In 1999, together with some very enthusiastic visionary friends we conceived the concept of the Smart Piazza. We pitch it to the then Multimedia Network as below:

Imagine walking into the Smart Piazza. You are entering a public wireless high bandwidth Local Area Network. Your digital mobile phone can now make free calls within the immediate area (the piazza and it’s surrounding buildings) so you dial your friend who tells you she’s in a particular café waiting for you.

There’s a screen just near you that runs the news headlines and an advertisement related to your interests, maybe even for that book you were asking about last time you were in the bookshop here. Children are making up their own games with the interactive flooring. A big group of people with earpieces and funny sunglasses are watching a dance party live from another Smart Piazza in Germany on a big screen. Another smaller group is watching the Japanese Grand Prix.

You head across the piazza to the café and your name lights up in the paving – the Smart Piazza knows you’re here. You thought that was fun last time you were here but you’re over it so you switch that function off for today.

In the café you meet your friend who’s been looking up movies on the web on her PDA. She’s seen five full video movie trailers off the local broadband wireless network, book-marked the screening times page, and is filling in time playing one of the house networked games against someone in the building next door. You switch over your PDA screen to the table’s own screen and show her what you’ve been doing at work by logging into your work computer. You exchange a contact list and update some working draft documents with your PDA’s. And after chatting with the waiters at the door walk out without paying because you already have – the wireless network picked up your smartcard/digital wallet and charged you accordingly.

How much is so real today – I see IOT we continued with this:

• All-in-one

Interacting with the “smart” environment will require the convergence of many of the personal consumer electronic devices we see today. Maybe one single device can replace the Phone, PDA, Walkman, and even Gameboy we already use. A lot of the content and smarts could be delivered by the local network to a small device which is simply an interface.

• Disposable devices

Single (or multiple) disposable devices could provide an interface to the network. For example a simple listening device to hear the news, dance party or sporting event being displayed on a large screen.

• Stored value chips

Could provide enough information for the holder to interact with the environment holding loyalty points, preferences or payment methods etc.

• Technologies

• Human Computer Interface – suitable for public spaces
• Public Local Interactive Network
• Pervasive Computing
• Convergence
• Smart Cards
• Wireless Networking

We won and we ventured on our SmartPiazza Research Voyage:

July 1999 – Berlin

Love Parade was a real sign of the way a culture can embrace a city completely.  It was amazing to see a traditional beer hall, where loud techno music was being played and the bar owners grey hair coloured green.  Berlin is a city of construction and rebuilding.  Berlin coped brilliantly, efficient train ticketing with full supportive marketing of all day tickets.  Kits of condoms and earplugs in a neat little travel case where supplied generously by Durex. Deutsche Post invested in a Mercedes Smart Car Promotion with a Postaway offer.  The ravers where will catered for by illegal beer traffickers and pretzel vans. The music kept pumping via these huge semi trailers, this allowed the love paraders to dance to the music as the trucks rolled past or for the very adventurous you could climb on board.  It was a very different street parade with no walking along but every one was dancing, whole families attended along with the very hardcore ravers. The sun was warm  men where wearing skirts and girls as much as masking tape on the nipple.

We were very keen to see the parade happen so we were there at about 11, watching Germany and techno Europe arriving.  They poured into the train stations and via the Autobahns. Late at night we ventured towards the Victory Column to get a closer look at Dr Motte, here we began terrified of being squashed as many fought to breath, we retreated and continued to party in the streets of Berlin.  After a few beers and some refuelling we discovered an underground dance party in the grounds of the Art Academy, we danced till dawn, unaided by drugs.  There events was not one where drugs were  mainstream.

Berlin is a city of reconstruction extend to an InfoBox with three stories of interactive displays about all the new developments that were being built.  Sony has taken a very large building the most modern looking European headquarters.

Deutsche Telecom is fueling a strong broad band cable infrastructure into the new building. Additionally Deutsche Telecom is extending on their investment in ISDN and promoting heavily the costs savings to internet users of ISDN based internet access versus analogue.

Zurich airport showed signs of the emerging existence of the web dj, with a newly built and heaving sponsored

Venice

St.Marks offered some real inspiration in Piazza design, the sheer size and structure was awesome. The design inspired networking and power of the community because of the style of the upper dwellings offering privacy yet together as the piazza.

Venice is focused heavily on tourism, but very few signed of smart integrated technology for example,  there were no reusable cards for any of the payments systems. The Vaporetto run by ACTV was a prime example of lack of efficient payment services. ie there only checking of payment were inspectors.  The Venice Academia had invested in a smart card payment system that was not reusable,  offered no functionality other than a welcome message and seemed an expensive but not smart solution.  Florence was another example of very bad payment systems were queues latest for days and there was little promotion of prepayment. Etc

The Tech Museum in San Hose allowed us to simulate an earth quake, displayed the HP head scanning technology and the history of the microchip.  Plently of generous large screens as part of a huge floor of internet kiosk’s/ café/public surfing with style, amazingly shaped desks and comfortable chairs.  Super fast and sexy.

 

Visited Musuem of Modern Art of  San Francisco to see and meet Bill Viola who conceived Benetton Magazine.  The Bill Viola exhibition was sponsored by Intel and AT&T.  The use of multiple large screens was repeated through-out the exhibition.  Visited 3Com as a guest at the corporate briefing centre. Meet the developers of the Palm and toured the production environment and lab. We then visited LA County Museum of Art, followed by the most accepted form of public spaces in the US the shopping mall.