acrossLondon and interested observers all over theworld. The results are empowering: helpingyoung people to co-ordinate the work thatthey do in a way that is independent of schoolstructures and to make contributions to theirlocal area more easily and effectively than theyhad been able to before. Projects haveranged from renovating derelict public spacesto installing solar panels to public buildings.The approach of its staff is not directive – toseek simply to ‘deliver’ these changes – butfacilitative, seeking to build relationshipsbetween young people that are grounded insustainable development.

Today, for example, Neighbourhood Watch ischanging. Once meeting in village halls todistribute posters, local people are now gettingactive. Groups are increasingly using textmessage alerts, streaming video surveillanceand online dialogue to deter criminals. In thisway, they help to reduce crime and the fear ofcrime together, building the confidence withintheir community that they are safe and thatthey can fight back. For example, BrunswickSquare Central Lawn Association inGloucester has recently received an AOLInnovation in the Community Award to fund anew Neighbourhood Watch bulletin board andnewsletter on its Web site, including homesecurity tips and emergency telephonenumbers.21 In East Malling in Kent, two-wayradios are being used in conjunction withcamcorders, both to reassure residents and togather evidence on known offenders.22 Asbroadband technology becomes increasinglyubiquitous, combining these centralised andpeer-to-peer approaches to community-ledcrime prevention will become increasingly easy,making it an area in which rapid innovation inyears to come seems likely.

21 www.brunswicksquare.org.uk22 See http://www.neighbourhoodwatch.net/motorola/scheme.htm23 Wired Magazine article, ‘Big Champagne is watching you’, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.10/fileshare.html

Citizen leadership

Broadband is connecting computers, andincreasingly all kinds of devices, across theUK. As a result, the means of virtualproduction will increasingly be in the hands ofthe people, but they will be privately owned.This may have dramatic consequences for theways in which services function and the waysin which decisions about them are made.

For example, for record companies, file sharingis a serious problem. However, the quality ofthe information that it simultaneously creates isirresistible. Even while suing those who enabledownloading, record and radio companies arepaying large sums for real-time informationabout who is downloading what, and wherethey live. Such information has turned theinternet into the world’s largest musical focusgroup. Together with exchanges of play-listsas well as music itself, this is shifting controlover musical taste and fashion from those whodistribute music to those who play and createit.23 Increasingly, the policies of radio stationsand record companies will be made incollaboration with those who buy their music.

This striking example raises questions aboutthe future of public services. Transferringknowledge about teaching or medicine hasalways been extremely complex and difficult.However, the tools of these trades, as we haveseen, are increasingly as transferable as MP3s.Could mapping exchanges of lesson plansnationally tell us what schools are prioritising orfinding difficult? Could the foci of public healthcampaigns emerge from the questions we askone another online?


In this year’s American presidential election, forthe first time in decades, local political activismwas the focus of national attention. However,while this was billed as a return to politics as ithad always been, the way communitiesorganise has changed forever. While bigbudget television commercials remained asimportant as ever to the candidates, the waysin which they are shared have changed.Some were not even broadcast on television,but shared on the internet like chain letters.Others were shown face-to-face in the street,on activists’ PDAs.25

Democrats, most famously Howard Dean,used moveon.org and meetup.org to buildsupport and organise meetings. Perhapsmost dramatically, bloggers drew in expertsfrom across the world to prove thatdocuments used by CBS anchorman DanRather to question George W. Bush’s NationalGuard service were false. From givingindividuals a say in the shape of the media,blogs had provided groups with a right ofpolitical initiative, a right of initiative in thedemocratic process itself.

From road maintenance to our democracyitself, as broadband helps to distributeleadership across our society, much maychange. While this may chime with nostalgiafor small town politics, the democratic benefitshang in the balance. As Douglas Rushkoffargued recently, in the shift from party politicalbroadcasts to party political networks, thedeclining need for a single conversation ormessage may blunt the force of democraticscrutiny. As with all four principles, thechallenge is to adapt, and to shape them topublic benefit.

