227/08 Social challanges s the basis for foresight - Gaia

opment. This future ubimedia platform consists
of many new business enablers, such as:
– Ubiquitous information flows: we can turn
any information source to a data flow that is
available anywhere.
– Positioning of people and things: cheap indoor
and outdoor positioning technologies
for new media services that are dependent
on context information, such as location
sensitive advertising.
– Sensors everywhere: using sensors at home,
at work in our surroundings to make smarter
systems, help ICT solutions to recognize the
state of the environment and adapt to it, and
increase human awareness of effects of our
own everyday behavior.
– Displays everywhere: we can expect the
growth in various types of electronic display
technologies, and we are rapidly moving
from approximately 10 digital displays
to 100 displays per household; how will this
change our media behavior?
– Ubiquitous data security: reliability of information,
data security and trustworthy infrastructure
become more important over
time, and Finland can be well-positioned to
be competitive in this market.
Nokia wants to more open and concentrating
on the Internet and new services. Nokia’s business
activity is currently bigger than the music
business or camera business globally, and
these industries could be directed by Nokia, if
they so wish. Finland should make sure that
there exists a new R&D and business cluster
around the evolving Nokia. By building a
strong mobile services cluster around Nokia,
Finland can leapfrog from the current status of
mediocrity in internet services onto one of the
major global developers.
3. Culture and entertainment. Can we make
something of a major scale with Finnish culture?
This is not so much about exporting
Finnish cultural products, but to export services
that are rooted in the Finnish culture and
have global reach and demand. The ways of
operation are becoming more based on networks,
new partnerships, growing economies;
international collaboration in the different axis
of cultural exchange. Many of the most important
game developers of Europe are in Nordic
countries, and the hope is that we can come up
with novel mixtures with global partnerships.
How about Nintendo Kalevala?
4. Learning. Understanding that democratic access
to information and learning has been one
of Finland’s keys to success. By raising the
knowledge level of the whole nation has allowed
to find resources for demanding tasks
that has risen the country at the top international
level, for example in telecommunications.
General media skills are at a high level in
Finland, and this needs to be retained, but we
should also be able to transform these into internationally
important products. Instead of
mechanistic information gathering we need
people who are highly skilled in information
refining, knowledge creation and exploitation.
We are moving from one-way teaching from
pupils to learners towards community-centric
learning. New forms of community-centric
learning, using new technologies are needed to
support discovery, insight creation and interpretation
will replace the existing learning
practices.
5. Well-being and sustainable living. ICT and
media tools are both a problem and a potential
solution. ICT may decrease the everyday mobility
thus reducing the normal physical activity
level. Then again, there is a big opportunity
to develop new solutions and services that motivate
people to stay in shape (e.g., life span
monitoring of health). Environmental theme is
rising from various directions and IT and media
has an important role to play in sustainable
development. Sustainable development puts
pressure on supporting new forms of behavior
related to consumption, mobility and tourism,
which all have links to uses of media technology
and new services. All in all, Finland could
be a model country for sustainable living and
the usage of IT.
6. Print 2.0. Publishing, print communication
and ICT combined with new products and services
is a unique combination globally, and
fundamental for the Finnish industrial structure.
There is a need to redefine the role of
print products in the future landscape of media
use, as media, ICT and paper industry have a
joint future.
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