TelePolis creates a public sphere that is different from that of the electronic mass media. As with the telphone, here everyone has the chance to establish contact with everyone else. TelePolis is essentially a location for the individual and not for the masses. Although the mass media are integrated into TelePolis, what distinguishes it is its interactive and multi- media interfaces. Users need not opt only for finished products, they can enter what is offered, alter it and tailor it to their personal requirements, whilst at the same time being addressed more individually.
TelePolis is acquiring a resident population. Every new connection to the networks enlarges the population. Just as in any ordinary town, there are many separate localities in TelePolis, and it is the home of many differing milieus. Everything is to be found here that real life offers, be it business people, the military, speculators, scientists, dandies, politicians, intellectuals, esoterics, criminals or gamblers. TelePolis is inhabited not only by large institutions but also by minorities of every ilk - and where they come together is in cyberspace.
TelePolis is a new data space in a multiplicity of forms and with dimensions that may well exceed the grasp of our imaginations; it is currently being created and constructed in a spirit of feverish activity that is as evocative of utopian hopes as it is of anxieties. TelePolis is not merely a marketplace in which information in word, text, sound and images is exchanged, processed and traded; TelePolis is itself also a gigantic market that is being fought over on account of the economic, technical, political and cultural significance that it has for countries and commercial companies.
TelePolis means that there is a life, a space, a reality, a public sphere and a community that in point of fact cannot be localized and is indeed "locationless", i.e. not to be pinpointed as existing in any one place in concrete reality.
At the same time, TelePolis does have its streets, squares, buildings, walls, doors and windows, places that are accessible or places to which entry is prohibited, or access to them is controlled in some way. With the performance of certain tasks and activities becoming ever less dependent on where we actually are situated, TelePolis overlaps or replaces many of the functions of a conventional polis since these functions hitherto depended upon the city's spatial density, upon who our immediate neighbors were, and upon our being centrally located.
In the first instance, TelePolis leads to new ruptures and shifts between spatial proximity and distance, between being bound to the locality in which our bodies and machines are situated and access to the virtual spaces in which one is at the same time present, between modes of behavior that are adopted when one is present and those that are adopted in virtual reality. At one and the same time, we occupy two - if not three - spaces: the space in which we are physically present, as well as the virtual space that we enter into via the appropriate interfaces, and perhaps a far distant or inaccessible place in the real world with which we are connected via tele-presence technologies or via a robot - with the robot's cameras allowing us to see, its microphones to hear, and with whose means of locomotion we move, and thanks to its prehensile organs we work or are entertained.
TelePolis is no global village as envisaged by McLuhan and into which he prophesied the cities would soon dissolve. TelePolis is an exploding megapolis, of which it is scarcely possible to take in a general overview; it is developing out of the old cities, combining all regions in one cityscape and forming a cosmopolis. TelePolis can be the reality on a farmstead, in a village or in the middle of a town. Being in TelePolis can also mean that we are on a beach, in the air, on water, or anywhere else. TelePolis blurs the traditional borderlines between private and public spheres, just as it does between work and recreation. TelePolis is a megacity built not of bricks, glass, concrete and asphalt. Its building blocks comprise at the same time its points of access. TelePolis can only be entered if one has the electronic technologies available. TelePolis is also a technopolis. It is inhabited not only by people who communicate with one another via machines and who become ever more nomadic. There are also robots and virtual forms of life to be found here. Whilst the equipment and places where we humans live and work become ever more intelligent, our technologies are closing in on us physically ever more until they begin to get under our skin. TelePolis will have an increasing amount of immersive media that like the still martial knightly armour of virtual reality shut us off from our surroundings. There will also be neurotechnological implants. It is possible that "Biosphere II", an autonomous technological- ecological island shut off from its surroundings and only connected with other biospheres by means of telecommunications, is an element from which the future TelePolis will be built. TelePolis will alter political structures, ways of working, forms of organization, the world in which we live, and our human existence. Technopolis is no utopia since it is in the process of coming into being; we have already crossed the threshold and have gained admission to all that it offers: its opportunities, risks, conflicts and repercussions that as yet can by no means be clearly seen.
TelePolis would appear to be moving in the direction of "locationlessness". It seems to negate space and material reality in favour of time and virtuality. Nonetheless, TelePolis is built upon the foundations of the old cities, their enclosed space and thoroughfares, as well as upon the forms of urban life that - with the help of the media, telecommunications and rapid means of transport - have long since reached the countryside and the villages. For all the mobility within the networks, TelePolis probably increases sedentariness and increases the sphere of private and individual decision-making. But just as the town was once dependent on the country, it is dependent on the urban spaces whose functions and form it in part takes over and in part changes. For an exhibition to be able to focus at least on this as its central theme, the chosen elements of TelePolis will be ordered according to some important functions which (still) spatially characterize our cities.
Text: Florian Rötzer (c) 1994