One area where similar suggestions arealready being made is that of roadmaintenance. As they become more andmore accurate, tiny and cheap, broadband-enabled sensors may literally be everywhere.Connected to cars’ GPS systems and anti-lock brakes, a near-accident on a local roadcould be relayed immediately to the council,and automatically allocated to the route of asalt truck that day.24

Another important area may be policing.Today, strategic decisions about policedeployment are made by a few senior officers.As broadband and location-based softwareconverge, officers will be able to use wirelessPDAs that automatically log events’ locationand time. This has the capacity to generateevolving pictures of crimes over a series ofweeks, which can help to show up patternsthat in the past remained hidden. With thegovernment’s emphasis on communitypolicing, there is also the potential for citizensto contribute to this database, unlocking theintelligence of a whole community about whenand where to deploy police resources.

Critics of the idea that broadband cancontribute not only to the services we receive,but also to the collective decisions we makeabout them, fear the growth of democracythrough plebiscite, where monumentaldecisions are just a click away. In thisscenario, what is unnerving is just how easy itis to choose. However, if access to theresources at each citizen's disposal had to benegotiated, this might create a much deeperkind of democratic conversation. For a driverto accept these sensors on their car, theywould really have to feel a commitment to theirlocal authority.

Until very recently critiques of central publicprovision were the preserve of academics.Social capital theorists, for example, likeRobert Putnam, argued that broadcasttechnology was a factor in focussing ourattention on broadcasting to everyone at theexpense of talking to one another. As the riseof broadband starts to swing this pendulumback, this critique is beginning to feed throughinto the strategies of political parties.

24 http://www.trainingmag.com/training/reports_analysis/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=100061730225 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders


A culture of experimentation and dialogue

To find social uses of disruptive technologiesrequires cultures of experimentation anddialogue. At its best, broadband has thepotential to be both convenient and adaptable,and it is only by exploiting these twin benefitsthat we can start to develop these cultures.

For example, a modern executive car is veryconvenient. It very rarely goes wrong, and willferry its driver hundreds of miles quickly andsmoothly - the luxury for their owners is thatthey can take them for granted. However, tochange the oil or tinker with the tuningrequires an expert. A mobile ringtone is todayhighly adaptable. Having given away thesource code, the industry has helpedthousands of people to craft their own, withrelative ease. But, of course, we cannot usea ringtone to achieve a great deal in life.Ringtones, nevertheless, are evidence thattechnology works best when it is our slaveand not our master.

Broadband has the potential to be both veryconvenient – enabling us to do a vast array oftasks with great ease – and very adaptable –helping us to change what we do and how wedo it. In so doing, it has the potential to giveits users both the confidence and the controlthey need to improve their own lives.

For example, mysociety.org is a website with avery broad aim: to create internet projects thathelp people, at very low cost per person. Thesite serves a place where people, no mattertheir idea, can log it, search for support andwould-be project partners and critique andadd to the ideas of others. Their secondproject is to be Pledgebank, which ‘allowsanyone to say “I’ll do X if other people also doX", for example “I’ll write to my councillor if 5other people on my street do the same’.

Only by developing more of these adaptable,convenient tools can we help communities tofind their own uses for broadband. The bestway to ensure broadband’s value is preciselythis – not to gamble on futurology but todevelop places where communities canthemselves make broadband work for them.

In a Leicestershire school, the rules say thatphones, especially camera phones, are notallowed. Like all schools, they worry aboutpupils communicating with people off-site, andin particular, with drug dealers and otherunsavoury individuals.

At the end of a maths lesson, a teacher sees apupils playing with a camera phone, while therest of the class are still dutifully copying downtheir homework from the board. The teacherdecides to pounce. The pupil protests, ‘well,you asked me to copy down the homework,so I did.’

