Knut's Sweden Report
6/16/99
swenska saga
last week, honoria and myself went to sweden to present the opera at the global bangemann challenge event ( http://www.challenge.stockholm.se/ ), a competition hosted by the city of stockholm and by the european community, for projects demonstrating best practices in information technology. our project had been chosen as a finalist in the culture and media category.
also there were vicente fores, our european director of operations, with his family, and my parents, driving up from germany. there was a two-day tradeshowish / symposion - event where we and most of the other projects participating had a presentation booth. we had presented a number of nice panels and banners, doing a good presentation. there was not terribly much traffic in the show, the audience was mostly composed of officials concerned with the globa cities dialog in information technology, which is the underlying theme of the bangemann challenge.
then we had the 1993 nobel prize dinner in the golden hall. the golden hall is a big room decorated with a mosaic of about 9 million fingernail-sized gold tiles depicting historical figures and scenes. the aesthetics are not really medieval, but it seemed strange that this place was built in the nineteen-twenties, after bauhaus, in a western country, in a setting that can not be explained by postmodernism. at the dinner, the finalists were also given award trophies, because 'they are winners, too'.
swedish citizens have a high awareness of royal-family related things, not just in a yellow press sense, also in a civic one. the king, giving out the awards in city hall, the mayor's place, was a respected guest, but not the boss. btw, with all due respect, the king looks like jerry springer's brother, the one with a harvard degree. there is also a queen (i think) and some princesses.
sweden has a strong concern with the rest of the world, manifested not only in this event, which will continue as the stockholm challenge in the future, but also expressed in the nobel prize and a general attitude embodied by the mayor of stockholm, who also keeps apologizing for the weather. the weather we had was mostly friendly. id doesn't get dark at night, the sky keeps a light blue color. during winter, it stays dark during the day. in the summer, people really cherish the sun.
sweden and the other nordic countries are proud of their information technology infrastructure, and local representatives express dissatisfaction with the level of attention they get for it from the usa. stockholm has 65% of housholds on the internet, fiber in the whole city. everyone uses a cellphone. there are cellphone earhones that have a microphone in the cord, so people can talk on the phone with their hands free: the postman is wearing one while delivering packets, and many cylists are on the phone while cycling. some swedish companies (ericsson, telia (the privatized phone company) and others) maintain a high-dollar smart-home research lab that we went to visit. it explores two different areas: all appliances remote-controlled with multiple access methods (phone, ip, whatever) and communication-zones: a big flat screen in the kitchen, with videoconferencing enabled based upon the part of the room that the user is in. communication zones allow for parallel presence of public and private areas in the same room. also there are 120 ethernet ports in the experimental appartment. the technology side seemed a bit uncoordinated and is independent of the us-initiatives (microsoft, java spaces), but the project has a secure theoretical foundation, with the right questions being asked.
things are expensive, there is 25% vat, but the streets are still full of big volvos, saabs and audis. the city of stockholm looks wealthy and has a large shopping district with many small stores. restaurants play billy holiday (spelling?), there is lots of good fish to eat. and on the eighth day, they flew home.
knut
see also: Honoria's Letter from Stockholm, honoria in ciberspazio in the Global Bangemann Challenge Awards
