Marleen Stikker - 'Digitale Stad'

Reflection

'The internet is broken' is how Marleen Stikker starts her lecture at De Dependance 2020. It is common knowledge that the Internet is no longer the product that was promised to be when it was designed. Marleen talks about ways to save, fix the internet and proposes certain steps, a hypothesis, that should work to slowly fix it. Changing the narrative, rethinking economics, incorporating full transparency etc. I cannot help but notice that The Internet is like any social construct. Changing one requires not only a good, well thought of strategy but more importantly willingness of the society, communities, people as individuals, which have to be ready to take that information in and be willing to accept the problems that there are in the now.
I think that what Marleen wants us to see is that everything is interconnected - we cannot simply change one thing without having to affect something else. If we want real change that leads into something positive that requires a lot of willpower, human understanding, openness to see our own flaws as a society as well as as individuals. To fix one aspect of life such as The Internet we would need to rebuild everything that it had been shaped and developed by through years. To do that we must accept that those social, cultural, psychological political, economical, ecological influences that shaped The Internet might have been broken too. And this, I believe, leads to reformation of everything. And while it does sound healthy and good for all of us in many different ways, it also sounds like a lot of work. I think a lot of times things do not change and do not get fixed because we learn to live with them, they are not uncomfortable enough to get up and do it and good enough to live by. How to change this mentality? How to start little and not be scared of the big work?

Research

When I first read about De Digitale Stad, (or the digital municipality in English), it seemed pretty unnecessary for a moment, but then I realized it was invented back in 1993, which does not seem far back at all, however The Internet and the capacities, capabilities and dependencies of it were way different in comparison to now.
Marleen saw a possibility of The Internet as a decentralized way of free communication, that is not being filtered, controlled and censored by the governments, states and other bigger 'powers'.
I think what Marleen invented was kind of similar to the concept of Facebook as to how it is now (without the parts where the product is the user and all data is being collected and sold:) ), however in a bigger, and at the same time smaller scale - even though it was not the intention, she did create a virtual community.
I find it interesting that the interface kind of 'followed' the infrastructure of the city of Amsterdam, maybe this way also creating a feeling of home, aka, safety? Afterall, the reasoning for De Digitale Stad was a safe space.

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