What should be the first step in trying tounlock the benefits of broadband for thepublic realm? This educational exampleshows that the capacity of organisations torespond – to make solutions out of potentiallydisruptive technology – may lie at the heart ofan answer to this question. So how can webuild this capacity to respond to thedisruptions that broadband will inevitablycreate? The answer lies in two features of thetechnology itself; its ability to combineconvenience and adaptability and its potentialto create cycles of public engagement andtechnical improvement. Broadband has thepotential not simply to demand socialinnovation but in many cases to improve ourcapacity to enable it.

public value and social innovation

A virtuous circle

Broadband also has the potential to developour capacity to work in this way by helping tocreate feedback loops between publicengagement and technical improvement. Forexample, in New York, 311 is ‘a kinder gentler911’, bringing together all governmentcommunications networks to offer a singleenquiry line for citizens, whatever their query.Perhaps most importantly, this way,governments learn. Every query is logged atstreet level, helping to produce fantasticallydetailed maps of every public issue, fromhomelessness to potholes.

As this information becomes public, itsbenefits will multiply. Imagine a voluntarycommunity group aiming to tacklehomelessness able to call up information ofthat quality and to map their own impact overthe weeks and months. Would they interactwith government? They would log theirinformation on government databases as if itwere their own, and they would activelyencourage others to engage with the service.This, in turn, would increase its value. This ishow broadband can help public engagementand technical improvement to grow together.This is the kind of feedback loop that policymakers must strive to forge.


To meet these new challenges, governmentmay increasingly strive to test itself against theprinciples of flexibility, personal support,community and citizen leadership. In all theseareas, broadband’s first contribution has beento raise expectations. From self-diagnosis totheir own democratic voice, broadband userswill expect to exploit its capacity to the full. Asthis capacity shifts beyond the merelytechnical to the social, it will place strongpressures on all kinds of familial, social andpolitical institutions, while helping individuals toshape their own interface with society. This isa development that must not be ignored.

While the technical virtues of broadband areimmediately apparent, its social benefitdepends upon deep and wide-ranging publicengagement. This dependence upon publicengagement is hardly novel – which of Britain’sproblems could not be solved with thededicated energy and imagination of sixtymillion people? What sets broadband apart isits potential simultaneously to help structureour society in ways that enable and encouragejust this participation.

In so doing, broadband may well help to shiftpower from the domain of the institution tothat of the individual. In this environment, theinfluence of public services is no longer set instone - it depends crucially on theirconnectedness and credibility, which theymust constantly strive to reproduce.

Broadband is helping to raise the importanceof four principles that will increasingly structurethe environment in which takes place: flexibility,personal support and engagement, communityand citizen leadership will all serve as vitalbenchmarks for Broadband Britain’s publicservices. Schools must be able to respond tothe diversity and imagination of their students’interests, and create learning environmentsthat help this creativity to be expressed anddeveloped. Hospitals will increasingly seek tocreate networks among their patients, helpingthem to share advice and support with oneanother. Local councils will need to engage inincreasingly open-ended and future-focusseddialogue with their citizens. All of theseprocesses will be engendered in part andfacilitated in part by the ubiquity of broadband– effects that are a far cry from today’s rhetoricof speed and access.

conclusion


YouGov, October 2004(Base: 2,469 broadband users)

Using broadband…• 59% of people have logged on before

breakfast• 21% have got up in the middle of the night

to use the internet• 68% of people have a TV or radio (or both)

in the same room as the internet

appendix: summary of quantitative data findings

From where in the home do you mostoften access the Internet? (%)

What have you done online in the past 12 months? (%)

• 94% feel safe or very safe using internetbanking

• 62% do not feel safe letting children use theinternet unsupervised

• 95% feel safe or very safe buying productsor services online

Posting content online…• 18% post content onto the internet daily• 22% post content onto the internet weekly• 16% post content onto the internet monthly• 57% have created content to post online

that they would not otherwise have createdoffline


What have you ever posted (or uploaded)onto the internet? (%)

Activities and community online…• 29% have helped with a child’s education • 42% of 30-50 year olds have helped with

a child’s education• 57% have researched their own health

or that of a friend or relative• 26% used the internet to organise

‘get-togethers’ or events in their localcommunity. While most of these areinformal and social, a significant number arepolitical, community or sporting events

• 35% say that the internet makes it easier for them or their family to be involved inlocal activities

• 81% email people they wouldn’t otherwisekeep in touch with by letter or phone

What do you think you will be usingbroadband for in 12 months/5 years time? (%)


Documents

Craig, J. & Wilsdon, J. (2004). Broadband Britain. Demos, London