The new local

OF ALL THE methods of communication invented by humanity over the centuries, none has disseminated so much information so widely at such high speeds as the internet. It is both a unifying force and a globalising one. But, as this report has argued, its very ubiquity makes it a localising one too, because it is clearly not the same everywhere, either in what it provides or how it is operated and regulated.

The smartphone has liberated its user from the PC on his desk, granting him access on the go not just to remote computers and long-lost friends on the other side of the world but also to the places around him. If he lives in a city, as most users do, then his fellow city-dwellers and the buildings, cars and streets around them are throwing off almost unimaginable quantities of valuable data from which he will benefit. And although communications across continents have become cheap and easy, physical proximity to others remains important in creating new ideas and products—especially (and perhaps ironically) for companies offering online services. You cannot (yet) have a coffee together online.

This simultaneously more localised and more globalised world will be more complicated than the world of old. Different rules will continue to apply to different countries’ bits of cyberspace. Gartner’s Mr Prentice thinks that three basic forces will shape the mobile internet, the transport of data across it and the content available on it: politicians’ demand for control; (most) people’s desire for freedom; and companies’ pursuit of profit. It is possible to imagine scenarios in which one of these forces comes out on top; for instance, a “Big Brother” state that keeps a close eye on the internet and determines who can do what on it. But it is more likely, says Mr Prentice, that different combinations of the three forces will prevail in different places.

What seems certain is that life online will become more local without becoming any less global

What seems certain is that life online will become more local without becoming any less global. With a smartphone in your hand you can find out more, if you want to, about what is going on immediately around you. The next bus goes in five minutes. The coffee shop across the street, where you haven’t been for a few weeks, is offering you a free cappuccino. Those cushions you looked at online are available in the department store around the corner. Mr Hudson-Smith of UCL speculates that the smartphone could even help revive the high street if people knew that they could take home today what Amazon could not deliver until tomorrow.

None of this will reduce the scope or the appetite for catching up with friends, news and stories from far away. “The truth is that three things will go on at once,” says Danny Miller, an anthropologist at UCL. There will continue to be “unprecedented opportunities for homogenisation and globalisation”, but there are also “possibilities for great localisation”—including services such as Foursquare. Lastly, there will be a new localism, thanks to an internet full of local differences that are not confined to particular places. For example, Trinidadians use Facebook in a distinctive way to reflect local concepts of scandal and gossip. But because more than half of Trinidadian families have at least one member living abroad, this form of use is not tied to Trinidad; it could just as easily be adopted by Trinidadians living in London or Toronto.

A further prediction is that, as people rely more on connected devices to explore the physical world, digital information will have a growing influence on how they see the physical realm and on how they move through it. Mr Graham and Mr Zook, with Andrew Boulton, also of the University of Kentucky, begin a forthcoming paper by imagining a young woman’s progress through Dublin on a Saturday night—a kind of digital “Ulysses”. She checks texts and tweets from her boyfriend (where is he?), passes a bar (a favourite band once played here) and looks up a review of a restaurant (seems good). But the city she sees has been digitally constructed for her. Her boyfriend sends her a text to arrange a meeting place. She knows about the band because her past online searches have prompted her smartphone to provide the details. And the restaurant review is nothing more than the sum of other people’s opinions, delivered electronically.

All this is harmless, even helpful, but there is a darker side to it. Eli Pariser, an American journalist, has written of a “filter bubble” in which people are presented only with ideas and opinions that their past online behaviour suggests they are likely to agree with. As they make their digital way through the physical realm, something similar may happen. Being steered away from areas of high crime late at night is no bad thing. But not being pointed towards a museum or a club because you haven’t been anywhere like it before may be a missed opportunity. Standing in front of a monument and being given a version of history that reinforces your prejudices closes rather than opens the mind. Messrs Graham, Zook and Boulton point out that Google provides very different information about the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn to Estonian- and to Russian-speakers.

Yet on the whole it is surely a good thing for the digital and the physical worlds to become increasingly interwoven. They are complements, not substitutes for each other. The digital overlay will, in effect, allow people to see not only through walls (what’s in that shop?) and around corners (is there a taxi nearby?) but even through time (what happened here in 1945?). Each realm on its own is fascinating; together they are irresistible.